Tuesday, February 3, 2009
It really surprises me the ease with which I fall asleep here. I swear like 10 minutes after I wrote about Monday I was fast asleep – that’s definitely not how I am in the US… not since I can remember.
I slept until 9:30, since I didn’t have to be at UC3 until 11:45. Teresa made me coffee this morning because the other day I asked her why she didn’t drink coffee. I expected there to be coffee all the time, considering that’s what I knew about other Spanish cultures and what I had heard there would be here too. Teresa said that the caffeine affects her greatly, so she doesn’t normally drink it, but that if I wanted some in the mornings she would prepare some for me to heat up. I think that it’s probably for the best she doesn’t drink coffee because she is a pretty intense chain smoker, so one addiction is enough.
Today and yesterday there was some kind of issue with the train, the power kept flickering and it slowed down at odd times. It took a good 20 minutes, plus I have to walk for 10 minutes on either end. It I’m not sure I’m going to take the train normally anymore because, while it’s good exercise for me to walk so much, I think it’s longer. Dan, Liz, and I took the bus/metro route today, and while it’s more transferring for me, I think it’s shorter by 5 or 10 minutes. I don’t know, I’ll have to try it out.
I practically ran to get to Isabel’s office by 11:45, but there was no need, as Chris, her 11:30 appointment was still in the hallway. We each had a 15 minute appointment with her to discuss our classes and extracurriculars, plus anything else we were having issues with. I wound up waiting for about 45 minutes, since she was way behind schedule, but I didn’t mind. I brought my computer and replied to Emily’s message about Stetson (which was hilarious) and looked at some travel destinations. The meeting with Isabel was short, she reimbursed me for my metro, bus, and Renfe tickets (yay! extra cash!) and then we talked mostly about extra activities I might consider. One in particular I think I’ll do is a beginner cooking class, since I really don’t know how to cook and am reluctant to learn on my own. Dan might take it with me too. Isabel also told me about an organic vegetarian restaurant, Viva la Vida, where maybe I’ll go for my birthday this weekend.
After I screwed around on the internet for a while and posted the past week of this “blog,” we had more presentations. Liz and I sat next to each other, and while I was looking through her notebook, I saw an old game of MASH! I was like “No way this is MASH!,” and she said, “duh, it’s one of the coolest games ever.” So, of course, we proceeded to play and laugh silently. My results were pretty epic, as were Liz’s. We also played with Dan and Chris, who were baffled by the fact that we were actually having fun playing the game. We had an extracurricular activities presentation, which was boring until the very attractive guy from ESN, came up to tell us about the weekly activities and trips offered by ESN. Liz, Cali Emily, and I got pretty excited about the idea of karaoke tomorrow night. For the class presentations, most of us just stayed for the ones we wanted to hear and then left to get a coffee. We had a better time drinking coffee then we would have back in the auditorium, but Isabel later was like “Where were you?” Oops.
We took the bus home and I ate dinner with Teresa almost immediately. We talked about cultural differences, mostly because she didn’t understand why Natasha and I get along better than with Sue. I made an extra effort to talk to Sue when she got home, and we had a nice conversation, amid many misunderstandings, about where we live and what we study.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
This was the day that I stopped being good about keeping up with the blog. So this is in retrospect:
Since we didn’t have to take our oral exams, Isabel scheduled for us to go to the Prado. We met at 10am and headed for a short walk over, plus I took a couple funny pictures of Chris and Dan on the way. It started raining as soon as we got to the door where we waited for a while. Isabel was trying to get us in, but then we had to go to another door – it was confusing. When we went to the Prado last summer, we went to one door, but there at least 5 different entrances and exits! It really is a big place. We finally got in and I was excited because I knew that when I came before I missed a lot of the paintings she was going to show and tell us about. When we were looking at Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights my back and knees really started to hurt, so I didn’t appreciate her explanations of El Greco and Goya as much. I was again in awe at Las Meninas, and really enjoyed some of the extra details Isabel gave me that I didn’t know about Velazquez and the painting before.
I headed home for lunch, and shortly after Liz called to go out shopping. She really wanted to find some boots and a flat iron, and I wanted to get some school stuff, as well as a purse if I could find a good deal. Earlier at the Prado, we realized that we only live one metro stop away, so we met at Delicias and headed to Sol.
First we explored the vast expanse that is El Corte Ingles, which is a huge department store, grocery store, electronics store, book store, farmacia. It’s in a couple of different buildings at Sol (there are a couple more around the city) so we just went in the main one. I think it was like eight floors, mostly clothes, shoes, and furniture etc. above the first floor. While on one of the many escalators I head the original version of Call on Me, so of course I immediately thought of Andrea and Kim. I thought it was pretty epic to hear that here. I really want to get that version!
The first floor was the perfumes, purses and accessories area, plus like a CVS. Liz found a flat iron, for what was probably the cheapest she’ll find (for one strong enough to work on her curly hair at least), but she didn’t get it. I don’t blame her for just resigning to having curly hair for a few months. I did point her to the anti-humidity hairspray I use though, and she’s found that quite satisfactory. Downstairs is the grocery store and other random stuff, like notebooks, but I didn’t buy any. Liz had called Jen, who studied here last semester too, and she said to wait until we started classes. However, I did find the “health food” section of the store down there, so maybe I’ll head back if Teresa runs out of veggie ideas.
After El Corte, we walked around looking for a cute boutique shop Liz had seen before, but we went down the wrong street and wound up at Gran Via. It didn’t matter though, because Liz was tired, so we just stopped in a little café and to have some café. The waitress was really sweet, and trendy, and she gave us a little piece of tortilla Espanola too. We walked down a different street back to Sol, and found the store, Linea Cero. It was pretty freezing by that point, so Liz bought a hat. I also found a great purse – inexpensive, cute, and just the right size. Then we looked at shoes a little, but nothing to spark our interest. We also heard some really bad renditions of English songs in Spanish, including Piano Man. I wish that the Delta Sigs could have heard it, although they may have been upset to hear their song being butchered.
We headed home for dinner, but I wasn’t at home long because Jaimee called me and said we were going out since we didn’t have anything to do until late Thursday. It was definitely a good idea. I got ready and headed out to meet them around 10:30. It wound up being just girls, which was cool, and I got to know some of the Marist girls better too. First, we headed to Museo del Jamon, since Jaimee hadn’t eaten dinner. Megan, Liz, Claire, Jaimee, I, shared a jug of sangria, and Jen, Emily, and Audra joined us later. While we were there Megan and I looked through her Top Ten Madrid book, and we all decided that we wanted to go to a different bar tonight, not an “American” one. We headed over to this place, La Alhambra I think, but it was pretty crowed. So we went next door. This was when we met David and Andres, the bartenders of El Jardin Prohibido.
We all ordered drinks, and as we were talking and enjoying ourselves a little later, David came up to us and asked where we were headed after. Since we didn’t know, he offered to take us out with him to Sol y Sombra, and we agreed. I think most of us, especially Liz were excited about this because David is very attractive. At Sol y Sombra, we all got free entrance and shots, because David knows all the right people. He also introduced us to Diego and Papi.
I have no idea what the next bar we went to was called, and I didn’t like it, so it doesn’t matter. It was pretty much a sausage party (all guys) but David protected us from the creepers. We got a free shot again, which I did not want to take, but did anyway… bad idea. It was apple schnapps, which was too sugary for me, so I just hung out with David and Jaimee by the bar since I didn’t feel well after that. We also saw Emily and Audra, who we’d lost at Sol y Sombra, and who randomly decided to come into that bar to pee, crazy (they left after that).
By the time we left and headed to the Salsa club I felt better. Papi and Diego met us there, which was funny because when we got there, there was an almost silent deal with the bouncer to let us in for free. The guys exchanged looks and said “Let the Columbian pass” (or something like that, I was drunk and it was in Spanish). Papi is Columbian, so apparently it meant something to all of them. I got in for free, so I didn’t ask. Inside we all had a really good time drunkenly dancing Salsa and Meringue (I was in my fringe boots so that was interesting too). I tried really hard to get Diego to dance with me, but he insisted he doesn’t dance. We wound up talking for a while because of this. I kept telling him that he’s Brazilian, so he must know how to dance. He danced a little bit.
We left around 5am, which was stupid since the metro opens at 6. We thought about waiting, so we walked to the Spanish equivalent of a 7/11 to get water and snacks. It wound up being too long to wait, so Jaimee, Liz, Jen, and I shared a cab home. David walked.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Isabel told me, Chris, and Liz on Wednesday that we hadn’t turned in a personal information sheet, and (we all thought) needed to go to school to turn it in. Us three, plus some others decided that we were going to go before we had to meet the group at 3:45, and that we’d get our ESN ID cards so that we could do their activities this weekend. Our plans totally did not work.
Liz, Jaimee, and I were tired and hungover. Chris wound up going earlier. I have no idea what happened to everyone else. It took me a really long time to get ready, so I met Liz at UC3 in the computer lab, where we just wasted some time really. We dropped our papers off and didn’t even bother with the ESN ID cards. As we were leaving we saw Megan and Claire arriving, but we made them come with us since I figured it was going to take us a while to get up to Plaza de Colon to meet the group.
I was right. We arrived almost on time to find Dan wandering around confused, and then called Isabel to figure out where we were supposed to be. The plaza was really confusing, so we wound up walking for 10 minutes before we found the bus. This was the same plaza that mom, dad, and I watched the Euro Cup finals in this summer, so it was cool to go back and now I understand where it is in the city! We got on the bus, and I was really confused because I thought we were going to get coffee or something with some Spanish students who are learning English.
Well, I was wrong. We actually went to a suburb of Madrid, Pinto, to visit the School of Languages there. I spent a good part of the bus ride and our introduction extremely confused about what we were doing there. The confusion only increased when the students came and they paired us off and told us we were going on a walk, but then loaded us on the bus. I didn’t understand until they let us off the bus in the center of Pinto and explained that we were to walk with our foreign language friends ½ hour back to the school. It was definitely unnecessarily complicated, but it was fun once we got started.
I was paired with Eva and Vanesa, two high school sophomores, who spoke decent conversational English. They were cute too because they were like my tour guides around Pinto, but to them it’s just where they live, so not much to see. I told them I agreed, that if someone asked for a tour of where I live, I might think they were funny. However, there were things in Pinto that would never be in Seminole! There’s an old downtown, where the streets are super tiny and the buildings look crooked, as well as an old cathedral with storks nesting in the bell tower, and of course the Tower, where a princess was imprisoned a long time ago. Pinto was also designated at some point in history the geographical center of the Iberian Peninsula, so we got some pictures of that monument. I don’t know if it actually is though.
The walk back to the school wasn’t bad, and thankfully it wasn’t too cold. I had a lot of funny conversations with the girls, and we exchanged emails when we got back. They had drinks and a snack for us to talk over back at the school, but Eva and Vanesa had to go study for their chemistry test. We all stayed and I met some of the other students while eating lots of olives, chex mix, and drinking soy orange juice. The bus took us back to Metro Ventas, which is right by the big bull-fighting stadium. I hope we go there to see one before we leave!
When I got home, I was exhausted. Ate dinner and the like, and went to sleep.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Friday at 10am we met at the Ministerio to go to the royal tapestry museum. Natasha had told me about the experience one time at dinner, and it was just like she said. We went on a tour to see the tapestries created from many of Goya’s “cartons” they called them. This was before he became famous as a real painter. There were some tapestries of Picasso and Gris as well. We also got to see the process of rugs being made, which was really interesting… I had never thought of how they were made before. We learned the difference between Turkish rugs and Spanish rugs too (which are more expensive). I felt bad walking on the rugs after that because I could see how much work went into them! We also saw a tapestry being made – this was the part that Natasha told me about – and there was a seemingly random penis with wings and some kind of crown thing on this tapestry that looked like it would have been inspired by 18th century France! So yes, I pointed it out to my friends silently (since I had told them to look for it), and they all agreed that seeing a flying penis on a tapestry made it worth their visit.
After the museum, the people who didn’t have internet issues left and the rest of us went to Apelcom to inquire about the wireless internet deal. It was certainly interesting trying to find the place because the building is also apartments. We accidently knocked on some poor old lady’s door! Anyway, we finally got there and I decided on the deal I wanted, but then when it was my turn to do the paperwork stuff, they told me they didn’t have another modem. So I was like, whatever I’ll come back Monday, and left. I was walking with Kristina, when Isabel called her and told her to tell me to come back upstairs. They’d found another modem that would work Saturday, so I was golden.
I went back to the apt and screwed around a little, installed the modem software, and took a nap. I woke up and realized that I was supposed to be meeting a bunch of people at Plaza Eliptica in like 10 minutes (it takes like 15). I popped out of bed and called Dan and to tell him I was on my way. When I got there, we all headed down to UC3 to get our ESN ID cards and maybe sign up for an excursion. It took us a while to find the office, but of course when we got there, no one was there, ugh. It could have been a wasted trip, but I went ahead and researched travel stuff for like 2 hours with Liz and Megan. When I got home I read through the Europe book that my cousin Meghan gave me to make some lists and possible itineraries for trips (along with dinner) and went to sleep.
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