Starry Night

The Chinese Korean restaurant/smoothie shop/bar that I mentioned before, Starry Night, has become my go-to place for studying while I eat supper. The atmosphere is completely informal, the food is very decent, and by now I have a nodding relationship with the guy who runs the place -- at least the restaurant part.

They have a rotating cast of characters too. There is a tall, slender gay man who serves as the waiter for the outside tables, when the weather is nice enough to use them. At slack moments he plays the guitar and sings something. There is a young East Asian woman with big round glasses and pink-purple hair; she sits and pokes a laptop, probably playing some kind of game. She talks informally with the staff, and she appears most nights I'm there.

Outside there are two or three middle-aged transgender prostitutes. I nod and smile at them. Some of them are there every night.

I haven't been sightseeing this week, partly because I'm spending a lot of time studying. But tomorrow I'm going with a group from the school to La Biblioteca Nacional -- the national library of Spain. I promise a post about that.