Classes, Retiro, Prado, and other things Spanish

So I came down with something this past weekend...some cold-like. At first I thought it was an allergy to all the cigarette smoke cuz that's when I was really feeling my lack of ability to breathe, but now I'm pretty sure it was just a cold. Therefore, didn't get out much this week as I just wanted to sleep it off.

Love my classes, love my classmates. My teachers are really fun and helpful, and my classmates are all really nice. I feel like I'm getting a good review of some of the things I'm not so good at in my Spanish grammar, which is great. Definitely stuff I need to work on.

As for Madrid, here are some things I did get out and do this week:

Went to El Rastro, a HUUUUUUGE market that happens Sunday mornings in madrid. Like, literally took us an hour to walk all the way through half of it. Jam packed.


We also did a little shopping. We needed notebooks. Weirdly, everyone writes on graph paper here apparently...we couldn't find lined notebooks. (It's actually something I really like though...makes my handwriting less crazy)
But this is the big store of Spain El Corte Ingles. It's like what Macy's is in NYC.


And Emily and I explored Parque de Retiro, and the next day I went on a run. When I went on the run I found the lake, so I didn't take pictures of that area yet, but here are some we took while we were there:





And today we went to the Museo del Prado, where we saw a lot of art by Valesquez, Guyo, and el Greco.




And after the Museo, Emily, Aly, Arianna, and I all finally went to one of the big lunches at a restaurant nearby. Essentially, it's two courses and a dessert, so I got the paella, veal, and flan.

Why yes, that is a mini crab staring at the camera:




Things that have surprised me in Spain:
Fanta is everywhere.
Everyone has a dog and a car. It's weird seeing so many people walking dogs in such a big city.
The clothes are a lot more casual than what I'd been told to expect.
Customer service is completely different too. Waiters here actually make a decent living apparently, so tipping isn't required, so they don't come by and check on the table constantly. Which is kind of nice except when you want the bill and no one is to be found.
I have been drinking water from the tap the whole time I've been here and have yet to get sick.
The milk comes in a box and it's not refrigerated.
We have a microwave and internet in the house, both of which we were also told not to expect. So nice surprises.
The way to flush a toilet I swear to god changes every time. I always get so confused; do I pull the knob up, push it down, pull on the thing dangling from the ceiling that doesn't appear to be attached to it?

It's been hard for me to make friends here; you get so used to the way of theatre kids, just loving on everyone and being totally open and friendly. I'm not saying people here aren't friendly, it's just different. And I'm such an introverted person at first because I like to observe people and group dynamics. So hopefully I'll find my place to fit in soon.

El Metro, las clases, y Toledo!

I've done quite a bit over the last two days, and I took lots of pictures to share with you guys!

First off, we figured out the metro system...it was really easy once we figured out how to read the map, and how to know what direction we were going. I wish more big cities had fantastic public transportation like this! I got my metro pass, no problem; unfortunately, I am not a young person anymore because I am 22 (young person passes are for 21 and under), so I have to pay 46 euro a month for mine, compared to 23 or something. But at least I got mine right away, they have to screen the young people or something so it takes 15 days. Oh the joys of getting old.

I was placed into high intermediate level for my language intensive month of classes, but after having 3 hours of class on Friday (there are 4 Americans, 2 British students, and 1 German student, it's a very small class, which rocks), I know this is the level I need to be at. I need to talk to the ISA guy and figure out if I can take a couple of the advanced level classes next month when we register for our actual classes so I get some credit for the major, and then I can take a couple Spanish classes when I get back, which I assume would work out perfectly, but if it that's not how the classes here work, if I actually have to test into the level, then I may be switching to a minor, which would still be great. Once I talk to the ISA guy, I will email my advisor at Idaho and figure this out, I know I'm not the only one in this predicament.

After classes, I went out with my roommate and Ally for Sangria:

I liked this footstool/chair:


We later went to the supermercado and I saw these bacon-flavored sunflower seeds...they have bacon flavored everything!


And then we walked around our neighborhood for a little bit, it's a beautiful, old part of town:


Later that night, Emily and I went out dancing with some of the girls, which was a lot of fun. The culture here towards American girls is so interesting, we walked in and immediately a guy bought the four of us shots of something lemon flavored, and then after that no one talked to us or approached us or anything. And the alcohol is so expensive! I paid 5 euro for a "Coronita", which is about $7, and my friend Kait paid 8 euro for her rum and coke! So no one needs to worry about me getting wasted in Europe, I can't afford it lol.

We didn't stay out super late (we left at 2:30am, which in Spain time is just when everything is starting to get going...they party until like 6 in the morning!) because today we went to Toledo! Toledo is the old capital of Spain, and it's a beautiful city that feels like a small town because it has been so well preserved for the last 600-800 years. The streets were still cobblestoned and everything. It was very humbling to be in a place with SO MUCH history; we have history in the US, but it only goes back 200 years. We don't have any buildings or streets or anything older than that.

While we were waiting for the group to show up at the metro station, I took a picture of this Madrid Space Needle wannabe:


Just some pictures I took, from the bus and then from a viewpoint that we stopped at:






And here's from our walking tour of Toledo:




El Museo Sefardi-Sinagoga del Transito:




San Juan de los Reyes:






The handcuffs symbolize the Christian's freedom from the Moors in Granada:


One of the streets of Toledo...unfortunately didn't take a photo earlier when I should have:


La Iglesia de Santo Tome, where we saw El Greco's "El Entierro del Senor de Orgaz", but we couldn't take pictures inside, so I bought a postcard I will take a picture of:


This was a church in the center of where we walked...I don't remember the name of it:



Ally and I with Miguel Cervantes, the author of "Don Quijote":


And tomorrow we're going to the market! It should be fun! :-)

Day 2 en Madrid

First off, last night for dinner, I ate a spinach (?), tomato, pomegrante, olive oil, avocado, and sardine salad. Still not big on tomatoes, but actually the sardine was not as bad as I expected; it tasted like tuna. Just wanted to get that out there cuz my parents know how I feel about tomatoes, but I ate them!!!

Tonight, my host padre Carlos is making homemade pizza!!! The house smells AMAZING, he's cooking onions right now. I'm stoked.

We had an orientation and took a bus ride around the city center yesterday, which was a BAD idea. I was literally like holding my eyelids open. AWFUL. I wish we could have done the tour like a week from now cuz I would have LOVED to see everything, we passed everything, but I kept nodding off...jet lag hit me hard during the meeting. :-\

Went and took our placement test at 8am this morning, and I drank my first cup of Spanish cafe con leche:


And this is my roommate Emily:


Hopefully I did well on the test; I have to place in advanced to get credit for my major. I can always challenge if i place close enough, but hopefully they'll just put me in. I did fine in my oral examen, I'm pretty sure...the written stuff was kind of odd, but I ROCKED the first page...questions like de donde eres, y describa tu casa. I'm like, Heck Yes, I know this! Then I turned the page over and it was a bunch of subjunctive and conditional stuff, and i was like :-\ So, fingers crossed that I did ok.

The view from my university:


The cafeteria is so weird! You have to like go to a ticket machine to order your food, they have every option with a button next to it, you push the button, pay, and then it prints you a ticket that you give to the people behind the counter. So cool, but kind of a pain when a bunch of people are gathered around it and you can't read it.

Finished orientation there, and we went to the ISA office to have our second half of orientation and eat lunch. Now, the staff in there seems SO nice and so friendly and helpful and everything, but we had a 2 hour meeting for what could have taken literally 20 minutes. Well, probably even less, because I felt like 75% of the info was stuff we'd covered in our university orientation earlier that day or had been in the packet. The guy Carlos, who ran the meetings, reminds me so much of Chase...he is seriously like Chase in 10 years in Spain. I like him a lot, he just talks so much and has a story for everything.

After we took THEIR placement test, my roomie and a few of her friends from her home university went on a hunt for a straightening iron for her. That was a bit of an adventura, we decided to go to El Cortes Ingles, which reminds me of Macy's in New York City; it's a HUGE department store with everything, and it's kind of spread out around el Puerta del Sol en different stores. We asked the first lady in the make up department, and she told us to go to a different store; we couldn't figure out where she was talking about, so we went back to the main escalator and went all the way up to the hair salon, where the woman was telling us where we could find a great straightener for 189 euro (almost $240!) in a different store and she spent a good 5 minutes explaining it in detail; we decided to try the make up department one more time and lo and behold, we found them in the back. We were all just like REALLY!? You couldn't have told us this in the first place!? And we know the first lady understood what we were talking about. Oh, language.

Lunch wasn't much food, so we all went to find tapas. At this point, I was super cranky and tired and I wasn't talking cuz I knew it would just come across as cranky...we found one, the waiter was so nice...I ordered tosta con salmon y queso crema (toasted bread with salmon and cream cheese):


And waiter liked our table so much, he bought us shots of Bailey's...at 7pm...:



Here's the street we had tapas on:


I got my cell phone today! I practiced exactly what I would need to say so I would say it right, and everything went super smoothly. In retrospect, I wish I'd done the ISA phone just because it sounds easier and from everything I've heard, everyone has had a really good experience with them, but I felt pretty awesome getting exactly what I needed using my Spanish. Of course, when he started asking me other questions, I was like, abuuuuuuh?? Lol.

And here I am, standing in front the fountain at Puerto del Sol:


There was a protest going on in el Puerto, they were essentially wanting the government to pay for respectable burials for all the soldiers who were killed under Franco's rule and thrown into mass gravesites. The newspaper reporter who came and talked to us told us that there were apparently 140,000 soldiers in need of proper burials. So sad, and very interesting. I hope the government does help pay:



And here is the sign for Avenue Q, which is happening literally a block away. I think Mamma Mia is coming next:



And here is my bed, and the view from my room:



Now I'm off to get hopefully 7 hours of sleep...going to go out tomorrow night for the first time. We'll see how it all goes!
Hasta luega,
Heather

Day 1 en Madrid

I hate flying. Just gonna throw that out there. It's cramped, it's long, it's annoying...they made me check one of my carry-ons cuz they ran out of room in the overhead bins on my flight from Seatac to Washington DC, and of course this was the bag with the clothes Nick gave me before I left, my childhood stuffed bear, and a lot of the personal, irreplaceable items. There wasn't enough time to get them out of my suitcase and into the backpack they were letting me bring in, so I was stressing about that the whole way.

That flight was lame. Watched that Queen Latifah/Common movie that was groan-worthy bad, but at least it was entertainment. Did some sudoku and just chilled.

Landed in DC, met up with my Madrid roomie Emily, who is a big sweetheart and totally a musical theatre fan (we saw that Avenue Q was playing here, we may try to go see it if it's in Spanish), and I think we're gonna be good friends, which is comforting. Also met a couple other kids that were studying abroad, although really our whole flight was pretty much exchange students. Seriously.

The flight was awful. I am totally buying one of those neck pillows for the ride back. I sat next to a kid that did NOT follow standard flight rules, and that drove me NUTS (like didn't put the window shades up for take off, had his tray down for all of landing, turned his phone on before we'd officially landed...I was like, YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US!!! I mean, I know that's an exaggeration, but you've probably never flown with me...I'm crazy when I fly). The nice thing about this flight was our own personal TV screens to choose what we wanted to watch. I watched Glee, 30 Rock, Date Night, and Remember Me, which I'd been wanting to see, but I hated it quite frankly. I was bored, and not in the right mood to deal with the ending. I may have also cried through the mash-up episode of Glee because the mash-ups are my favorite and remind me of my Moscow friends and Nick. Food was meh of course. The landing was superb.

Got through customs, baggage claim, and arrival no problems. My luggage showed up THANK GOD, mind you a wheel had broken off my old red bag, but oh well, it was pretty light to carry. We got dropped off at our homestay, and I can tell this is going to be a good family to stay with. They are patient with our slow Spanish, but also don't speak fantastic English, so it's going to be a good challenge. They gave us some coffee, and then Emily and I siesta'd. We are sharing a room that has a view of the street, which is cool. We're living in one of the oldest parts of Madrid, a 10 minute walk from the center of the city, surrounded by blocks of tapas restaurants. :-) Fantastic! We woke up, ate some lunch (breaded fried chicken with potatoes and eggs, very tasty). I'm hoping hoping hoping I don't catch a bug or get sick from the food while I'm here!!! Something I'd rather not deal with, y'know.

The also have wireless internet, which means I will hopefully be able to a) stay in touch very easily, and b) update this frequently, but we'll see...most likely if I'm not updating, I'm out having adventures, which would be for the better anyway. :-)

I'm not a religious person, but I do believe in the power of positive thought and good will (if you want to call it prayer, that's cool too). If you have some to spare, I'd appreciate if you could send some towards Madrid. These first couple weeks are going to be trying and frustrating, with attempting to figure out how long distance is going to work, being patient with myself and others in the language, and just opening up to this new experience and enjoying it.