I even encountered myself.

Okay, some positivity.

2009-04-29T13:07:00.001+02:00

(even though I still have one more exam...)

Okay. Now that I'm in a better mood, let's discuss some of my accomplishments here in Spain.

1. I've already mentioned that I'm no where near where I hoped to be language-wise, but I did improve. While improving my language was a goal, it wasn't the most important thing I came here to do. I gave it some effort, not as much as I could have, but as much as I was willing to give, and I have improved a lot. No regrets. I might try to find a few Spanish speaking friends to chat with on occasion, but I will -never- take another Spanish class. I wouldn't have believed how much I could miss science.

2. Speaking of missing science, I have learned that I am definitely on the right path. Sometimes, I would wonder if I was a science major/minor just because I could be. I can handle something like the sciences, so that's what I should do, right? It was worrisome, on occasion. The last thing you want is a midlife crisis when you've gone in debt $35,000 a year for four years. But I -love- the sciences. I gave a presentation yesterday about a new study concerning prehistoric man and how scientists have examined a bunch of skulls of the first 'homo sapiens' that appeared in Africa and have found that they were even more diverse than the humans of the world today, and we have some pretty diverse skulls, as I'm sure you've noticed. Fascinating! I went on and on (it was translation class, so we were allowed to speak in english). It was great. Language is not for me. I could do it (not very well), like I have, but I don't want to. I miss science. I cannot wait to go back to studying it.

3. I have gained my independence (mostly). Okay, right now, there is nothing I want more than to curl up on the couch with Tom or go shopping for domestics with my mother, but I've gone nearly four months without these things and I have survived. I found out that I handle life much better surrounded by my parents, my boyfriend, and my beautiful perros (they had better remember who I am when I get home!). Of course, as far as being independent of my family and boyfriend, I cheated a lot. I spent a lot of time on Skype and emailed them nearly everyday, so I did have their love and support with me via crappy Spanish internet (though, they are dependent on me too, you know, so it wasn't all just me clinging to them). And I kept a very positive attitude until the end at least... kind of had a bit of a breakdown about exams and being here this past weekend, but that was the only time, which is pretty fantastic. I have some independence and I know I can handle anything.

4. Speaking of, I have really gained some confidence. Not with Spanish, but with speaking to people, in general, with just giving up when it needs to be done, with making new friends. I'm sure I still won't be comfortable being stuck somewhere with a huge group of people I don't know, but I at least won't be on the edge, poised like a rabbit, ready to leap out the window at any second. I think I've learned to relax (not when it comes to my grades, obviously, but in every day life situations).

5. I have made some friends. Will I keep them? Tough to say. They are all really nice people, but, really, they're language majors and minors. How much do we really have in common outside of a barroom? Not that you necessarily need more in common than that when you're a college student, but... Maybe I'll try. It may end up being more of a hassle than an enjoyable friendship, as it often does, but maybe not. We'll see... The point is that I did make friends. Most people seemed to like me. There were a few that I didn't really talk with, who didn't really talk to me, but that's typical of life. I felt very different from everyone else here (for many reasons...), but I didn't feel ostracized. Just being liked in general is a very fulfilling accomplishment.

6. Umm... Five is more than enough...

Well, I have come to Spain. I have overcome the difficulty. I have grown into a more independent, more confident, more outgoing person (I think, anyway). I have had a fantastic time (mostly...) during the last semester of my undergrad. I have encountered part of the person I am striving to be: myself, only better.

Bring on the rest of life!

(And I promise I'll update about Valencia, spring break, Segovia, and the rest of my adventures when I get home!)

AYA Spain: What I've Encountered...

2009-04-26T14:34:00.001+02:00

Some last comments about Spain (while I'm still here) for those of you thinking about studying abroad through AYA Spain.

Will I be able to communicate with my limited Spanish?

Well, that depends, really. I came here with the lowest level of Spanish that you can be allowed to come here with, I just got out of 202 in the fall, and I would have to say that the program should not allow students to come without at least completing either 351 or 352 first. I would -highly- recommend, for those of you looking to come and who have only just completed 202, take either 351 or 352 first. I was completely lost pretty much the entire time I've been here. I can understand a lot of what my teachers say to me, as they often use worksheets or other visual aids to help you follow along, but anyone else... less than 3/4 of what they are saying. That's enough to get the gist, but not enough to hold a conversation. And I've been here four months...

There are six of us in 351. The one girl had lived in Madrid for a year already and knows Spanish perfectly, but BG wouldn't let her test out of 351 and 352, so she was way ahead of us and doesn't count. Another girl seemed to do pretty well. She had a couple of really close friends (that she was basically attached to the entire time) in the program who are at a higher level than her, so she practices with them and has them to help her out if she's struggling at all. But the other four of us... probably not the best idea for us to be here. One word: struggling. There is a guy who knew a few Spaniards from Madrid and he hangs out with them. He has more trouble in class than just talking to Spanish people, but the grades are one of the biggest things your taking away from the experience.

I'm not saying that it's impossible, but I am saying it makes it much harder than they claim. You will not find the classes easier and you will have to work harder to maintain the grades you get at BG. Maybe I'm being dramatic and they will all give me all A's at the end for effort or something, but looking at the syllabus and what they are claiming to expect, much more effort has gone into these classes than I think I would have had to put into 351 or 352 at BG.

Outside of difficulty, how is school, in general?

School is a 30+ minute walk away. And thank God because you need to get some exercise to counter how much food they give you here (well not all the host families, but mine at least... I'll speak more on that later). You won't want to pay for the bus everyday and you'll get used to the walk. No big deal. The school resembles a middle school more than a university. It's a satellite campus and is located far away from most of the Spaniard students. We have a few Spaniards that take classes in the school, not with us, of course, but in general. They will want nothing to do with you and view you mostly as an unavoidable annoyance. I was totally okay with this. I've found the Spanish youth to be far more immature than, well, the American students that study abroad. Just don't be surprised. If you want to find Spanish friends, you'll need to look in the bars, become a regular at a food or coffee spot, or set up an intercambio, which involves randomly emailing people from a list and asking to hang out with them. Most people found one or two intercambios that they really could spend time talking to. I didn't bother. I just wasn't comfortable with the whole thing. If the school had set something up for us, that would have been different. I don't particularly trust the Spanish, you see.

Classes were all held in the same room in hour and half blocks. If you manage to set up your schedule like mine, you can sit in the same seat for 4 1/2 hours straight. It's not as bad as it sounds. The syllabus for a class was typically midterm, final, big presentation, a few written works, giant final project. Not too bad. Except right now when I have two huge projects and finals looming before me. I'm taking four classes, each with 100% possible grade (of course), so 400% possible total. 105% of the 400% is going to be concentrated into tomorrow and Wednesday of this week. And I need to prepare to go home on Friday. If that's not stress, I couldn't tell you what is.

How did your Spanish improve?

My Spanish improved a lot. I picked up all kinds of new vocabulary. I have much less trouble conjugating verbs, still lots, but much less. I can understand far more than I could last semester. Am I nearly fluent? Not even close. In fact, if fluency is your goal, you need to come for the year because it takes about five months being here before you even begin to think, "Hey, I'm getting the hang of this," according to the year students I've spoken with. You spend at least the first three months walking around in a fog and a state of confusion, or trying earnestly and failing most of the time. I was told three weeks and you'd be fine. I still am not fine. I didn't try as hard as I could have. I didn't get an intercambio, I didn't strike up conversations with strangers on the street, our entire group almost outright refused to speak to one another in Spanish, and I barely spoke with my host family. People get frustrated with you quick. Once they've taken nearly two minutes to help you understand a phrase that takes takes less than 15 seconds to say, they tend to say less and less and less the next time. And the accent is nearly impossible. I had to relearn every word I've ever known. I'm not an audio-learner, you see, which is why I'm not a Spanish major or minor. I couldn't even learn a new word unless I tried to keep the basic sound of it in my head and then looked it up to see how it was actually spelled and to clarify the meaning. My Spanish improved a lot, but I could never walk up to a spanish-speaking person on the street and have a decent conversation. It would be filled with me asking them to repeat themselves and them asking me to repeat myself. Too frustrating to think about.

How was your host family?

I was partnered with a graduate student, who is completely fluent in Spanish and very intimidating. I refuse to speak my crappy broken Spanish in front of her, which makes practicing at home almost impossible. My host mom was fantastic. Sweetest Spanish lady ever. A little odd, but she's Spanish... so what can you expect? She didn't clean as much as everyone else's family seemed to. And she only did my laundry every once in awhile. I would -strongly- recommend bringing two weeks worth of underwear as I did. Most students said that their host moms did their laundry every other day. Sometimes I would wait around for awhile. It bothered me on the level that I couldn't control when my laundry was done - I do my own in the US, but it wasn't that big of a deal. I wasn't happy when I put two pairs of jeans in the basket and didn't see either of them for 4 and 1/2 weeks. I was nearly ready to complain when I got them back. Not sure what happened there. The food is terrible, but it's Spanish food. Bland bland bland and full of disgusting things like beans and ham and sausage. I will never eat beans or tuna again in my life. Three + times a week is far too many for such foods. One girl had a family that had a member who was a trained chef, I believe, and she said her food was amazing. Most people claimed it was hit and miss. But don't think that because you don't like the food you are able to not eat it. You can tell them you don't like it, but that's much harder than you would imagine. And you have no control over your portion size, at least not in my house. She gives you a gigantic plate of food and if you don't finish all of it... you must be ill, or upset, or not like her cooking, or maybe you need to go to the doctor... I've gained so much weight because I'm eating well over 3X what I would normally eat in the US.

Some people lost weight. The girl with the chef in the family, one of the guys whose host mom didn't feed him properly (it's looking like she will no longer be given any students, so no worries there) and a few other people that just learned what exercise was in having to walk everywhere. But the vast majority put on a few pounds at least. And then a few of us, me and my roommate included, put on 10+ pounds and are going to have to go home looking far heavier than we did before we came. Embarrassing... I have recently lost the ability to fit into my jeans. I cannot wait to get home and start eating normal portions at decent times. Explain to me why any culture would think it was a good idea to eat a gigantic meal at nearly 10pm, right before you go to bed. It's madness.

That's enough for now, I think.

Here we go...

2009-04-19T00:45:00.001+02:00

I've tried three separate times to write something. I was unhappy with every result. Just know that I'm very busy and am working on getting everything written down. I promise to post when I get a chance... which may be after May 1st.

I'm just not in the mood.

A Layout of My Life Until May First

2009-03-29T01:29:00.001+01:00

Well, I feel like I've neglected March a bit, so here's another quick update. I would write all about my Valencia trip, but I don't really have the time right now. I am planning on getting up fairly early and trying to go to the Rastro for a bit. Let's hope anyway.

The weather here has suddenly turned to crap. I'm not sure what's going on, but it's definitely not a day where you would want to be outside. I was planning on going to Salamanca today, but after coming down with a bit of a cold and realizing I'd probably be miserable the entire time, I postponed the trip.

Instead of traveling, I spent the day planning for Spring Break. While I have no day-by-day plans as far as what I'm going to see, I at least have places to stay, transportation (almost), and a good idea of what needs to be done before I leave on Wednesday night. I'm not planning on taking my laptop with me because 1) I am staying in hostels, so it could get stolen; 2) I am going to be traveling a lot, so it could get broken; 3) I think at least London has a different plug type for the outlet, so charging it might be a pain; 4) I'm not checking a bag with any of my flights, so a heavy laptop might cause problems when I'm trying to make weight for a carry-on; 5) etc. It just seems like a better idea to not take it. Most of the hostels that I'll be staying in have computers that you can pay to use, so I can keep up with my email at least. This means no more updates after Wednesday until April 15. Sorry!

I also planned out the rest of my stay, day-by-day. It is as follows (forgive this jumble, but it might come in handy later if you're wondering what I'm up to):

3/29: Rastro, Carrefour shopping, Homework

3/30: School

3/31: Homework

4/1: School, Packing, Leave for Spring Break

4/2-4/3: Rome

4/4: Venice

4/5: Rome (Palm Sunday Mass at the Vatican!)

4/6: Rome, Paris, London - intense!

4/7-4/10: London with a trip to Stonehenge and Bath

4/11-4/13: Paris

4/14: Paris, Madrid

4/15: School

4/16-4/17: Salamanca

4/18: Segovia

4/19: Rastro, Valley of the Fallen Monument, Madrid

4/20-4/26: Nonstop studying for finals

4/27-4/29: Nonstop studying and finals

4/30: Packing, Pictures, Partying - Last day in Spain!!

5/1: 18 straight hours of plane rides, connections and layovers, hooray! Also, it seems likely that I will miss my connection back to Detroit, so better add another 4 or 5 hours until the next one leaves (God, I hope not... please pray for me!)

Okay. So that's the rest of my trip in a nutshell. I hoping it goes by quickly, which it really seems like it should from that jam-packed schedule I've set myself. I really really want to see Salamanca and Segovia, so let's hope that leaving them until the last possible minute doesn't come back to bite me.

Well, I should try to get some sleep if I'm going to get up in the morning. I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep, but I'm going to try my best. I hope I feel better soon. I'd hate to spend my entire Spring Break feeling like this.

I can't wait to get home. Spain has been nice, but it's not home.

Granada, Finally

2009-03-26T00:15:00.011+01:00

Okay. Granada.

Thank goodness that my teachers make me write two separate essays about each of our trips (really?) so that I can actually remember what we did in Granada. Two weeks ago is a long time ago. So much has happened between now and then that I could have easily forgotten it all. Between my essays and my pictures, I think I can still give a pretty good account of what happened.

To begin:

Our trip to Granada was the last school planned trip of the semester, which means it was also the last time I had to get on that bus for a 6 and some hour drive. Even the thought of the smell of that bus gets to me. It didn't help that during every stop, the bus driver would spray the place down with some kind of chemical cleaner that would try to kill you every time you got back on the bus.

Eight in the morning meeting time in the Plaza Cervantes. I decided that I was leaving early in order to get a window seat on the bus no matter what, but no worries. We left at a decent time and so many people skipped this trip (mostly because it was during Bowling Green's spring break and many people had friends coming to visit them) that I got my very own seat. It was amazing. I curled up in a little ball and slept and slept. I was probably awake for a total of 1/2 an hour on a 6 hour bus ride.

Our first stop was this little town in Castilla-La Mancha that claimed some kind of fame for something about Don Quijote. I caught a glimpse of some old-fashioned windmills up on a hill, but I was too disoriented to hear the history behind the little town. They kicked us out of the bus and into the cold where I stood in the sun until we were allowed to get back on the bus.

Our next stop was at a rest-stop where we all ate our bocadillos (sandwiches). A couple of the guys thought that they would be manly and try to climb the mountain and that was kind of entertaining. I just sat in the sun. It was amazing. Although I realized that I had forgotten my sunglasses just as I was walking away from the bus, jumped back on to grab them and turned around to realize that the doors had shut on me and I was basically locked on the bus. I called to get the drivers attention as he was walking away. When he opened the door for me, I think he may have been cussing me out (because he's Spanish), but I didn't understand him enough to be sure.

We arrived in Granada and headed straight for La Alhambra. Granada is in the south of Spain, about an hour away from the Mediterranean, so it was fantastic weather. La Alhambra was the last stronghold of the Muslims before the re-conquest by Ferdinand and Isabella when they kicked out all the Muslims in 1492. At La Alhambra, there is a Nazarian (the last reign of Muslims in Granada were called the Nararis) palace that was constructed in 14th century. This place was gorgeous. They had a ton of water and fountains and the like because water was apparently the symbol of purity. And this place had amazing views.

Stairway at La Alhambra with water flowing down the railings. I thought it was a fantastic picture and a very unique "fountain".

View of Granada from La Alhambra. Apparently gypsies live in caves in that mountain. And rebel teenagers hellbent on disappointing their parents.

Pond in La Alhambra with a bit of a view in the background. I loved the reflection of the building. That's moorish architecture with the arches and patterns.

Also at La Alhambra are the Gardens of the Generalife (and I forget what that means right now). There was a summer home for the Muslim leaders here. But the gardens are just beautiful themselves. In Granada, or just outside of it, is the tallest mountain on the peninsula: Mulhacen. The view of the palm trees in the garden with a background of the snow-covered Mulhacen was an amazingly gorgeous scene. Lastly, we visited La Alcazaba. This is a fortress and is pretty much in ruins. It was fun to climb on though, and we got some great views of Granada and the landscape from the top of the tower.

There it is. A palm tree and a snow-covered mountain. Beautiful.

Part of the Palace. This is the place that you usually see when people bring up pictures of La Alhambra. You can see why. Gorgeous. Cute little fountains too.

I felt like we wandered around La Alhambra forever. I eventually got sick of taking pictures. It's a hard balance to enjoy something by actually looking at it while you are there and enjoying something through your camera lens in order to have a picture of it for later. When we finally left La Alhambra, we made our way to the hotel. The bus stopped in the middle of the street and we all had to jump off, grab our stuff and run inside. Unfortunately, in my rush, I cracked my head on the luggage compartment of the bus and had to feel unwell for quite a bit after that. I used my break before dinner to hang out with a few people. It was one of the graduate student's birthday, so I went with her friend to the Corte Ingles to pick out a children's book in Spanish that she will be able to use in her classroom. Then we wandered all over the hotel finding the people in our group to sign it. It was cute. I also used this time to allow a girl who began beauty school to cut my hair. She just took off a few inches, but it's still past my chin. I really contemplated getting it all chopped off, really short boy cut hair, which I've always wanted to do, but have never had the cuts, but I thought about how if it looked terrible, everyone would remember me as that girl that got that really terrible haircut. And then someone else mentioned that I'll be graduating soon and I wouldn't want to chance a horrible haircut before graduation pictures. The haircut turned out nicely and I went to dinner. Some people noticed, but most didn't. Everyone said it looked nice though, like you have to when someone gets a haircut.

Dinner was amazing. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet. I loaded two full plates because free food means that you have to stuff yourself past full. It was pretty fantastic. I can't remember everything I ate right now, but I do recall piling on three forms of potatoes. After dinner, we all went out for the grad student's birthday. I had my customary tequila, but I didn't actually drink very much. Alcohol is expensive and it's difficult to order drinks when your spanish isn't great.

Hour and a half shower because hot showers at 3 in the morning are amazing, then bed. We had a breakfast buffet, which was not nearly as good as dinner buffet, but tolerable. Then we were off to Salobreña, a costal town on the Mediterranean where the Spaniards go on vacation, but the tourists don't. For some reason, we all decided that it would be a good idea to climb a mountain to reach this moorish castle. The climb about killed me especially because I wasn't feeling so great after very little sleep and an hour in that horrible bus. But the view was amazing. The Spanish have a word that means a view of the sea from a mountain: (fondo) acantilado. Acantilado also means cliff, but if you use it with fondo (background), it means a view of the sea from a mountain, basically. And it was gorgeous. I'm going to go with - it was worth the horrible horrible climb to the top, but only barely. Our climb down wasn't nearly as bad, naturally, and we made our way to the coastline.

My shorter hair, but it's blowing in the wind so it looks bad. This is me and that's the coast. Simple enough, yet gorgeous in every way...

We then found out that we had around five or six hours to do whatever we wanted. I went to a chinos and bought myself a hat. I think it's a fantastic hat, but I might be the only one to think so. I needed to cover my head from the sun either way. I went with two grad students to find some lunch. We finally settled on this place on the sea, like right on the beach with a dock that hangs over the water. We ate inside out of the sun. I got to try gazpacho (cold tomato soup) for the first time in my life - AMAZING - and I ate some paella, which was only so so. The thing I hate about paella is that it's supposed to be naturally colored yellow due to the saffron (I think it's saffron), but because saffron is expensive, they color it yellow with food dye, and because a lot of it is food you handle, your hands get dyed yellow, which makes me very uncomfortable about my insides being dyed yellow too.

Then I sat on the beach. I love the beach, more than any other region. I basked in the sun and tried my hardest to not get burned, which I managed successfully. In fact, I don't believe that I even tanned. I took a break from the beach (it was too cold to swim, in my opinion) to get some raspberry sherbet.

Back on the bus, blugh!, we went back to the hotel to hang out for a bit until dinner. After dinner, the girl who cut my hair straightened it for me. It looked fantastic. I seriously contemplated buying a straightener, but considering that I wouldn't be able to bring it home with the voltage differences and stuff, I decided against it.

We then packed onto tiny buses to visit Albaicín and Sacromonte, old Muslim districts within Granada. There are Arab and Muslim public baths in the area and many churches that were built on top of the places where there used to be Muslim mezquitas (done after the re-conquest of Granada by the catholics). There is also the view of Saint Nicholas, which provided a fantastic view of La Alhambra lit up at night, a view that my camera just couldn't handle. I couldn't figure out how to set it for night pictures...

La Alhambra, lit up at night from the View of Saint Nicholas. Rough picture, but it was beautiful. I wish I could have gotten the full effect with the camera, but alas...

Then we went to see a Flamenco show. Everyone thought it was absolutely amazing. I thought it was okay. I have very sensitive ears and they were all clapping in this really intense rhythm that hurt my ears. Mostly, I thought the dancing looked angry and very painful. They stomped and stomped and stomped and those women had thighs like a redwood. I had absolutely no desire to learn, though I was one of the only ones. It was interesting and the dresses were beautiful. It wouldn't have looked nearly so angry if they would have flashed a smile or something. Two groups was enough. But it was a fantastic look at a different culture.

Flamenco dancers. Enough said.

After the Flamenco show, I went out with a few people from the group and our group advisors. Everyone was pretty exhausted (the beach

will do that do you) and no one stayed out very long, except... me and two other people. It was the last night of the last trip of the semester. We were not going to waste it sleeping! We danced like crazy and then decided to head out. I will never miss smelling like smoke. If Wood county has one thing right, it's the public places smoking ban. Well, still not ready to go home, we wandered around Granada for awhile. We decided to chronicle our night by taking millions of photos. We ran across a couple of chairs that someone had thrown away and we used them as props for our picture-taking. It was a fantastic night.

Around 4:30 in the morning, we decided that we were hungry. Not knowing Granada and not knowing where a good place to eat would be located, we stopped 6 different groups of people who pointed us in various directions until we found a guy that mentioned Donar Kebab. We weren't quite sure of the directions, but finally we found people eating Kebabs and we just followed one person after another all of the way to the door of the shop. It was the first time I had eaten a Donar Kebab and it was fantastic. It was like Taco Bell, open when you need it and very cheap, but it tasted a million times better.

We then made our way back to the hotel for a good two hours of sleep. Sunday morning, we went to la Capilla Real, a part of the cathedral of Granada. The bodies of Isabel and Ferdinand are located here and we got to see their tomb. The alter was kind of creepy with scenes of John the Baptist getting his head chopped off and the other John being boiled alive. We wandered around Granada for a bit more before we got on the bus for our trip home.

Rather boring trip back. I slept most of the time again. We stopped and

ate tortilla bocadillos and I had a Fanta límon. I'm not quite sure why they don't sell Fanta as fountain drinks in the states, but I really think that they should. Really. I love Fanta límon, although it is lacking caffeine, an essential for a college student.

Well, that took for absolutely ever. And uploading these pictures is going to take longer. I'll be sure to try to get my trip to Valencia posted soon, but I do have a million things to do. School is rough right now.

Things I will and won't miss about Spain

2009-03-19T00:24:00.002+01:00

Last weekend, I went to Granada. Tomorrow, I'm going to Valencia for Las Fallas. I don't have the energy to write about my Granada trip yet (it takes a lot out of you to remember these things and put them in order, etc.) and next week is going to be just as busy (if not more) than this week, so look for a post about Granada on Thursday... cross your fingers anyway.

Right now, a quick post to put off packing. I can't imagine giving up procrastinating. I've found it's really for the best. If I work ahead, I go back and edit and revise and drive myself crazy with whatever it is I'm working on. And then I come to loathe whatever it is I'm working on, for taking up so much of my time, for not ever being exactly the way I want it to be, etc. If I took this working ahead approach in everything I did, it's possible, and possibly even likely, that I would come to loathe everything I do. Now what kind of life would that be? No. I'm a procrastinator for life. Let's hope I can get through medical school with this logic.

Time for: Things I won't miss about Spain.

1. The building where I go to school. It was huge lie that we were going to go to the University of Alcalá. The Americans, from Bowling Green at least, are shoved into this tiny school way out in the middle of nowhere. It's also the school where the English-education majors go, I think, as the hallways are decorated with children's books and posters in English. It looks far more like a middle school than a college. And, in order to print, you have to put whatever it is that you want printed on a flashdrive, give it to the librarian (at this excuse for a library building) who prints whatever you want, and then you have to pay five cents a page. I -really- miss Bowling Green, where I can mosey into any computer lab I want, sit down at a computer, print 300 pages of whatever I wish while checking my email or otherwise wasting time on the internet, and then mosey on out. No money, no hassle.

2. Electricity issues. A lot of Spanish lights are on timers, which is a huge hassle when you are trying to use the restroom and the lights go out on you and you can't quite remember where the switch was, so you try to find it without actually touching the walls, because who wants to touch the walls in a public bathroom? I don't actually have a big problem with this. I think it's a really good idea for public buildings and they probably save a ton in electricity costs. The problem is the lack of outlets. We fight over outlets at school in order to plug in laptops and the like. And it's impossible to find them elsewhere. The first day I arrived, I used the airport restroom and I couldn't quite figure out why there were two girls sitting in the bathroom watching a movie on a laptop until I realized that it was plugged into the outlet that they had unplugged the hand-dryer from. Ridiculous.

Things I will miss about Spain.

1. The kids. It's a little depressing when you hear a 5 year old speaking and it's painfully obvious that they can speak Spanish far better than you can, but the kids are adorable. One day, I was walking to school and heard a kid talking. I think he was probably around 7 years old. I wasn't really paying attention to him until I heard him say, "Por ejemplo", which means "for example". At first, I was a little amused to hear a phrase that all of my teachers say and have said for as long as I have been taking Spanish. But then I stopped and thought about it. What kind of kid says "for example"? What kind of 7 year old qualifies his monologue through exemplification? I was a bit blown away, but it's possible that he was just a crazy smart kid. Then, the other day, on the way home from Granada, I was walking through the plaza. It was filled, absolutely filled, with people. They shut down the streets around the plaza on Sundays and everyone goes there (when it's nice out, which it was) to sit and talk. There was a man selling balloons and every available seat was filled. It was nice. Anyway, I was just about to cross the street to leave the plaza when a little girl (I'm going to go with 5 or 6 years old) dashes across the street to reach the plaza, turns around to look at her parents, puts her arms straight up in the air, and yells "LA PLATHA!" (remember that the Spanish lisp, so I spelled it the way it sounded) in the happiest voice. Her father laughed and said, "Sí, la plaza. Yay!" I cracked up. This little girl sounded like she had just arrived at Cedar Point when she was only going to the plaza, which she probably passes everyday on her way to school or something. I mean, yeah, there was a guy selling balloons, but I didn't feel it warranted an arms-in-the-air rejoice. It was adorable.

2. My host mom. She is great. She calls me so many different things that I have trouble keeping up. She usually prefaces it with "AAY!". I believe I mentioned that she calls me "pobrecita" whenever I'm struggling with something (poor little one). She calls me "carino" a lot, which is "loved one" or "darling" or she'll say, "AAY, mi niña!" (my child). Today, I realized that she had been calling me "cielo" for awhile and I only just put together that she was calling me "heaven". But my absolute favorite was the day she called me "brujita" (little witch). I'm not a big fan of the breakfast here. I usually eat cereal, but I'll never really be able to stomach the milk. Usually, on my days off, I'll sleep in pretty late and then stay in my room until it's lunch time. One day, I had to go to the school to meet my partner to work on a project on my day off. I didn't really want to eat any breakfast, so I got ready and packed up and tried to sneak out the door. "AAY, brujita!" She caught me and she wasn't very happy about it. I could only crack up. She forced me to take a roll and a juice box with me when I insisted that I didn't have the time to eat. She's fantastic.

Well, I need to pack and then get some sleep. I'm going to be up all night tomorrow night. The city should be one big party. Let's hope because we can't check into our hostel until 9 in the morning.

I'll write next Thursday.

A bit of an update

2009-03-12T00:34:00.002+01:00

Today was the 11th of March. It marked the anniversary of the March 11th terrorist bombings of the train here in Spain. If I understand correctly, the train that was bombed was the one that travels through my city, Alcalá de Henares, to Madrid. There is a nice statue by our train station where people lit candles and laid flowers all day. It's been five years and although the whole of Spain didn't feel these attacks quite like the whole of the United States felt September 11th, today is their September 11th.

The weather has been just gorgeous lately. Although it's still a bit cold in the mornings, around 4˚C (39˚F), by the time I head home for lunch, it's around 21˚C (70˚F). Today, the thermometer at the train station said 28˚C (82˚F), which I think may have been a lie because weather sites say that the high today was 71˚F. I've only been wearing my coat in the mornings and it's been fantastic. I'm going to Granada this weekend, and as Granada is in the south, I guess it's supposed to be even nicer (or hotter). Supposedly, our hotel has a pool, so maybe I'll go swimming.

I'm going to get my hair cut this weekend, which I think I may have already said, but I'll be so glad to get rid of it that I'm saying it again. I hate when it gets long and just hangs. Drives me nuts. I've been wearing it up more and more. It'll be nice not to have it hang on my neck as it continues getting hotter.

What else? I have soo much too do. I found out today that my huge essay that's worth a lot of my grade is actually due next week, and not the week after like I originally thought and planned for. So that's going to be fun. At least she pushed it back to Wednesday, when it was originally due Monday, because that just wouldn't have happened. I was going to try to work on not procrastinating anymore, but it's not quite working, so I decided I'll work on it later. I figure that it'll be better to pile everything into one stressful week. Time really flies when you're on a deadline.

Well, I probably should get something done... Maybe.

Toledo, Spain

2009-03-08T23:11:00.007+01:00

Me and Cervantes in Toledo. Spain really loves this guy. Look at how long my hair is getting. I'm think about getting it cut next weekend, but maybe not.

I'm very tired today, even though I've slept and slept. I guess it was a beautifully gorgeous day, but I stayed inside all day, relaxing and not moving. I haven't even begun any of the projects that I need to finish before sometime in March or before the end of the semester, and there are quite a few that are going to take quite some time. I really need to quit procrastinating and get to work.

This week went by pretty quickly, thankfully. Friday was 8 weeks in and exactly 8 weeks to go. I'm halfway there and I'm feeling a bit relieved that I'm over that hill. Like I said, I love being here, this has been a great trip, and I don't regret coming at all, but I'm so ready to go home. I'm just getting through the rest of this time be filling it with things that I'd like to get done.

Friday, I went to Toledo with a couple of girls from our group. Getting there wasn't bad at all. A bus from Alcala to Madrid, the metro to a different bus station (we asked information for the correct bus station because my parents told me that Rick Steve's sent them to the wrong bus station), and then a bus ride to Toledo. It was about a 2 hour and 15 minute commute, but it wasn't bad at all. I chatted for quite a bit with one of the girls and I was pretty glad that I went with them on Friday. I was asking around for anyone that wanted to go with me on Saturday, but no one was game and then they asked me to join them on Friday. I hadn't spent much time with either of them, but they are friendly and cracked me up, so a good day over all.

We climbed the huge hill up into Toledo, taking a little bit of a shortcut over the side of a wall. This was after we wandered around for five or some minutes, trying to find an opening in the wall that surrounds the city on the one side that isn't bordered by the river. Making our way all of the way to the main plaza in the city, we went to check out the Alcazar, a huge former imperial residence that is currently closed for renovation. Honestly, it was not that impressive. The streets to Toledo are very narrow and while we walked past it, standing practically right next to its walls and craning our necks up to see it, it wasn't a very impressive building, just long and tall. Later, we took a tour-bus train up along the other side of the gorge and got to see it stand out along the skyline and that was far more impressive.

The tourist-bus train. You really feel a bit ridiculous riding around in it, but most people seemed to be entertained and like I said, I got some great pictures on this ride.

We traversed the narrow, hilly streets towards the cathedral. We managed to get a few nice pictures of the cathedral, but we had the same problem. Standing right next to a huge building only allows you to take in tiny portions at a time, much less impressive, but again we got to see an impressive view from the train.

We headed, then, to the workshop of Mariano Zamorano. He makes his own swords and knives and was, in general, a really nice guy. He showed us his workshop, explained how the swords and knives are made, and let us take pictures with some of his swords. He was really nice and I was tempted to ask him to tell us how he lost some of his fingers, but I thought it was probably pretty obvious and I didn't want to be rude.

At this point, I was starving. I wanted to go into the cathedral, but the girls I was with weren't willing to pay the 7 euro admission fee. So I headed to McDonalds (finally allowed in Toledo after a great struggle), got a cheap meal of nuggets and fries and then went and bought my ticket to the cathedral. They ate their packed lunches and wandered around Toledo for a bit. The church was absolutely gorgeous. I wandered around a bit, following Rick Steve's guided tour. The Transparente, a big hole in the ceiling with amazing paintings and sculptures around it all of the way to the ground was my favorite. Unfortunately, you weren't allowed to take any pictures inside, but I got some nice postcards that had random pictures on them. I hung out in the gift shop for awhile afterwards, trying to figure out which of the 12 booklets that they sold was the one Isha wanted me to pick up for her. Each booklet had pictures and focused on a different part of the cathedral and I didn't know which she wanted. After calling my mom, who called my brother, two separate times, I settled on the booklet about The Transparente, which I hope is okay.

In the Catedral of Toledo, there is a gift sent from Toledo's sister city, Toledo, Ohio. I'm a little bit ashamed that they call Toledo, Ohio, Toledo, Spain's sister city because there is no comparing them, at all, but it's kind of nice to be from the sister city of Toledo, Spain. The gift, however, was little pathetic sitting next to all of these gold pieces and the sword of Franco and other ridiculously historical things. It was just a interesting looking piece of glass, which makes sense as we are the glass city, but still... I was just impressed that they agreed to display it in that magnificent church.

I met back up with my friends and we wandered around a bit more, stopping in at random shops to buy random things. I found a very decent looking set of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza statues for a lot less than I was looking to spend and bought them immediately for myself. They will for sure be a centerpiece in my next place. Those statues were on my list of things that I wanted to get while I was here, as well as earrings from each place I visit. I picked up some really cute flower earrings at a shop off the Plaza.

After shopping for a bit, we were going to head to the Santo Tomé where El Greco's most famous painting is located: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. However, it was starting to get late and I decided that I absolutely had to take this ridiculous tourist train, which left the plaza every hour. I offered to pay almost half of the fares of the girls to convince them to come with me and it worked. So we went and bought some tickets, climbed on this train and went off. Rick Steve's suggests sitting all of the way to the right and a little ways behind the driver. Apparently, everyone reads Rick Steve's because there wasn't a single seat on the right side of the train open when we went to get on. I had to sit next to this guy (French, I think) and practically lean over him taking pictures. I didn't feel too badly about how rude I was being because his wife, who didn't even have a camera, was taking up the right side of the seat in front of us, which was really crappy and rude. She didn't even have a camera... you'd think she could have sat next to her husband and seen everything just as well, without forcing people to lean over her (and her husband) to get good pictures. But whatever. Here are some fantastic pictures that I got.

View of Toledo. If we had stopped, I would have been able to get some of the river that's right in front (the wall is coving it), but we didn't. That tall building to the right is the Alcázar. The tower-ish looking thing near the middle is the cathedral. Both far more impressive at this angle.

View of the Catedral. The weather was fantastic. It was overcast all day, but it didn't rain. Doesn't make for the best picture, but it makes it look interesting.

A bridge. This picture shows a bit of the river that surrounds Toledo on three sides. A very strategic defensive position.

When we got back to the plaza we were all ready to go to the Santo Tomé for real this time, but it had just closed. I was pretty disappointed, especially because it was my fault that we got on the train instead of going. I had seen it before though, when we stopped in Toledo when I was here in high school, not that I remember it very much, but maybe a little. It was starting to get late and with a two and some hour commute ahead of us, we decided that we had better catch the bus back to Madrid if we were going to make it home on time for dinner. On the way to the bus station, we stopped at the Santo Tomé dessert shop in the Plaza to buy some Mazapan, a famous in Toledo dessert. I bought a piece with some fruit filling and decided that I wasn't really a fan. I was trying to explain why I didn't like it to the other girls and the one said that she thought it tasted a lot like those circus peanuts and I couldn't agree with her more. And I'm not really a fan of circus peanuts.

Bus back to Madrid, metro to the other bus station, then bus back to Alcala. I talked more with the one girl and learned a lot about her. They both said that they were glad they invited me along, especially because they really enjoyed the tourist train and I demanded that we go. It was a really nice trip.

I think in my quest to make more friends and become way less shy, it would help a lot if I started asking people questions. When you're ridiculously shy, you tend to stay away from people and you definitely don't initiate additional conversation by asking people to talk about themselves. This tends to make people think you're a bit stuck up. It's compounded when I take the approach that if someone wants me to know something about them, they'll tell me. I'm not going to bother them to tell me something when they may not really want to talk about it. If they want me to know, they'll tell me, right? I think this also makes me look a bit stuck up, like I don't care about you or your affairs. I care, I just hate to pry. It also doesn't help that my memory is terrible. If I'm going to start asking people to tell me about themselves, I'm going need to remember it or there is really no point. And considering that I'm still having trouble sorting through the names of the people in our group... Sigh.

Last night, I went out with Dah-veed. He really likes to find random places, excellent hole-in-the-wall places that he will later bring our group to. Usually he wanders around alone, but he invited me to go with him last night and we wandered a bit. I played a bit of pool and, as usually, I began very strong (my first shot, I got two of my balls in, in two different pockets... ridiculous!), and then began failing. We chatted a bit and I found out that he went through BG's computer science program a year ahead of my brother, which he says means that there is probably no chance that they wouldn't recognize each other, but that he's terrible with names, so he couldn't picture him. I didn't drink all that much, but the mixture (wine, beer, and some kind of fruity drink) was probably a really bad idea. I haven't felt very well all day.

It's not helping that we've had tuna for the last three days. I don't mind a bit of tuna here and there, but I'm really not a fan at all and three days in a row is way too many days of tuna. I can't wait for Easter when Carla is no longer not eating meat and we can ease off the tuna a bit. We ate tuna omelette (or is it omelet?) for dinner tonight. Seriously, tuna omelette. Has anyone even heard of such a thing?

Well, tons of homework and no desire to do it. Loading these pictures is probably going to take forever too. I should really get to work on all that.

Resumen - only forever long

2009-03-03T01:00:00.001+01:00

I guess a lot has happened in the last week or so.

Firstly, I would like to say goodbye to my beautifully tilty rat, Mako. She was put to sleep on Friday after many months of a debilitating sickness and over a year of tiltyness. Tom and I bought Mako and her sister, Ami, from a pet store in Bowling Green on February 5, 2007. My brother said that she was given anesthesia so she wouldn't feel any pain and they had her cremated. I'll really miss her. She was adorable. She was my tilty rat.

Saturday, over a week ago Saturday, my parents arrived in Madrid. I waited for them at the Puerta del Sol where their hotel was located and tried to study a bit. An old Spanish man sat down next to me on the bench and began speaking with me. Granted that I only followed about 1/2 to 3/4 of what he was saying, it was a pretty good conversation. He saw that I was studying about bull fighting and launched into this long story about bull fighting back in the day, complete with the singing of songs that they used to sing about various bull fighters and during certain bull fights.

My parents must have walked right past me on their way to the hotel, but we didn't see each other. It was so nice to see them again, and my brother and Isha. We started Saturday with a walk around the Puerta del Sol and then to the Plaza Mayor. Lunch was bocadillos de calamarie, which no one enjoyed, but it was real Spanish food, so it was okay. We then walked to the Parque Retiro. The temperature had to be around or above 60, a beautiful day. The park was filled with people and performers. We took pictures of the flowers and lake and rested in the sun near the pool. After a quick nap in the afternoon, we decided to go get some dinner. That weekend was the weekend of Carneval, the last huge party before Lent begins and Spain celebrates Carneval with style. People dress up in costumes and stay out all night. On our way to the Hard Rock, we ran into a huge gathering of people, all of the way down one side of a main street through Madrid. Apparently, they were setting up for a parade. At the Hard Rock, we were seated near a window and got to watch some of the larger floats go by, including a large dragon that breathed fire and had people on its back. That night, our Pub Crawl was a little pathetic. One of the suggested places was only serving dinner and we couldn't find another, but we had some fantastic sangria nonetheless.

That night, I was going to stay at the hotel with my family, but I ended up getting kicked out by the hotel staff because we hadn't paid for an extra person. My parents had already gone to bed and I didn't think it was a big deal, as I had originally planned to go back to Alcalá for the night anyway, but after going the wrong way on the metro and then attempting to backtrack, I ended up getting kicked off the metro when it closed down and emerging onto some street in north Madrid around 2 or so in the morning. As I don't understand the bus system and had no idea where I needed to go, I walked around for a bit, getting even more lost, and it really didn't help that I was still a little bit tipsy from the Pub Crawl. I didn't have a map of Madrid on me, so I began relying on the huge metro maps that they have at every metro stop to tell me where I was. When I realized, upon arriving at a stop, that I had walked quite a ways in the wrong direction (further north), I began trying to call people to tell me where I needed to go. No one was available here and I only had a few euros left on my Spanish phone. I didn't have the number to the hotel and I still have no idea how to call information. I ended up getting ahold of Tom's brother who found me on Google Maps and began directing me to where I needed to go, the bus station. It took a good 30 some minutes to get around this huge circular intersection of construction and then be sure I was going in the right direction, which likely adds up to about a $70 phone bill.

I finally found a metro line that I could follow from stop to stop all of the way to the bus station, but I was so far away that it was after 3 by the time I got there. The buses for Alcalá leave every hour on the hour at night, so I would have had to wait for the 4 o'clock bus, which means I wouldn't have gotten back to Alcalá until around 5 and wouldn't have gotten in bed until around 5:30. I was supposed to meet my family back at the hotel around 8 or 9, which means I would have gotten a total of an hour of sleep before I would have to get up and return to Madrid, so I decided to just walk back to the hotel. After 3 hours of being lost by myself in Madrid, 2 hours straight of walking, and 4 in the morning, I was exhausted and drained and emotionally a wreck. I got to the hotel, called my parents from the front desk, we paid the 38 euro to have me stay the night, even though it was already 4 in the morning, and I finally got some sleep. It was a bit of a nightmare, but it wasn't as terrible as it sounds. The walking was terrible, but the streets were filled with people out celebrating Carneval and I didn't fear for my safety at all. I did see at least 3 men urinating on random buildings though throughout the night.

Sunday was another gorgeous day. We slept in quite a bit (I really needed it) and after a slightly disappointing breakfast of McDonald's (the Spanish aren't much for breakfast outside of a cup of coffee), we headed for the rastro, a giant flea-market type held every Sunday near the Plaza Mayor. I was wondering how to get to it from the Plaza Mayor and after asking a man, he said just go down one of those streets and you'll find it. He was absolutely right. It is huge. Streets and streets are filled with vendors and people. It was wall to wall people the entire time. You could barely move, but I thought it was amazing. I bought myself a scarf (bufanda) that I have been wearing ever since. I wanted to pick up some earrings, but I couldn't find anything that I couldn't live without. I'm definitely going to go back at some point to pick up some more things, find gifts for people. My mom went a little crazy buying things, which made me very happy. We both love a deal. After the rastro was another nap, which none of us really took. I stood out on the balcony of my parent's room and watched the people in the Puerta del Sol. The hotel was really fantastic. It had an amazing view of the Puerta del Sol and as it was Carneval and just because it is the Puerta del Sol, there were mariachi bands playing and street performers out, including human statues.

We headed, on the metro because we were all a little sick of walking and my body was killing me, to the Reina Sofia for the afternoon. We stopped to have lunch first, at Burger King (again disappointing, but there wasn't a good, available restaurant within sight, though I have since learned that we were not too far away from the Bohemian district and could have had some Indian food), and then headed to the Reina Sofia, which just so happened to be closed by the time we got there. I was a little disappointed because, with midterms and everything else going on that week, I wasn't going to have time to come back to Madrid to see the Reina Sofia before my family left. But, undeterred, we headed to the Prado, and considering that this would be my third visit to this museum (fourth in my lifetime), I was more than prepared to lead a guided tour. My mom was pretty excited to see so many of the paintings that she had studied in her History of Western Art Class and dad got bored and left to smoke a cigar in the sun. It was a pretty good visit overall.

We were all pretty exhausted by this time and my brother wasn't feeling too well. After a quick stop at the Corte Ingles for some snacks (cheese and crackers), we headed back to the hotel to pass out in my parent's room. We all watched a movie dubbed in Spanish (I was so proud of them all) starring Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood, which I have since learned was called "Perfect World". I slept through the majority of it and I wasn't all that impressed, but everyone else (except my brother, who I think slept through all of it) seemed to really like it and expressed interest in seeing it in English. My brother went to bed while my parents and Isha and I went to an Italian place near the hotel to have some pizza. It definitely wasn't the best pizza I've ever had and it couldn't compare to Marco's Pizza, but it wasn't bad and hit the spot quite nicely. And, we finally learned how to ask for water without receiving bottles of water that you have to pay for.

After dinner, my parents helped me to find the bus station so I wouldn't have another night of aimless wandering in Madrid. I barely made it onto the midnight bus (seriously, it left in less than a minute after I had sat down) and I got back to my piso around 1am, where I commenced studying for the midterm I had the next day. Endlessly exhausted, I studied my heart out until Tuesday morning. My family had gone to Toledo on Monday while I was at school (I really wish I could have gone with them, spent more time with them) and the plan for Tuesday was to come see Alcalá. I met them at the train station around 10:30 or so and took them to see the big sights of Alcalá (nothing really amazing, I promise). We walked around the plaza for a bit, went to the house where Cervantes was born (though we didn't tour it, not really worth it), then to the church. Returning to the plaza, we still had a bit of time before we were going to meet my host mom, so I took them to buy almonds from the nuns that you aren't allowed to see, except for an eye apparently. We all munched happily on delicious sugar coated almonds (these things are amazing, I promise) and I took them to the Chinos by my house. My dad got a pair of sunglasses (he had broken his) and my mom bought some washcloths because they don't provide washcloths in Spain (Europe, I think). Then it was time to meet my host mom.

The meeting went extremely well. Much better than I had hoped. I was very worried about translating properly and expected that there would be many moments of absolute uncomfortable silence, but it wasn't bad at all. So much can be communicated with simple hand gestures and my host mom was just fantastic. Everyone was very relaxed. She put out food for us to eat and handed out beer and drinks. She forced my brother to have a second beer after he had finished his first, which made me so happy because then they could see how she forces me to eat all of the time. My host mom called me a "good girl" numerous times and we discussed me, Spain, the people, impressions. It was a fantastic meeting.

After the meeting, we decided to head back to Madrid, where the scene is a bit more lively. Unfortunately, things don't always go as planned. I had bought a bono-tren, which is a ten trip train ticket from Alcalá to Madrid or Madrid to Alcalá. I had used it once to get to Marid when my family came, left it with them to bring the four of them to Alcalá Tuesday morning, and then the five of us used it up on the way back to Madrid. Now, Alcalá is the only train station that I've encountered that doesn't require you to show your ticket upon leaving, so my brother, who had the ticket had no idea that he was supposed to keep it, and being that there were no more trips on the ten trip ticket, he threw it away. I didn't think to tell him to keep it. When we got to the train station and we all realized what happened, I thought, "no big deal, they'll just open the gate and let us out". As I went to find someone to open the gate for us, I passed a gate that was already open and thought that we could all pass through without problem. However, it closed behind me and I was stuck outside while my family (who all speak less Spanish than I do, were stuck inside). So I found a guy who told me that he couldn't open the gate and led me to another guy who apparently could. However, because we didn't have proof that we had only come from Alcalá and not from some place far far away, the man insisted that we pay the maximum fee to travel on the trains: 10 something euro a piece. I was very very angry to say the least. I had paid for the ticket. No one was cheating anyone and it was a simple mistake through miscommunication. Why should we have to pay 10 something euro a piece for a 2 euro 50 train ride? I was all ready to get back on the train and travel back to Alcalá for 45 minutes, buy a new 10 trip ticket for 17 euro, and come back, saving us all 20 some euro and having an extra 5 trips on top of it, but my parents wouldn't hear of it and they paid the money. It was all very ridiculous and I was very upset about the whole thing. I still am, kind of.

Well, after that debacle, we went to find an Irish Pub in order to eat our lunch. Unfortunately, or fortunately because it was all very interesting, that night was the night before the Real Madrid-Liverpool soccer game and those Europeans love their soccer. The Irish Pub was not serving food at that time because they were expecting a large crowd of drinkers that night. We decided to eat in the Plaza Mayor, outside, instead. The food wasn't too bad and it was a really nice experience. I was glad to have gotten to eat in the Plaza Mayor without having to pay the bill.

I headed back to Alcalá after that because I had three exams the next day and needed to get really serious about studying. I studied and studied and studied and dropped into bed completely exhausted, only to get right up and take exam after exam after exam. The school day finally ended and I rushed, bookbag and all, to the train station to get back to Madrid. I arrived around 7pm. My family had gone to the Reina Sofia that day and had split up. I hung out with my brother and Isha until my parents got back and then we went to find a masquerade mask for Isha, had a drink at a bar, and went to dinner at a place that I forget the name. I had some kind of pancake filled with something I forget, a word I didn't know, like corquette or something and it was absolutely terrible. Isha and my dad had ratatouille, which I had never tried before and decided that I kind of liked. Jimmy had some spinach-manacotti type dish and my mom had a salad. Overall, some people were happy and others weren't, but we ate everything and even had some dessert: the best vanilla ice cream I think I've ever had with raspberry sauce. Amazing. We made our way to the plaza mayor for a drink, but we chose this place that must have been closing because it had the strongest lysol smell ever and it made my drink taste awful.

We called it an early night because they had to leave in the morning and we paid the 38 euro again and I stayed at the hotel. In the morning, we got some breakfast from a small cafe by the hotel, packed everything up, and headed to the airport. I went in a taxi with my mom and dad while my brother and Isha took the metro. It was a sad leaving. I wished they could have stayed a bit longer, at least another day after I finished my exams, but they couldn't. I took the metro back to the train station and the train back to Alcalá and then I collapsed in bed. I was exhausted after such an emotionally charged week of exams and my parents and traveling and getting lost. I slept for a few hours until it was lunch time and then after lunch, I still felt tired, so I went back to bed. Next thing I knew, my host mom was knocking on my door telling me that it's dinner time. I was astounded. I had napped for 7 hours in one day! And I felt like I could still sleep!

Friday, I went running with my roommate. She destroyed me. She was like, "Let's jog really slowly" and then took off. I was dying. We managed to get lost in some back park near the river and it was a nice hike all of the way around the southern end of Alcalá. I think we walked for a good hour and a half. I'm sure getting a work out here. My brother said that he lost 3 pounds with all of the walking that he did. I haven't seen a scale since I left the states though I can't imagine that I lost any weight with all the food that I eat, especially right before bed.

Saturday, I got up early with my roommate and we went to this place called El Pardo, where there is a palace where Franco used to live. My roommate wanted to go because her family name is Pardo. It didn't take long to get there and it was relatively inexpensive, less than 4 euro total. Unfortunately, the palace was closed for a state function, so we didn't get to tour it. We then walked 1 km uphill to the Pardo church. It was not as grand as most of the churches that I have seen here, but it was very solemn and felt much more "religious" than the tourist filled churches I've seen.

We walked back down the hill only to learn that the mountain that we wanted to see was back up the hill, so we made the trek again, only farther and came to a nice park area. I think it might have been one of the national preserves. We found this little area that had a bunch of goats and I got to pet a few. Goats can be adorable.

After walking around for a bit more (my legs are going to be amazing), we headed back to Madrid where we found an Indian food restaurant. I was horribly disappointed with how not spicy this food was. Indian food is supposed to "melt your face off" (according to Isha) and this was like rice pilaf. Barely even any flavor! So we asked the server if he had some spicy sauce and he brought out this stuff that was like a kick in the face. One drop of it was more than enough to keep me chugging water. It was amazing. It was the first intense spice I've had since I've been here. After Indian food, we headed to the Plaza de España. In this plaza are giant statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Carla and I took all kinds of pictures on them, but I forgot my camera, so they are all on here camera, which I'll need to borrow at some point. I ended up climbing up on Sancho's donkey and getting a picture. I can't wait to see it. How fantastic is that?!

Sunday was a very lazy day. I got up a little late, opened the door to my room, and found a bunch of men milling around the piso. Apparently, they were changing the windows on the back patio, but it was unnerving enough to keep me shut in my room all day. My host mom was very upset with me because I left the house so little this weekend. She says that I need to hang out with friends and spend time having fun like young people should do. She's convinced that my parents coming and going made me really homesick and now I'm shutting myself away, which isn't really true. I'm just very very tired. I still don't think I've recuperated from this last week.

I might run again tomorrow. If I can. I plan on completely filling my time until it's time to leave. I have already planned a trip for every weekend, as follows: Toledo, Granada, Valencia, El Escorial/Salamanca, two weeks of Spring Break (Rome, Paris, London), Segovia, and some beach somewhere to study for finals (maybe Cadiz or Ibiza). And then I have a million final projects to finish before I can even begin to think about studying.

Well, I seriously can't write anymore, though I do have more to say. I might write again when I'm procrastinating tomorrow. It will definitely happen (procrastinating, I mean).

Sorry about no pictures. I'll have to steal them from my mom and Isha and Jimmy when I get a chance. Someone remind me to ask my mom to upload them to my computer when she's feeling better. The flight killed her ear. Also, there is no way I'm going to check this for typos. It took absolutely forever to write.

To Be Continued...

2009-02-23T14:39:00.000+01:00

It's exam week and my parents are here. It's a little nonstop right now. I'll update again Thursday afternoon or early evening when my exams are finished and my family is on a plane headed for the States. Until then, it's going to be nonstop studying, spending time with them, and catching a nap here and there. This Friday will be 7 weeks in and 9 to go. I don't want to wish the time away, but there really is no place like home and I miss it terribly.

Well, I suppose...

2009-02-18T19:18:00.007+01:00

Well, I haven't felt like writing. I've been a little down though I'm not sure why. I guess I'll start from last week, when I set the pencil (keyboard, I guess) down. Wednesday, I gave my presentation over The Clan of the Cave Bear and everything went fantastically. I had a powerpoint presentation that was well put-together and colorful with all kinds of descriptive pictures and bulleted points so that my classmates could follow along. I took up more than the required 10 minutes and taught everyone new words in Spanish, such as "manada" (herd) and "antepasado" (ancestor). I only stumbled here and there and only forgot to mention a few minor points. I was pretty happy with it. The downside, because there is always a downside, is that, after all of my hard work, about half the class had their eyes glazed over within the first 2 minutes, which I don't believe is a reflection of my presentation abilities, but a revelation about the type of people with whom I am attending class. Also, I think I have put the most effort into this project than anyone and I am very proud of how it turned out. I raised the bar, but everyone else refuses to reach it. That's fine, but the teacher will grade on their level and I will have done all that work for nothing. Ah, well.

Thursday, I bought my tickets for Spring Break. Here is the plan. I am going to Rome for 4 days, London for 4 days and Paris for 4 days. I plan on taking side-trips, here and there. I want to see Venice, Stonehenge and Bath, and I was kind of hoping to visit the prehistoric caves of France, but I'm not sure that that will be feasible for a day-trip. So far, the plane tickets for Rome, Paris, then Madrid have cost me a good $270 (ouch!). This does not include the train ticket to London, the side-trips, food or lodging, or entrance fees to places I want to visit. This will be one expensive Spring Break. Part of me wonders if I should have just caught a flight to the Canary Islands and lived on the beach for 12 days.

Friday morning, we left on our weekend trip to Cantabria, a northern "state" (they call them autonomous communities) in Spain. There wasn't that much to do there, but it was the most gorgeous place I've ever seen. Friday morning, I was hoping to get to the bus early in order to get a good seat, but my host mom was a little late in giving us our lunches and Carla was late getting ready, so we didn't leave the piso until less than 5 until 9 (when we needed to be there at 9) and didn't get there until 5 after. Fortunately, we weren't the last to arrive, but I was stuck with an aisle seat. I was feeling a bit ill from the breakfast (I'll never get used to our milk) and mentioned it when asked. This caused my seat partner to collect his things and rush to the back of the bus. I felt badly, but, at the same time, I got the window seat, and the entire seat to myself...

Our first stop was in Castilla-Léon in the city of Burgos. We visited The Cathedral of Burgos, this giant (beautiful) cathedral that they began building in 1221 and that is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It has the remains of El Cid Campeador (does anyone remember the movie?) and his wife Doña Jimena. Tom and I watched the movie with his grandparents not long ago, so it was kind of cool to see his resting place. The catherdral was wonderful, but it was freezing! I kept thinking: When will this cathedral end?! We just walked and walked and walked. We had to have passed about 15 "Salida" (exit) signs on our way through this maze.

A very small section of the Cathedral of Burgos. It's gorgeous, isn't it? Especially the sky...

We ate our lunch in Burgos, which was nice. I hung out with pretty much one girl the whole time and we chatted. She is a very open and outspoken girl, so I learned her opinion about pretty much everything in that day, and I shared a bit of mine. It was a nice bonding time.

Our hotel for the weekend was in Santillana del Mar. This place was amazing. It's this little town of stone streets and stone buildings. Very old-timey. Very medieval, in a not creepy way. It was gorgeous. However, our first stop was at the Museum of Torture where we viewed all the different kinds of torture that they used during the Inquisition. It was pretty horrible. I was rather disturbed. I really can't imagine how one person could do such things to another human being. I'm not against capital punishment, and I'm not saying terrible people should go in a painless bliss, but this stuff was terrible. And beyond that, it was disturbing to see how entertained some of the people of our group were. These were real people who may have done nothing worse than say that the church may not be correct in everything. I can't even imagine. I lost my faith in people again for a bit.

This is a hollow metal cow. People would shove other people inside of it, lock them in and then light a fire underneath until the person inside was cooked to death. What kind of twisted mind would even think this up?

Saturday, we visited three other "pueblos" (little cities, or villages, kind of) of Cantabria: Comillas, Potes, and San Vicente de la Barquera. In Comillas, we saw the beach, though we didn't go near and it was rather cold, a few gorgeous buildings of which I can remember no history except that the one was done by Gaudí (recall that Barcelona would be nothing without Gaudí). They were El Capricho, The Palace of Sobrellano and the Universidad Pontificia Comillas.

We left Comillas and headed down this mountain to Potes. This was the most frightening drive I've ever been on. We are in this giant bus, rounding all kinds of curves with cars flying past when there is barely room for two cars. The bus driver is swearing and honking the horn, but I was completely transfixed by the scenery. I couldn't pay attention to the bus coming nearer to the edge of this cliff we were on. Apparently, though, everyone else was feeling the curves far more than I was. Not long into the ride, Susana, our director, came by asking "¿Estás bien? ¿Estás bien?" (Are you alright?) I had no idea why until the girl a few seats away began vomiting. The fun thing about Spanish is that "to vomit" is "vomitar", so when we recounted our adventures in class this week, everyone kept saying, "Michelle vomitó en el autobus." It was great.

The mountains near Potes. We didn't drive those, but they were in the background the entire time. Look at how gorgeous the sky looks. Not a cloud in sight.

Near Potes, we went to the Monasterio de Santo Toribio de Liébana. In this monastery is the (believed) largest piece still in existence of the wooden cross upon which Christ died. Many might think that would be an amazing thing to be able to see... I thought it was kind of creepy, but I guess tons and tons of pilgrims made their way to this monastery in order to see it. Potes was a beautiful little town full of angry locals that dislike tourists. The group I tagged along with got lucky and found an empty friendly restaurant in which to have our lunch (toasted sandwich of fried egg, tomato, lettuce, and mayonnaise; Delicious!). We wandered around later. I bought some earrings (I think I'll buy earrings from every place I visit) and we took some fantastic pictures of the scenery.

Me in Potes. You can see the river below, kind of, it's the shiny thing to the left of me, part of the village and the mountains in the background.

San Vicente de la Barquera was right next to the sea. I took some amazing photos and we arrived right around sunset, so some are even better. We checked out the cathedral and a castle. Both were nice, but the views stole the show. The sea was freezing though. We didn't even bother going down to the beach. The wind was enough to keep us all huddled together. It was Valentine's Day though, so I stopped in a candy shop and bought myself a heart sucker. Great day, beautiful sun. It was colder than I would have liked, but it wasn't raining, which apparently is a miracle for northern Spain.

San Vicente... This is a view from the top of the castle looking out toward the sea. Those little things in the water are boats and you can see part of the castle there at the bottom of the picture.

Sunday morning, a quick unexciting tour of Santillana del Mar and then we headed to the Altamira Caves, which I discussed in my presentation and somewhat influenced Auel while writing her books. They are the caves discovered in 1871 with prehistoric cave paintings, far advanced from what was expected for the time. I was a little disappointed. Firstly, no pictures at all. I mean, these are fake caves. Reproductions. Why can't we take pictures? Then, I wanted to buy a t-shirt at the gift shop, but all of the t-shirts were ugly, basically, and very expensive. I finally settled on a stuffed mammoth that I fell in love with for more money than he was worth, but I had to take him home. He was a hit with everyone too. I wish we had had more time to wander around the museum part of it, but we didn't. It wasn't all a disappointment. It was gorgeous and amazing and it made me happy to learn more about prehistoric people, but I just wish that the people who run the museum weren't so uptight and wouldn't rip you off at the gift shop. It made the experience a little less amazing and feel a bit like a tourist trap, when, considering what it is, it should never be considered as such.

The ride home wasn't bad at all. I sat and discussed life with a grad student for most of the time and caught a catnap here and there, but I had had a late night Thursday talking with Tom and then two late nights in the hotel, hanging out with people in different rooms. Of course I couldn't go home and sleep. I had to get home and begin to write an essay about my trip, in Spanish, and finish up the rest of my homework. I didn't make it to bed until after 3 and was up before 7. Needless to say, I was exhausted and not loving life at this point. Monday was a long, difficult day. The internet in the school gave out and I needed to begin studying for midterms. I caught up on my sleep yesterday, but I'm behind on my studying and my parents are coming soon. Lots of pressure right now and I'm really feeling it.

I miss home terribly. I've even begun counting the days and I'm not even halfway through. I think I'll feel better when midterms are over, but then my family will be leaving at the same time. It's just going to be an emotional week and a half. I just hope I handle it well. I guess I have no choice.

Well, I think that's about it... I need to head home now. Catch a nap and start organizing myself for the studying that I'm going to need to do over the next 5 or 6 days. I'm not excited. I might check for typos later, but it takes so long to upload these pictures and everything that it's just not worth it right now.

Some things I thought about while killing time in this hallway...

2009-02-09T18:13:00.003+01:00

Well, it's Monday. I didn't have to do my presentation today because the teacher ended up talking for a long time. Our class is having a really difficult time with the subjunctive. I thought about doing it anyway (in 15 minutes) because I was, for the most part, prepared, but I can always use a little extra time and I really didn't want to have to rush to finish in 15 minutes when the presentation needs to be at least 10 and is 15% of our grade. I managed to get what seems like a good deal of homework today, for some reason. Maybe I'll try to do it all tonight. I kind of like not procrastinating. At least recently it has given me extra time to work on my presentations and the like. Unfortunately, I was planning on beginning to study for midterms immediately after I completed my presentation, so now I'll have two days left for that, but I guess it's okay. I'm working on it.

I'm not sure why... whether it's the walking, the weather, or I'm just getting old... but ever since I've been here, my old soccer injury has been hurting me. One time, while I was playing a game of soccer in summer gym, I managed to kick the ball with my foot straight and pretty much crushed my big toe. No one told me that you are supposed to kick the ball with the inside of your foot and it really didn't occur to me. It wasn't that big of a deal. I had to sit out for the rest of the game and my big toe looked a little crooked (it still does), but it didn't hurt too badly. Two or three days later, I ran 3 miles on it and did just fine, so I thought I was good. But now, it's been killing me. I wonder if I'm going to be one of those people that always knows when it's going to rain because the drop in pressure has affected my misplaced joint. Usually, though, those people are really old.

Other news: My host mom seems to be taking an interest in my learning Spanish after I mentioned that I felt one of my biggest faults as her charge was that I couldn't speak very well and that the majority of the Americans (really all of them) do not want to speak in Spanish when we speak together. We had to sign this agreement that we would always speak in Spanish in class, with each other, and outside of class, but so far I haven't noticed anyone following this. Anyway, she taught me how to say "leaf" today by pointing out the "hoja" on the stem of a tangerine. And she's talking to me more slowly and explaining words that I don't know. So that's an improvement. I still should find an intercambio, but I'm too afraid to inconvenience people. I'm hoping to just run into one, like Dah-veed's roommate (I'm just going to spell it phonetically from now on because this guy just doesn't look like a David and I don't want anyone to get it messed up).

I should really start taking pictures of my American "friends". I don't know if I'll ever see any of them ever again (maybe I'll head to Bowling Green sometime to hang out with them), but it would be nice to at least have pictures of them. Especially the ones that seem to like me. People have taken pictures of me, but so far, only a few have posted them on facebook and tagged me. I don't even think I am facebook friends with a bunch of them. I'm really terrible at finding people. I let them come to me.

Anyway, I should do something constructive. Not that this isn't constructive, but...

El Escorial and the rest of my weekend

2009-02-08T17:56:00.007+01:00

Yesterday, I took a day-trip with my roommate to El Escorial. We went by train, which was okay. It was really cold though. We left Alcalá by 7am, bought our tickets and got on a train that took us almost to El Escorial. It was cold and windy and the further west we went, the more snow was on the ground. The ride was pretty scenic though. Spain has really nice mountains and they are especially pretty covered in snow. We had to change trains, but other than that, the ride was pretty uneventful. Just a little tiring because it was 8am, with nothing to do, on a train rocking you to sleep. But it was cold. Very very cold. It took about 2 hours on the train to get there.

When we got to El Escorial, we hopped on a bus to take us from the train station to the bus station, which is closer to Royal Monastery. We headed straight there because it was only just 10 and the bus to the Valley of the Fallen didn't leave until 3:15. We were one of the first people inside the monastery, which opened at 10am. We paid for a guided tour (10 euro) because with a guided tour you get to see more of the place. Unfortunately, they refused to assign us a guide who spoke English because we were the only English speakers there at the time. So I had to listen to the tour in Spanish, which means I didn't get to understand very much. However, my roommate translated a lot of it for me and I had my Rick Steve's book with his own information about each room, so it wasn't too bad.

Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Look at how nice the sky looked at this point... One thing about this place was that it's not nearly as pretty as most cathedral and castle places we have seen so far. Just walls and windows. It was still beautiful.

I loved the sundial-ish things on the floor of the Walking Room. There was a hole (now plugged) above a window that the sun would come through and there was a strip across the floor that would tell you what time it was according to the time of year. The other thing that I really liked was the Royal Pantheon. It was a circular room with rows of coffins where the kings and queens (only the queens that gave birth to kings) were placed after their deaths. There are still three coffins that aren't filled yet, but they already have people (dead, but properly decomposing) waiting to be placed into them. I wonder where their bodies are for now... it was amazing though. Generation after generation of royalty, stacked on top of one another. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but I bought a postcard with a picture of the room on it. Another kind of creepy thing, was the room with a huge circular... um... thing in the middle of it where the remains of all of the royal children that died before their seventh birthday (their first communion) were placed. The sculptures were pretty amazing. Some of the coffins in the other areas had statues of the people within carved on top. Gorgeous, but a little creepy.

Royal Pantheon of El Escorial. Those are the coffins, stacked four high. Kings on the left, queens on the right. You can see how it's very pretty, but at the same time, kind of weird. Especially walking in there as a king or something and knowing that the next coffin will have your name on it...

The Spanish older people that were in our group were like misbehaving children. It was a little shocking. Like at one point, there is a giant curtain with one of those velvet rope looking things in front of it and one old lady walked around the velvet rope to go peek behind the curtain. A nearby guard had to tell her that she wasn't supposed to be behind the rope. Then, there was a big coffin with a statue of the guy (I forget at the moment who it was) carved on the top of the coffin. It clearly said "Do not touch" in four languages, but many of the Spaniards had to touch every square inch of this thing after the guide had left the room.

After we left the basement where all the bodies are, our guide left us, which I thought was kind of crappy. Carla and I managed to tag on to the end of another group with a guide that occasionally spoke some English. We found out later that this guide was traveling with their group and they had their own bus and everything, but she didn't tell us we couldn't follow them, so we did. We learned a few things about the paintings. I love El Greco and there were quite a few of his there. She also pointed out this fantastic painting on the ceiling above the main staircase that I would have missed entirely. It was gorgeous. She told who some of the people were and how it was so interesting because many of the figures were painted with their bottom halves larger than the top halves so that it would look like they were hanging down from the ceiling. I bought a postcard of the painting too, although it is so big and the postcard is so small that it is difficult to make out many of the figures.

The other really amazing part of this place was the library. Absolutely beautiful. A very very long room with paintings across the ceiling. Each portion of the ceiling had a different educational subject of importance, such as math, music, astrology, etc. and the walls below each section had a historical story related to each subject. I didn't get to look long enough because I didn't realize that it did this until I was already at the other end of the room. It was amazing though. The guide called in the most important library in the world, but I'm pretty sure she was just being biased for some reason. There weren't that many books and they were all backwards in order to allow the pages to breath. And almost none of them were behind glass, so I can't imagine these books are that important, though I could very easily have missed a good explanation.

Royal Library. You can see the paintings on the ceiling. It was gorgeous.

The basilica was closed that day because they are restoring it, which a little disappointing, but I wasn't too worried about it. It seems that everything seems to be being restored this year for some reason. Anyway, after we left the library, the guide told the group that they had 15 minutes to use the bathroom, stop at the cafeteria, and go to the gift shop. We followed them still, why not? It was freezing and the wind was hitting the monastery at just the right angle that it was whipping around corners and stopping us in our tracks. So we headed to the cafeteria and I got some hot chocolate. It was the best hot chocolate that I've had since I've been here and it warmed me up. It was definitely a highlight of the trip. When we were trying to ask one of the guys that we knew was in the group where they were meeting, we found out he didn't speak Spanish, so we tried English, which didn't work either, so my roommate tried French, because she knows how to speak French too, and they launch into this whole long conversation about who he is and why he is in Spain, which I didn't follow, of course, because I barely speak Spanish, let alone French.

We followed the group all of the way back to the bus station where they all got on a bus, presumably to head up to the Valley of the Fallen. We were going to just get on the bus and the old french man wanted us to (I think it was the first conversation he had had in a language he knew well in a long time), but the guide told us no. So we decided that it was lunch time and walked around and around and around looking for a decently priced restaurant. We tried some of Rick Steve's suggestions, but they were a bit expensive. We went to the market, which was built in 1871 and had a fountain in it where horses could drink from (back when people rode horses to the market), but there wasn't much going on there. We finally found a small, smoky (I so miss no smoking in public buildings) cafe where we could get tortilla sandwiches. They weren't bad... a little cold and when we asked the lady to heat them in the microwave, she got offended and told us that they were just made and were fresh, but she got over it and heated them up for us.

We had about an hour to kill before the bus left, but we went and sat in the bus station anyway. I was freezing, my pants were soaked around the ankles, and the bus station wasn't very warm (they don't believe in heat sometimes), but we sat on a seat in the sun and talked a bit while we waited until the ticket booth opened. After waiting nearly an hour for the ticket booth, we went to by our tickets for the bus to the Valley of the Fallen. It turns out, that half an inch of snow is more than sufficient to shut down the Valley for many days and it was closed. I was a bit peeved. It's half an inch of snow people... and my roommate was upset because this was her second time to El Escorial and she had missed the bus to the Valley of the Fallen that last time she went. I figured that it was closed because the mountain was slippery and they didn't want to send a bus up there, so I decided that we were going to make the 30 some minute hike up the mountain (I guess there is a nice trail), but a lady in the bus station told us that they close the monument and everything. Because of half an inch of snow... Anyway, she told us that we could go visit the historical prince's summer home instead. We wandered around looking for souvenir shops for awhile (all were closed because it was siesta) and ended up going back to the monastery gift shop to buy all of my postcards. I bought the two I mentioned and then one of the library and one of a drawing of the monastery with little people on horses and carriages and stuff. It reminded me of Age of Empires and I thought that Tom would really like it, so I had to buy it.

Then we made our way to the prince's summer home. The garden would probably have looked really nice in the spring and summer, but it was kind of bare and sad right now. There were really good views of the surrounding mountains though. I took some pictures. When we got up to the gate, we were told that the house isn't open to visitors until after Semana Santa (Easter week). Sigh.

View from the garden of the prince's summer home. You can kind of see the snow-covered mountains and for sure the snow-covered ground. The mountains kind of blend into the white sky though. It was a little cloudy at this point of the day.

We decided to head home after that. It was an hour until the next train to Madrid came, so we sat in a nearby cafe. I decided to get another hot chocolate because the first that day was so delicious. It was a mistake. You have to be very careful about the hot chocolate here because sometime they just hand you a cup of, pretty much Hershey's syrup, only maybe a bit thicker and creamier, and it's disgusting to try to stomach. I drank as much as I could because I had paid for it, but it made me a bit ill.

The train ride back wasn't bad because we managed to get on a train that was going to Alcalá. We only had to change trains once because the front half was going to Alcalá and the back half was going somewhere else (really weird). The people in the car told us that we were in the correct car, but after they separated the train in half a man came over the speaker saying that our car was going somewhere else, so half the car jumped up, leapt out of the train, sprinted down the platform to the front of the train and leapt back on. We made it, thankfully, but it was a bit crazy.

When I got home, finally, I talked with Tom a bit online, but I was exhausted. I hadn't slept much the night before and had gotten up at 6am. So when dinner was served at about 9:15, I ate my fill and went straight to bed. It felt fantastic. I slept forever. Almost 14 hours and it felt amazing. Yesterday really wore me out more than I realized, and I had the craziest dreams. I woke up not being able to distinguish the dreams from reality (Did someone say that or did I dream that someone said it?), which is really irritating. But when I sleep late, I get to skip breakfast, which makes me happy.

Also, I guess my roommate and my host mom aren't getting along too well right now. Apparently, my roommate has been coming home pretty late for dinner, mostly because she doesn't have a computer and does all of her homework at the cafes at night, and my host mom isn't happy about it. Carla said that my host mom yelled at her about it on Thursday after I left to hang out with my friends. Carla is kind of unhappy with the situation. I guess I'll have to see how it works out.

I realize that I haven't mentioned what I did Thursday night. Well, some of the graduate students, after a semester of living with a host family, decided to get their own places (including my roommate's old roommate). So I was invited, along with another girl sitting in the hallway with me to one of the graduate student's apartment. I was all for it, but she wanted to check with other people before she would agree, which made me realize how well I'm doing with my goals. I wanted to open up a bit and learn to be more confident and not rely on people anymore. Well, here I am spending a lot of time with a bunch of different people. I don't have a select group of friends that I have to run to in order to see what they are doing first, or if they want to go too. I've made a few, not enemies, but there are a few people that don't like me, but I think that there are more people that do. I've impressed people with my tequila drinking, with coming here even though I've had very little Spanish, and because I'm going to graduate the minute I get home. My host mom even mentioned that I keep my room very organized (this is thanks to Tom of course, because his obsessive compulsive-ness rubbed off a bit).

Anyway, I show up at the grad-student's house with a few other people. He's such a great host. He had the potato chips and the other kind of potato chips, in the same bowl, separated evenly. He had drinks and cups and even brought back some wine when he left to show more people where he lived. I decided to live a little and play some beerpong... my first ever game of beerpong, and as I expected, I lost horribly and it was disgusting. I refused a second game. One of David's (the graduate student, but you have to pronounce it Dah-veed because that's what we call him) roommates is from Venezuela and I tried talking with her for a bit. Mostly I just had to follow her conversations with other people because I flipped out a bit when she talked directly to me, but I could understand her so much better because she doesn't have the Spanish accent. She was sitting in the room with us to listen to us speak in English, to practice a bit. I secretly want to have an intercambio (language interchange where you speak two different languages in order to practice each) with her because she's not very good at English, so I wouldn't feel so badly about my being terrible at Spanish. It sounded like she's really busy though, so I don't know if she'd even have time.

So, we hung out a bit and I was told these things by different people: That I was one of the grad-student's favorite undergrads and that one of the undergrads was glad I was there. So I was very happy. After that, we walked around a bit, went to a bar or two, ran into some more people. I had a good conversation with one of the other undergrads that I hadn't really talked to before about why we decided to come here and how we feel about being here. Then it started pouring rain and some how, we ended up at the Can-Can. I'm not really a big fan of this place. People smoke a lot in there and it's in the basement of this place, so the smoke gets really thick really quickly and makes me sick. I headed home with some other people rather than wade my way through the smoke.

I really miss not having to deal with smoke, but I know I'll miss having the bars stay open until 5 or 6am.

Friday, I slept in a bit, but mostly hung out at home. Next weekend, we go to Cantabria, where it's snowing and ugly. I'm so excited for the Altamira Caves though. Recall the book that I bought at the CarreFour. Well, these caves were a big inspiration for the author when she wrote the fifth book of the series and I've known this for many many years now, but I didn't realize that we were going to the town right next to where these caves are located. I'm ecstatic. And I'm probably the only one of the entire group to be so. I'm going to do a presentation tomorrow, in Spanish, over that book, so I'm going to work on that for awhile now. Quit procrastinating.

My parents come in less than 2 weeks!! Hooray!

All in a Day

2009-02-05T00:59:00.003+01:00

So, yesterday (Tuesday anyway), I didn't really leave the piso all day. By evening, I was getting claustrophobic and my legs were cramping (they are now used to a good two mile walk per day), so I decided to go for a walk. I walked around Nueva Alcala, the south part of town by the river, trying to find the laundry place. Secretly, I want a place where I can go with dirty clothes and come back two hours later with clean ones. I'm not used to not knowing exactly where my laundry is for days on end. It was closed when I stopped by, with a metal door covering all windows and doors, so I couldn't even peak in. But Nueva Alcala was pretty nice. Mostly just apartment buildings, but some shops here and there. Most of Alcala is just apartment buildings. Most people live here and then take the bus or train into Madrid to work everyday. Anyway, I plan on stopping there tomorrow during the day to check it out.

After I left Nueva Alcala, I headed down towards the plaza. Then I figured that I may as well stop at the CarreFour (the Meijers type place) and look for some spices to spice up this bland food we are always eating. That is the number one thing that everyone has said about the food. We've never had anything blander. So I headed to the CarreFour. Now, for the past week or so, I've been setting off alarms in department stores. I set off the one at the Corte Ingles like six times while in Barcelona, but I haven't been setting them off all of the time and it's only really been recently, so I was kind of confused. Anyway, I go into the CarreFour and set off the alarm on the way in. The security guard stops me (first time that's happened) and makes me walk through again. So I had to set the thing off two more times while people turned to stare. He pulls out a wand and tells me to open my coat, which of course, I had no idea what he was saying, so I stared at him blankly until he pointed at my buttons and made motions. So I open up my coat and he points to this tag on the inside of my coat that says "Please remove after purchasing" and I guess had some sort of metal security thing in it. So the guy shakes his head in a chastising way and pulls out some scissors to cut it off.

As an aside, I love my pea coat. I wasn't so sure about it. It was $80 and I am not in the habit of paying such money for something like a coat, but I broke down and my mom bought it for me. And I love love love it. I don't think I'll wear another coat again, at least until next winter when it's negative some degrees again. It keeps me warm and it's very stylish, which I usually don't pull off.

So, back to the CarreFour. I wandered around and found this fantastic isle full of spices and sauces and delicious condiments. I hadn't thought to look up how to say "Chili Powder" in spanish and had to go through the entire shelf, eliminating anything not red and powdery and then narrowing it down to what could only be chili powder, if they carried it at all. Luckily, it was, thank goodness. I also grabbed some vinegar, but all they had was white wine vinegar, which I think is different than the vinegar that I eat at home, but was still delicious enough. Lastly, I searched and searched until I found some tabasco sauce. It was hidden in a corner shelf at the bottom, for some reason.

I wandered around some more with my arms full, grabbing a box of mini Chips Ahoy!, and contemplating a few other delicious snackies for late nights, when I found the books section. I decided to go all out and buy the first book from pretty much my favorite book series, The Earth's Children (by the way, thanks Aunt Ruth for introducing me to them), in spanish and I was so excited about that. It was 10,50 euro, which is a little steep, in my opinion, but I figured I'd feel better about having my book and would be practicing more spanish along the way. It has ended up being a little intense. In the first page, I have looked up more than 50 words and have learned probably 8 different words for "rock".

Anyway, I go to pay. The place is packed with people, for some reason at 8 something on a Tuesday night. The woman rings up all of my stuff, but she rings up my book last and as I glance up at the scanner, I see 19,50 euro and I was like, wait a minute... that book was only 10,50 euro. So I try to tell her by pointing at the price and she has no idea what I'm talking about and then realizes what I'm thinking and tells me that that isn't the price of the book, that's the total price. So I feel like an idiot and the whole long line behind me is tapping their feet in impatience. But no worries. I bag my stuff and head out the door.

As I'm crossing the street, I realize that I have lost a glove and I'm very upset about this because I love these gloves. Mama and Papa gave them to me for Christmas and they are warm and thin and fantastic and I really didn't want to lose one. So after scouring the streets looking for my glove, I decide that I must have dropped it in the CarreFour and head back. I have my bag in my hand, so I can't walk through the alarm gates again, so I walk up and down in front of the cash registers trying to see down these isles, which is completely impossible. So I try to figure out how to ask if someone found it and realize I don't know the words "lost" or "glove" in spanish. I stand at the front of the store, shifting my weight from foot to foot, unwilling to give up on the glove, but not having enough courage to begin a conversation that I have no words for. Finally, I go up to the security guard (a different one because the one who cut the tag off my coat is gone) and hold up my lone glove and say, "have you seen the other?" which may not have translated into spanish well because I don't think "other" can even be a noun (maybe it can? I don't know), but after she asked a few questions that I just answered yes to even though I had no idea what she was asking, she said that she did not have it and she had not seen it. So I asked her, "can you watch my bag when..." (although I think I actually said purse) and just handed her my bag of groceries. More talking that I did not understand, she took the bag and I walked through the gate to look for my glove. Lo and behold, just as I start to head into the store, here comes the security guard who cut the tag off of my coat, holding my glove in his hand. He gave me quite a speech, the contents of which, or even the tone, I have no idea, but I thanked him profusely, grabbed my bag, and left.

But I survived! It was a struggle, but last night, I had the best tasting blended vegetables that I've had since I've been here. Blended vegetables with chili powder.

And I'm doing better than some people. Today, I heard someone say, "I hate this place!" referring to Spain. I don't hate it here. I'm doing alright. I just still can't speak the language, that's all. Well, I can speak okay, but I can't understand. I'm working on it.

Barcelona would be nothing without Gaudí

2009-02-03T17:19:00.011+01:00

So, this weekend past, we went to Barcelona. I want to go back. Not because I had such a fabulous time that I have to experience it all again and more, but because I was so disappointed with the trip that I want to go back and actually enjoy it. The biggest problem with the trip was that it rained a lot. Friday wasn't bad and I enjoyed almost everything we saw that night, but we didn't get there until after 4pm and that was after an 8 hour bus ride, so I wasn't feeling my best anyway. But we saw some amazing things that night.

For one, The Sagrada Familia, which is a gorgeous and gigantic church, designed by Gaudi, a very ahead-of-his-time architect who made Barcelona beautiful. We didn't go inside, but we could see people poking their heads out of the top towers and I really wanted to go in to climb the towers. I took a lot of pictures. However, the Sagrada Familia is currently (and has been for some decades) under construction, so there are hideous cranes and construction looking things in my pictures. Some of the things that The Sagrada Familia is known for is the sculptures of the passion of Christ. There is a four by four block of numbers on the side of the church. Left and right, up and down, diagonally, and many other combinations (such as the four in the corners and Z patterns) (310 to be exact), all add up to 33, which was the age Christ was when he died. It was all very beautiful and awesome.

The Sagrada Familia... at a distance because it's hard to get the whole thing in one picture unless you're at a distance. That's me standing in front of it and that sandy looking patch at the bottom is usually filled with water creating a gorgeous pond that reflects the church, but it's drained right now to conserve water...

We left The Sagrada Familia and headed to the Casa Milá, another work of Gaudi. It is a very stylish apartment building, completed in 1912. After being restored in the 90's, some of the apartments were rented out for 6,000 euro a month, which is insane. We were able to see the lobby, one of the top floor apartments styled in early 1900's decor and furniture, the attic, which is kind of a museum and tribute to Gaudi's work, and the rooftop terrace with all kinds of gorgeous sculptures and views of the city.

The Casa Milá. Gaudí liked to use curvy architecture and iron, but iron was kind of considered lower class so he made it into nice designs.

The roof of The Casa Milá. That tiny building in the far background through the arch is the Sagrada Familia. It was much more impressive seeing it off the roof than in this picture.

After The Casa Milá, we went to see the Casa Batlló. It is yet another building by Gaudí. By this time I was beginning to think that the only good things about Barcelona were Gaudí's works. And for the most part, I still believe this. It's not true, but I didn't get to see enough of the rest of the city to disprove it. Anyway, we didn't get to go into the Casa Batlló and I'm not even sure what it's being used for today, although I'm sure Javier (our tour guide and a teacher at our school) explained everything. The place is called the House of Bones because many of the designs look like bones and tendons and things. I noticed this in a lot of Gaudí's work, and being pre-med, it was pretty interesting. I wouldn't imagine that bone looking things would be beautiful.

After the Casa Batlló we headed for the plaza de Catalunya, which is the main plaza of Barcelona. This is where the Corte Ingles is (very important) and the Hard Rock, H&M, etc. Off one of the streets of the plaza is La rambla. A very long street with many many shops and little tent shops running all the way down the center. Pictures make it look much prettier in the summer when the trees have leaves, or the spring when the trees are in bloom. Some of the tent shops were weird. There were open-air pet stores, where you could buy chickens and bunnies and hamsters and birds and the like. There were flower shops, which made more sense to me. There were a lot of tourist shops. Barcelona in general is a very tourist-y town. I heard England-english and Australian-english in the short time I was there and this was in January/February when no one really wants to go.

Off La rambla is this insane market. It's called the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria and it's this giant open area under a metal roof that sells tons and tons of foods, mostly fruits and vegetables and fish. There were also some pastry and candy places that looked amazing. Some of the weird things that we saw were still living shrimp and crabs that flailed about when the lady grabbed a handful and skinned sheep heads with the eyes still intact. If this place wasn't so tourist-y, it would have been an amazing place to shop for food. Some people bought smoothies that were being sold, but I passed. I wasn't feeling too well at this point because we were still marching around the city after being cramped in a bus and we hadn't used the bathroom or eaten since before 1pm and it was now after 7.

La Boqueria. Only like 1/10 of one of hundreds of aisles in this place. It was amazing.

We snaked our way down a few narrow side streets full of shops and made from stone to a small plaza that I forget the name with some important buildings that I forget the name. It was too hard to listen to our tour guide at this point and I think he had stopped asking the graduate students to translate for him. Then we walked past (but not down) Carrer D'Avinyó, the brothel on this street inspired Picasso to paint "Les Demoiselles de Avignon".

We made a few more stops at plazas that I can't remember very well (Plaza del Rei and something else with big buildings with guards).

Our last stop, basically, was at the Cathedral. The Cathedral may have been gorgeous, but with the entire front of the building obscured by construction materials, I couldn't tell you for sure. I didn't even bother taking any pictures. The inside was nice, but all of the cathedrals are beginning to look the same. I took a few pictures here and there, but I was ready to head back by that time. Mi madre always feeds me after 2pm and then by 9, so when it was after 9 and I hadn't eaten since before 1, I was beginning to feel a bit sick. Not to mention that I still had to use the bathroom. But there is no stopping when Javier gets going.

I managed to hop into a restroom at a Cafe when we made it back to Plaza de Catalunya and were waiting for the bus. We were wondering why the bus wasn't there yet when we realized that most of the streets around the plaza were shut down for... A PARADE? At 9-something at night? Really? We had to continue our march out of the plaza to a place where the bus could get through and then take a half an hour bus ride to the hotel, which was disappointingly situated well outside of Barcelona in a small, dead town.

Dinner at the hotel was some manicotti-like noodles stuffed with tuna? It wasn't very good, but I've learned just to eat whatever it is. Only the milk is still making me sick these days. The tuna was almost gritty tasting, but I ignored it because I was starving. Second course (what? there is a second course?) was some kind of fake steak and french fries. I was hoping there would be a second course because I was still hungry after the first course and not very happy about it. Desert was natural yogurt, which, if anyone has ever had natural yogurt, you know that it is disgusting. Intense sour flavoring without a hint of sugar. Luckily, they gave us giant packets of sugar with our natural flavor yogurt, and I used both, and it wasn't that bad after that.

That night, about 8 of us located pretty much the only bar in this tiny town where our hotel was, which I never did learn the name of. The bar was like an Irish Pub and besides being packed with people, the only spark of life in this dead little town. I was a little concerned at first because a bottle of beer was 6 some euro and I don't even like beer, so I asked the bartender how much the tequila was (my favorite) and she said 1 euro, so I was set for the night. I hung out with some really nice people that night and had a fantastic time. When I got home, rather late, I took what had to have been a 40 minute shower and it was amazing. It felt so good. I shaved my legs probably three times since that has been all but impossible to manage in my 5 minute showers at the piso. The hotel was actually pretty nice. It was kind of weird because we had rooms with two single beds, but they were pushed together like one giant bed, but no complaints. Free internet, comfy mattress. I was very very comfortable.

For breakfast, we had a buffet. I ate a lot. I figured, free food, why not? I loved it, but apparently everyone said it was terrible. I ate a good three bowls of cocoa puffs cereal, a napolitana, two rolls with olive oil, salt, and tomato, and two pieces of tortilla española. It wasn't necessary to eat again until dinner. When we got to Barcelona, we stopped at a few places on MontJuïc. We saw Calatrava's Olympic telecommunications tower, which was a giant almost sword looking thing. We stopped at the Catalan Art Museum, this gigantic looking castle place, but we only walked in the front entry and then out again. We stopped for 20 minutes at the Olympic Stadium from 1992, the year the Olympics were in Barcelona. Not a bad morning. I don't think it had started raining yet anyway. Maybe only some sprinkles.

View from MontJüic. See the clouds?

Next we went to see my favorite part of the trip: Park Güell. It was raining by this time, but there

were a lot of places to stand under. We passed by this guy selling earrings and I wanted to buy some, but Javier was already out of sight by this time and I had to run to catch up. At the park were these mosaic looking lizard statues, beautiful. I got my picture next to it. This is also a Gaudí place, by the way. There are these curvy benches that overlook the city. It's really a beautiful place and we didn't spend nearly as much time there as I would have liked.

Me at the Park Güell. I'm sitting on the curvy benches. It's raining in this picture, by the way.

Then is was free time. We wandered around the Plaza de Catalunya for awhile, looking for a place to eat, even though I wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat. Then we wandered around stores for awhile. I bought a Barcelona t-shrit for 8 euro. It was actually a kids t-shirt, but I demanded that I wanted one and the guy found me one that fit. It was pouring by this time and I was soaked and miserable. I had brought an umbrella to Barcelon, but I had asked my roommate that morning if I should bring it and she said no, so I left it in my room, for some reason. I really wish that I hadn't. I was absolutely miserable. Then we had the option to go to the Picasso museum and I wanted to go, but someone else wanted to go to the Sagrada Familia to go inside and climb the towers. I figured that would be an amazing experience, so I went along instead. Well, after 3 euro round-trip metro ride to get there, then 9 euro entrance fee, it was 2.50 euro to ride the elevator. So I was like, whatever, let's pay to ride the elevator. But the elevator was closed for the night. It was really disappointing. The inside of the church was decent looking enough, but not 9 euro worth of decent. Oh, well. Live and learn. Like never leave your umbrella behind. After the church, we went back to the plaza to have dinner at the Hard Rock. I've now eaten at Hard Rock Madrid and Hard Rock Barcelona since I've been on this trip. I'll never dislike their spicy mac and cheese.

Free time seemed like it would never end. I was soaked. My feet were soaked. It was miserable and we spent probably 10 hours walking around in the rain. I was cold and miserable. I hated Barcelona at this point. I spent the last probably 2 hours wandering around the Corte Ingles, where I bought some earrings that I really like. Finally, the bus arrived. Many people decided to stay in Barcelona to go out for the nightlife, but I didn't want to do anything but go back to the hotel, where I ran into Carla and her roommate having a hot foot soak in soapy water. I joined them and began to feel better. Then, after a 30 minute shower, I went back to their room to watch the Latin music video channel and relax. When they went to bed, I headed down to my tutor's room where I hung out with him, his roommate, and her friend where I had a glass of cheap wine and some cookies. It was fantastic. Probably one of the bigger highlights of my trip.

I slept like a rock, again, and over-ate at breakfast, again. I thought that we were just heading back to Alcala when we all piled on the bus with our stuff, but no. We had to stop at the Palau de la Música Catalana where we got a guided tour. It was pretty, don't get me wrong, but I was exhausted. We sat in these comfy seats and the guide turned on some organ music. I was asleep in seconds. Then I was trying not to fall asleep as she was talking, but when you hardly understand someone talking about something not all that interesting, it's very hard not to sleep. On the bus ride, finally, I watched Mystic River in spanish. I was very very proud of myself because I followed almost all of the movie. Of course, they had spanish subtitles on and I can read spanish much much easier than listening to it. If the subtitles hadn't been on, there would have been no way I could have followed it. It was a pretty good movie, but I was motion sick by the end of it. I guess Sean Penn (?) won an award for the movie. I recommend it anyway, except that someone said that at one point they have really really thick Boston accents and it's kind of hard to understand them in English, which I obviously didn't experience.

Lunch was cookies and chips, neither very good, but I wasn't in the mood for a plate of spaghetti like some people ate. I slept a bit more. I thought that I wasn't sleeping, but when I saw Madrid 135 and then we were in Alcala like 10 minutes later, I knew I must have fallen asleep.

Anyway. What did I learn? Never forget my Rick Steve's book again. Never go anywhere without an umbrella. Only wear old socks because my shoes leak dye when they are wet. I will never grow tired of tequila and drinking tequila garners respect from most college students. The Corte Ingles, with its 7 floors, does not believe in bathrooms. I do not like the chocolate here as much as chocolate in the states. I would rather give up chocolate than never have a hot shower ever again. My wish that Barcelona wasn't our first trip so that I would know what I was getting into better and therefore could plan better was a very legitimate wish. I love window seats.

There, that's about it. This took forever to write and I refuse to proofread it, so sorry about that. Now I basically have to write it again on a much smaller scale, in Spanish for my classes. Fun!

In Progress: Barcelona

2009-02-03T02:03:00.001+01:00

I'm very exhausted from Barcelona. We didn't get back until late Sunday and I had homework and school and everything since. I'm working on a blog post all about it, but it's slow going and I'm exhausted. I'll try to have it up by tomorrow.

The Real Post: How I'm Doing, What I Miss, Some Things I Should Be Saying

2009-01-28T18:18:00.005+01:00

Apparently a large number of people from our group now have el gripe, the flu. Everyone is apparently sick. Me, my allergies are out of control today, but I don't feel like puking, so I'm a hundred paces ahead of everyone else. And I still don't have pinkeye, though itchy allergy eyes started my heart racing the other morning. I'm doing really well, I guess. Cross your fingers for tomato and onion salad for la cena and if a miracle occurs, tortilla española too.

So, I leave for Barcelona on Friday. How fantastic is that? It'll be a great time, I know, except that the forecast calls for rain all Saturday, which is our principle day because there is 6 hours of traveling on Friday and Sunday. No worries though.

I'm doing well in school so far, I'm starting to have at least 1.5 sided conversations with mi madre, y it was greater than 60˚F here today. What a beautiful day! I'll take walking to and from school for 2 full hours in one day over a snow day any day. Even if I did only have 4.5 hours of sleep last night. I was up late doing homework because I'm a procrastinator. Like right now. Instead of doing homework... well, I have all day tomorrow, right? I'll probably stay up late doing it tonight too, although I tried that Monday night and didn't end up waking up until 12:30 on Tuesday and ended up embarrassing myself. My roommate is up every day before 10am, so there are expectations, I guess.

Let's see, what's been going on? I've been a bit down here and there about being in Spain and failing at Spanish, but some people have been saying that it took them the full four months before they felt comfortable speaking and could understand. I guess I'm okay with that. I just want to do well in my classes. I've been trying really hard, like much harder than I every have in United States school, to participate and I think I'm doing a good job. I hope I don't seem pompous or anything, but I feel as though I should try. It's a different story in Civilization because there are so many people in that class and it's very intimidating to stutter out something that doesn't make much sense in front of all of those people. However, after a little chat with my teacher, I think she likes me and that makes me feel a lot better about trying.

I've also been a bit down about the food. I am so sick of bean soup. I hate beans. I mean, I can eat them and on occasion, they are pretty good, but every other day is too much. Beans aren't that good, I promise. And the fact that the Spanish have two courses basically. The first is usually a vegetable dish, and the second is a meat dish. Like last night, mi madre set down a giant bowl of mashed potatoes in front of me. Just mashed potatoes. No gravy, no salt. I can't eat an entire plateful of mashed potatoes (unless they are my mother's mashed potatoes) just by themselves. So I pushed them around a bit until she brought out a plate of fried chicken breasts. Just fried chicken breasts, which isn't as weird as just mashed potatoes, but I still prefer a bit of ketchup or barbecue sauce to give it some flavor. I ended up dumping my bowl of mashed potatoes over the chicken, much to the confusion of mi madre, and ate them together. It wasn't bad that way, but I'm missing my foods. Peanut butter and jelly and tomato soup sounds fantastic right now. Chocolate chip cookies and brownies. We have "postre" every day after la comida and la cena, but it is limited to jello, pudding, flan, rice pudding, yogurt, or fruit. Outside of the pudding, nothing too exciting there.

Carla and I booked our tickets to Valencia the other day. It's especially exciting because we are going on the night of the festival of Las Fallas. A falla is a monument made of word, cardboard and other combustible materials. They are a variety of heights, up to 30 meters. The monument is about a real-life subject and is satirical in tone (last year they had one of Bush). The celebration with marching bands, fireworks, partying, etc. begins on the 15th of March. At about midnight on the 19th of March, all of the fallas are burned. We will arrive in Valencia on the 19th of March, where we are going to sprint around the city seeing as many fallas as we can and then we'll stick by one to watch it burn. I'll post so many pictures when I get back so you can all be amazed too. If you have time, I suggest looking up images of las fallas just to get an idea of how cool these things are. Maybe I'll steal a picture from the internet and post it.

Well, that's enough for now, I guess, but I feel like I should be going into more detail about things everyone experiences. Like how disappointing it was to find out that we aren't attending "The University of Alcala", we are attending a puny, out of the way satellite campus where they stick the foreign students so the Spanish students don't have to deal with them. I forget the name of the school. I need to get a picture of it at some point. Like how my books were only 11 euro total (did I mention that already?) which is amazing considering I spent over $500 on one class one semester at BGSU (although I totally got screwed with having to buy a brand new OChem book). Like how even though they tell you that you should expect to see wine everywhere, including at lunch and dinner, almost no one has had wine with any of their meals at their houses. Like how, even though there may be a few people that you can't decide how you feel about, there is a real bond between everyone in your group as you work through this experience together. Like how, if you're just coming out of 202, you're more screwed with the language than the program tells you. Like how, if you've only have professors that speak with a South American or Central American accent, you're even more screwed than the rest of the kids just coming out of 202.

Anyway, I'm done for now. Really. I'll write again when I feel like procrastinating. Maybe tomorrow because I'll be really busy Friday through Sunday in Barcelona.

In Progress...

2009-01-28T15:56:00.006+01:00

I'm going to write more later, but for now, as I have to go to class in 3 minutes, I'm going to use the really fast internet of the school to upload these pictures. They are the ones from Madrid that I couldn't take because my camera was dying.

This is me and the Matador Vaca. Some people taking pictures put their fingers up like bull-horns, but I thought that looked silly.

This is me petting the Vaca stretched up the Madroño tree. In the Puerta del Sol there is a statue of a bear stretched up a madroño tree. This is the heraldic symbol of Madrid. I didn't realize that the Policia were behind me. I wasn't supposed to be touching the statue, but they didn't stop, so it's all good.

Jesús está en tí

2009-01-25T12:48:00.005+01:00

I went to a Spanish Catholic Mass today in La Iglesia Magistral with my roommate. We thought the service started at 11:30, when in reality, it started at 11, so we arrived almost 35 minutes late. Mass in such a huge church was interesting, but more interesting is seeing mass in Spanish. Even though we only caught the last twenty minutes, I noticed some similarities and differences between this and the Catholic Mass of my childhood. There was a lot of standing, the Our Father was said (in Spanish!), and we shook hands with our neighbors and wished them peace (La Paz). The differences included people talking in the church a lot, no choir, no hymnals, and the priest led us all in what seemed to be a children's song about Jesus, including hand motions.

Jesus... está en tí, está en mí, está en todos mis hermanos...

Also, even though there is this giant, three story practically, beautiful organ, no one was playing it at any point. I was kind of disappointed with that. I'd like to go back at the correct time and sit through the whole thing someday because it was a really interesting experience. The Spaniards are supposed to be serious about Catholicism, even though the majority don't feel that it is necessary to attend church every week or pray before dinner or anything.

The door to the church. This is only the top 1/3 of it. It's a huge door.

Yesterday was an okay day. I didn't really do much. I meant to do a lot of homework, but didn't really get around to it. I talked with my parents a bit on Skype and it was really nice. Last night, I went out with a couple of people. We went to what seemed to be a Mexican restaurant (in Spain) and I had a glass of wine. I hate that all there is to do here really is spend money. Every day I throw money somewhere or another. It's only really a euro here and a euro there, but it adds up and I try to never spend unnecessary money if I can help it. But the night was fun. We hung out in a small plaza near the church with what appeared to be 15 and 16 year olds getting very drunk, empty bottles strewn everywhere, until they began throwing fireworks, which was really more annoying than anything. But I had a lot of fun with the people I was with. All the group members are really nice and as far as I know, no one has been fighting or anything.

Today, I guess I'm a little depressed. I'm mostly sick of the food. It's not bad food, but it's not flavorful, it's not enjoyable to eat. Typically, I'm not gagging on it, but being forced to stuff yourself with food that isn't wonderfully delicious gets old pretty fast. I miss home food. And I miss Tom. I can't remember the last time our schedules corresponded so that we could talk for any length of time. The time difference is hard.

Well, I should probably work on my homework, although I might just take a nap. It's raining here and that always makes me sleepy.

Madrid! Again...

2009-01-23T21:12:00.005+01:00

Okay. So yesterday I went to Madrid. We caught the bus from Alcala (about a 10-12 minute walk from my piso to the bus station) at 11:00am. The bus tickets are 2.20 euro, which seems amazing to me. It's so cheap to travel to Madrid. After a 45 minute bus ride, we entered the creepy bus station again under Madrid and began our adventure. It began at the metro station, which is pretty simple although a complete maze. You find which station you are in, then which station you need to go to. Then find which lines will connect the two. Each line can has trains going in both directions, so you look at the end of the line that is towards the direction you want to go. The name of the last station is the name of the train you get on. The ticket machine wouldn't take my credit card, but I had enough cash on me to buy a 10 ticket deal. Finding the proper platform wasn't difficult, but time consuming. We knew which platform we needed and everything was clearly labeled at every intersection, but this place is huge. We had to have walked for a good 5-10 minutes until we got there. After changing trains once, we arrived at the Retiro park near the Plaza de Indepencia and the Puerta de Alcala (Door to Alcala, which is where I live and apparently these arches were built on the road that would take you to Alcala long ago).

Me at the Puerta de Alcala. So, it was raining a lot of the day, but it was mostly a light rain. I was so glad to have an umbrella. Walking around in wet wool would have been terrible.

Then we visited the park again. Rather than have to follow Javier around and spend limited time at each place, we wandered at leisure and found the best places to take pictures. Especially a straight on shot of the Monument to King Alfonso XII from across the lake.

Monument to King Alfonso XII. It's very impressive.

We walked around taking pictures and made our way to the monument itself for some close up pictures. The good thing about the rain was that we pretty much had the entire park to ourselves. So, when no one is watching, why not have a little fun? I was too afraid to climb up anything, like onto the lions around the monument, but the naked women sitting on sea animals were readily accessible from the steps.

Me sitting on the back of a turtle. The woman is tastefully shielding her nudity.

We continued around the park, seeing the Monument to General Arsenio Martínez-Campos, the Crystal Palace and the Royal Botanical Garden. All sights were very beautiful and lots of pictures were taken. This park will be gorgeous come late April when everything is in bloom.

From the park we walked towards the Puerta del Sol. On the way is the Plaza de Cibeles with the Cibeles fountain and the Madrid City Hall. We walked back past the clock museum, the store that contains it is called Grassy and has a big Rolex sign at the top of the building. The Jeweler that I mentioned before, but couldn't remember his name is Anthony Caro. Also on the way to the Puerta del Sol, is the Kid's Cow and I totally made sure to have a picture this time.

Check this out! Is this not one of the coolest things you ever seen? The information plaque lists the artist as a seven year old, though I doubt he put together or painted the cow... probably just drew it and others did the rest.

One the way to the Puerta del Sol, we stopped at a McDonalds. This McDonalds had two stories and a marble staircase. Very fancy. I just had some chicken nuggets, the only food I can really stomach from McDonalds and they were pretty good. I asked, all by myself, if they had any honey ("¿Tienes miel?") for my nuggets, but they did not. So I ate them with salsa barbocoa instead. Then we went to the Puerta del Sol. The Puerta del Sol is a great place. Within the Puerta del Sol is the very center of Spain. I stood on it and got my picture taken. Within the Puerta del Sol is the office of the governor, a statue of Charles III, and a statue of a bear stretching up a madroño tree, a symbol of the city. The very best part of this statue is that there is a similar statue near the Hard Rock Cafe in Madrid of a cow stretching up a tree. I had to get my picture taken with it, but my battery was almost dead at this point and so I have to get it from someone else before I can post it.

After the Puerta del Sol, we stopped at the Corte Ingles, a multiple story shopping mall, kind of like a Kohls and Meijer combination on a grander scale. It was very large and confusing, not very well labeled at all, but the staff was friendly and helpful enough. After the Corte Ingles, we headed to the Plaza Mayor again. Unfortunately, due to the rain, there was only one or two estatuas humanas (human statues) around the Plaza, but there were quite a few people out selling paintings and painting pictures within the Plaza. Also in the Plaza, I sneakily snuck and shot this picture just for Tom.

You'll have to tell me what you think of the uniforms, okay? These uniforms are pretty much identical to the police in Alcala.

In the Plaza Mayor we ran into a few Americans. They wanted us to take a group photo, and we obliged. One of them was from Indiana, so pretty close really. It was nice to have someone come up to me and saying in my accent of English "Someone who speaks English!". I miss English, despite the fact that everyone in my group only speaks to one another in English. I guess I'm just too used to them and I've become frustrated with strangers because I can't communicate with any of them.

After the plaza, we took a side street and ate some Bocadillos de Calamares. The Rick Steve's book that I was following indicated a different place than we stopped, but we didn't see it right away and figured any place was good enough. Well, it wasn't quite fried long enough and it was a bit chewy although it tasted okay. It was just literally fried squid rings on a roll and nothing else. The biggest thing is that everything here is so bland. I could have really used some mustard or hot sauce or something. I was really expecting some real spice. Like Spanish rice is spicy, but I'm sure that Spanish rice is not real Spanish rice, but I was just thinking there would be lots of spices for some reason. Spanish food is blander than American food and everyone knows how bland a hotdog would be without loading it with condiments. I miss spices. Maybe I should go to the Carrefour (pretty much a Walmart only on a lesser scale) and look for some chili powder and hot sauce to add to some of the dishes.

Anyway, Bocadillos de Calamares. Fantastic picture! Check out my fingernails! I talked about nail polish in my last entry.

From the Plaza we headed towards the Cathedral. On the way we passed the Statue of Don Bazán in the Plaza de la Villa, where City Hall is located. Many pictures were taken of the Cathedral. It is really a beautiful and extensive church. It's easy to pull up a picture of it on the internet (Cathedral of Almudena), but this part was one of my favorites.

These statues are very high up and it's just gorgeous. Why don't we have millions of statues all around and sculpted out of buildings?

At the cathedral, we went in and took pictures. You know how the catholics light candles for some reason, to pray for something, I think. Well, in this church they don't have real candles that you can light. It's probably too dangerous (fire hazard) and with all of the tourists that go through, they'd probably go through candles really fast. So in order to make some money off the deal (as the Catholic church would) and save on the expense and eliminate the fire hazard, they have these boxes set up all over with maybe 50 or so fake candles in them. If you put 20 euro cents into the slot, the bulb of a candle will light up. I paid the 20 cents just to say that I did, but I was more interested in taking a picture of the whole thing than to remember to pray for something.

Next to the Cathedral is the Royal Palace. It's beautiful, but you cant get close without paying 8 euro to enter. I took lots of pictures, but we didn't go in. Someday I would like to. There is a beautiful view of the valley below on one side of the Palace, that we couldn't get a good view of where we were due to construction and traffic. One day, I'll go. There's plenty of time let on this trip and it's less than 5 euro total to round trip to Madrid.

Anyway, after the palace, we went back towards the Puerta del Sol. Near here there is a pastry shop recommended by Rick Steves. We stopped there and ate a pastry called a Napolitana, a cream-filled pastry. I figured I would try one filled with chocolate because it look so delicious, but it was way too rich and I had couldn't finish it. My determination was that it wasn't good enough to justify the sugar/calories/fried-ness of the pastry.

One more stop at the Corte Ingles for a bathroom break (really one would expect a bathroom on every floor, but they would be wrong. One bathroom was all I counted). Then it was to the Prado, where the museum is free Tue-Sat from 6-8pm. We weren't allowed to bring cameras into the museum, but it was still worth it. The paintings are beautiful and the best Spanish artists are in this museum: Goya, El Greco, and Velázquez. I bought two prints from the gift shop, one of a painting by El Greco and Las Meninas by Velázquez. I'm so excited to bring them home, get them framed and hang them up somewhere. I love Velázquez and El Greco.

From the Prado, we headed all of the way down the Paseo del Prado, the very busy main street. Along this road, you find the Hard Rock Cafe of Madrid. We stopped in for dinner. I had a pepsi, a salad (with ranch and cranberries) and a side of spicy macaroni. It was the best meal I've had in such a long time. I might have to go back regularly just to get some spices and some pepsi and it was so amazing. I was so full and happy and I can't stop going on about how great this macaroni and salad were. It ended up costing a little over 12 euro, which is much more than I like to pay for a meal, but considering it was a Hard Rock and they tend to run expensive anyway, it really wasn't a bad price for such a good meal.

After the Hard Rock, we navigated the metro another time. By the way, don't ever put a metro ticket in your pocket with your cell phone because it clears the little strip and voids the ticket. I learned this in DC, so I didn't have problems, but I didn't think to tell anyone else. Although later that night, when I was emptying my coat of valuables, I stuffed my phone in my pocket with my ticket, forgetting the ticket was even there, so let's hope it's okay. I'll find out next time I go to Madrid. We caught the 10:00pm bus home, after some initial confusion about which side of the bus station was unloading and which side was loading. It only took about half an hour because there wasn't much traffic.

We left the bus station and went to the Plaza de Cervantes where we met up with more people ready to go for the night. I ran home to drop off my things and came back by 11. Our first stop was a dance club (the name escapes me) where they were giving out free beer and free sangria and 50¢ shots. Holy crap, right? I was all over that. Then we went to the Can Can where they were giving out free beer until 1am. Because we were the only people in the place, the bartender gave us a free mixed drink, and free shots. I didn't spend more than 2 euro total. It was amazing. No one give out free alcohol in the states, they know the college students would never be able to handle themselves. The dancing was even fun too although it got very crowded around 3am. I left not long after that with most of the rest of my group. It was a very fun time.

Today, I slept quite a bit, which felt very nice. I hadn't been sleeping very well, but I got some good sleep today. My roommate found out that she has pinkeye, which I'm horrified to get. I really hope I'm lucky and don't get it. I took out my contacts and have been washing my hands constantly. We went out for churros today. They are like fried doughnut sticks that you dip in chocolate and eat. They sound really good, but there were very rich. My stomach doesn't handle that much sugar well anymore. I felt the same way about them as I did about the Napolitana... good, but not good enough to justify how bad it is for your body.

My entire body aches. We must have walked many miles yesterday and dancing really works the muscles. I'm feeling much healthier since I've been here. I might even start running again, if my shoes can handle it. I didn't think to bring my workout shoes.

Anyway... I should probably work on some homework, I have quite a bit. So far, no plans tonight other than homework. That should be fun... or not.

Exhaustion (You Might See This Title A Lot)

2009-01-21T23:36:00.006+01:00

Short post tonight because I am exhausted. I haven't been sleeping well at all the last three nights. I've been having very vivid dreams and my mind is just in overdrive while I'm supposed to be trying to sleep.

I'm going back to Madrid tomorrow, which should be a blast. I'm not going to forget my camera this time, or I will come back to get it. Speaking of, I should probably charge my battery now, just in case.

Yesterday was a relatively uneventful day. I did lots of homework, too much. I take a lot longer to do my homework than I think is intended and therefore am constantly working. My host mom called me a "trabajadora", a hard worker, even though I didn't complete nearly as much as I wanted.

I stopped at a Chinos today and bought some ties for my hair (because it's getting very long, I'm wondering if I shouldn't go get it cut... maybe when it gets a little warmer), some nail polish, and nail polish remover. I went all out and spent a total of 4 euro. I'm such a miser, but I'm saving my money just in case I want to travel more than I think. However, my nails look pretty good now, which is practically a first. The nail polish was a bit pinker than I intended, but I didn't like any of the other colors. I might go back and get a pearl color. I didn't buy it because it was so transparent, but I think three coats might look nice. The nail polish is like 0,75 cents, and it's not bad either. I love the Chinos.

At some point, I'm really going to splurge and go to the pastry shop. That will be a fantastic day, but I feel a little like a closet eater sneaking off to the pastry shop by myself. Maybe I can convince someone else to go with me.

So, most people call me Nicky. Here though, everyone pretty much calls me Nicole, which is absolutely fine and it's easier than having to tell people over and over to call me Nicky when they can barely pick up Nicole (I was trying to be a bit more extroverted on this trip, as one of my goals, but I still heard someone say, "That's Nicole. She's quiet."). Anyway, I'm not that used to being called Nicole, just here and there by random people, and so I don't always realize that someone is talking to me when they say it. I know it sounds weird to not automatically respond to your own name, but more than a few times on this trip, I block out my own name like it's background noise. I've been telling people here and there why, but I still look the fool.

I ate arroz con leche today for the first time. Rice with milk sounds like one of the most disgusting combinations of food actually made, but it was surprisingly good. I think there was a ton of sugar in it and lots of cinnamon. It tasted a bit like pumpkin pie mix.

Okay. I stole a few more pictures from people today from the Madrid trip, including the pirate. If I can get them to load on slow, stolen internet, I'll load them now, but if not, I'll give up and try again later.

I'm so tired.

Feed the birds! Arrg!

My Weekend, in too much detail

2009-01-19T23:58:00.001+01:00

It is already Monday again. I have been in Spain for 9 days now. It feels like a lot longer than that though. It feels like I should be more acquainted with the language than I am. I learn new words everyday and I am much better than 9 days ago, but I still feel really far behind everyone else. I think I might go talk to the director of our program here in Spain tomorrow about how difficult the language is for me. I really don't expect anything to come of it... probably not even any worthwhile suggestions ("talk with your friends in Spanish", they don't seem to understand that talking in Spanish is slow, difficult, and frustrating... I talk with friends because I enjoy talking with friends... If we only talked in Spanish, I would not want to talk to them and isolating myself is probably not a good idea right now). Hopefully, though, talking to the director about my difficulties might cause her to pass on this information to my teachers, who will then be very lenient. We took a placement test at the beginning of the semester and it didn't affect what classes we are taking. I hope that means that the professors will assign grades by comparing our work to our placement test and not to the other people in the class, because I really think I must be the worst in the class. Anyway, those are my difficulties so far. I understand no one. Well, I understand my professors here and there, or some of my professors here and there, especially in my Comp and Conversation I class, which is the most basic class available.

On Saturday, we had a tour of Alcala. Our Civilization professor led the tour in Spanish, so I have no idea what we saw or the significance of it, but this is what I picked up. The Plaza Cervantes is a major meeting place where people go to gather, shop, and otherwise enjoy themselves. Near the Plaza Cervantes is the Calle Mayor, a major street of just shops and commercial businesses, on which only commercial vehicles are allowed to drive. After the Plaza and the Calle Mayor, we went to the house where Cervantes was born. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote and is a very big name in Spain, but especially in Alcala. The house is a museum of how a house would have look during the time when Cervantes was born and next door is the somewhat preserved hospital where his father worked as a doctor (I think that's what she said). In the house was kind of like a doctors office with all kinds of bottles and a crazy scary chair. I wanted to take pictures, but we weren't allowed to take pictures of anything not in the courtyard. I loved the courtyard. It had a beautiful skylight and a well and they had a bunch of plants out there. I want a courtyard in my house. I got a picture of me sitting with the Don Quixote and Sancho statues that are outside of the house (see profile pic). Of course, Don Quixote has special meaning for me. I've been singing the songs to the musical since I was in grade school, I saw the musical at the Stranahan (the only show I've paid to see there), and I was the stage manager of the musical when we performed it at our high school (although that was really more bad memories than anything else).

Then we visited the Iglesia Magistral, a giant cathedral in Alcala. There was a whole story about the church, when it was built, what happened there, and there were some pictures of people getting their heads chopped off in some form of crypt area, but I did not catch the significance of any of it. The cathedral was pretty though. There was this gigantic organ that was emitting music, but I didn't realize that someone was actually playing it until we were walking out. They must just sit there and play nonstop all day, everyday? I'm not sure I would like that job.

We visited a few more buildings near the University (Colegio del Rey maybe?), and we passed the Archeological Museum, but we didn't go inside. There wasn't much of this part of the tour that I caught, but it ended with a trip to Iglesia y Colegio de la Cía de Jesús (I think that was the one anyway). We went inside and bought these sugar coated almonds from the nuns that are not supposed to be seen. You ring the bell and then tell the nun what you want, she puts it in this kind of revolving door window and turns it until you can take your almonds. Then you put your money in the revolving door-window, she turns it again and you leave. It was pretty interesting and the almonds tasted fantastic. I was the last one to eat them, so I got to keep the box as a souvenir. I haven't decided what exactly to do with it yet, but it's sitting on my shelf as a reminder to go get more almonds at some point.

It was a pretty good tour, although it would have been many many times better if I had understood what was being said to me. If I get ambitious, I'll look up the history of these things myself, but for now... Maybe when I get better at Spanish, I'll ask her to repeat most of it for me.

Saturday during the day, I went out with Carla and we went shopping. She wanted to buy some shoes, but couldn't find any that she liked at a price that she was willing to pay. It was okay though because I was introduced to a lot of new stores, including Carrefour, which is the closest thing they have to a Meijer around here. While we were there, I bought some Cheerios and some Spanish frosted corn flakes because I just couldn't take another day of toast. I was literally getting ill eating the toast every morning. Then we stopped at Calzedonia, a small shop that sells nylons of every color and pattern. I realized that I had forgotten to bring mine, although I specifically remember thinking to myself "Don't forget those." So I bought some regular nylons.

We then went to The Phone House, which is a shop that sells cell phones. I had gone earlier in the day and bought myself a cheap phone in order to keep in contact with my group members here. It was a horrible experience. There is no such thing as customer service in Spain, especially when you don't know the language well enough to make your wishes clear. Suffice it to say, there was a very long line, a very unpleasant employee slamming things around, and after she took my information, she ignored me while she waited on other people. So I had to go back with Carla and deal with the same woman in order to put more minutes on Carla's phone. After waiting behind 1 person for almost 20 minutes and a line of 10 more people forming behind us in this small shop, it was our turn. Carla only needed 10 euro worth of minutes, but only had a 50 euro bill. The lady refused to take the bill saying that Carla needed to leave to go get change and then come back (and wait in the line again...). Carla and I were counting out euro cents at the counter until we reached 10 euro rather than leave and come back. What a horrible experience in Spanish customer service! At the very least, that woman should find a different job that doesn't involve interacting with people.

That night, we dressed up and went to a tapas bar. I only had a glass of wine (2 euro) and some kind of bagel/ham sandwich. I wish we could have had some Sangria, but they only sold it by the liter. After the bar we went to a salsa club where people actually danced salsa. I, however, cannot dance salsa, cannot even come close (I tried) and I would much rather learn to swing dance than salsa dance. It was a good time though, but I was very paranoid about leaving my coat (and my money) in a pile against the wall.

Sunday was sleeping in, doing some homework, taking a nap, finishing my homework. Nothing exciting. And today I just went to school. Nothing more, although the weather was nice (in the 40s!).

I do think I'm going to have to spend some more money here soon, just to entertain myself. There really isn't that much to do here, except spend money (spend money drinking - the wine is usually cheap, but beer and especially liquor are outrageously overpriced; spend money shopping; spend money visiting Madrid). It's hard when you even have difficulty watching TV. I need something more to occupy my time. I don't have any video games, a DVD player, books, nothing. I would try my hand at some Spanish cooking, maybe even add a bit of spice to the dishes, but my host mom seems really possessive of the kitchen and it's always so cold in there with the window open all of the time.

Now you can understand why this entry is so long. Well, at least I'll have an in depth account of my time here. No regrets there.

So a pirate gave me chocolate...

2009-01-16T23:15:00.008+01:00

Today, I went to Madrid with my group. I realized halfway to the the plaza that I had forgotten my camera and could have kicked myself, but it was too late to go back for it. I missed a lot of great pictures, but Madrid is only about thirty minutes away by bus or train and I've already made plans to return next week and I will not forget my camera this time. In the meantime, I'm going to steal the group pictures from people who put them up on Facebook... Thank goodness for Facebook, eh?

We took the bus to Madrid. I realize after we got to the bus station that I had not been paying any attention to how to get there. Not a big deal though, I can look that up later. The bus ride wasn't bad. We were kind of packed in, but I had a nice comfy seat and only a few people had to stand. The entrance to the bus station was probably the creepiest thing of the trip so far. The bus literally drove down into this underground tunnel where the walls practically touched the bus on each side. On my side, at least, if the bus had broken down right there, I would not have been able to crawl out the window because I wouldn't have fit between the wall and the bus. It gave me this really creepy vibe, because there would be no way a bus could back out that tunnel and if we couldn't go forward, we couldn't go back and we'd get stuck. It was very Resident Evil-ish. Thankfully, the walls opened up into this underground bus station (too cool).

We took the metro, one level below the bus station. I was completely lost with the metro. I know we took number 9 and then changed trains at one point, but it was mostly just making sure that you didn't get separated from the group ("¡Chicos! ¡Aquí!"). The first place we went was to some arches. Now, remember that I don't know Spanish very well, so I had a lot of trouble understanding what he was saying, but after some later research and some help from friends, I know that we began our tour in La Plaza de la Indepencia near the arch called Puerta de Alcalá. The really great thing, is that Madrid has cow statues everywhere. It's like in Toledo, where we have all of those frog statues, they have some crazy cow statues. My favorites were the pegasus cow and the kid's cow. The pegasus cow is exactly as it sounds, the kid's cow looked like a 3-D version of what a kid would draw when you asked him to draw a cow. The four legs were spaced evenly under the body, one after the other, so when I originally saw it, I thought it was a caterpillar cow with a smily face and no nose. I'll definitely get a picture of it later. I hope they remain up until my parents and my brother and his girlfriend come. I think they would all love the cows.

We stopped at the park, Parque del Buen Retiro, which contains the Real Jardín Botánico (Royal Botanical Garden). The entire park was gorgeous and I know it will be even better in the spring when the trees are in bloom. There was a beautiful lake where you can rent paddle boats and there were all kinds of sculptures. There was a beautiful greenhouse looking building where they used to grow plants from the Philippines, but it now holds crystal. We saw teachers giving little kids tours of the park, including one holding up a book with a picture of a bunch of different birds and she was pointing out the ducks in the park. There was even a man playing a saxophone.

In the Park. I'm the only one with a winter hat on. Apparently, no one else's ears get cold like mine do. If I don't wear a hat, my ears hurt all of the way into my jaw.

We walked past a couple of major buildings, like the Prado and a really important school, where it is such an honor to teach there that the faculty is not paid. I have a really hard time remembering what other buildings he showed us between there (I meant to bring a pen and notebook, but I forgot that too...). The buildings were all gorgeous though. We don't have architecture like that in the states. Then we stopped at this jewelry shop, which I really couldn't understand why we were all piling into this really really expensive shop. It turns out, it has a museum in it. It houses the collection of a really famous jewelry maker/artist in Spain, whose name escapes me right now. He used odd objects to make his jewelry, like one of the handles of scissors. I was trying to explain that one of the pieces used "wing nuts" to the tour guide of the museum and our tour guide, but neither had ever heard of that before and I didn't make myself clear (windmill...? no, wing nut). In the basement was a museum of clocks, old antique clocks from all over the world. Some of them were really beautiful, like the one that also had a model of the sun, earth and moon and what they all look like in relation to one another during the year. It was amazing.

Then we made our way to the puerta del sol near the Tio Pepe sign. Our guide explained how it is kind of like Times Square on the New Year, jam-packed with people watching the clock count down. He said that at 12:00, everyone eats 12 grapes, one at each gong of the clock.

Near the puerta del sol is the Plaza Mayor. I love the Plaza Mayor. It is one of my most favorite places in the entire world. It was filled with people today, including street performers either dressed up or playing. A man was playing a Chinese violin, which sounded beautiful, but looked weird. The street performers were dressed up as a toy soldier from Toy Story, Don Quixote, a pirate, one of the characters from Alice in Wonderland, a rock??, and more. Anyway, we had our lunch in the Plaza Mayor. I ran to the McDonalds to get a sundae because I haven't had ice cream since I left. It was a really bad idea because the sudden influx of that much sugar gave me a horrible headache, that I still have even though I napped for almost three hours. My head is killing me. Anyway, I gave the pirate 20 cents. It was fantastic. He pretended to look around with his hand over eyes until he spotted me. Then he bowed and handed me a gold coin out of his treasure chest that he was holding (it was a piece of chocolate wrapped in gold foil). Also in the Plaza, I fed the birds. There were pigeons, but there were more of the tiny birds and one of them ate out of my hand and it was such a fantastic moment in my life. I have to live somewhere where I can feed the birds every day.

We then walked to the Cathedral. It was huge and very beautiful. It sits right next to the royal palace, which we didn't go very near, but looked at through the gates. Then we made our way back to the metro to make our way to the train station. I wasn't feeling very well by this time and it was a very long ride home, especially because we had to pack ourselves into the train and it kept stopping and going and making me even more sick. Finally, we returned. I sat in the Plaza Cervantes for awhile because it was so beautiful outside. The sun was out and it was almost warm enough to just have a coat or just have a hoodie on, instead of both.

When I got home, I pass out for almost three hours, but when I woke up, I still had my headache and I felt really sick. For dinner, I ate a little bit of pasta, my mom made me some chamomile tea, and I took some Tylenol and a pill that my mom gave me, although I don't know what it was. I feel like one hundred percent better, although I'm very tired all of the sudden. Maybe it was the tea. I might nap until I call my brother to wish him happy birthday. He's 25 today.

Some odd things...

2009-01-15T13:49:00.007+01:00

Yesterday was a long day, but I got through it without too much difficulty. Tuesday, however, I managed to get myself lost. I've been walking to and from school and I have a pretty straight-foward path to follow. Walk to the plaza, take the street on the north side right until you reach a large intersection with a statue in the middle, then take a left. Stay basically straight at the next circular intersection (huge!) and this road will take you to the train station. Use the pedestrian walkway to cross the tracks and take a right after the parking lot. Take your first left at the next circular intersection and this road will take you all of the way to the fountain (uphill).

Go kind of left at the fountain (not a hard left) and then take the first right. This street ends at the school. Unfortunately, on Tuesday, on my way home, I turned one intersection too early and ended up walking all of the way around the plaza in a giant circle. I didn't want to pull out a map and look like a fool, so I just kept trying to spot something familiar. Finally, I did, but I was pretty tired and cold by that time.

I have it down now. No worries, but on Monday and Wednesdays I have three classes in the morning and then come home for lunch and then go back for another class. That means I'm walking that path four times in one day, if I don't take the bus, which would get expensive. Apparently, the bus hit a car the other day. You wouldn't believe how these people park their cars. The driving is a little crazy, but the parking is worse. They don't enforce parking rules, so you can just park anywhere. Observe.

Can't find a place to park? No problem. Create a space on a corner in the pedestrian walkway.

I haven't taken any sight-seeing pictures yet. I'm waiting until Saturday when we do our "historic tour of Alcala". I'll have to convince people to take pictures of me so I can post them. The great thing about Alcala is that Cervantes was born here, so they are obsessed with him. There are statues of him everywhere and the plaza is called "Plaza Cervantes". His most famous work was Don Quixote, so there are also statues of the main character all around too.

Some interesting things about the language. Did I mention that everyone here lisps? Apparently, a famous royal had a lisp and everyone just kind of picked it up like it was something only proper people did. It's probably what I found the hardest to cope with. I can usually understand the accent of Mexico (ll's are pronounced like a hard j), but this lisp is killing me. I've never had any practice with it because all of my teachers taught us the very clear, sounds like it looks central American accent. Here, words like plaza are "platha" and Galicia is "Galithia". They even lisp d's at the end of words like "verdath" (verdad means truth, or true). It's driving me crazy. Not only are there so many words I don't know, but more than half the words I do know I can't make out enough to understand them. I'm slowly getting use to it. Picking up more and more. Now when my host mom asks me what I want for dessert (postre) I can understand.

Also interesting about the language. They say "vale" over and over and over. I had never heard that word before in my classes so it kind of throws you off. It apparently means "okay", but they say it over and over. Every sentence ends with "vale" and every question is or starts with "vale". And often it is said repeatedly: "¿Vale? Vale." or "Oh! Vale, vale." It makes sense when you know it means okay, but you hear it everywhere! Much more often than we say okay. And they understand okay, but you have to be careful. You have to say O-kay where the kay is barely audible, otherwise they hear "o-QUE", and "¿Qué?" is "what?", so then they repeat themselves.

School was fine yesterday. My teachers are mostly following along a powerpoint or a printed paper, and using that as a guide I can almost understand them really well with only picking up half the words. After school yesterday, I stopped at a Chinos, which is a lot like a dollar store, but it's run by Chinese people and hence people call them the Chinos. Everything was amazingly priced. I bought a mirror (7" circular with two sides) for my room, a notebook to begin my dictionary, and index cards for 3,65 euro. Not bad at all! I'm so excited about my mirror... it was 2 euro and it's perfect! I felt so bad taking up the bathroom and I can leave it here when I go for the next person.

I really want to do some more exploring. The Calle Mayor is the street with the most shops and things, so I want to head over that way. Maybe tonight. I found this fantastic shop with the coolest looking things. I wanted everything in there. There was a carved giraffe with really long legs and neck, and it was about as tall as I am. Then there was this teapot, shaped like an elephant where the trunk was the spout. It was beautiful. I'm trying not to spend any money though. There are a lot of side trips that I want to take and I can't be spending my money on all kinds of things that I will have trouble finding room to bring back.

Other interesting things so far. The toilets. The flush is on the top and it's a literal button that you have to depress into the toilet. And all of the water is at the bottom and then a huge gush flushes it down, rather than swirling. Also, we have a bidet in our bathroom. I don't touch it.

The elevators are so small. Max four people. It's really uncomfortable to shove yourself in one with someone you don't know who is saying things to you that you don't understand. I usually take the stairs down the six floors, but the other day, the police were in the stairwell with some guy who may have been dying. He was passed out pretty much and I couldn't get by. Really creepy. I guess he had been there for awhile because my roommate left an hour earlier than I did and she said that he was just laying there when she left. I want to take a picture of the police, but I'm afraid they'll get angry and I don't want to try to ask without knowing how to give a good explanation.

The snow is basically gone here. It snowed a bit on Tuesday, and the whole place flipped out. They cancelled classes at the university and people had to pick up their kids from school. The snow didn't even stick. What did stick was melted by that evening. I was in shock. It's just snow... I saw the other day, two guys outside. One had like a hammer thing and was smashing up the ice in the sidewalk and the other had a push broom clearing it away. Crazy... I almost took a picture, but I didn't want to get yelled at.

Anyway, Madrid tomorrow. I'm excited. I'll write again soon.

My first day of school.

2009-01-13T17:30:00.002+01:00

I had originally signed up for classes M,W from 9am to 12pm and then 4 to 5:30pm and then one class T,R from 10:30am to 12pm. For some reason, the schedule (horario) changed and I now have classes only M,W from 9am to 1:30pm (straight through, only 2 or 3 minute breaks every half an hour) and then 4 to 5:30pm. I'm so excited about this, despite that it's a lot in one morning. I now have no classes on T,R and therefore have four day weekends, every weekend. Two of my classmates also set up their schedules this way, so we plan on hanging out late every Monday and Wednesday night. It also extends my Spring break by two whole days, which is really time to visit another city.

The morning started out with toast and milk, like it always does. I found my own way to the bus stop (I had to tell my madre three times I could make it) and got to school with only a few minutes to spare. Composición y Conversación I is my first class from 9 to 10:30am. I followed what she was saying mostly. I wasn't entirely lost anyway, but I have a lot of trouble understanding everything and sometimes that is a problem. I introduced myself, told about my major, etc. I had to do this every class and it got pretty old pretty quickly because the classes consist only of the AYA Spain kids, which means most of us have the same classes together. We also discussed how we feel about Spain and the differences that we've noticed. Every class. I am glad that we didn't just jump right in to learning though...

In Composición y Conversación I, I need to write a paper for each trip that I take, describing the city, the food, the sights, etc. I have to buy a postcard in each city to attach to the paper. I also have to keep a dictionary of Spanish words, defined in Spanish. I need over 300 words by the end of the semester. I've already started this with words my host mom has said to me that I didn't know. I didn't know "vegetable", for some reason, but I learned cabbage pretty quickly as we eat it a lot (repollo or col). The teacher was really nice. She seemed a bit eccentric, which always makes for a fun and interesting class. And she speaks English, so if we are really lost, she can help us.

The next class is Civilización y Cultura. The teacher was soft-spoken (odd for Spain) and very nice. It seems like we will have a lot of presentations in the class, which I'm not too excited about, but it'll be good for my Spanish. She told us (all teachers told us to always use pen) that in Spain, only little children used pencils. I'm glad I asked Tom for a good supply before I left. She also wants us to write about our trips, but she wants more of the history and culture of the cities. These need to be 300 words or more, in Spanish, of course.

The last class of my four and a half hour block is Composición y Conversación II. This teacher talked really fast and my brain was so fried by the time this class began that I picked up almost nothing that she said. Even the simple questions that she asked us, I was completely lost. I zoned out a lot, which is not good. Apparently, we have a small project due tomorrow that will be a presentation about a region of Spain. Thank goodness my partner knows Spanish pretty well. The only thing I understood was that she pointed at us and said "Galicia". In this class, we have an essay, or maybe more than one, that is 3-4 pages long. Let's hope only one. There is also an individual oral presentation about a subject that she picks, and then a collective oral presentation with another student about a subject that she picks.

Then I go home for la comida. I took the bus back and found my way just fine. Lunch was cabbage and a piece of hamburger. I was so excited that she brought out the ketchup to eat the hamburger with. It was probably the best hamburger I've ever had considering it had no bun, toppings, or anything.

Back at school I began my last class of the day at 4pm: Traducción or Translation, which was probably my most favorite class of the day. She spoke a lot of English and a lot of half English half Spanish sentences because that is what we are going to be doing, translating. She was really nice and smiled a lot. She had studied for many years in Salt Lake City, so she was the least odd of all of my teachers. We are going to have written essays and a major translation project. We get to choose a source in Spanish and then we have to translate it to English. It can be a song, a section of a novel, or anything really. It sounds like fun. I also have to do a Power Point presentation over something.

Today for lunch, we had fish. Only it was the actual fish... the whole fish with its tail wrapped around and stuck in its mouth. I was like "¡Tiene sus ojos!" (It has its eyes!) I tried it. You just had to pull the meat off from around the spine (la espina). It wasn't bad but I refused to touch the head. "No quiero comer la cabaza" (I don't want to eat the head). It wasn't that bad and it tasted just like fish, so no problem. Just shrug it off, right? Relax. Really though, I'm never relaxed. I have no idea why I'm not flipping out.

The language issue is no better (after a day), but I figured out why I'm not very upset about it. It's like if you have a really bad head-cold and you can't hear clearly enough to make out what anyone is saying and you just shrug it off because you can't help it and you can't change it. You just wait until your head clears and not worry about. I studied enough Spanish to be able to express myself just fine and practicing with Tom gave me the ability to get around not knowing exactly how to say what I want to say. For example, my host mom told me that it was very cold outside and I wanted to say "I will dress warmly", but I couldn't remember the word for warmly, so I said "I will dress a lot" with some hand gestures indicating many layers on my arm. She understood perfectly.

Anyway, when I finally get some homework or something else to do, I will stop writing novels, but for now....

The First Days

2009-01-12T22:38:00.005+01:00

I left my parents and Tom in Detroit three days ago (although it feels like two days because I've only slept twice since). I was actually doing pretty well handling leaving. I only cried a little bit when I left. Basically, I hadn't been sleeping almost at all in the last four days and I am so completely exhausted that I can't be emotional. Other than the possible negative side effects on my immune system, it is really working out pretty well. I really don't feel like I'm here. There is snow on the ground (very, very odd for Madrid: one student said that his host family was scraping their car with a spatula), it's cold, and the change in language is not nearly as bad as I thought... what culture shock? Maybe I'm just too relaxed... really, me?

One thing that I really liked about the plane was that I had a window seat and therefore was able to watch the sun rise up over the clouds at about 2:30 in the morning Toledo time as we flew east. It was really beautiful. Spain is six hours ahead of Toledo, which isn't too bad. I've been keeping in contact with my mom and Tom through email. I've used Skype with the crappy internet I can pick up at my piso (I'm stealing it so I suppose I can't complain). It's kind of like instant messenger, but you can "call" other Skype members and video chat. It's fantastic.

I've unpacked everything. I get a whole room to myself, but it is very small (See above). It's about half the size of a dorm room at Bowling Green, but I'm glad that I don't have to share. I need my personal space (and somewhere to hide when I can't take Spanish anymore). My bed folds down from a giant wardrobe looking thing that has two drawers for clothes and a space to hang clothes. There is a tiny desk in the opposite corner, which is a nice place to sit and there is a bedside table with a few drawers and some shelves on the wall. I like it. The space management is good. The floor is tiled, though, and it is really cold on my feet, although I think I'm just supposed to walk around in my shoes, which will never happen because I'm too used to taking my shoes off when I go in the house.

I took four years of high school spanish and one semester of 202 at Bowling Green. Supposedly, this is all I need to succeed here in Spain. So far, I beg to differ. I am really far behind, I think, or everyone else is just pretending a lot better than I am. There are a few people that were here last semester also and a few people that are already pretty fluent in Spanish for other reasons. And then there is me. My host mom keeps saying "pobre niña" over and over when I just shake my head because I don't understand her.

I live pretty far away from the University. I walked this afternoon (oh, the weather is fantastic! It's cold in the morning, like Bowling Green cold, but then the sun comes out and the whole place warms up and it feels like spring... It's amazing!) and it took about 30 minutes. I walk fast though... Google maps says 38 minutes. However, I live very close to the Plaza, which is the main meeting point of the entire city. I'd rather live next to the plaza than near the school because I have managed to schedule only Monday, Wednesday classes, which is fantastic! 9am-1:30pm and then 4pm-5:30 is rough, but I'd rather do that than have to go to the university everyday.

The food isn't bad so far. My host mom is always trying to get me to eat. I'm having trouble with having such a large lunch (la comida is the biggest meal of the day and then you have la cena, a tiny dinner at around 9:30pm) because I'm used to having a sandwich at noon and then a big meal at 6. I don't want to eat at 9:30pm. The food is a bit different, but a lot of it seems to be cabbage based, which is fine with me because I love cooked cabbage. There is also a lot of meat though. I'm not really a fan of plain meat, but apparently that's supposed to be the biggest part of lunch. The milk is definitely different. It's pasteurized, not homogenized. It's a little warm and a little sour, but it's thick like milk.

I'm not homesick yet. I'm having a hard time with the language and I feel really dumb a lot, but I'm mostly just numb right now. Being away from home hasn't really affected me yet, which is great. I expected to have a lot of trouble with that. Well, I've written quite a bit. Congratulations for making it, if you did. There is still so much to say, so I'll write again soon.

Why am I going? Here are my goals.

2009-01-04T02:37:00.004+01:00

In less than one week I will travel to Spain and stay for nearly four months. I will leave my family, my friends (because I really don't know the other people going), my boyfriend, Tom (of five years), and my pets (who I am going to miss more than is probably reasonable).

I am not traveling to Europe to "find myself", as some young adults do, because I've never really liked the idea of needing to discover yourself. Shouldn't you know who you are? I think a great deal of self-reflection and determination would accomplish as much and is much cheaper. I am going to Europe because I know who I am, and I know who I want to become and this experience will lead me to that end much faster than any other, and I have the time and opportunity right now. Besides, how many people get this opportunity? I'm convinced that everyone is very very jealous of me right now, or should be.

I want to excel in my chosen career. I begin medical school in August and being a doctor fluent (or close to it) in Spanish would be very helpful in career opportunities.

I want to become independent. I am leaving my family, my friends, Tom, etc. to take care of myself, learn a new language, experience a new culture, and have fun. This is not an everyday occurrence for me. I am convinced that I can take care of myself and thrive with only limited communication with the people I love, but now I'm going to prove it. And in the face of overwhelming loneliness and culture shock, I will become a stronger, more independent person.

I want to gain some confidence. I'm a really shy person. Although I've gotten better throughout my college years, I used to suffer a lot of anxiety even just talking to someone I didn't know. If I can start and maintain a conversation with someone I don't know in a language I don't especially know, social interactions in English should be rather easy. Face your fears, right? Only times a million.

This is my first real step into adulthood really. I'm going to face the world, almost literally. I figured that it's about time. I've already put off finishing school and starting a "real" job by getting into medical school and committing to at least four more years. Rather than go because I should for a major or minor, I'm going to go to overcome the difficulty and hopefully have a fantastic and memorable experience at the same time.

I expect this is going to be really hard for me, but when it's over, I'll have some great memories and I'll have taken another step toward who I want to be. I will encounter the person I am striving to be: myself, only better. Besides, after this, medical school should be a breeze.