I'M DONE: The first book I've ever read cover-to-cover in Spanish...

... and I still don't know what it's about. Well, I do, but I'm still trying to tie it all together. All morning, I've been looking up literature reviews so that I can see other people's viewpoints on how all of these stories contribute to a greater lesson somehow.

On a less searching, and more superficial level, I really really enjoyed a couple of things about this chapter (and it's really hard not to like this first one):

• Ahohándose en el mare mágnum de fórmulas abstractas que durante dos siglos constituyeron la justificación moral del poderío de la familia, la Mamá Grande emitió un sonoro eructo, y expiró. (Drowning in the great sea of abstract formulas, that during two centuries constituted the moral justification of the family's power, the Grand Matriarch emitted a loud burp, and died.) Classic. Pure poetry.
  

• Then, the fact that el blablablá histórico is an acceptable Spanish way of writing "historical mumbo-jumbo" is pretty awesome. Or, at least, it's acceptable according to Señor Gabriel García Márquez, the writer. Blah blah blah.

This is some interesting new vocabulary from this last chapter making a slow entrance into my lexicon (very, very slow, some of it):

racimo=bunch, cluster
muchedumbre=crowd
alborotado=agitated, excited, rowdy
padecer=to suffer from
yacer=to lie, be lying (physically, not verbally)
espumoso=(beer) frothy, (wine) sparkling
rugir=to roar; rugido=roar
rechoncho,-a=chubby, tubby, dumpy
asunto=matter

And a fun one from a past chapter:
acribillar=to riddle (with bullets, questions)

And from my friend Tanja this morning:
pachucha=gloomy

And, what the heck, a couple from online sources, too:
mero,-a=mere
garciamarquiano,-a=is an actual adjective describing anything pertaining to the author, Gabriel García Márquez

At any rate, I think I'm going to have to start trying my hand at Mandarin, since the woman at work insistantly greets me with Zao shang hao every morning, and smacks me on the arm if I don't answer back. It makes me nervous.