When I first arrived in Salamanca, I lived in a spacious apartment by myself. I knew no one, and talked to no one, bar a few friendly buskers and street vendors who were gracious enough with their time to tolerate the stammering foreigner I was. I also missed out on any sort of orientation; the surefire way to meet lots of other bumbling foreigners and form a closeknit group of exchangers.

So I started watching films by myself. I’d go to a cinema about 6 blocks from my apartment and would watch whatever was going. I initially found the lack of subtitles set a fairly tough standard, but settled into the groove and made it a personal and common ritual. It is as a consequence of this that I prefer to see films by myself, not quite understanding the allure of the 10-strong herd of local film connoisseurs come friday night.

It was also this time that I started having semi-surreal experiences upon leaving the cinema. Like a sensory enhancing drug, leaving a cinema and coming back into the world – cold and tangible; full of straight edges and hard faces – became an almost other-worldly experience. With half a mind still in the realm of fantasy and fiction, and the other thinking about how REAL the real world is…it still gets me to this day.

So back to reality and last night I had the most vivid set of dreams that I can remember in a long time. In a moment, I was transported back to Salamanca (a dream affected version) in the company of two good Brazilian friends from those days. Twisting quicker than a Tarantino plot, the dream became more sinister and involved death and killing. From there to paratrooping and walking (Vietnam style) down a creek-bed to culminate in a tense finale with a videogame-esque badguy. I awoke and tried to recount to Storm the details in that very deficient way we convert and transcribe dreams to reality.

The point is that I felt the same as I did post-cinema; stuck half in my dreams and half in reality. I drifted back to Salamanca for the first time in a long while and started romanticising about going back for more study. A sign? An omen? Or simply a vivid dream?

How can I possibly go from that to researching water use and management in a NSW copper mine? Meh…