Merigoesaround

REGRETS!! Is this the limit of procrastination?!

Did you know that Peruvians call women (informally)...'ribs'??!?!? Costilla in Spanish. Mi costillitaaaa... My latino classmates are a box full of surprises, specially as regards the differences between the Spanish slang from Spain and their slang.

Tropical climate. Humidity. Humility. Poverty. Monsieur Leblanc calls his staff to the big conference room of the third floor. 'This year is our 50th anniversary of cooperation with the country of Lumanda. I think we should celebrate with a big party and prepare a book summarizing our successes helping Lumandans to live out of poverty. So, where do we start? which is in your opinion our major achievement after 50 years here and 1 million EUR spent? S.i.l.e.n.c.e. Nobody says. Nobody looks at Monsieur Leblanc. Local staff feel an imperative need to go to the bathroom. Internationals blush. 'Well, maybe it is not such a good idea to celebrate the 50th anniversary. We can always wait for the 60th', says Monsieur Leblanc. My friend Nini was visiting this weekend. She does little big things for a Foundation in New York. A Foundation that is close to the ones that have less in the part of the world that has more. I think micro is beautiful. Maybe the solution to combat the ineffi...

At home...only when the cops come and send everybody home. Luckily, we were not fined. Our last party was the dream of any single 40-year old divorced female...a party with a clear gender imbalance in favor of men. Check the picture of the kitchen. (*) this is kind of common in the U.S

Men today, at least most the ones I know, are perfect househusbands. They cook (specially impressive greasy weekend brunches), iron, do the dishes, take care of the trash, repair your computer when it crashes, buy all the things you will never buy (creamy 250 kcal yogurts) at the supermarket...Men are even better gossipers than women. Loveee my male roomaaatees!!!

These last days I've been shopping courses. This is the system Harvard has whereby you can attend a 30 minutes presentation of a course before you enroll. I believe my workload is more or less like last semester. Two quantitative and two qualitative subjects. Social life appears to be more intense than the last months. Now you actually have friends and want to spend more time with them outside school. This weekend starts on Friday, with Patrick's Mojitos Party. On Saturday...grosse fete at home, organized by my roomie Yue Man and myself. Pictures will come. On Sunday is the Superbowl and there is also another party. In a couple of weeks we will be immersed in problem sets, quizzes and memos...so let's enjoy every single second of the first two weeks at the Bubble. The Bubble is cold. There is no snow but my face hurts with the frozen breeze.

I never thought it would be so much fun going shopping in Cotonou. Everything has its (normally long) process. You fancy a new dress? Alright….you go to the market, fight against the thousands of people moving from here to there yelling ‘Ago, Ago’ (sort of ‘Watch out’), you finally find a place you like the tissue (my favorite the most expensive, the Dutch Wax Vlisco one) and then the bargaining process starts. Beninese people normally tell you around 5/7 times the price that you can get if you are good at bargaining. I am not going to say that that is the ‘real’ price, that depends on the context: most of the handcrafts you can buy in Benin cost a mini-fortune back in Westernworld. I love bargaining. Hugo says that I am a witch with no heart who tries to get ridiculous prices from poor Beninese sellers. That is simply not true, I get the price I believe I should be paying and sellers almost always end up giving me a small ‘cadeau’ (gift). So, 1- I am not exploiting anybody otherwise t...

If you haven’t noticed yet, I can be kind of weird sometimes. I promised my friend Rosa that at some point I would confess my ten oddest behaviors…I found those by now: - RIGHT FOOT FIRST: First rule in the morning, get out of the bed with the right foot. That does not sound very original, right? But I am awfully strict about it. - EAR-EATER: When I sleep I cover my right ear. I believe when I was a kid my mum repeated so many times that if I did not cover my ears a monster would come and eat them that what was a childhood scary story has become and lifelong habit. - YOGURT EVEREST: I eat yogurts in a very special way. I eat around the container creating a small pick. I can not stand when somebody put the spoon in the container and stirs the yogurt. - TOE’s PHOBIA: I do not like the big foot toe. Neither mine, nor others. I hate cutting the toe’s nail and when I was a kid my mum and my dad were both needed to cut it. - UNTOUCHABLE NOSE: Not even kissing Hugo. Nose is sacredly untouchab...

It is a kind of wind. Sandy one that comes from the Sahel desert. I love the name, it has a kind of Star Wars and aristocratic sound when I pronounce it. Har-ma-ttan. I am in Benin. Voodoo land. I had the chance to go to a Voodoo festival in Ouidah. I do not believe much on this kind of crazy spiritualism, animism, call it as you wish. Probably it is because it seems irrational to me and I am scared. Benin is so poor that I feel bad almost most of the day. I feel sorry and mad. Sorry because most of the people is so unbelievably poor that they can not even imagine how their lifes out of poverty would be. It seems to me that not to be able to imagine prosperity is a good definition of the overused ‘poverty trap’. I feel mad because you just have to go out and try to do anything that would be normal in a developed country: drive, have lunch, buy in the market, go to an internet café, breeeeath and you realized that all these simple routine-like things are more complicated over here. Even...

Should I describe friends I have made during the last years...I would probably need to stop studying and write full time about each of them, for a YEAR! Esta imagen es de mi amigo Verano. The one that nicknamed me ´hormona´, the hormone. For my hyperactivity. Don´t think dirty. He is an artist. He would not like that label though. A publicist, nop, he would not like that one either. What about the most creative person I know. He is working on a children´s calendar and I have stolen this very timely image from him.

I would be the one under the blanket... Just replace MIT with Harvard...and...I saw Borat.

Deadlock in Albania´s local election. I feel sad and mad, expectant and nervous. Is Albania going backwards? The fact that Nano is back to politics ain´t no good... New generation of Albanians, where are you? I know some of the new good blood, I can´t wait to see them on stage. Politically yours, Mtxll

Yes it is Christmas. At least officially. Those days when you eat so much that your feet feel like iron when you try to stand up and walk back home... Christmas, when it is cold even in Spain. Weell, no really. Christmas, when you receive new pajamas and colorful socks, tights and scarves (at least I do) Christmas, when you have time to sleep until midday and rela......doooong...WRONG! I do not sleep until late and I am not relax. I have those awful papers that I need to finish before going on official holiday to Benin. So, let Xmas wait a couple of weeks, until the 9th of January.

Bad girl is back. I have left this blog aside for the last month or so. In between exams and parties, parties and exams...haven't had time to write about my life here. We are in exam period. No fun. I discovered today with my Stats exam that even if during the semester you more or less follow the class and are somewhere not too extreme in the Bell curve....the finals can be very tough. And long (3 hours). All in all I hope I am still the B GIRL that I am. I have savored a couple of As this semester in partials...but I know that I belong to B. I am going to Barcelona tomorrow (well, there is a snow storm forecasted...with my luck, I can also foresee what could happen*). Just for 10 days. It is going to be short but intense...family, food (Gosh, I miss jamon. I miss my family too! but the other day I found myself checking the US Customs website to see whether I can bring some vacuum packed ham. The answer is no). I have what here in the Americas is called 'take home exams' to...

Don't want to turn this blog into a diary. No, no and no. But I just thought of my grandma who died almost 4 months ago and had some seconds of sadness. I enjoyed every second with her and thanks to Saturnina (what a name, right?!) I have those strong roots in the deep sweet Spain I often talk about. Here a piece of those memories turned into picture.

I am wondering... This economic/political definition of transition countries. In between developing and developed. When is it over? If I might focus my career on those countries, are they going to "transit" so fast that I'll be unemployed in 15 years? And why developing countries never turn into transition ones? NO "transit" for them? Aren't we all in transition?

...and I am happy. The trees, the yard, the river...". A classmate told me. Ursu, again you! And I agree. The last couple of months have been excitingly happy. I have enjoyed being in other places, I do not remember being unhappy anywhere...but the speed at which great days go by here is extreme. I wish the day had 30 hours. (we could even have longer parties...!!!) I am trying to finish this stupid assignment of having to analyze an education sector assessment. A 'critical review of a sector assessment' the assignment says I need to do. But hold on, I am analyzing a perfectly ok piece of paper that I indeed wish I had written. As my friend JW told me many times, 'you are really opinionated'. Yes, I am. I am sure I can write 7 pages with my opinion on how the World Bank assesses Turkey's education system. For TOMORROW!! I should have planned better. But this week has been crazy with "Why are so many countries poor?" paper. This Haussmann's growth ...

I am thinking about the results of elections back home, in Catalonia. My mum gave me the hint on how to read this election's results. She moved to Barcelona almost 40 years ago, from deep rural (and lovely!) Spain. She lived Franco times from the distance of a peaceful, non-revolutionary tiny village of Zamora's province. She moved to Barcelona looking for a new life, like other thousands of people living in more deprived areas of the Peninsula. Mum voted in the first democratic election for equality and justice, for Felipe Gonzalez Socialist party. Mum is a socialist. However...and this is really important, after 40 years living in another region of Spain that has given her (and ME!) all kind of opportunities that she would have not even imagined back in her little village...this election she was indecisive about whom to vote. "I am not sure", she said, "I think I should vote for Convergencia i Unio (CiU), the moderate center-right nationalist coalition. It is g...