An odd but enjoyable dinner

What I ate for breakfast: magdalenas and a cup of pineapple juice

Every Monday, there's a thing called "festival de cine" where a Spanish movie is shown in the little theater at the center. Today being a pretty free day, I decided to watch the featured flick, which was Return to Hansala. Since my last class ended at 6:50 PM and the movie started at 7 PM, a bunch of us scurried off to Mercadona to buy some munchies. I bought little flaky pastries filled with cheese and pate, some ham-flavored corn chips, and lemon soda. As we entered the darkened theater room just minutes after the movie started, some of us shared our snacks. I tried an apple-nut cookie from Claudia and a chunk of baguette with Brie from Kaitlyn. The movie was about a man whose job consists of taking back the bodies of Moroccan men to their homeland after they drown in the sea amidst attempts to escape to Spain. It presented a passive but profound perspective on the complexities of illegal immigration. Humanizing an otherwise sharply political matter can sometimes do us a bit of good, I think. But only if it serves as a launching pad for further investigation through reading the newspaper or some other informative resource. Us college students get all fired up on this or that issue, we say we need change, but that change isn't going to come from wearing a tee shirt with some dramatic tagline or by becoming a fan of some political figure or issue on Facebook. The problem is that we think doing these things proves an audacity within us. With this false assumption, the feeling of being responsible, concerned citizens comes too easily to us and there is no urgency to do more, such as read. And not just read the essays and articles that we know we'll agree with, but also the ones that make us feel uncomfortable because they bring legitimate arguments that merit a careful analysis, giving us the opportunity to re-access and/or strengthen our stance along the way.

Truth be told, this post is written partly out of guilt. The healthcare reform bill passed yesterday, but I haven't done any significant reading on it since arriving in Spain. Studying abroad is certainly no excuse to be ignorant of my own country's political and social condition, especially since I have Internet access. And while I'm being all truthful here, I might as well admit that sometimes (a lot of the time) politics is boring, hard to understand, or both. But that isn't an excuse either. I don't think I deserve to feel like a responsible citizen until I actually understand what we as Americans should be responsible for.