Rain in Spain

The past few days have been rainy here in Granada, but considering that we haven't had precipitation in over a month, it's not so bad.
Some sad news: on Valentine's Day I woke up and found that one of the little puppies had died over night. Poor little guy - but at least he had a fighting chance. On the bright side, his brother - now dubbed Polo (short for Polaris, the north star, because he has a white "star" on his forehead. And because I'm a nerd like that) - is doing well and has even started to walk a little bit. He's been transferred from the oven to underneath the radiator, and so far so good :)
I had my first concert singing with "Gospel Molotov" on Thursday... lots of fun. The group is a strange mix of Americans, Brits, and Spaniards, but the music comes out pretty well. Wadih and I have been working hard on writing, arranging, and transcribing some of his songs; we're hoping to start recording some ideas for the CD this week.
Other than that, things are going well here. This morning the Granada Fulbrighters had a brunch at one of the women's house. It was great to see people and chat... even though we're all here together, we're rarely all in the same place at the same time. We'll all be heading to Valencia in a few weeks for our mid-year Fulbright reunion. Should be fun!

And Then There Were 6...

The theme of 2008 is...
puppies.
I think I mentioned in my previous entries that we have a little black puppy named Ramsis. At the end of January we decided to adopt another puppy from the animal shelter as a playmate for Ramsis, and we ended up with Toby, who is a small brown 3 month-old mix. Only a few days later, I found two puppies in the trash can near my house... at the time they were only a day or two old. So now there are six of us - Me, Wadih, Ramsis, Toby, pup1 and pup2. The past week has been somewhat crazy since the little babies have to be fed "Puppy Replacement Milk" out of a bottle every couple of hours. Their eyes still haven't opened yet but I think that by tomorrow they might be!
But really... who throws newborn puppies in the trash???
I think the man at the animal shelter told me that there are around 150,000 cats and dogs living "on the street" in Granada
Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately considering that we have a one bedroom apartment) I'll be giving the pups away as soon as they're old enough to eat solid food, and Toby may not end up staying with us due to some aggression issues.
My parents also have a new puppy for those of you who don't know -
Rossi is now their "pet" (although still trained as a demo dog) and Midge is the new baby in training.
What can I say - the Smiths are running zoos on two different continents!

I'll put pictures of the dogs up soon :)