Oh Happy Day

Today was a very good day for two reasons.  The first was that last night the Futbol Club Barcelona played a match against their arch rival Real Madrid in what is called here a “classic” – the confrontation in the Spanish league between Spain’s two most important teams.  I don’t subscribe to the pay channel where you could watch the game and I was not disposed to go out at night, alone, to watch it in a bar, so it wasn’t until late this morning that I found out that Barça had won 5-0.  That is a thrilling result for any Barça fan, but even more so this year after some impolite bragging and put-downs on the part of Real Madrid’s trainer and their star player (who isn’t nearly as cute as they say.  Has anyone ever looked at Xavi Alonso?  Now there is cute) just before the game.  Every now and then justice prevails.

The second and more important reason for this being a good day for me personally is that I finally, after much money, effort, and disappointment, passed the exam for my Spanish driver’s license.  In fact, I learned about the result of last night’s Barça game from the examiner while I was driving around the streets of Tortosa, trying not to run anyone over.  Getting a license here is nothing at all like getting one in California, and in a subsequent post I will describe the process.  Suffice it to say that I consider it a big accomplishment and I am thus very relieved, a little bit proud, and very, very happy.