Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Igual Internacional

Today´s word of the day is "kaixo aspaldiko!": long time no see

Any time I tell some here where I am from they imagine the wide open prarie. I try to explain that there is some of that, but that I live in a city. But there are lots of cows, no? Why, yes, but there are a lot of cows in your country, too, it is sort of like that. At least some mayors of the region, who I met at a meeting, now know that people from Missouri draw the line at being considered from Kansas.

It is a comfort to know that politics is politics. Whether in Spain or the U.S. it comes down to votes and money. I sat in on a meeting on the topic of innovation in the municipalities in the region. Some of these towns still do stuff by hand, which is quaint and not bad in and of itself, but has economic consequences. The first thing that one of the mayors said, a mayor of a big city and is highly in favor of innovation, was "how does this get me re-elected and does it cost me anything?"

Saturday I spent time with a professor from Rhodes and his family. We went up to hill to look at Bilbao and it was very cool because rain was passing over part of the city and not others. I went to the Guggenheim on Sunday. There´s a room with these huge rust-red steele sculptures. Some of them are huge sheets on end and rolled up into curls so you walk in and around and around til you get to a big open center. I did a little dancing in one of them. That was my favorite room.

1 comment:

  1. it is hard to be from kansas city. everyone is so confused by it, and explaining it once for some reason doesn't make them understand. it's kind of like spelling my name for people. i have to spell it about 4 times and even after that, if they were to try to spell it on their own they would get it wrong.

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