Jury Duty, Earthquakes, and blackouts

Getting called for jury duty is never a fun task, but getting called for jury duty when you're living abroad can cause some added troubles. I was called for jury duty in June but I'll still be in Spain. In order to have my date postponed I need to do several things, among them getting an official letter from my school saying I'm working here until June 30th. I've been trying to get this simple 2 sentence letter from them for a couple of days. I asked about it again today at break and was told, "We can't do things immediately, this is Spain" well, yes by now I am VERY aware of that! I am kind of sad not to be able to do jury duty because I think it's an important duty that needs to be done, but that could just be because all of my classes are currently talking about the Spanish constitution and the rights and duties of citizens... oh well, I'm sure I'll get summoned for it again. I finally got my letter after a 45minute debacle today involving waiting on signatures and the scanner being broken but them trying to fix it and ending up with me just faxing it anyways. unnecessary tramites, but it's done now.

There was a 5.1 earthquake in southeastern Spain yesterday. It did a fair amount of damage in Murcia (the region where it was located) but it could have been a lot worse. It was felt slightly here in Madrid- my blinds fell down but that was all. Hopefully they can scrounge up some money somewhere to rebuild. On a side note the IMF jas just placed Spain in the same category as Greece and Portugal, so things aren't looking good financially.

The lights went out at school today during break and everyone just kinda looked around and then continued eating and talking in the dark (it's cloudy here today so not a lot of sunlight coming through the windows covered by curtains). A few minutes later a really loud beeping sound started. Only the assistants seemed to hear it. About 5min later one of the teachers noticed it and asked US what the noise was. How the hell are we supossed to know?! No one bothered to leave their snacks and eventually the noise stopped on its own and the lights came back on a few minutes later. Pues, de verdad tio, estamos en Espana...