but now i'm studying for finals (and making good progress, i think), so i still don't really have time to update. oh well, pictures!
barcelona
kayla's visit (annecy and cinque terre)
life in madrid
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
so it's been a while
sorry about that. it's amazing how busy life can get just with traveling and keeping up with school. apparently in spain they're huge fans of not doing anything for months, then heaping it all on for a few weeks, so i'm getting to the tail end of that (finally...)
let's see, what all have i missed? mom's visit (vienna, madrid, paris), san sebastian, and semana santa in italy. dang.
well, mom's visit was great. so so so good to see someone from home again, particularly my mommy. vienna the first weekend was great - enough to do in a day, no problem. we had great austrian food (remember that sweet cheese and vanilla thing, mom? incredible.), climbed to the top of st. stephen's and burned off the same amount of calories as are in a sacher torte, ate our sacher torte, got standing room seats at the opera from a couple that was leaving... very fun. AND that saturday when we were out on the town was the only day for the last month that it hadn't rained, including the days we arrived and left. perfect!
madrid during the week was less fun, as i was in class and mommy was on her own for the first half of each day. the first day, that resulted in a fun little (not little) walking adventure for her, from - for those of you in madrid - the reina sofia, up to plaza mayor, and back down to the general atocha area. poor mommy. i did my best to show her around the city in the afternoons, though, and on our last day ana (the woman i rent my room from) cooked a huge paella lunch for us and my other roommates. it was great - paella, sangria, and a brazo de trufa from la mallorquina. i love la mallorquina.
then thursday evening, we headed off to paris! which was pretty much a fiasco from the beginning. my mom's bag was 'delayed' when we arrived there at orly airport in paris, and wasn't delivered to the hotel until a day later. at which point, it had been robbed. a large sum of euros were gone, as well as her cell phone. police were useless, the airport was useless, both airlines were useless, and all of the above have continued to be useless for the last month.
paris taught me 2 things about why the US is the big world power:
1. when someone steals from you/legitimately wrongs you, there is something that can be done about it. here, there is not. they treat you like an idiot and send you on your way.
2. we know how to run an airport. bag checks, security (in vienna, it was downright scary how lax they were about suspicious items...), posting gates and boarding times... gracious. in orly on the morning we were leaving, they didn't post what gate the plane was at until a good 10 minutes after our boarding time. after. and it was a 7am flight, the plane had been there all night! and if you can believe it, they lost my mom's bag on the way back, too. gracious.
anyway, back to paris. our time there was a bit marred by me being super intent on seeing everything. which led me to stress out about being late and get mad when stupid parisians sucked and messed things up. seriously, they are probably the least helpful and most rude about it people i've encountered. there were, of course, exceptions to that, but i definitely would not return to paris for the people. the further i've gotten from that trip and the more i've talked to people about it, though, the less i hate paris. i still think it's pretty dang overrated and only cool because "oh my gosh, it's paris!", but i no longer hate it as much as i did when we left.
if you ever go to paris, take a fat tire bike tour. it was fantastic, i plan on doing one in barcelona in a week and a half. oh, and don't bother going to the top of the eiffel tower - the line is way too long for such a hazy view... the montparnasse tower is way better. and really, what's the paris skyline worth without the eiffel tower? i ended up taking about 1000 pictures in paris and kept almost 300, so despite my dislike, i apparently found it rather photogenic.
nothing really ever happens during the weeks here... i go to school, run errands, come home, do schoolwork, skype, waste time on surfthechannel... and go to bed. mix bible study in there on wednesday nights, and there you have it. i like it that way, i have to catch up and relax after my weekends away sometime, right?
by the time i was done traveling with my mom, i was very glad to settle back into speaking spanish and not flying for a while. i realized a week or two ago that in these 4 months, i'm doing the amount of travel a normal person would do in several years. and crap, it gets really tiring. particularly the flying part, airports suck.
so after paris was an ESN (foreign kid) trip to san sebastian. it. was. amazing. after so long of being in city after city after city, it was great to be on the coast, climbing a 'mountain' (large hill, let's face it), with trees and beach and... nature. made me realize how much i love the water, a fact later reinforced when alex and i arrived in venice. but that's another paragraph. anyway. there wasn't much structure to the trip because, apparently, the main point of the trip was to drink. which, whatever, just meant we got to do our own thing during the day and ignore the drunkies at night :) i went home early both nights, but 'early' meant 3am and 4am, respectively. (insane, i know. welcome to spain.) walked around a lot, ate pinxtos (tapas, basically), played on the beach and only very narrowly saved my purse (and all its contents including my little camera), umbrella, and coat from a rogue wave that decided to make it's way quite a bit further onto shore than we anticipated. mostly it was just a fun trip to enjoy the beauty of the place and be away from madrid without having a million things to see and do. we stopped by burgos for like 2 hours on the way up there and spent the afternoon in bilbao on the way back, which meant getting to see the guggenheim.
which further reinforced that i am not an art person. granted, there were some very cool things in there. but for the most part, it was lame junk that i either found to be incredibly distasteful or just not requiring that much skill to create. really, that's been the story of me and art museums on the whole... it's either distasteful, amateurish and something a kindergardener could do, or just rather boring. i find architecture and photography to be SO much more interesting, which i think is why i loved italy so much...
ah, italy. so many adventures over semana santa...
we made a blanket fort because our first hostel in rome had mosquito issues... did a lot of wandering, actually, especially in verona and venice. but that's more because our verona map was useless and venice is too complicated to bother with a map... ate gelato 2-3 times a day... hung out in a thrift store in rome after close, drinking wine and talking to the old guy and 2 young guys that worked there because the old guy LOVES texas and found out i'm from there... we hopped buses for free in rome :)... ran into renee mcvay at the vatican... cut the line at st. peter's, went to the vatican at 2 pm so we only had to wait 15 minutes to get in, got a free ticket (with reservation) at the uffizzi, so we bought another ticket for the same reservation time and got to walk right in, and we went to the david late so we only waited like 10 minutes (in general had incredible luck and hardly ever had to wait in lines)... marveled at the ridiculousness of rome only having 2 metro lines... made sure to visit the bocca dei verita, like in roman holiday... alex got pickpocketed in the rome train station, so i played sugar daddy and paid for everything for the rest of the trip... ate an incredible ricotta cheese and nutella calzone from this impossible to find place in trastevere in rome... had some great conversations... rode bikes in the tuscan countryside. which, honestly, was freaking hard. those hills are unbelievably killer... hunted for a new hostel in florence at 930 pm because our original one ignored our reservation and didn't have room... ended up in a WAY better hostel... met creepy creepy italians. geez, those guys are so creepy... figured out trains like pros... ate lots of pastries... took pictures with the pigeons in st. mark's... bought murano glass and journals on ponte rialto... put a lock on ponte dell' accademia with 'jake & kristina' on it... fell in love with the adorable italian children... accosted a woman in siena because i thought she was eating samples of bread with pesto and cheese, and i wanted some. turns out, it was definitely something she had bought and i made a total idiot out of myself. it was great... had this funny fat pasta in siena that was handmade in the restaurant... got directions from a security guy in venice who then turned creepy and asked us to hang out the next day. we didn't, don't worry...
it was just... it was amazing. we saw rome, seina, florence, verona, and venice.
i love italy, rome and venice in particular. i love how in rome, you can just wander around and stumble upon ancient ruins all over the place. there's such an energy there, too... one of my favorite things was crossing the street, because you just... crossed. i mean, obviously i never walked out when there were cars coming (at least not too quickly...), but the streets were just in such constant chaos that the only way to get across was to just assert yourself and go. i loved it. the last thing we did sightseeing-wise in rome was to walk down to a neighborhood called trastevere, which is pretty much as far from our hostel as you can get. there we finally found a restaurant called dar poeta, which had been recommended to us by (funny story) a girl we met on our flight from madrid to rome, who is studying in rome but had spent a few days in madrid visiting a friend. who goes to UC3 (my university here). who alex and i met for the first time the weekend before in san sebastian. it is a crazy crazy small world. anyway, dar poeta has ricotta cheese and nutella calzones that are absolutely incredible. we ended up hauling butt back to the hostel from dar poeta in hopes of still making it to the free pasta they were serving... it was a grueling (for me, anyway, my feet were dang tired) 40 minute powerwalk, and it was totally worth it for that calzone. yeah, that good.
siena was a cute little town, and biking was a lot lot lot harder than we (at least i, anyway) thought that it would be. florence was nice and i think i would have loved it more if i hadn't already been to rome. it just wasn't as entertaining, didn't have the energy and personality of rome, but it was cool. we went and saw the david, which is where we ended up running into a friend of alex's from whitman (her college in washington) and another girl. we ended up spending that night hanging out with them and another guy from their school, it was crazy. but back to the david, it was amazing. so much more than just a 'big naked guy', as jake put it. the skill that goes into creating a sculpture like that... impressed even an art cynic like me. i mean, you can see veins in his hand. crazy!
went to a bar that night with those kids and hung out for a while, then alex went to dance off her dragoon beer... and ran into creepers. persistent creepers, one of which i ended up having to physically shove away from us. geez. the next day we met up with the guy (matt) and one of the girls (laura) from the night before, and spent our time just wandering. ended up at a great restaurant for dinner that night, then hanging out on ponte vecchio listening to a street musician. he did this great song where he just kind of melodically talked to and about the people who were passing by... the general tune and 'buonna serra' were stuck in my head the whole next day, and i didn't hate it
verona was another nice little town, though a bit more gimmick-y i think because of the whole romeo and juliet connection. it was fun for a day trip, though... we had good pastries and we got out of a big city for a day.
venice was... probably my favorite. i mean, a city on water with a mix of adorable and impressive buildings, how can you not love it? of course, i could see where, in the summer when it's hot and the water smells and there are 5 million idiot tourists everywhere, it would be absolutely heinous. which reminds me, i now officially hate tourists. and i know that's a little bit hypocritical, as i technically am one, but it's like saying i can't stand the college students in college station... i've been here longer and i'm not stupid like the majority of them. yep :)
but yeah, venice. ah-mazing. the water was a lot cleaner looking than i expected, too... the buildings were adorable, you could walk everywhere and be completely lost and it wouldn't matter... seriously, using a map would've been a waste of time, the streets were crazy and usually unmarked, so we had fun just seeing what we saw and stumbling upon things.
by the time it was all said and done, though, we were ready to be done. alex was a fanastic travel buddy and we got along great, but i'm pretty sure a few more days of only having each other to talk to would've had us at each others' throats from sheer travel exhaustion. we walked so dang much that i'm surprised my feet don't still hurt a few days later. it was worth it, without a doubt, particularly because it meant we never had to think twice about our multiple daily gelatos and the various pastries we had here and there too :) seriously, how could we go to italy and not eat?
this trip left me with an even greater desire to come back someday, hopefully in a couple of years, but it also left me with a new theory about europe:
europe is like the first week of college. i'm not sure how it is at other universities, but at texas a&m, freshman move into the dorms a week before school starts. and for that whole first week, thousands of kids who are just barely out of high school are on their own, in a new place, and surrounded by more new people than they've probably ever seen. during that time, it becomes completely acceptable to talk to anyone. no one looks at you weird to introducing yourself to a stranger, joining a card game or conversation in comm lob with people you've never met is fine... i can remember a few nights when toni (my freshman year roommate) and i either left our door open to see who wandered by to talk (and people did) or headed over to comm lob and talked to whoever looked most interesting.
here, it's a lot of the same thing. that first night in florence, when alex and i were frantically searching the city for a hostel with space, anytime we heard americans on the street, we asked them where they were staying. most people were pretty helpful, one group even walked us down to their hostel so we could make sure and find it to see if they had space. and no one (well, with a few rare exceptions) thought we were that weird for it. alex made friends in our hostels left and right, particularly in our second rome hostel. and heck, in a week and a half i'm going to spend the weekend in barcelona with a guy and a girl from alex's university that i met in florence, people i hardly know at all. granted, i have spent the semester with people who were complete strangers before, but for barcelona... i've spent like 4 hours with the girl, and like a day with the guy, so they're much more 'complete strangers' than anyone else.
but i'm not that worried about it, and it's not that weird, it's just the way it is here. certainly not the way i'd want to live all the time, but it's fun. like that first week of college... you meet a ton of people, have some good stories and some good fun, stay in touch with the ones that really mattered, and move on to some other new and exciting stage of life.
let's see, what all have i missed? mom's visit (vienna, madrid, paris), san sebastian, and semana santa in italy. dang.
well, mom's visit was great. so so so good to see someone from home again, particularly my mommy. vienna the first weekend was great - enough to do in a day, no problem. we had great austrian food (remember that sweet cheese and vanilla thing, mom? incredible.), climbed to the top of st. stephen's and burned off the same amount of calories as are in a sacher torte, ate our sacher torte, got standing room seats at the opera from a couple that was leaving... very fun. AND that saturday when we were out on the town was the only day for the last month that it hadn't rained, including the days we arrived and left. perfect!
madrid during the week was less fun, as i was in class and mommy was on her own for the first half of each day. the first day, that resulted in a fun little (not little) walking adventure for her, from - for those of you in madrid - the reina sofia, up to plaza mayor, and back down to the general atocha area. poor mommy. i did my best to show her around the city in the afternoons, though, and on our last day ana (the woman i rent my room from) cooked a huge paella lunch for us and my other roommates. it was great - paella, sangria, and a brazo de trufa from la mallorquina. i love la mallorquina.
then thursday evening, we headed off to paris! which was pretty much a fiasco from the beginning. my mom's bag was 'delayed' when we arrived there at orly airport in paris, and wasn't delivered to the hotel until a day later. at which point, it had been robbed. a large sum of euros were gone, as well as her cell phone. police were useless, the airport was useless, both airlines were useless, and all of the above have continued to be useless for the last month.
paris taught me 2 things about why the US is the big world power:
1. when someone steals from you/legitimately wrongs you, there is something that can be done about it. here, there is not. they treat you like an idiot and send you on your way.
2. we know how to run an airport. bag checks, security (in vienna, it was downright scary how lax they were about suspicious items...), posting gates and boarding times... gracious. in orly on the morning we were leaving, they didn't post what gate the plane was at until a good 10 minutes after our boarding time. after. and it was a 7am flight, the plane had been there all night! and if you can believe it, they lost my mom's bag on the way back, too. gracious.
anyway, back to paris. our time there was a bit marred by me being super intent on seeing everything. which led me to stress out about being late and get mad when stupid parisians sucked and messed things up. seriously, they are probably the least helpful and most rude about it people i've encountered. there were, of course, exceptions to that, but i definitely would not return to paris for the people. the further i've gotten from that trip and the more i've talked to people about it, though, the less i hate paris. i still think it's pretty dang overrated and only cool because "oh my gosh, it's paris!", but i no longer hate it as much as i did when we left.
if you ever go to paris, take a fat tire bike tour. it was fantastic, i plan on doing one in barcelona in a week and a half. oh, and don't bother going to the top of the eiffel tower - the line is way too long for such a hazy view... the montparnasse tower is way better. and really, what's the paris skyline worth without the eiffel tower? i ended up taking about 1000 pictures in paris and kept almost 300, so despite my dislike, i apparently found it rather photogenic.
nothing really ever happens during the weeks here... i go to school, run errands, come home, do schoolwork, skype, waste time on surfthechannel... and go to bed. mix bible study in there on wednesday nights, and there you have it. i like it that way, i have to catch up and relax after my weekends away sometime, right?
by the time i was done traveling with my mom, i was very glad to settle back into speaking spanish and not flying for a while. i realized a week or two ago that in these 4 months, i'm doing the amount of travel a normal person would do in several years. and crap, it gets really tiring. particularly the flying part, airports suck.
so after paris was an ESN (foreign kid) trip to san sebastian. it. was. amazing. after so long of being in city after city after city, it was great to be on the coast, climbing a 'mountain' (large hill, let's face it), with trees and beach and... nature. made me realize how much i love the water, a fact later reinforced when alex and i arrived in venice. but that's another paragraph. anyway. there wasn't much structure to the trip because, apparently, the main point of the trip was to drink. which, whatever, just meant we got to do our own thing during the day and ignore the drunkies at night :) i went home early both nights, but 'early' meant 3am and 4am, respectively. (insane, i know. welcome to spain.) walked around a lot, ate pinxtos (tapas, basically), played on the beach and only very narrowly saved my purse (and all its contents including my little camera), umbrella, and coat from a rogue wave that decided to make it's way quite a bit further onto shore than we anticipated. mostly it was just a fun trip to enjoy the beauty of the place and be away from madrid without having a million things to see and do. we stopped by burgos for like 2 hours on the way up there and spent the afternoon in bilbao on the way back, which meant getting to see the guggenheim.
which further reinforced that i am not an art person. granted, there were some very cool things in there. but for the most part, it was lame junk that i either found to be incredibly distasteful or just not requiring that much skill to create. really, that's been the story of me and art museums on the whole... it's either distasteful, amateurish and something a kindergardener could do, or just rather boring. i find architecture and photography to be SO much more interesting, which i think is why i loved italy so much...
ah, italy. so many adventures over semana santa...
we made a blanket fort because our first hostel in rome had mosquito issues... did a lot of wandering, actually, especially in verona and venice. but that's more because our verona map was useless and venice is too complicated to bother with a map... ate gelato 2-3 times a day... hung out in a thrift store in rome after close, drinking wine and talking to the old guy and 2 young guys that worked there because the old guy LOVES texas and found out i'm from there... we hopped buses for free in rome :)... ran into renee mcvay at the vatican... cut the line at st. peter's, went to the vatican at 2 pm so we only had to wait 15 minutes to get in, got a free ticket (with reservation) at the uffizzi, so we bought another ticket for the same reservation time and got to walk right in, and we went to the david late so we only waited like 10 minutes (in general had incredible luck and hardly ever had to wait in lines)... marveled at the ridiculousness of rome only having 2 metro lines... made sure to visit the bocca dei verita, like in roman holiday... alex got pickpocketed in the rome train station, so i played sugar daddy and paid for everything for the rest of the trip... ate an incredible ricotta cheese and nutella calzone from this impossible to find place in trastevere in rome... had some great conversations... rode bikes in the tuscan countryside. which, honestly, was freaking hard. those hills are unbelievably killer... hunted for a new hostel in florence at 930 pm because our original one ignored our reservation and didn't have room... ended up in a WAY better hostel... met creepy creepy italians. geez, those guys are so creepy... figured out trains like pros... ate lots of pastries... took pictures with the pigeons in st. mark's... bought murano glass and journals on ponte rialto... put a lock on ponte dell' accademia with 'jake & kristina' on it... fell in love with the adorable italian children... accosted a woman in siena because i thought she was eating samples of bread with pesto and cheese, and i wanted some. turns out, it was definitely something she had bought and i made a total idiot out of myself. it was great... had this funny fat pasta in siena that was handmade in the restaurant... got directions from a security guy in venice who then turned creepy and asked us to hang out the next day. we didn't, don't worry...
it was just... it was amazing. we saw rome, seina, florence, verona, and venice.
i love italy, rome and venice in particular. i love how in rome, you can just wander around and stumble upon ancient ruins all over the place. there's such an energy there, too... one of my favorite things was crossing the street, because you just... crossed. i mean, obviously i never walked out when there were cars coming (at least not too quickly...), but the streets were just in such constant chaos that the only way to get across was to just assert yourself and go. i loved it. the last thing we did sightseeing-wise in rome was to walk down to a neighborhood called trastevere, which is pretty much as far from our hostel as you can get. there we finally found a restaurant called dar poeta, which had been recommended to us by (funny story) a girl we met on our flight from madrid to rome, who is studying in rome but had spent a few days in madrid visiting a friend. who goes to UC3 (my university here). who alex and i met for the first time the weekend before in san sebastian. it is a crazy crazy small world. anyway, dar poeta has ricotta cheese and nutella calzones that are absolutely incredible. we ended up hauling butt back to the hostel from dar poeta in hopes of still making it to the free pasta they were serving... it was a grueling (for me, anyway, my feet were dang tired) 40 minute powerwalk, and it was totally worth it for that calzone. yeah, that good.
siena was a cute little town, and biking was a lot lot lot harder than we (at least i, anyway) thought that it would be. florence was nice and i think i would have loved it more if i hadn't already been to rome. it just wasn't as entertaining, didn't have the energy and personality of rome, but it was cool. we went and saw the david, which is where we ended up running into a friend of alex's from whitman (her college in washington) and another girl. we ended up spending that night hanging out with them and another guy from their school, it was crazy. but back to the david, it was amazing. so much more than just a 'big naked guy', as jake put it. the skill that goes into creating a sculpture like that... impressed even an art cynic like me. i mean, you can see veins in his hand. crazy!
went to a bar that night with those kids and hung out for a while, then alex went to dance off her dragoon beer... and ran into creepers. persistent creepers, one of which i ended up having to physically shove away from us. geez. the next day we met up with the guy (matt) and one of the girls (laura) from the night before, and spent our time just wandering. ended up at a great restaurant for dinner that night, then hanging out on ponte vecchio listening to a street musician. he did this great song where he just kind of melodically talked to and about the people who were passing by... the general tune and 'buonna serra' were stuck in my head the whole next day, and i didn't hate it
verona was another nice little town, though a bit more gimmick-y i think because of the whole romeo and juliet connection. it was fun for a day trip, though... we had good pastries and we got out of a big city for a day.
venice was... probably my favorite. i mean, a city on water with a mix of adorable and impressive buildings, how can you not love it? of course, i could see where, in the summer when it's hot and the water smells and there are 5 million idiot tourists everywhere, it would be absolutely heinous. which reminds me, i now officially hate tourists. and i know that's a little bit hypocritical, as i technically am one, but it's like saying i can't stand the college students in college station... i've been here longer and i'm not stupid like the majority of them. yep :)
but yeah, venice. ah-mazing. the water was a lot cleaner looking than i expected, too... the buildings were adorable, you could walk everywhere and be completely lost and it wouldn't matter... seriously, using a map would've been a waste of time, the streets were crazy and usually unmarked, so we had fun just seeing what we saw and stumbling upon things.
by the time it was all said and done, though, we were ready to be done. alex was a fanastic travel buddy and we got along great, but i'm pretty sure a few more days of only having each other to talk to would've had us at each others' throats from sheer travel exhaustion. we walked so dang much that i'm surprised my feet don't still hurt a few days later. it was worth it, without a doubt, particularly because it meant we never had to think twice about our multiple daily gelatos and the various pastries we had here and there too :) seriously, how could we go to italy and not eat?
this trip left me with an even greater desire to come back someday, hopefully in a couple of years, but it also left me with a new theory about europe:
europe is like the first week of college. i'm not sure how it is at other universities, but at texas a&m, freshman move into the dorms a week before school starts. and for that whole first week, thousands of kids who are just barely out of high school are on their own, in a new place, and surrounded by more new people than they've probably ever seen. during that time, it becomes completely acceptable to talk to anyone. no one looks at you weird to introducing yourself to a stranger, joining a card game or conversation in comm lob with people you've never met is fine... i can remember a few nights when toni (my freshman year roommate) and i either left our door open to see who wandered by to talk (and people did) or headed over to comm lob and talked to whoever looked most interesting.
here, it's a lot of the same thing. that first night in florence, when alex and i were frantically searching the city for a hostel with space, anytime we heard americans on the street, we asked them where they were staying. most people were pretty helpful, one group even walked us down to their hostel so we could make sure and find it to see if they had space. and no one (well, with a few rare exceptions) thought we were that weird for it. alex made friends in our hostels left and right, particularly in our second rome hostel. and heck, in a week and a half i'm going to spend the weekend in barcelona with a guy and a girl from alex's university that i met in florence, people i hardly know at all. granted, i have spent the semester with people who were complete strangers before, but for barcelona... i've spent like 4 hours with the girl, and like a day with the guy, so they're much more 'complete strangers' than anyone else.
but i'm not that worried about it, and it's not that weird, it's just the way it is here. certainly not the way i'd want to live all the time, but it's fun. like that first week of college... you meet a ton of people, have some good stories and some good fun, stay in touch with the ones that really mattered, and move on to some other new and exciting stage of life.
Friday, April 17, 2009
stupid economics taking over my life... i'll do a proper update someday, i promise. in the meantime, more pictures!
rome
siena and florence
verona and venice
rome
siena and florence
verona and venice
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
i realized yesterday, sitting on the metro during my hour-long commute to my apartment from school, that i've finally settled into a routine here. more than that, really, because routines don't mean all that much... more that i've found ways to spend my time that i like, that seem like real life to me, not just play time or something random before i get back to real life.
this is my life now... for now. hour-long metro trips to school full of people-watching and that electronic piano-playing man in plaza eliptica, class friends, church friends, weekend trips, being anti-social during the week... i like it.
i could be more social during the week, and probably will try to be after semana santa when school slows down again, but by the time i get to my piso after school, i'm tired and have enough little things to keep me busy until skype dates and bed. i don't crave interaction or feel like i'm missing out here like i would at home... i'm not sure why that is, really, but i like it. being social all the time would be exhausting :)
last weekend i stayed in madrid (gasp!) for the second weekend in a row... spent friday locked in my piso with the intention to get quite a lot of school work done... which halfway happened. i got enough done, though, and went to sleep.
saturday i met up with nora at 10 to visit el escorial. it's a monastery a little bit north of madrid, something i've seen as a 'must' on every list of what to do while visiting madrid. it was a neat place, but a bit overrated, i think. the weather was beautiful, with clear blue skies and just enough of a temperature difference between sun and shade that bringing my coat wasn't pointless, but i didn't have to wear it all the time. we walked around in the gusting wind, strolled through the art gallery area, snuck pictures (well, i did, anyway) in the interesting part of things with the original architecture, paintings, and furniture, and ate at a nice sidewalk cafe. we actually got to spend a lot of time outside, enjoying the weather... when we arrived at the train station, we decided to walk to try and find our way, rather than figuring out a bus to take. so off we went, wandering into a park and realizing quickly that that wasn't it, then off uphill on a road that luckily was the right one, though i can't actually remember why we chose that direction. maybe there was a sign or something. the monastery also had a nice garden area, so we spent a little bit wandering around there just before leaving.
even though we were back in madrid by 530ish, with all the walking and the fact that we met up at 10am, it was a rather long day. poor nora practically passed out on the train back, she could barely keep her eyes open. she was a great travel buddy, though... we tour at about the same pace, so neither of us had to wait much on the other. didn't run out of things to talk about either; silence isn't always bad, but why bother with it if you don't have to? hahah
that night at 7 the esn group was getting together to watch the real madrid vs. atletica soccer game, to start at 8, at a pub... the pub i watched the soccer game at last time, actually. so after resting and skyping a bit, i headed off to sol to meet them. considered different ways to bail for about the first 15 minutes, as the only people there were the french girls (they're nice, but they don't really speak english i don't think, just talk to each other in french. so... yeah.), and some boys i didn't know. i chickened out on bailing, though, and this finnish boy ended up talking to me, so i wasn't all alone. eventually some other friends showed up, but i left around 845 because i was tired and being around soccer crazies just makes me more tired.
plus, i had to get up for church in the morning! yay church! but seriously, i didn't realize just how much i'd missed being around a community of believers. immanuel baptist looks a lot different than any church i've been to in the states, with tons of backgrounds, nationalities, and accents, but the songs were familiar and the message rang true. i won't be around on a sunday to go to church again until the beginning of april, but i've got wednesday night Bible study to tide me over... i really like the kids at church, even met a few new ones this week. hung around for like an hour and a half after church, just chit-chatting and enjoying their company. i would have stayed for longer, but...
there was a picnic in retiro park that afternoon! nora, having noticed that good weather was predicted for sunday, arranged a huge potluck picnic with the esn kids. the weather was incredible, there were like 40 people there and i made even more new friends... i really wonder how there are still brand new people in esn i've never met before. oh! and i finally met another texan! though he's from austin and goes to school at wash u, he's still a texan. hahah... there was tons of food, a few of the boys brought their guitars... fantastic. there's been talk of making it a weekly tradition (yes, even so far from texas a&m, people still make 'traditions' for any reason), and i hope they do so i can join whenever possible.
i was going to go to the prado museum at 5 with the formal esn group, but decided to skip it because i didn't want to leave the park yet. wound up staying til 6 at retiro, then heading back to my piso just in time for a skype date with jen, steph, kayla, and carly. that whole daylight savings time in the western hemisphere thing caught me off guard, so it was a really good thing i skipped the prado, or i would have missed the date entirely. yay skype date! yay jen is engaged! yay kayla being here in like two months! yay steph is 21! yay talking to carly for the first time in forever! yay susan is engaged and was having a party for it so she couldn't make it to the skype date!
hahah, lots of yays... exciting weekends like that make me wish i was home, but i know that this is my place for this semester. i won't be in college station or always in the same city as my friends after we all graduate anyway, so i suppose this is as good a time as any to become ok with not always being there.
i do love skype though, seriously. it is one of the absolute most amazing inventions ever. EVER. to be able to talk to someone 5300ish miles away on a daily basis, for free? love it.
anyway, back to what i'm up to. just going to class, trying to get ahead in schoolwork a bit so i don't end up busy and/or stressed right around semana santa, and getting ready for mommy to be here! yay! i'm really looking forward to mommy being here... she's a good travel buddy, and from what i remember from past trips, we tour at the same pace, too. i'm looking forward to being able to show her around madrid, showing the little bit of the city that i've learned so far. vienna this weekend will be fun, but let's face it - paris next weekend is the real highlight. mom has been before and loves the city, so it will be fun to have her show me around there, too. whoo boy, get ready for lots of pictures in the next few weeks!
tonight i tried to go to a salsa class in sol, but couldn't find the cafe it was at. i wound up just walking all the way up calle mayor to the north, by palacio royal and other places i only barely vaguely know. the only reason i had any idea where i was was because that was where paloma and i had walked last thursday when we met.
oh yeah, had i mentioned paloma yet? she's this really nice spanish girl from my marketing research class who is taking an english course and wants to practice her speaking and listening. so we got together last thursday to talk a bit, just hang out and let her practice english at the same time. she kept apologizing for not speaking well, but she definitely speaks english way better than i speak spanish. she was fun to talk to too... we walked around for a while, then settled in at la mallorquina, the amazing old bakery that i love. ended up talking for like 2 and a half hours, it was neat.
but anyway, tonight. yeah, i just sort of walked. figured i was on a main street, so i'd hit a metro station at some point. false, it turns out. of course, i could have turned around and gone back to sol, but i didn't want to. so i just kept walking, wandering, with my mace tucked accessibly in my coat pocket, just in case :) it was nice to just walk, not really having anywhere to be in particular. the buildings are all lit so beautifully at night, i love the way the use lighting here.
and speaking of night, it is now 1032 pm and i have to be up at 7 am. stinky 9 o'clock classes here are like 8 am's at home...
Bible study tomorrow night, maybe meeting with paloma again, booking hostels for italy over semana santa with alex on thursday, then off to vienna on friday!
p.s. pictures!
this is my life now... for now. hour-long metro trips to school full of people-watching and that electronic piano-playing man in plaza eliptica, class friends, church friends, weekend trips, being anti-social during the week... i like it.
i could be more social during the week, and probably will try to be after semana santa when school slows down again, but by the time i get to my piso after school, i'm tired and have enough little things to keep me busy until skype dates and bed. i don't crave interaction or feel like i'm missing out here like i would at home... i'm not sure why that is, really, but i like it. being social all the time would be exhausting :)
last weekend i stayed in madrid (gasp!) for the second weekend in a row... spent friday locked in my piso with the intention to get quite a lot of school work done... which halfway happened. i got enough done, though, and went to sleep.
saturday i met up with nora at 10 to visit el escorial. it's a monastery a little bit north of madrid, something i've seen as a 'must' on every list of what to do while visiting madrid. it was a neat place, but a bit overrated, i think. the weather was beautiful, with clear blue skies and just enough of a temperature difference between sun and shade that bringing my coat wasn't pointless, but i didn't have to wear it all the time. we walked around in the gusting wind, strolled through the art gallery area, snuck pictures (well, i did, anyway) in the interesting part of things with the original architecture, paintings, and furniture, and ate at a nice sidewalk cafe. we actually got to spend a lot of time outside, enjoying the weather... when we arrived at the train station, we decided to walk to try and find our way, rather than figuring out a bus to take. so off we went, wandering into a park and realizing quickly that that wasn't it, then off uphill on a road that luckily was the right one, though i can't actually remember why we chose that direction. maybe there was a sign or something. the monastery also had a nice garden area, so we spent a little bit wandering around there just before leaving.
even though we were back in madrid by 530ish, with all the walking and the fact that we met up at 10am, it was a rather long day. poor nora practically passed out on the train back, she could barely keep her eyes open. she was a great travel buddy, though... we tour at about the same pace, so neither of us had to wait much on the other. didn't run out of things to talk about either; silence isn't always bad, but why bother with it if you don't have to? hahah
that night at 7 the esn group was getting together to watch the real madrid vs. atletica soccer game, to start at 8, at a pub... the pub i watched the soccer game at last time, actually. so after resting and skyping a bit, i headed off to sol to meet them. considered different ways to bail for about the first 15 minutes, as the only people there were the french girls (they're nice, but they don't really speak english i don't think, just talk to each other in french. so... yeah.), and some boys i didn't know. i chickened out on bailing, though, and this finnish boy ended up talking to me, so i wasn't all alone. eventually some other friends showed up, but i left around 845 because i was tired and being around soccer crazies just makes me more tired.
plus, i had to get up for church in the morning! yay church! but seriously, i didn't realize just how much i'd missed being around a community of believers. immanuel baptist looks a lot different than any church i've been to in the states, with tons of backgrounds, nationalities, and accents, but the songs were familiar and the message rang true. i won't be around on a sunday to go to church again until the beginning of april, but i've got wednesday night Bible study to tide me over... i really like the kids at church, even met a few new ones this week. hung around for like an hour and a half after church, just chit-chatting and enjoying their company. i would have stayed for longer, but...
there was a picnic in retiro park that afternoon! nora, having noticed that good weather was predicted for sunday, arranged a huge potluck picnic with the esn kids. the weather was incredible, there were like 40 people there and i made even more new friends... i really wonder how there are still brand new people in esn i've never met before. oh! and i finally met another texan! though he's from austin and goes to school at wash u, he's still a texan. hahah... there was tons of food, a few of the boys brought their guitars... fantastic. there's been talk of making it a weekly tradition (yes, even so far from texas a&m, people still make 'traditions' for any reason), and i hope they do so i can join whenever possible.
i was going to go to the prado museum at 5 with the formal esn group, but decided to skip it because i didn't want to leave the park yet. wound up staying til 6 at retiro, then heading back to my piso just in time for a skype date with jen, steph, kayla, and carly. that whole daylight savings time in the western hemisphere thing caught me off guard, so it was a really good thing i skipped the prado, or i would have missed the date entirely. yay skype date! yay jen is engaged! yay kayla being here in like two months! yay steph is 21! yay talking to carly for the first time in forever! yay susan is engaged and was having a party for it so she couldn't make it to the skype date!
hahah, lots of yays... exciting weekends like that make me wish i was home, but i know that this is my place for this semester. i won't be in college station or always in the same city as my friends after we all graduate anyway, so i suppose this is as good a time as any to become ok with not always being there.
i do love skype though, seriously. it is one of the absolute most amazing inventions ever. EVER. to be able to talk to someone 5300ish miles away on a daily basis, for free? love it.
anyway, back to what i'm up to. just going to class, trying to get ahead in schoolwork a bit so i don't end up busy and/or stressed right around semana santa, and getting ready for mommy to be here! yay! i'm really looking forward to mommy being here... she's a good travel buddy, and from what i remember from past trips, we tour at the same pace, too. i'm looking forward to being able to show her around madrid, showing the little bit of the city that i've learned so far. vienna this weekend will be fun, but let's face it - paris next weekend is the real highlight. mom has been before and loves the city, so it will be fun to have her show me around there, too. whoo boy, get ready for lots of pictures in the next few weeks!
tonight i tried to go to a salsa class in sol, but couldn't find the cafe it was at. i wound up just walking all the way up calle mayor to the north, by palacio royal and other places i only barely vaguely know. the only reason i had any idea where i was was because that was where paloma and i had walked last thursday when we met.
oh yeah, had i mentioned paloma yet? she's this really nice spanish girl from my marketing research class who is taking an english course and wants to practice her speaking and listening. so we got together last thursday to talk a bit, just hang out and let her practice english at the same time. she kept apologizing for not speaking well, but she definitely speaks english way better than i speak spanish. she was fun to talk to too... we walked around for a while, then settled in at la mallorquina, the amazing old bakery that i love. ended up talking for like 2 and a half hours, it was neat.
but anyway, tonight. yeah, i just sort of walked. figured i was on a main street, so i'd hit a metro station at some point. false, it turns out. of course, i could have turned around and gone back to sol, but i didn't want to. so i just kept walking, wandering, with my mace tucked accessibly in my coat pocket, just in case :) it was nice to just walk, not really having anywhere to be in particular. the buildings are all lit so beautifully at night, i love the way the use lighting here.
and speaking of night, it is now 1032 pm and i have to be up at 7 am. stinky 9 o'clock classes here are like 8 am's at home...
Bible study tomorrow night, maybe meeting with paloma again, booking hostels for italy over semana santa with alex on thursday, then off to vienna on friday!
p.s. pictures!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
last weekend, my first full weekend in madrid since january, started out busy and ended with a day spent mostly in bed.
friday night and most of saturday were spent at the church retreat, which, it turns out, was for all high school and university students, not just the girls. we met at a mall (who knew spain had malls?) and hung out for a while, waiting for other people to arrive. we were supposed to be there at 7, i was 20 minutes late because i went to my usual metro stop instead of the one north of me, and we didn't even start bowling until i'd been there for about an hour. good ol' spain :)
it was a really fun group - liz, kathryn, and april, the americans, julia from london, quini (real name: joaquin) and jd (jose david) from madrid, marcio from brazil, mathias from sweden, plus a bunch of new people... the diversity here is really entertaining
as was trying to explain to julia what a biscuit is in the US... in england/most of europe, biscuit=cookie. they don't have any of those fantastic southern biscuits like what we know. oh, and that night i tried to explain about a&M and all our traditions... they now think we're crazy. oh, the joys of sharing cultures
but i digress. anyway, we bowled... i was terrible, as usual, but i kind of like it. it would suck to be good at that and have to worry about how well i was doing. at about 1030 when we were done bowling, we headed down to the food court for dinner. yes, at 1030. pm. most people opted for mcdonalds, i took the cien montaditos route for bocadillos (baby sandwiches). mmm almonds, cheese, and chicken.
then the 7 of us college-age girls headed off to the house where we were to spend the night... which turned out to belong to jan, the missionary who had pointed me to immanuel baptist in the first place! small world, though i guess it's pretty easy to have that happen when you go to a tiny church. we had Bible study, snacked, stayed up until 4 am talking... the usual. then woke up at 9 am to a fantastic breakfast prepared by jan (i had banana nut bread!!!!!! yes, it warrants that many exclamation points), more Bible study, and headed off to the church an hour late to do some cleaning. alessandra (originally from guatemala, lived in madrid for 5 years, goes to uc3 too!) and i wound up cleaning kids' toys... a fantastically tedious job, but we got it done thanks to help from kathryn, april, and the boys before they got distracted by coloring. ate lunch (no-bake cookies! no, that wasn't all we ate, but it was definitely the best part), sat around talking/goofing off/giving massages, and went home.
saturday night i headed over to marcio's apartment because that's where they were all headed for the evening... liz, julia, quini, jd, and marcio were there when i arrived, april showed up later. we sat around, ate the spaghetti and hot dogs that marcio so lovingly prepared, tried to decide on a movie to watch, and ended up just sitting around, talking and watching youtube. i love youtube.
also saturday night, i was introduced to frenadol - the most disgusting thing i have ever ingested. ever. ever ever ever. it's the popular cold medicine here... a citrus-y smelling POWDER that you dissolve in water and drink. awful awful awful horrible. jd made me take some because i was feeling sick (more on that in a second) and it did make me feel better, but good gracious, how have these people not figured out pills yet? i mean, really? pills, people! i've learned that it's best to take it in just 1/3 of a glass of water, though... it's more concentrated, but it doesn't take as long to drink it all
but yeah, the sickie thing. friday night at jan's house, i started getting a sore throat, and when i woke up on saturday, i barely had a voice. i was a bit headache-y and icky feeling, but pretty much just ignored it. that continued through saturday night, and when i woke up sunday, i felt so gross i skipped church. considering that was 1 of about 5 times i'll be able to go to church while i'm here, that's saying something. finally dragged myself out of bed at about noon, achey all over, feverish, sore throat... bought some frenadol, and spent the day at home. the stuff is disgusting but it works, i'm almost all better... though i'm way more congested than i can ever remember being in my life. guess that's just the last step in the frenadol process, or something.
everyone has seemed to get sick at the same time, too, it's weird... my school friends, other church friends, friends of random people i've met. i think it has a lot to do with the weather, which has been super crappy this week. last week it was allllllmost warm enough to discard my peacoat, but this week has been cold and rainy. today it was ridiculously windy, too, so the little courtyard outside my window keeps catching gusts and making howling noises. this weekend is supposed to warm up by like 15 degrees and get sunny, though, so here's hoping.
school here has actually proven to be more stressful than school at home. believe it or not, i'm as anxious/unsure about all my classes here as i was about taking finance 341 honors last fall - though for different reasons. this stuff isn't necessarily difficult (except that math in economics - geez), it's more that even my profs that 'speak english' really don't speak english, the deadlines for things are either not mentioned until the last minute or completely disregarded (might seem like a good thing, but it's not. i like structure in my courses... how else will i know how i'm being evaluated?), assignments pop up out of nowhere when we were only supposed to have a paper and a final in the whole class. case in point: economics of european integration. we're told at the beginning that we will have 1 paper and a final as our grades in the class. in the last week they've added in another paper, a quiz, and a debate, all due in the next couple of weeks. i'm scared to miss class because who knows what new assignment might strike their fancy that day, and i'll never know about it until it's too late. i'm reallllly looking forward to being back in class in texas, that's for sure
well, i've wasted quite a lot of time today as i'm avoiding writing my surprise econ paper, but i should probably get to that. meh.
friday night and most of saturday were spent at the church retreat, which, it turns out, was for all high school and university students, not just the girls. we met at a mall (who knew spain had malls?) and hung out for a while, waiting for other people to arrive. we were supposed to be there at 7, i was 20 minutes late because i went to my usual metro stop instead of the one north of me, and we didn't even start bowling until i'd been there for about an hour. good ol' spain :)
it was a really fun group - liz, kathryn, and april, the americans, julia from london, quini (real name: joaquin) and jd (jose david) from madrid, marcio from brazil, mathias from sweden, plus a bunch of new people... the diversity here is really entertaining
as was trying to explain to julia what a biscuit is in the US... in england/most of europe, biscuit=cookie. they don't have any of those fantastic southern biscuits like what we know. oh, and that night i tried to explain about a&M and all our traditions... they now think we're crazy. oh, the joys of sharing cultures
but i digress. anyway, we bowled... i was terrible, as usual, but i kind of like it. it would suck to be good at that and have to worry about how well i was doing. at about 1030 when we were done bowling, we headed down to the food court for dinner. yes, at 1030. pm. most people opted for mcdonalds, i took the cien montaditos route for bocadillos (baby sandwiches). mmm almonds, cheese, and chicken.
then the 7 of us college-age girls headed off to the house where we were to spend the night... which turned out to belong to jan, the missionary who had pointed me to immanuel baptist in the first place! small world, though i guess it's pretty easy to have that happen when you go to a tiny church. we had Bible study, snacked, stayed up until 4 am talking... the usual. then woke up at 9 am to a fantastic breakfast prepared by jan (i had banana nut bread!!!!!! yes, it warrants that many exclamation points), more Bible study, and headed off to the church an hour late to do some cleaning. alessandra (originally from guatemala, lived in madrid for 5 years, goes to uc3 too!) and i wound up cleaning kids' toys... a fantastically tedious job, but we got it done thanks to help from kathryn, april, and the boys before they got distracted by coloring. ate lunch (no-bake cookies! no, that wasn't all we ate, but it was definitely the best part), sat around talking/goofing off/giving massages, and went home.
saturday night i headed over to marcio's apartment because that's where they were all headed for the evening... liz, julia, quini, jd, and marcio were there when i arrived, april showed up later. we sat around, ate the spaghetti and hot dogs that marcio so lovingly prepared, tried to decide on a movie to watch, and ended up just sitting around, talking and watching youtube. i love youtube.
also saturday night, i was introduced to frenadol - the most disgusting thing i have ever ingested. ever. ever ever ever. it's the popular cold medicine here... a citrus-y smelling POWDER that you dissolve in water and drink. awful awful awful horrible. jd made me take some because i was feeling sick (more on that in a second) and it did make me feel better, but good gracious, how have these people not figured out pills yet? i mean, really? pills, people! i've learned that it's best to take it in just 1/3 of a glass of water, though... it's more concentrated, but it doesn't take as long to drink it all
but yeah, the sickie thing. friday night at jan's house, i started getting a sore throat, and when i woke up on saturday, i barely had a voice. i was a bit headache-y and icky feeling, but pretty much just ignored it. that continued through saturday night, and when i woke up sunday, i felt so gross i skipped church. considering that was 1 of about 5 times i'll be able to go to church while i'm here, that's saying something. finally dragged myself out of bed at about noon, achey all over, feverish, sore throat... bought some frenadol, and spent the day at home. the stuff is disgusting but it works, i'm almost all better... though i'm way more congested than i can ever remember being in my life. guess that's just the last step in the frenadol process, or something.
everyone has seemed to get sick at the same time, too, it's weird... my school friends, other church friends, friends of random people i've met. i think it has a lot to do with the weather, which has been super crappy this week. last week it was allllllmost warm enough to discard my peacoat, but this week has been cold and rainy. today it was ridiculously windy, too, so the little courtyard outside my window keeps catching gusts and making howling noises. this weekend is supposed to warm up by like 15 degrees and get sunny, though, so here's hoping.
school here has actually proven to be more stressful than school at home. believe it or not, i'm as anxious/unsure about all my classes here as i was about taking finance 341 honors last fall - though for different reasons. this stuff isn't necessarily difficult (except that math in economics - geez), it's more that even my profs that 'speak english' really don't speak english, the deadlines for things are either not mentioned until the last minute or completely disregarded (might seem like a good thing, but it's not. i like structure in my courses... how else will i know how i'm being evaluated?), assignments pop up out of nowhere when we were only supposed to have a paper and a final in the whole class. case in point: economics of european integration. we're told at the beginning that we will have 1 paper and a final as our grades in the class. in the last week they've added in another paper, a quiz, and a debate, all due in the next couple of weeks. i'm scared to miss class because who knows what new assignment might strike their fancy that day, and i'll never know about it until it's too late. i'm reallllly looking forward to being back in class in texas, that's for sure
well, i've wasted quite a lot of time today as i'm avoiding writing my surprise econ paper, but i should probably get to that. meh.
Friday, February 27, 2009
and send all my lovin' too you
so london was pretty sweet... stephen, a friend from super summer (church camp) like 5 years ago, and his girlfriend cari were kind enough to play tour guide and show me around the city last weekend. we skipped museums, but saw pretttty much everything else:
st. paul's, trafalgar square, millenium bridge, camden market, platform 9 3/4, the changing of the guard at buckingham palace, hyde park, portobello road market, covent garden and it's crazy street performers, fleet street, temple church (from afar), a pub, london school of economics, abbey road, and westminster abbey.
needless to say, we walked quite a bit. temple church and abbey road were our 2 semi-fiascos to find... temple church is, it turns out, inside of a large gated area that just looks like a lot of old buildings that might be apartments or something now. we couldn't get in, and the several times we asked for directions from people, we'd just end up walking further around the gated area without figuring it out. after being faked out by several other buildings that looked like they might be churchs, stephen saw a sign that said 'temple church' and listed the hours... and that it was closed on saturdays... and we went on a saturday. epic journey completed (sort of), we quit and went to eat dinner :)
abbey road was just complicated by tube line closures and silly bus stops that weren't in use. oh, and crazy double-decker busses that made me feel like i was on the knight bus from harry potter or something.
london was also the first (and hopefully only) time i stayed in a hostel by myself... well, by myself with 13 other girls in the room. it was... interesting. definitely lots of abrasive foreign girls, but i did meet a few nice americans while trying to find the hostel from the tube station and in the dining hall. my first 2 nights, the view from my hostel bed was an orange painted wall... and a poster of edward from twilight. cracked me up, and reminded me of erin. the third night i was in a different room with just 10 girls... but the one next to me snored louder and more disgustingly than anyone i've ever heard in my life. she was like a phlemy leaf-blower and chainsaw - constantly loud, with louder twinges every 3 breaths or so, and... yeah. ew. it was fine though, because i had to get up at 430 anyway to get ready and catch the tube to catch my train to catch my flight
lessons from this trip:
-never ever fly before 9. otherwise you have to take a taxi to the airport, which gets really expensive.
-ryanair only allows one carry-on, including your purse. THAT was an interesting little re-packing game at the gate to fit my purse into my suitcase
-when you've got a few days to explore a city, don't go so far as to make an intenerary. maybe a list of desired sights and activities, but that's as specific as is necessary. it's so much more european and fun to go with the flow and wander
also, london is dirty. i didn't expect it, so i wore toms and white socks when we were touring the last 2 days and i wound up with a dark grey coating where the toms left my socks exposed. also, when i blew my nose, my snot was charcoal-colored. pretty gross, but kind of funny too. i wish we'd remembered to take a picture of my socks with that distinct crude-line on them.
london isn't the only dirty city, though... i've noticed that here in madrid i end up with junk under my fingernails quite a bit more than i do in the US, even though i'm making more of an effort to not touch anything.
so i wore my boots on the plane friday and during our whole first day of touring... i'd had them stretched twice and treated them with leather protector stuff, so i was good to go. except, of course, for the fact that those boots really are just a size too small and no amount of stretching them is going to make them fit comfortably. so i've officially given up on making them work... listed them on facebook marketplace and craigslist, though i really don't think i'm going to get much any response from that. one of the other girls that lives here told me that i should be able to return the things to the store where i bought them, but i tried this morning and this farty old man told me absolutely not. i can't speak spanish well enough to argue, so i'm hoping maybe the roommate or ana will take up my case and argue with them for me
the store i bought the boots at is called El Corte Ingles, and it's really interesting. it's bigger than any department store i've ever seen and has quite literally EVERYTHING. groceries, clothes, electronics, books, makeup, souvenirs, a restaurant... it's like a super walmart on steroids, but at department store prices. the strangest thing, though, is that they have absolutely no competition - there's not a single other store here with the same differentiation of stock, or even the same selection in any one category. it's like if all we had was dillards... no macy's, sears, bealls, jc penney, nordstrom's, saks, neiman marcus... it's weird. i think i'm going to go with the theory that the whole thing is run by the mob, and that's why they don't have any competition
i think i forgot to mention this in my last post, as it actually happened before the last time i wrote, but... i changed my schedule again. after doing the entire thursday with two 4 hour classes in spanish (yes, a grand total of 8 hours of things i'd be tested on in spanish), i decided there was no way that would happen. both profs talked to fast, explained too little, and demanded too much. so i found 2 new classes to take, yay! they are:
marketing manangement wednesday/thursday 11-1
management and promotion of audiovisual contents tuesday/wednesday 9-11
waking up at 7 to get to class at 9 has been pretty rough, but it will be fine. WAY better than having class for 4 hours at a time and until 8pm. it's in spanish and the guy speaks really quickly, but we're doing a group project and the girls i'm with seem really sweet, and the prof seems like he'll be a lot more patient with me, so it's definitely a change for the better. the marketing class is in english and pretty much every school friend i have is in that class, so it's pretty fun. the material seems easy enough too... and part of our grade is doing a marketing simulation, where we have a product and have to make decisions as if we were the company trying to sell it. it's a competition amongst all the groups in the class, so hopefully we do well.
still, school has been frustrating... on tuesday of this week, after our economics of european integration ta spent an hour going over this really complex math (we can't really figure out how all that stuff is going to be used in the course, either. they aren't connecting it at all to the concepts we're studying), he just mentioned off-hand that we would have a quiz sometime, and then a few minutes later dropped the bomb that we'd have 2 papers due in the class, one of which would be due soon. we had been told that the class consisted of a group paper, due at the end of the semester, and a final exam. so we ask more about this new paper... he's wishy-washy about how things are to be formatted, doesn't really know how to explain... i mean, for teaching a class in english, this guy can barely speak the language. then, the best part - someone asks when the paper is due. 'oh, two or three weeks i think'. two OR three? you think? seriously? yeah, seriously. he says he'll see it's going sometime soon, and decide later about the due date. also, he didn't bother to tell us when the mystery quiz would be.
school in spain is just so different... i'm definitely learning to be more laid-back about things, but most of the time they're just disorganized, unprepared, and lazy. i will definitely be glad to get back to real school when i get home.
this week has actually been a bit busier than usual, with school and socializing. on wednesday i met liz in sol to shop a little bit, before meeting up with julia and keaney, killing time, and trying to find this irish pub to watch the soccer game at. the match was liverpool vs. real madrid, here in madrid. liz and i had wandered over to plaza mayor around 430, but left quickly when we encountered a wall of hunnnnndreds of drunk liverpool fans. we made our way back there a couple of hours later with julia and keaney... by that time most of the liverpool fans were making their way to the stadium, singing loudly in what we assumed was english - honestly, we couldn't tell. their crazy northern accents plus the fact that they were all completely wasted made it so that all we could understand was a line or two of some song every now and then. they'd left all their trash behind too... i felt really bad for the workers who were going to have to clean up all that junk.
after a bit of a detour when the location of the pub turned out to be a little less than certain, we got there and found a table with a view of both huge screens... the place had plenty of space when we got there, but by the time the match started, it was packed. i left after 15 minutes or so because i was tired and the yelling + smoke was giving me a wicked headache. it was fun, though... soccer people are insane.
girls retreat this weekend, get excited! we're meeting up for bowling and food, then heading off to wherever we're staying for Bible study and the usual retreat stuff. should be fun, though i'm hoping i get a little more sleep than usually happens at these sort of things. i'm such an old person. i had thought about trying to go to a museum or el rastro (the market) on sunday afternoon, but i'm not sure that will happen anymore. i figure that after church (FINALLY, i actually am in town to go to a service!), i'll probably end up hanging out with all those kids for a while, then at 5 alex and i are getting together to book our italy stuff (more on that in a second), this spanish girl from my mktg class in spanish wants to get together to just hang out, practice her english and my spanish a bit, and then i've got skype dates. whew, busy day. so i think the museum will just have to wait until next weekend.
so it turns out, planning a week + excursion with several destinations gets pretty dang complicated pretty dang quickly. alex and i met last night to figure out a little bit more what we're doing in italy during semana santa... we had planned on it being like an 8 or so day trip, but it's turned into a 10 day thing because of flights. we'd also planned on working our way north, going rome-siena-san gimignano-florence-verona-venice, but it's way cheaper to go to venice first and leave from rome, so we're doing north to south instead. we haven't even looked at hostels yet... i'll be honest, i'm really not looking forward to figuring that part out. booking hostels is a pain.
there are just SO many variables to trips like this... flights, trains, hostels, transportation within the city, timing... it's nuts. but sunday we're getting it settled, woohoo!
and then in like 2 weeks, mommy is here! man, i am so excited for that... we're doing vienna as planned on the first weekend, but decided we'd rather go to paris on the second weekend - so off to paris we'll go! i feel bad that she'll have to kill time here in madrid without me while i'm in class, but i'm done by 230ish on monday tuesday and 1230ish on wednesday thursday, so it will be alright. it's been really nice to have her taking care of booking flights and all that, makes it a lot less work for me :) and hopefully we'll be able to stay with a family friend in paris and avoid the cost of a hostel/hotel in one of the most expensive cities ever.
in my shopping this week (i went wednesday and again thursday afternoon), i was on the hunt for boots and skinny jeans. boots i've given up on, as they're all ugly and/or expensive, and it'll be too warm for boots soon anyway
SIDE NOTE: i haven't worn my peacoat at all the last two days, and i LOVE it. granted, at times i've been a little chilly, but i am so dang tired of that coat and the temperature has been borderline warm enough, so no more coat until i have to :)
the skinny jeans quest has pretty much been dropped too... jeans are difficult for me to find in the US, and designers here really seem to think everyone is shaped like a square. also, the sizes are really different here... i'm a size 12 in jeans. seriously, 12s are the only ones that came even close to what i would call 'fitting'. i don't get hung up on numbers, so i'd buy the 12s if they actually fit... but just the fact that i would be that size here tells you how differently jeans are done.
welp, i actually have a little bit of homework stuff to get done and check off my list before retreat stuff tonight. adieu!
p.s. in case you don't have facebook, here is the link to my photo album from the trip
st. paul's, trafalgar square, millenium bridge, camden market, platform 9 3/4, the changing of the guard at buckingham palace, hyde park, portobello road market, covent garden and it's crazy street performers, fleet street, temple church (from afar), a pub, london school of economics, abbey road, and westminster abbey.
needless to say, we walked quite a bit. temple church and abbey road were our 2 semi-fiascos to find... temple church is, it turns out, inside of a large gated area that just looks like a lot of old buildings that might be apartments or something now. we couldn't get in, and the several times we asked for directions from people, we'd just end up walking further around the gated area without figuring it out. after being faked out by several other buildings that looked like they might be churchs, stephen saw a sign that said 'temple church' and listed the hours... and that it was closed on saturdays... and we went on a saturday. epic journey completed (sort of), we quit and went to eat dinner :)
abbey road was just complicated by tube line closures and silly bus stops that weren't in use. oh, and crazy double-decker busses that made me feel like i was on the knight bus from harry potter or something.
london was also the first (and hopefully only) time i stayed in a hostel by myself... well, by myself with 13 other girls in the room. it was... interesting. definitely lots of abrasive foreign girls, but i did meet a few nice americans while trying to find the hostel from the tube station and in the dining hall. my first 2 nights, the view from my hostel bed was an orange painted wall... and a poster of edward from twilight. cracked me up, and reminded me of erin. the third night i was in a different room with just 10 girls... but the one next to me snored louder and more disgustingly than anyone i've ever heard in my life. she was like a phlemy leaf-blower and chainsaw - constantly loud, with louder twinges every 3 breaths or so, and... yeah. ew. it was fine though, because i had to get up at 430 anyway to get ready and catch the tube to catch my train to catch my flight
lessons from this trip:
-never ever fly before 9. otherwise you have to take a taxi to the airport, which gets really expensive.
-ryanair only allows one carry-on, including your purse. THAT was an interesting little re-packing game at the gate to fit my purse into my suitcase
-when you've got a few days to explore a city, don't go so far as to make an intenerary. maybe a list of desired sights and activities, but that's as specific as is necessary. it's so much more european and fun to go with the flow and wander
also, london is dirty. i didn't expect it, so i wore toms and white socks when we were touring the last 2 days and i wound up with a dark grey coating where the toms left my socks exposed. also, when i blew my nose, my snot was charcoal-colored. pretty gross, but kind of funny too. i wish we'd remembered to take a picture of my socks with that distinct crude-line on them.
london isn't the only dirty city, though... i've noticed that here in madrid i end up with junk under my fingernails quite a bit more than i do in the US, even though i'm making more of an effort to not touch anything.
so i wore my boots on the plane friday and during our whole first day of touring... i'd had them stretched twice and treated them with leather protector stuff, so i was good to go. except, of course, for the fact that those boots really are just a size too small and no amount of stretching them is going to make them fit comfortably. so i've officially given up on making them work... listed them on facebook marketplace and craigslist, though i really don't think i'm going to get much any response from that. one of the other girls that lives here told me that i should be able to return the things to the store where i bought them, but i tried this morning and this farty old man told me absolutely not. i can't speak spanish well enough to argue, so i'm hoping maybe the roommate or ana will take up my case and argue with them for me
the store i bought the boots at is called El Corte Ingles, and it's really interesting. it's bigger than any department store i've ever seen and has quite literally EVERYTHING. groceries, clothes, electronics, books, makeup, souvenirs, a restaurant... it's like a super walmart on steroids, but at department store prices. the strangest thing, though, is that they have absolutely no competition - there's not a single other store here with the same differentiation of stock, or even the same selection in any one category. it's like if all we had was dillards... no macy's, sears, bealls, jc penney, nordstrom's, saks, neiman marcus... it's weird. i think i'm going to go with the theory that the whole thing is run by the mob, and that's why they don't have any competition
i think i forgot to mention this in my last post, as it actually happened before the last time i wrote, but... i changed my schedule again. after doing the entire thursday with two 4 hour classes in spanish (yes, a grand total of 8 hours of things i'd be tested on in spanish), i decided there was no way that would happen. both profs talked to fast, explained too little, and demanded too much. so i found 2 new classes to take, yay! they are:
marketing manangement wednesday/thursday 11-1
management and promotion of audiovisual contents tuesday/wednesday 9-11
waking up at 7 to get to class at 9 has been pretty rough, but it will be fine. WAY better than having class for 4 hours at a time and until 8pm. it's in spanish and the guy speaks really quickly, but we're doing a group project and the girls i'm with seem really sweet, and the prof seems like he'll be a lot more patient with me, so it's definitely a change for the better. the marketing class is in english and pretty much every school friend i have is in that class, so it's pretty fun. the material seems easy enough too... and part of our grade is doing a marketing simulation, where we have a product and have to make decisions as if we were the company trying to sell it. it's a competition amongst all the groups in the class, so hopefully we do well.
still, school has been frustrating... on tuesday of this week, after our economics of european integration ta spent an hour going over this really complex math (we can't really figure out how all that stuff is going to be used in the course, either. they aren't connecting it at all to the concepts we're studying), he just mentioned off-hand that we would have a quiz sometime, and then a few minutes later dropped the bomb that we'd have 2 papers due in the class, one of which would be due soon. we had been told that the class consisted of a group paper, due at the end of the semester, and a final exam. so we ask more about this new paper... he's wishy-washy about how things are to be formatted, doesn't really know how to explain... i mean, for teaching a class in english, this guy can barely speak the language. then, the best part - someone asks when the paper is due. 'oh, two or three weeks i think'. two OR three? you think? seriously? yeah, seriously. he says he'll see it's going sometime soon, and decide later about the due date. also, he didn't bother to tell us when the mystery quiz would be.
school in spain is just so different... i'm definitely learning to be more laid-back about things, but most of the time they're just disorganized, unprepared, and lazy. i will definitely be glad to get back to real school when i get home.
this week has actually been a bit busier than usual, with school and socializing. on wednesday i met liz in sol to shop a little bit, before meeting up with julia and keaney, killing time, and trying to find this irish pub to watch the soccer game at. the match was liverpool vs. real madrid, here in madrid. liz and i had wandered over to plaza mayor around 430, but left quickly when we encountered a wall of hunnnnndreds of drunk liverpool fans. we made our way back there a couple of hours later with julia and keaney... by that time most of the liverpool fans were making their way to the stadium, singing loudly in what we assumed was english - honestly, we couldn't tell. their crazy northern accents plus the fact that they were all completely wasted made it so that all we could understand was a line or two of some song every now and then. they'd left all their trash behind too... i felt really bad for the workers who were going to have to clean up all that junk.
after a bit of a detour when the location of the pub turned out to be a little less than certain, we got there and found a table with a view of both huge screens... the place had plenty of space when we got there, but by the time the match started, it was packed. i left after 15 minutes or so because i was tired and the yelling + smoke was giving me a wicked headache. it was fun, though... soccer people are insane.
girls retreat this weekend, get excited! we're meeting up for bowling and food, then heading off to wherever we're staying for Bible study and the usual retreat stuff. should be fun, though i'm hoping i get a little more sleep than usually happens at these sort of things. i'm such an old person. i had thought about trying to go to a museum or el rastro (the market) on sunday afternoon, but i'm not sure that will happen anymore. i figure that after church (FINALLY, i actually am in town to go to a service!), i'll probably end up hanging out with all those kids for a while, then at 5 alex and i are getting together to book our italy stuff (more on that in a second), this spanish girl from my mktg class in spanish wants to get together to just hang out, practice her english and my spanish a bit, and then i've got skype dates. whew, busy day. so i think the museum will just have to wait until next weekend.
so it turns out, planning a week + excursion with several destinations gets pretty dang complicated pretty dang quickly. alex and i met last night to figure out a little bit more what we're doing in italy during semana santa... we had planned on it being like an 8 or so day trip, but it's turned into a 10 day thing because of flights. we'd also planned on working our way north, going rome-siena-san gimignano-florence-verona-venice, but it's way cheaper to go to venice first and leave from rome, so we're doing north to south instead. we haven't even looked at hostels yet... i'll be honest, i'm really not looking forward to figuring that part out. booking hostels is a pain.
there are just SO many variables to trips like this... flights, trains, hostels, transportation within the city, timing... it's nuts. but sunday we're getting it settled, woohoo!
and then in like 2 weeks, mommy is here! man, i am so excited for that... we're doing vienna as planned on the first weekend, but decided we'd rather go to paris on the second weekend - so off to paris we'll go! i feel bad that she'll have to kill time here in madrid without me while i'm in class, but i'm done by 230ish on monday tuesday and 1230ish on wednesday thursday, so it will be alright. it's been really nice to have her taking care of booking flights and all that, makes it a lot less work for me :) and hopefully we'll be able to stay with a family friend in paris and avoid the cost of a hostel/hotel in one of the most expensive cities ever.
in my shopping this week (i went wednesday and again thursday afternoon), i was on the hunt for boots and skinny jeans. boots i've given up on, as they're all ugly and/or expensive, and it'll be too warm for boots soon anyway
SIDE NOTE: i haven't worn my peacoat at all the last two days, and i LOVE it. granted, at times i've been a little chilly, but i am so dang tired of that coat and the temperature has been borderline warm enough, so no more coat until i have to :)
the skinny jeans quest has pretty much been dropped too... jeans are difficult for me to find in the US, and designers here really seem to think everyone is shaped like a square. also, the sizes are really different here... i'm a size 12 in jeans. seriously, 12s are the only ones that came even close to what i would call 'fitting'. i don't get hung up on numbers, so i'd buy the 12s if they actually fit... but just the fact that i would be that size here tells you how differently jeans are done.
welp, i actually have a little bit of homework stuff to get done and check off my list before retreat stuff tonight. adieu!
p.s. in case you don't have facebook, here is the link to my photo album from the trip
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
i really meant to update this more often
but let's face it, the really interesting stuff only happens on the weekends when i travel. speaking of - london this weekend, get excited!
went to granada last weekend... it was beautiful, of course, though i think toledo was more striking. we arrived there on friday after a 5 hour (!!!) bus ride, got set up in our hostel (steffi, amy, juliette, esmir, and i in our room), and found food... had paella for the first time, it was really good. the seafood they put in is a bit intimidating bc it's crawfish and giant shrimp things, but with the shells still on. i tried to eat the crawfish-like thing, and ended up flinging it across the table. needless to say, i didn't bother with that again.
after food, we went on a tour of the city... this time our guides really knew exactly where they were going, thank goodness. it was funny to watch how people would get distracted and wander off to take pictures or explore a nearby store and disappear for a while, only to reappear a little while later. or in some cases, give up trying to find us and go back to the hostel, either way. we started out the trip doing the usual spanish thing of being way late and ok with it, but by friday night, the trip leaders developed a strange insistence on puncuality. fine by me, but very un-spanish and unexpected.
then... we went back to the hostel and took a nap. well, everyone else took a nap because they, for the most part, had not slept the night before bc they went out. i stayed up and read during their nap, and got ready to leave again. next on the agenda was our mystery evening event. we knew we were going to the almacin (oldest muslim neighborhood in europe) and seeing a flamenco show, we just couldn't figure out how we'd be touring a neighborhood in the dark. we finally got ready and all left, almost missed the bus because some of my little group wanted to get food, and... toured the neighborhood in the dark. in buses, for the most part, though we did get out and walk a bit. it was absolutely insane how those buses squeezed through the tiny little streets... at one point, a car going the opposite direction came around the corner we were about to turn, and i really thought the bus was going to demolish them. we just barely squeaked by the car and continued winding up the itsy bitsy streets.
saw the alhambra at night all lit up, and eventually got to the place the flamenco thing was at. at which point, of course, we spent like 20 minutes outside in the cold not really knowing what was going on and waiting for someone to tell us what to do. got inside, they gave us drinks (best sangria i've ever had. still only finished half before i got tired of it, but still. it was really good), and we watched flamenco for like an hour. the footwork they do is really interesting and the dancers were all so intense that sometimes i didn't know whether to giggle or be a bit scared.
the show didn't end until like 1245, and though i never ate dinner, i wasn't all that hungry. that paella was so filling, mmm... anyway. we got dropped off on some random street in granada where the rest of the group was going to a bar (or five), but esmir, cristina (i've met more c/ch/kristina's on this trip than ever in my life, geez), dina, thomas, merilin, and i were tired and decided to go back to the hostel. so we started walking, not really knowing where we were going, kind of looking for food along the way. saw a sign for a pizza place and got all excited, only to find inside the nastiest dried-up looking pizza ever. kept walking and found an incredible pizza place that also had pastries, so i got a slice for dinner and a napoleana (spanish favorite thus far - flaky sweet pastry with chocolate inside and powdered sugar on top) to save for breakfast. total: 3.20 euros. woohoo! the other girls got a cab while esmir and i finished getting our food, and esmir, thomas and i kept walking until we decided we were lost, then got a cab. and went to sleep.
saturday we didn't have to be anywhere until 1130, which was great. i still got up wayyyy before the rest of my room, for some reason. checked email and whatnot in the hostel lobby, had a girly little excited fit that made these french girls look at me like i was crazy, and went back to be mom and make sure everyone else woke up. yadda yadda yadda (don't worry, that's not the best part), we got on the bus and went to the alhambra. which was absolutely unbelievably gorgeous. ancient arabic construction and design, and obsession with water and intricate wall decor... i put a link to my fb album of it in my last post, but those pictures seriously dont do it justice. we were there for 4 hours, wandering through the summer palace next to the alhambra, all the gardens, and the actual alhambra. i... really don't have anything else to say about that place, it's more of a 'picture's worth a thousand words' kind of thing.
walked like 10 minutes down a hill, and we were back in the middle of granada. at lunch at a restaurant with waiters that were ridiculously inattentive - seriously, i'm almost looking forward to being bugged by a salesperson or waiter when i get back to the states. though i do like trying to decipher the menu and ordering without really completely knowing what you'll get. it's always worked out well for me so far (knock on wood...). i had 'pate de pato' (duck patee, we think) with rasberry jam on toasted bread. it was awesome.
i struck out on my own when i was done eating so that i could try and buy some clothes for the club that night. i'd brought stuff to wear, but judging by the way everyone else was talking, my sperry-jeans-pretty tank top-cardigan combo wasn't going to measure up. it ended up being that i probably could have worn that without being denied entry into the club, but i managed to indulge myself fashion-wise rather cheaply... little black audrey hepburn-esque dress - 12 euro. green pointy-toed flats (that really tore up my heel, i'll wear tights next time) - 7 euro. yay cheap!
ran into other people in zara, left some and went on with thomas, steffi, and merilin to other stores. after finding my dress and shoes, steffi and i went to the arab street we'd seen the day before on the tour (one of the main places we lost people) so i could see about buying a (camel) leather briefcase i like. it was professional-looking but quirky, and big enough to be functional without weighing you down. i bartered the guy down to 25 euro, and even though i wanted 20, he wouldn't budge from 25. so i gave up and bought it at 25 :)
went back to the hostel, rested for a few minutes, then started getting ready for the evening. attempted to meet a guide to take us over to the other hostel for a paella dinner, she never showed, and we tried to find our own way. a few phonecalls later, we were sitting on an upstairs patio eating 5 euro paella. again, sooo muuuch paella. mmm... and i had calamari in mine this time, woohoo! got into a big political discussion with thomas (french, from paris) and esmir (lives in holland, originally from bosnia) while merilin (estonian) sat and laughed at us. as you might imagine, it was an interesting conversation. good thing i started dating jake when i did, or i wouldn't have had a single political opinion to bring to the table :) kidding...
from there we wandered off to find cristina and dina some food, and find our meeting point for heading to the club with the whole group. designated time to meet: 1030. time when actually headed out: 11ish. silly spain. walked for WAY too long, got a little lost, and ended up at a little club that was apparently just an interim place for us to hang out before going to the big club they'd told us about. we snagged a table and pretty much just stayed there the whole night. well i did, except for the few times i was guilted into dancing a bit. dina and cristina say they've joined the quest to find a drink i like enough to actually finish, but no luck so far.
at 2 (yes, that's 2am. ridiculous.) we finally left that club and headed off for our real destination, a club called mae west. it was in a mall, so when we finally got in, we were more excited about the bocadillo (sandwich) and kebab places than the actual club. so when we got inside the actual club and realized there was barely room to breathe, much less dance, we left after 5 minutes and spent like an hour sitting (and eating, of course) in the kebab place. got to the hostel at 4/415 ish and went to bed.
and had to wake up in time to be out of our room by 1030, which of course didn't happen. i got up in time and was packed and everything, but no one else was, so i just hung out in the room with them and waited. we left with like 10 of us to go to dunkin' coffee (yes, the same as dunkin' donuts. i have no idea why the name is different), but esmir and i took a detour so i could go to the atm and he could exchange a mug. stopped at a pastry shop on the way to meet up with everyone else, rather than get breakfast at dunkin' coffee. sat around there for a while in a huge circle of chairs, and around 1230 or 1, juliette, amy, thomas, connor, and i decided to go see the inside of the cathedral we'd passed on our tour. we wandered over there, chatted with some fellow erasmus kids sunning themselves on the church steps, and wandered inside. the cathedral was, of course, gorgeous... simpler than others i've seen so far, though, and i think i like that better. carved whit columns, unbelievably high ceiling, black and white marble tile floor... very pretty. unfortunately there was a service going on, so we didn't get to explore much. instead we went back outside and listened to this amazing guitar and bass trio play... for a good 15 minutes or so. they were really really good. then off to the arab street again, where we met up with esmir and merilin. wandered around there, did something else (maybe, i don't remember), and ended up vegitating and sunning ourselves on the church steps. see, the problem was that we weren't meeting to leave until 4, so we had quite a lot of time to waste and not a whole lot to do. so we sat and talked for a while, then roused ourselves to finally get some lunch. i had my first kebab of the trip (so good, though messier than i'd hoped), and we headed back to the hostel at like 3 so we could be the first people in line to get on the bus. turns out the bus went to the other hostel (our group was split in half and staying at 2 separate hostels) first, so it didn't get to us until about 445 and it didn't matter much where we sat anyway. it was a decently comfy ride home, though, particularly when i figured out how to recline the seat. we stopped at a gas station/restaurant about halfway back and it was funny how similar it was to stopping on a group trip in the us... pretty much everyone loaded up on junk food for dinner and spent a while loitering in the gas station before ambling back to the bus. mmm, pringles for dinner. better than the weird sausage-looking things the restaurant had hahah
finally got back to madrid at about 1030, went home, skyped, unpacked, and went to sleep.
one of the most entertaining things about this trip was to watch our pack mentality in action... the vast majority of the time we were with the entire group last weekend, half of us had no idea what was going on, we just saw other people from our group going somewhere, so we followed. it was this 'even if the group is lost, as long as i'm with them it's fine' kind of thing. worked out well every time, believe it or not.
oh, and thomas (the sharp-dressing parisian) asked me if my weekend bag was long champ. nice to know it looks that stylish :)
last wednesday i went up to immanuel baptist, the church i'm getting involved with here, to hang out with some of the other college kids. it's a small group, there were only like 8 people there, but they're fun. i kept hearing how the college pastor was from texas, so when i got there and met him, i asked him about it. turns out:
he's from houston
he lived in college station for a year
during that year, he attended first baptist church.
in college station, not bryan
yeah, the church i grew up at.
unfortunately, it was only a year and a half ago that he was there, and i was already going to grace by then, so i never met him.
still, he's related to 2 of the older kids i grew up with in youth group
AND mrs. melton (the consol biology teacher) is his aunt and mr. medlock (yes, THE mr. medlock from algebra 2 honors at consol) is his uncle.
absolutely ridiculously ironic. i love it.
and another funny story... last week i took my boots to have them streched, because they were absolutely destroying my feet. too tight across that wide part above the toes (is there a name for that part of the foot in particular?), and rubbing blisters like crazy. i bought tape for my heels today to prevent the blisters, but anyway. back to the stretching. even though the calves of the boots are very fitted, i decided to leave them alone and only have the toes stretched. so i go back monday afternoon to pick them up, and try them on before i leave, just to be safe. the toes feel fine, but i can't get the calves of the boots completely over my actual calves. that's right, in the week and a half since i'd quit wearing the stupid things, my calves had grown to the point that they are now too big for the stupid boots. so of course, i handed the things back to have the calves stretched, and i pick them up tomorrow.
still, how crazy is it that that is such a huge difference in the amount of exercise i do here versus in the US that my muscle mass would increase that much? and isn't walking supposed to make you leaner, anyway?
here's hoping they fit, because all the cute 'english countryside' outfits i want to wear in LONDON this weekend center around them. yep, london this weekend, get excited! i'll try and post earlier in the week after this trip, but i wouldn't recommend holding your breath about it... ♥
went to granada last weekend... it was beautiful, of course, though i think toledo was more striking. we arrived there on friday after a 5 hour (!!!) bus ride, got set up in our hostel (steffi, amy, juliette, esmir, and i in our room), and found food... had paella for the first time, it was really good. the seafood they put in is a bit intimidating bc it's crawfish and giant shrimp things, but with the shells still on. i tried to eat the crawfish-like thing, and ended up flinging it across the table. needless to say, i didn't bother with that again.
after food, we went on a tour of the city... this time our guides really knew exactly where they were going, thank goodness. it was funny to watch how people would get distracted and wander off to take pictures or explore a nearby store and disappear for a while, only to reappear a little while later. or in some cases, give up trying to find us and go back to the hostel, either way. we started out the trip doing the usual spanish thing of being way late and ok with it, but by friday night, the trip leaders developed a strange insistence on puncuality. fine by me, but very un-spanish and unexpected.
then... we went back to the hostel and took a nap. well, everyone else took a nap because they, for the most part, had not slept the night before bc they went out. i stayed up and read during their nap, and got ready to leave again. next on the agenda was our mystery evening event. we knew we were going to the almacin (oldest muslim neighborhood in europe) and seeing a flamenco show, we just couldn't figure out how we'd be touring a neighborhood in the dark. we finally got ready and all left, almost missed the bus because some of my little group wanted to get food, and... toured the neighborhood in the dark. in buses, for the most part, though we did get out and walk a bit. it was absolutely insane how those buses squeezed through the tiny little streets... at one point, a car going the opposite direction came around the corner we were about to turn, and i really thought the bus was going to demolish them. we just barely squeaked by the car and continued winding up the itsy bitsy streets.
saw the alhambra at night all lit up, and eventually got to the place the flamenco thing was at. at which point, of course, we spent like 20 minutes outside in the cold not really knowing what was going on and waiting for someone to tell us what to do. got inside, they gave us drinks (best sangria i've ever had. still only finished half before i got tired of it, but still. it was really good), and we watched flamenco for like an hour. the footwork they do is really interesting and the dancers were all so intense that sometimes i didn't know whether to giggle or be a bit scared.
the show didn't end until like 1245, and though i never ate dinner, i wasn't all that hungry. that paella was so filling, mmm... anyway. we got dropped off on some random street in granada where the rest of the group was going to a bar (or five), but esmir, cristina (i've met more c/ch/kristina's on this trip than ever in my life, geez), dina, thomas, merilin, and i were tired and decided to go back to the hostel. so we started walking, not really knowing where we were going, kind of looking for food along the way. saw a sign for a pizza place and got all excited, only to find inside the nastiest dried-up looking pizza ever. kept walking and found an incredible pizza place that also had pastries, so i got a slice for dinner and a napoleana (spanish favorite thus far - flaky sweet pastry with chocolate inside and powdered sugar on top) to save for breakfast. total: 3.20 euros. woohoo! the other girls got a cab while esmir and i finished getting our food, and esmir, thomas and i kept walking until we decided we were lost, then got a cab. and went to sleep.
saturday we didn't have to be anywhere until 1130, which was great. i still got up wayyyy before the rest of my room, for some reason. checked email and whatnot in the hostel lobby, had a girly little excited fit that made these french girls look at me like i was crazy, and went back to be mom and make sure everyone else woke up. yadda yadda yadda (don't worry, that's not the best part), we got on the bus and went to the alhambra. which was absolutely unbelievably gorgeous. ancient arabic construction and design, and obsession with water and intricate wall decor... i put a link to my fb album of it in my last post, but those pictures seriously dont do it justice. we were there for 4 hours, wandering through the summer palace next to the alhambra, all the gardens, and the actual alhambra. i... really don't have anything else to say about that place, it's more of a 'picture's worth a thousand words' kind of thing.
walked like 10 minutes down a hill, and we were back in the middle of granada. at lunch at a restaurant with waiters that were ridiculously inattentive - seriously, i'm almost looking forward to being bugged by a salesperson or waiter when i get back to the states. though i do like trying to decipher the menu and ordering without really completely knowing what you'll get. it's always worked out well for me so far (knock on wood...). i had 'pate de pato' (duck patee, we think) with rasberry jam on toasted bread. it was awesome.
i struck out on my own when i was done eating so that i could try and buy some clothes for the club that night. i'd brought stuff to wear, but judging by the way everyone else was talking, my sperry-jeans-pretty tank top-cardigan combo wasn't going to measure up. it ended up being that i probably could have worn that without being denied entry into the club, but i managed to indulge myself fashion-wise rather cheaply... little black audrey hepburn-esque dress - 12 euro. green pointy-toed flats (that really tore up my heel, i'll wear tights next time) - 7 euro. yay cheap!
ran into other people in zara, left some and went on with thomas, steffi, and merilin to other stores. after finding my dress and shoes, steffi and i went to the arab street we'd seen the day before on the tour (one of the main places we lost people) so i could see about buying a (camel) leather briefcase i like. it was professional-looking but quirky, and big enough to be functional without weighing you down. i bartered the guy down to 25 euro, and even though i wanted 20, he wouldn't budge from 25. so i gave up and bought it at 25 :)
went back to the hostel, rested for a few minutes, then started getting ready for the evening. attempted to meet a guide to take us over to the other hostel for a paella dinner, she never showed, and we tried to find our own way. a few phonecalls later, we were sitting on an upstairs patio eating 5 euro paella. again, sooo muuuch paella. mmm... and i had calamari in mine this time, woohoo! got into a big political discussion with thomas (french, from paris) and esmir (lives in holland, originally from bosnia) while merilin (estonian) sat and laughed at us. as you might imagine, it was an interesting conversation. good thing i started dating jake when i did, or i wouldn't have had a single political opinion to bring to the table :) kidding...
from there we wandered off to find cristina and dina some food, and find our meeting point for heading to the club with the whole group. designated time to meet: 1030. time when actually headed out: 11ish. silly spain. walked for WAY too long, got a little lost, and ended up at a little club that was apparently just an interim place for us to hang out before going to the big club they'd told us about. we snagged a table and pretty much just stayed there the whole night. well i did, except for the few times i was guilted into dancing a bit. dina and cristina say they've joined the quest to find a drink i like enough to actually finish, but no luck so far.
at 2 (yes, that's 2am. ridiculous.) we finally left that club and headed off for our real destination, a club called mae west. it was in a mall, so when we finally got in, we were more excited about the bocadillo (sandwich) and kebab places than the actual club. so when we got inside the actual club and realized there was barely room to breathe, much less dance, we left after 5 minutes and spent like an hour sitting (and eating, of course) in the kebab place. got to the hostel at 4/415 ish and went to bed.
and had to wake up in time to be out of our room by 1030, which of course didn't happen. i got up in time and was packed and everything, but no one else was, so i just hung out in the room with them and waited. we left with like 10 of us to go to dunkin' coffee (yes, the same as dunkin' donuts. i have no idea why the name is different), but esmir and i took a detour so i could go to the atm and he could exchange a mug. stopped at a pastry shop on the way to meet up with everyone else, rather than get breakfast at dunkin' coffee. sat around there for a while in a huge circle of chairs, and around 1230 or 1, juliette, amy, thomas, connor, and i decided to go see the inside of the cathedral we'd passed on our tour. we wandered over there, chatted with some fellow erasmus kids sunning themselves on the church steps, and wandered inside. the cathedral was, of course, gorgeous... simpler than others i've seen so far, though, and i think i like that better. carved whit columns, unbelievably high ceiling, black and white marble tile floor... very pretty. unfortunately there was a service going on, so we didn't get to explore much. instead we went back outside and listened to this amazing guitar and bass trio play... for a good 15 minutes or so. they were really really good. then off to the arab street again, where we met up with esmir and merilin. wandered around there, did something else (maybe, i don't remember), and ended up vegitating and sunning ourselves on the church steps. see, the problem was that we weren't meeting to leave until 4, so we had quite a lot of time to waste and not a whole lot to do. so we sat and talked for a while, then roused ourselves to finally get some lunch. i had my first kebab of the trip (so good, though messier than i'd hoped), and we headed back to the hostel at like 3 so we could be the first people in line to get on the bus. turns out the bus went to the other hostel (our group was split in half and staying at 2 separate hostels) first, so it didn't get to us until about 445 and it didn't matter much where we sat anyway. it was a decently comfy ride home, though, particularly when i figured out how to recline the seat. we stopped at a gas station/restaurant about halfway back and it was funny how similar it was to stopping on a group trip in the us... pretty much everyone loaded up on junk food for dinner and spent a while loitering in the gas station before ambling back to the bus. mmm, pringles for dinner. better than the weird sausage-looking things the restaurant had hahah
finally got back to madrid at about 1030, went home, skyped, unpacked, and went to sleep.
one of the most entertaining things about this trip was to watch our pack mentality in action... the vast majority of the time we were with the entire group last weekend, half of us had no idea what was going on, we just saw other people from our group going somewhere, so we followed. it was this 'even if the group is lost, as long as i'm with them it's fine' kind of thing. worked out well every time, believe it or not.
oh, and thomas (the sharp-dressing parisian) asked me if my weekend bag was long champ. nice to know it looks that stylish :)
last wednesday i went up to immanuel baptist, the church i'm getting involved with here, to hang out with some of the other college kids. it's a small group, there were only like 8 people there, but they're fun. i kept hearing how the college pastor was from texas, so when i got there and met him, i asked him about it. turns out:
he's from houston
he lived in college station for a year
during that year, he attended first baptist church.
in college station, not bryan
yeah, the church i grew up at.
unfortunately, it was only a year and a half ago that he was there, and i was already going to grace by then, so i never met him.
still, he's related to 2 of the older kids i grew up with in youth group
AND mrs. melton (the consol biology teacher) is his aunt and mr. medlock (yes, THE mr. medlock from algebra 2 honors at consol) is his uncle.
absolutely ridiculously ironic. i love it.
and another funny story... last week i took my boots to have them streched, because they were absolutely destroying my feet. too tight across that wide part above the toes (is there a name for that part of the foot in particular?), and rubbing blisters like crazy. i bought tape for my heels today to prevent the blisters, but anyway. back to the stretching. even though the calves of the boots are very fitted, i decided to leave them alone and only have the toes stretched. so i go back monday afternoon to pick them up, and try them on before i leave, just to be safe. the toes feel fine, but i can't get the calves of the boots completely over my actual calves. that's right, in the week and a half since i'd quit wearing the stupid things, my calves had grown to the point that they are now too big for the stupid boots. so of course, i handed the things back to have the calves stretched, and i pick them up tomorrow.
still, how crazy is it that that is such a huge difference in the amount of exercise i do here versus in the US that my muscle mass would increase that much? and isn't walking supposed to make you leaner, anyway?
here's hoping they fit, because all the cute 'english countryside' outfits i want to wear in LONDON this weekend center around them. yep, london this weekend, get excited! i'll try and post earlier in the week after this trip, but i wouldn't recommend holding your breath about it... ♥
Monday, February 16, 2009
for those of you without facebook
i'll update about granada tomorrow, but for now i'm just posting the links to my pictures in case anyone doesn't have facebook.
madrid & toledo
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2673770&id=8346086&l=453dd
granada
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2681562&id=8346086&l=38342
hasta luego!
madrid & toledo
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2673770&id=8346086&l=453dd
granada
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2681562&id=8346086&l=38342
hasta luego!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
