El Ciclón

The weather this weekend has been terrible throughout northern Spain. It has been extremely windy with some gusts as high as 95 miles an hour. The news has been showing blown over trees and downed powerlines from Galicia to Catlonia. Some poeple have been killed by falling debris in Barcelona. fortunately I havent been too affected by the wind but it has made it difficult to sleep. A restaurant near my apartment had a second story balcony totally blown off. At the beach there have been massive waves and it has been so dangerous that the police closed all public beaches. The waves have also been so bad that the city's port has been closed.
At the university some information booths were blown over. However what was most surprising is that part of the roof over the library was blown in. The structure of the building is basically a hollow rectangle where the classrooms and bookshelves are on the exterior and there is an empty central area. It is this area where part of the roof collapsed and now they put sand down to absorb the water that pours in when the rain comes and clean constantly. The campus itself seems kinda old, Im thinking late 60's or 70´s. Most of the buildings are kinda boxy looking. Hopefully this will be repaired soon. Fortunately, the weather is supposed to be gone by thursday.
Last thursday was kinda funny as while out with all the USAC kids we went to a bar with a live band and while waiting in the alley to get in a large group of people passed us and to our surprise everyone was speaking english. It turns out they were American exchange students that go to the University of Deusto, a private school closer to Bilbao. There actually werent that many locals around and we americans kinda took over the area. It was cool to just hang out and talk to all the other Americans.
Last night (monday) I watched a very interestig tv show called Tengo una pregunta por usted (I have a question for you) in which José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the prime Minister of Spain was asked questions by a huge group of average Spaniards. The forum was pretty free and including both people who seemed to like him and those that didnt. Some people asked some pretty tough questions about the economic problems that have been affecting the world and especially spain. After the question time had ended the prime minister staid and milled around with the citizens. It was kind of remenisent of the town hall debates in the presidential race but this a year after the spanish election where the people can express themselves to someone still in power. I wish that we had this kind of officials-citizens type of program in the US. About Zapatero, while his actions and mannerisms were calm, he seemed wide eyed like he was surprised or worried throughout the whole program. I found this kinda eerie as his eyes never changed their expression.
Also involving TV, Password is a really really cool show that is really helpful for language. During the first part contestants try to get their partner to guess words with three clues inside a time limit. Then during the second part teams try to work together to go through lists of words. then at the end a contestant has to identify a certain word from each letter of the alphabet to win. Its really interesting to watch and I feel that it will help my vocab a lot.