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!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
i can never think of good titles...
i really didn't mean to be so neglectful of this blog... i didn't update last week because there really wasn't anything to update except how stupid the course selection process is at uc3, and since getting back from toledo... i've just stayed busy. it's crazy. anyway.
so... classes. half the classes i'm taking are different than the ones i planned on taking when i came over here. really, half only means two classes, but saying 'half' makes it sound like a bigger deal :) basically, they changed schedules at the last minute and i missed almost all of my classes last week. but i did find myself in a thursday section of the class i'd planned on taking monday, even though i meant to be in a different class, and now i'm taking the thursday one instead. that prof only wants one 1 pg paper a week, as opposed to a 20 page paper at the end. yep.
so now it's :
-economics of european integration - MT 11-1 in english... and almost all my dutch friends are in there, so that makes it quite a bit more enjoyable...
-marketing research - MT 1-3 which, it turns out, is in spanish. thought it was in english, but oh well. yesterday was my first day to go to the class because of them moving the time last week, and today i met two really nice spanish girls who seem to be alright with kind of adopting me... they're letting me be in their group for writing our research paper at the end, which is great! i figure i'll just do a lot more of the research and pre-writing preparation than everyone else, and let them actually write the paper so the spanish doesn't sound like an elementary school kid
-media, receivers, and users - T 11-3 in spanish. deals with communication mediums, mostly in journalism i think. i went to the class' monday section last week and the professor was really nice about the fact that i only understood about half of what he said, but he referenced spanish literature a lot, i would've had to write a 20 page paper, and the class ended up conflicting with both my monday classes. so, thursday it is. this prof, a woman, seems a lot more interested in turning us into journalists, which means that each weeks writing assignment will be more like article-length... which is quite a bit more manageable for me!
-magazine design - T 4-8 in spanish. yes, that's right, i have 8 hours of class in spanish on thursday, with only a 1 hour break. oh well, it's just the way it worked out. this prof seems nice too, though maybe more of a hardliner than the others. luckily it's a design class, so i don't think i'll have to do as much writing. he talks really quickly, though, so the lecture part of the class could get interesting. and by interesting i mean difficult. there are two other foreign girls in the class, a french girl and a brazilian girl, so it will be really nice having other people around who don't understand everything.
i was in a stat class TF 9-11 in english (well, sort of), which is a really sucky schedule. i did NOT want class on friday, because even though it's early, i'd still miss it every time i went on a trip with school. also, the class was statistics 2, which to them means econometrics. so a difficult next step to a course i took 4 years ago, and with a prof that barely spoke english. i feel bad for kids here who take courses in english in an effort to learn the language better... if this guy didn't know the phrase 'i mean', he would have talked half as much. also, instead of 'women and men' he said 'womans and mans' mhmm. so i dropped that class :)
actually, i guess since i didn't turn in my schedule until today (which, by the way, was a whole 6 days early. and i have until march 2nd to change my schedule. this place is crazy...) i was never in the class. regardless, i'm pretty happy with the way things are now. mondays and tuesday are nice leisurely days to go to class and finish homework before having a skype date or two and going to bed. wednesday i have no class at all, so it will be interesting to see how i choose to fill that time. after the library/bookstore finally gets its act together and i have textbooks, i'll be sleeping in, reading and getting ahead on homework before jetting off for the weekend. thursday is a loooooong day, and i think all but 5 or so fridays for the whole rest of my time here already have travel plans or are designated as the start of a travel weekend.
mmm traveling. this weekend is granada, then london, then a girls' retreat with the church here (ok, so not traveling, but still), then an open weekend i'll probably spend in madrid (fancy that...), then mommy's here! i'm really looking forward to her visit... any familiar face would be fantastic now, but it being my mommy will make it even better.
as far as social time goes, i might go out a little bit during the week, but not too terribly much. by 'out' i mean out to dinner with people, or a Bible study or something... this staying up late business that most everyone here is so into is just way too much for me. it just has no appeal, so i'm not going to bother. i can hang out with my school friends that do that during our trips instead, and i've met some very sweet girls from the church i'll be going to here, and i'm looking forward to hanging out with them more.
it's kind of a ridiculous chain of e-mails that brings me to actually meeting these girls... i e-mailed a woman whose address i'd gotten from a program evaluation that a former A&M student who went to uc3 filled out. she gave me the church website, i e-mailed the college pastor. he passed my e-mail on to a girl named april, and i ended up meeting her and 5 other girls for dinner that night. we went and ate bocadillos (little sandwiches) and then had churros con chocolate, which are amazing. mmm chocolate and fried stuff...
that was friday night, and after leaving the church girls i went to a party at the dutch boys' apartment... it was fun and there were a ton of erasmus kids there so it was nice to talk to people (most everyone speaks english, though some are more difficult to understand than others), but smoke + staying up late = me going home WAY before everyone else. also, the metro closes at 130am, so i had to make sure i was home by then. when i got up to leave at 1, remy walked me to the door and after we were out of earshot of everyone else was like, 'so really, why are you leaving so early?' poor kid didn't believe me that i was just tired. i told him i'm just an old person and that's the way it is with me, which he found hillllarious. i keep forgetting that things we say in the US (or even just my group of friends, we do say some odd things) don't make sense to other people.
and off on another tangent, but things not making sense reminded me... the weather here is crazy. absolutely crazy. one day last week it wasn't even raining, then suddenly started hailing really hard for about 3 minutes, then it turned into rain for like 10 minutes, then it quit altogether. the weather in general has been pretty good, though. hopefully it stays that way while i travel these next two weekends :)
so back to what i've been up to... saturday morning i met liz, one of the church girls, to go on a cow hunt around madrid. we were supposed to meet another girl that was a friend of a friend of liz's, but the girl didn't have a phone and we couldn't find her, so after waiting a while, we left. anyway, madrid has painted cows like college station has painted trains... but a LOT more of them, and usually they're in groups of 3s or 4s. we started out at atocha, walked through the parque del retiro (which is really pretty and will be even better when it gets warmer), where we saw some interesting people and an adorable children's puppet show. on our way out of the park we saw a church and went inside for a bit (it was beautiful), then kept wandering up the street we were on. for some reason we were under the impression that we were headed in a general direction that would easily take us back to the city center, sol. and after walking a while and loitering at bakery windows, we realized we were quite a bit east of where we wanted to be. so we found a route and started back toward sol.
bear in mind that, being the brilliant person i am, i wore my new boots. yes, the leather ones i've been trying to break in that already turned my heels into giant blisters. i thought a nice little walk on a saturday morning would be good for getting them a bit more comfy... but i didn't count on walking as much as we did, and definitely did not get any more comfortable as time went on. by the end i was practially limping, partially bc i'm a baby and partially because it really stinking hurt. all in all we walked about 5 miles (see the map). it was good exercise, and my project for tomorrow is to find cheap boots, because cheap = not leather = more comfortable for the kind of walking i do here.
seeing the cows was fun, there were some really cute ones... my favorite was probably the one painted like a hamburger - oh, the irony :)
sunday was my first trip - toledo! i went with the Erasmus Student Network (for the non-spanish kids), which made it so much better bc they arranged everything. rode the bus up there, wandered around the city for a while, freezing our butts off and trying to understand the history our guide was telling us in spanish. then we went to the cathedral, which was absolutely gorgeous. so grandeous, so overdone... but not gaudy overdone, if that makes any sense. wandered around for a while, tried to follow our guide to lunch but he lost us, ate, waiting, wandered around the city some more, and went home.
toledo was absolutely, unbelievably beautiful. the prettiest place i've ever seen in my life, seriously. i expect that that statement won't be true anymore after i see austria, germany, and italy in the next few months, but for now... wow. so so so pretty. this is my favorite photo of the town:
like i said, it was gorgeous. why can't anywhere in the US look like this? other than the fact that some of those buildings were constructed before europe had a clue that north america existed...
esmir was my bus buddy both ways, and we ended up getting dinner at this place called cerveceria cien montaditos, which was awesome. i love bocadillos because they are tiny little sandwiches that usually cost about a euro each... you only need two, and this place even gave us chips to go with it... so far i've had spanish cheese, some ham thing, smoked salmon, and chicken with almonds and philadelphia cheese. all were most excellent. then we went to this bakery that's right outside of the metro stop that's been there since 1894 (ridiculous!) and had a pastry called napoleon con chocolate (or something like that) for a euro, that's a sweet flaky pastry with chocolate inside and powdered sugar on top. oh to be completely full for 3.20 euros, how i love it!
oh, and saying 'philadelphia' reminded me... a lot of my foreign friends like to think the know a lot about the US, esmir in particular. so today during economics of integration (while the TA was going over all this really complicated math stuff that i'm hoping i don't have to know, it was crazy looking) i look over and esmir is writing down US states. he then challenges me to see how many i can get, and if i can beat him. when we both gave up, he had about 36, and i had 45. that's right, i didn't know 5 of my own states. even worse - delaware, connecticut, and wisconsin were ones that he remembered and i didn't, though neither of us remembered wyoming or minnesota. stinking midwest and north east...
in other news, i might be headed back home a couple of weeks early in june... apparently the european kids aren't as interested in traveling outside of spain as i'd counted on, and most americans i've met are heading back to the states soon after finals. i think i have finally found someone to go to italy with over semana santa (my spring break), though, which is great. hopefully that works out, because otherwise i just won't go. traveling alone is pointless. i think that by the end of all this time away, i'll be glad i did it, but definitely ready to come home. and if that happens 2 weeks early, i won't be disappointed at all :)
AND kayla booked her tickets last night to come visit me in may, get excited!
and now, to bed. i'm such an old person...
so... classes. half the classes i'm taking are different than the ones i planned on taking when i came over here. really, half only means two classes, but saying 'half' makes it sound like a bigger deal :) basically, they changed schedules at the last minute and i missed almost all of my classes last week. but i did find myself in a thursday section of the class i'd planned on taking monday, even though i meant to be in a different class, and now i'm taking the thursday one instead. that prof only wants one 1 pg paper a week, as opposed to a 20 page paper at the end. yep.
so now it's :
-economics of european integration - MT 11-1 in english... and almost all my dutch friends are in there, so that makes it quite a bit more enjoyable...
-marketing research - MT 1-3 which, it turns out, is in spanish. thought it was in english, but oh well. yesterday was my first day to go to the class because of them moving the time last week, and today i met two really nice spanish girls who seem to be alright with kind of adopting me... they're letting me be in their group for writing our research paper at the end, which is great! i figure i'll just do a lot more of the research and pre-writing preparation than everyone else, and let them actually write the paper so the spanish doesn't sound like an elementary school kid
-media, receivers, and users - T 11-3 in spanish. deals with communication mediums, mostly in journalism i think. i went to the class' monday section last week and the professor was really nice about the fact that i only understood about half of what he said, but he referenced spanish literature a lot, i would've had to write a 20 page paper, and the class ended up conflicting with both my monday classes. so, thursday it is. this prof, a woman, seems a lot more interested in turning us into journalists, which means that each weeks writing assignment will be more like article-length... which is quite a bit more manageable for me!
-magazine design - T 4-8 in spanish. yes, that's right, i have 8 hours of class in spanish on thursday, with only a 1 hour break. oh well, it's just the way it worked out. this prof seems nice too, though maybe more of a hardliner than the others. luckily it's a design class, so i don't think i'll have to do as much writing. he talks really quickly, though, so the lecture part of the class could get interesting. and by interesting i mean difficult. there are two other foreign girls in the class, a french girl and a brazilian girl, so it will be really nice having other people around who don't understand everything.
i was in a stat class TF 9-11 in english (well, sort of), which is a really sucky schedule. i did NOT want class on friday, because even though it's early, i'd still miss it every time i went on a trip with school. also, the class was statistics 2, which to them means econometrics. so a difficult next step to a course i took 4 years ago, and with a prof that barely spoke english. i feel bad for kids here who take courses in english in an effort to learn the language better... if this guy didn't know the phrase 'i mean', he would have talked half as much. also, instead of 'women and men' he said 'womans and mans' mhmm. so i dropped that class :)
actually, i guess since i didn't turn in my schedule until today (which, by the way, was a whole 6 days early. and i have until march 2nd to change my schedule. this place is crazy...) i was never in the class. regardless, i'm pretty happy with the way things are now. mondays and tuesday are nice leisurely days to go to class and finish homework before having a skype date or two and going to bed. wednesday i have no class at all, so it will be interesting to see how i choose to fill that time. after the library/bookstore finally gets its act together and i have textbooks, i'll be sleeping in, reading and getting ahead on homework before jetting off for the weekend. thursday is a loooooong day, and i think all but 5 or so fridays for the whole rest of my time here already have travel plans or are designated as the start of a travel weekend.
mmm traveling. this weekend is granada, then london, then a girls' retreat with the church here (ok, so not traveling, but still), then an open weekend i'll probably spend in madrid (fancy that...), then mommy's here! i'm really looking forward to her visit... any familiar face would be fantastic now, but it being my mommy will make it even better.
as far as social time goes, i might go out a little bit during the week, but not too terribly much. by 'out' i mean out to dinner with people, or a Bible study or something... this staying up late business that most everyone here is so into is just way too much for me. it just has no appeal, so i'm not going to bother. i can hang out with my school friends that do that during our trips instead, and i've met some very sweet girls from the church i'll be going to here, and i'm looking forward to hanging out with them more.
it's kind of a ridiculous chain of e-mails that brings me to actually meeting these girls... i e-mailed a woman whose address i'd gotten from a program evaluation that a former A&M student who went to uc3 filled out. she gave me the church website, i e-mailed the college pastor. he passed my e-mail on to a girl named april, and i ended up meeting her and 5 other girls for dinner that night. we went and ate bocadillos (little sandwiches) and then had churros con chocolate, which are amazing. mmm chocolate and fried stuff...
that was friday night, and after leaving the church girls i went to a party at the dutch boys' apartment... it was fun and there were a ton of erasmus kids there so it was nice to talk to people (most everyone speaks english, though some are more difficult to understand than others), but smoke + staying up late = me going home WAY before everyone else. also, the metro closes at 130am, so i had to make sure i was home by then. when i got up to leave at 1, remy walked me to the door and after we were out of earshot of everyone else was like, 'so really, why are you leaving so early?' poor kid didn't believe me that i was just tired. i told him i'm just an old person and that's the way it is with me, which he found hillllarious. i keep forgetting that things we say in the US (or even just my group of friends, we do say some odd things) don't make sense to other people.
and off on another tangent, but things not making sense reminded me... the weather here is crazy. absolutely crazy. one day last week it wasn't even raining, then suddenly started hailing really hard for about 3 minutes, then it turned into rain for like 10 minutes, then it quit altogether. the weather in general has been pretty good, though. hopefully it stays that way while i travel these next two weekends :)
so back to what i've been up to... saturday morning i met liz, one of the church girls, to go on a cow hunt around madrid. we were supposed to meet another girl that was a friend of a friend of liz's, but the girl didn't have a phone and we couldn't find her, so after waiting a while, we left. anyway, madrid has painted cows like college station has painted trains... but a LOT more of them, and usually they're in groups of 3s or 4s. we started out at atocha, walked through the parque del retiro (which is really pretty and will be even better when it gets warmer), where we saw some interesting people and an adorable children's puppet show. on our way out of the park we saw a church and went inside for a bit (it was beautiful), then kept wandering up the street we were on. for some reason we were under the impression that we were headed in a general direction that would easily take us back to the city center, sol. and after walking a while and loitering at bakery windows, we realized we were quite a bit east of where we wanted to be. so we found a route and started back toward sol.
bear in mind that, being the brilliant person i am, i wore my new boots. yes, the leather ones i've been trying to break in that already turned my heels into giant blisters. i thought a nice little walk on a saturday morning would be good for getting them a bit more comfy... but i didn't count on walking as much as we did, and definitely did not get any more comfortable as time went on. by the end i was practially limping, partially bc i'm a baby and partially because it really stinking hurt. all in all we walked about 5 miles (see the map). it was good exercise, and my project for tomorrow is to find cheap boots, because cheap = not leather = more comfortable for the kind of walking i do here.seeing the cows was fun, there were some really cute ones... my favorite was probably the one painted like a hamburger - oh, the irony :)
sunday was my first trip - toledo! i went with the Erasmus Student Network (for the non-spanish kids), which made it so much better bc they arranged everything. rode the bus up there, wandered around the city for a while, freezing our butts off and trying to understand the history our guide was telling us in spanish. then we went to the cathedral, which was absolutely gorgeous. so grandeous, so overdone... but not gaudy overdone, if that makes any sense. wandered around for a while, tried to follow our guide to lunch but he lost us, ate, waiting, wandered around the city some more, and went home.
toledo was absolutely, unbelievably beautiful. the prettiest place i've ever seen in my life, seriously. i expect that that statement won't be true anymore after i see austria, germany, and italy in the next few months, but for now... wow. so so so pretty. this is my favorite photo of the town:
like i said, it was gorgeous. why can't anywhere in the US look like this? other than the fact that some of those buildings were constructed before europe had a clue that north america existed...esmir was my bus buddy both ways, and we ended up getting dinner at this place called cerveceria cien montaditos, which was awesome. i love bocadillos because they are tiny little sandwiches that usually cost about a euro each... you only need two, and this place even gave us chips to go with it... so far i've had spanish cheese, some ham thing, smoked salmon, and chicken with almonds and philadelphia cheese. all were most excellent. then we went to this bakery that's right outside of the metro stop that's been there since 1894 (ridiculous!) and had a pastry called napoleon con chocolate (or something like that) for a euro, that's a sweet flaky pastry with chocolate inside and powdered sugar on top. oh to be completely full for 3.20 euros, how i love it!
oh, and saying 'philadelphia' reminded me... a lot of my foreign friends like to think the know a lot about the US, esmir in particular. so today during economics of integration (while the TA was going over all this really complicated math stuff that i'm hoping i don't have to know, it was crazy looking) i look over and esmir is writing down US states. he then challenges me to see how many i can get, and if i can beat him. when we both gave up, he had about 36, and i had 45. that's right, i didn't know 5 of my own states. even worse - delaware, connecticut, and wisconsin were ones that he remembered and i didn't, though neither of us remembered wyoming or minnesota. stinking midwest and north east...
in other news, i might be headed back home a couple of weeks early in june... apparently the european kids aren't as interested in traveling outside of spain as i'd counted on, and most americans i've met are heading back to the states soon after finals. i think i have finally found someone to go to italy with over semana santa (my spring break), though, which is great. hopefully that works out, because otherwise i just won't go. traveling alone is pointless. i think that by the end of all this time away, i'll be glad i did it, but definitely ready to come home. and if that happens 2 weeks early, i won't be disappointed at all :)
AND kayla booked her tickets last night to come visit me in may, get excited!
and now, to bed. i'm such an old person...
Sunday, February 1, 2009
yesterday i went for a walk
and today it snowed.
yesterday. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . today
yeah, friday night i decided that since i didn't have all much to do saturday, i'd let myself sleep in. maybe work off some of that sleep deficit, that sort of thing. except that i was guessing i'd wake up around 11 or 12... and i woke up at about 345. oops. i had been thinking i'd go to the park and people-watch, but it was still a bit too chilly for that, so i took a walk down fuencarral to gran via, and up paseo de los castellanos. fuencarral was all shops and crowds, but the paseo was very nice and open, plenty of pretty buildings all around. i wish i could've taken more pictures, but since i was by myself, i didn't think it would be a good idea to look touristy, too. several times i thought i was lost, or i wasn't sure where i was, but it always ended up that i was exactly where i needed to be. it's definitely a route i'll take again, though with company next time so i feel comfortable bringing my dslr camera and really taking some pictures.
also, all along the paseo de los castellanos, there are these life-sized cows that are painted all crazy, like we have trains in college station. i'll definitely be taking pictures of my favorites of those to pass along...
after my walk, i spent a bit of time on skype, then headed over to some friends' apartment.... the germans and dutch kids i mentioned from orientation on friday. remy, mike, esmir, and a girl are the ones that actually live there, but kiku, melanie, this random guy that goes to school with them, and two estonian girls all came over to hang out before the erasmus (uc3 foreign kids) welcome party. it was weird to be around people drinking and smoking and stuff, but they were very respectful of the fact that i wasn't going to partake. in fact, esmir doesn't drink or smoke either, so that's neat. they always ask me things about what the US is like, varying from how many people live in cities versus villages (which made me giggle a little, 'villages' sounds so old-world and too quaint for the US), to what we think of mexico and what should be done with healthcare. some very interesting conversations with those kids.
we stayed at the apartment until about 1245, when it was decided that we should probably head for the club. there were initally 11 of us all together riding the metro, but by the time we arrived at the club, we'd run into enough other erasmus kids that we knew that there were about 25 of us all mobbing the streets and talking loudly in english. it still strikes me as funny sometimes how much english does stand out here... so to get into the club, you had to have a ticket, which everyone else had previously bought for 10 euro. i hadn't bought mine already, for whatever reason, but was not at all looking forward to paying 10 euro. when we got there, it turned out they weren't selling
tickets anymore... but the tickets were two identical stubs, perforated down the middle, so i used half of esmir's and we both got in. and i didn't have to pay! woohoo! after waiting 20 minutes outside the door and 40 minutes in the coat check line, we finally got inside around 230. by 330 i was ready to go, and by 4 i was dying. esmir offered to walk me home, because on google maps it didn't look that far, but when we stopped to ask directions (they pointed us the complete opposite way, by the way. i should know better than to ask people directions at 430 in the morning when they're probably drunk...), they said it was far away. so we went back to the club, and at about 515 other people in the group wanted to go home too, so we got a taxi. at 538 am, i walked in my front door.
ridiculous. i do like hanging out with those kids, but they might just be daytime friends, because i can't keep that kind of nighttime pace. i'm terrified of traveling at night by myself, too... actually, when i was getting of the metro to go to the boys' apartment, kiku had been on the same one and put her hand on my shoulder to get my attention. she came very close to getting maced by me, too, as i was on guard and already had the mace-pocket zipper open should i run into any trouble. plus the metro closes at 130 am and doesn't open again until 6 am, so anytime between then i'd have to take a taxi or walk. and i just can't stay out until 6 am, it's crazy.
needless to say, when i got home last night i was exahusted and thoroughly reeked of smoke. bleh, so gross. my jacket and even my purse were completely saturated by the smell... it's better today, though, i think being in the snow and rain and open air helped clean them off.
i came very close to deciding to skip church this morning, but then realized that this would be my last opportunity for a few week, since next sunday is an erasmus day trip to toledo and the next weekend is trip to granada. so i dragged myself out of bed, showered, realized it was snowing, lamented my lack of practical shoes, and headed out. i was running late anyway, but thought i knew exactly where i was going from having studies google maps (which, by the way, is pretty much the best thing ever). turns out, i didn't have a clue where i was going, or not enough of one anyway, and wound up trudging through the slushy snow for like 20 minutes until i couldn't feel my toes anymore. i'd already decided i had to buy boots that morning as i was getting dressed, but after giving up on finding the church (i still don't know where it is), i decided that i would go to Sol (the center of Madrid, saw some good shops there the other day) and i wouldn't leave until i'd bought boots. walked through pretty much every age-appropriate shop in the area and didn't find anything i loved that was under the 20 euros i wanted to spend. ended up in a department store called El Corte Ingles and found a few pairs, but the
salespeople said they didn't have my size (38 or 39, i thought), only 37. so i had myself a little pity-party comfort food lunch in the cafteria upstairs with a hamburger and chocolate cake, then went back downstairs and tried on the 37s. and bought them. for wayyyyy over my budget, but that's ok. they're leather and nice and pretty and will get plenty enough wear to make them worth what i paid. plus, the euro to dollar conversion rate is better than usual today ($1.27=1 euro), so even better! and i also bought a skirt for 8 euro, so that frugality must balance things out, right?
i have a few skype dates this evening and a few more things on my to-do list, then it's off to bed at a reasonable time tonight... i was going to get up in the morning and go talk to the erasmus coordinator people before the first class i'm visiting tomorrow (we have until february 16th to visit and try out classes and pick which we want to take, then until march 2nd to change that class selection), but the office won't be open until noon. most of the ways they do things here is so crazy...
yesterday. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . today
yeah, friday night i decided that since i didn't have all much to do saturday, i'd let myself sleep in. maybe work off some of that sleep deficit, that sort of thing. except that i was guessing i'd wake up around 11 or 12... and i woke up at about 345. oops. i had been thinking i'd go to the park and people-watch, but it was still a bit too chilly for that, so i took a walk down fuencarral to gran via, and up paseo de los castellanos. fuencarral was all shops and crowds, but the paseo was very nice and open, plenty of pretty buildings all around. i wish i could've taken more pictures, but since i was by myself, i didn't think it would be a good idea to look touristy, too. several times i thought i was lost, or i wasn't sure where i was, but it always ended up that i was exactly where i needed to be. it's definitely a route i'll take again, though with company next time so i feel comfortable bringing my dslr camera and really taking some pictures.also, all along the paseo de los castellanos, there are these life-sized cows that are painted all crazy, like we have trains in college station. i'll definitely be taking pictures of my favorites of those to pass along...
after my walk, i spent a bit of time on skype, then headed over to some friends' apartment.... the germans and dutch kids i mentioned from orientation on friday. remy, mike, esmir, and a girl are the ones that actually live there, but kiku, melanie, this random guy that goes to school with them, and two estonian girls all came over to hang out before the erasmus (uc3 foreign kids) welcome party. it was weird to be around people drinking and smoking and stuff, but they were very respectful of the fact that i wasn't going to partake. in fact, esmir doesn't drink or smoke either, so that's neat. they always ask me things about what the US is like, varying from how many people live in cities versus villages (which made me giggle a little, 'villages' sounds so old-world and too quaint for the US), to what we think of mexico and what should be done with healthcare. some very interesting conversations with those kids.we stayed at the apartment until about 1245, when it was decided that we should probably head for the club. there were initally 11 of us all together riding the metro, but by the time we arrived at the club, we'd run into enough other erasmus kids that we knew that there were about 25 of us all mobbing the streets and talking loudly in english. it still strikes me as funny sometimes how much english does stand out here... so to get into the club, you had to have a ticket, which everyone else had previously bought for 10 euro. i hadn't bought mine already, for whatever reason, but was not at all looking forward to paying 10 euro. when we got there, it turned out they weren't selling
tickets anymore... but the tickets were two identical stubs, perforated down the middle, so i used half of esmir's and we both got in. and i didn't have to pay! woohoo! after waiting 20 minutes outside the door and 40 minutes in the coat check line, we finally got inside around 230. by 330 i was ready to go, and by 4 i was dying. esmir offered to walk me home, because on google maps it didn't look that far, but when we stopped to ask directions (they pointed us the complete opposite way, by the way. i should know better than to ask people directions at 430 in the morning when they're probably drunk...), they said it was far away. so we went back to the club, and at about 515 other people in the group wanted to go home too, so we got a taxi. at 538 am, i walked in my front door.ridiculous. i do like hanging out with those kids, but they might just be daytime friends, because i can't keep that kind of nighttime pace. i'm terrified of traveling at night by myself, too... actually, when i was getting of the metro to go to the boys' apartment, kiku had been on the same one and put her hand on my shoulder to get my attention. she came very close to getting maced by me, too, as i was on guard and already had the mace-pocket zipper open should i run into any trouble. plus the metro closes at 130 am and doesn't open again until 6 am, so anytime between then i'd have to take a taxi or walk. and i just can't stay out until 6 am, it's crazy.
needless to say, when i got home last night i was exahusted and thoroughly reeked of smoke. bleh, so gross. my jacket and even my purse were completely saturated by the smell... it's better today, though, i think being in the snow and rain and open air helped clean them off.
i came very close to deciding to skip church this morning, but then realized that this would be my last opportunity for a few week, since next sunday is an erasmus day trip to toledo and the next weekend is trip to granada. so i dragged myself out of bed, showered, realized it was snowing, lamented my lack of practical shoes, and headed out. i was running late anyway, but thought i knew exactly where i was going from having studies google maps (which, by the way, is pretty much the best thing ever). turns out, i didn't have a clue where i was going, or not enough of one anyway, and wound up trudging through the slushy snow for like 20 minutes until i couldn't feel my toes anymore. i'd already decided i had to buy boots that morning as i was getting dressed, but after giving up on finding the church (i still don't know where it is), i decided that i would go to Sol (the center of Madrid, saw some good shops there the other day) and i wouldn't leave until i'd bought boots. walked through pretty much every age-appropriate shop in the area and didn't find anything i loved that was under the 20 euros i wanted to spend. ended up in a department store called El Corte Ingles and found a few pairs, but the
salespeople said they didn't have my size (38 or 39, i thought), only 37. so i had myself a little pity-party comfort food lunch in the cafteria upstairs with a hamburger and chocolate cake, then went back downstairs and tried on the 37s. and bought them. for wayyyyy over my budget, but that's ok. they're leather and nice and pretty and will get plenty enough wear to make them worth what i paid. plus, the euro to dollar conversion rate is better than usual today ($1.27=1 euro), so even better! and i also bought a skirt for 8 euro, so that frugality must balance things out, right?i have a few skype dates this evening and a few more things on my to-do list, then it's off to bed at a reasonable time tonight... i was going to get up in the morning and go talk to the erasmus coordinator people before the first class i'm visiting tomorrow (we have until february 16th to visit and try out classes and pick which we want to take, then until march 2nd to change that class selection), but the office won't be open until noon. most of the ways they do things here is so crazy...
Friday, January 30, 2009
kristina la europea
i hate blogger. i typed this whole big thing, it posted fine, i went back to edit it, and it deleted like the first half bc of some html error. when i hadn't done anything but resize pictures. meh.anyway, to the left is my first glimpse of Spain... silly airplane engine in the way.
today was really my first day in Spain, as yesterday was mostly spent in a daze, running errands around the neighborhood, unpacking, and attempting to go to sleep very early. today was the orientation, which was a whole lot of nothing except getting to meet the other foreign kids. oh, AND they told us there's a day trip to Toledo (5 euros) next Sunday and a weekend trip to Granada the weekend after that (100 euros). Both will be fantastic, since I won't have to worry about the logistics of anything AND they're unbelievably cheap. ah, travel in Europe, how I love thee.
Anyway, the other foreigners were very nice... due to a missing step in my 'how to get there' directions, i wound up being a little bit late (as was the entire operation, luckily, so i ended up being right on time) and met a few people on the bus on the way over, a boy from Arkansas and a boy from Italy. Then i met two girsl from Ireland, and a bunch of kids from germany and holland. they were all very nice and outgoing, which made it easier for me since i'm not a huge fan of approaching strangers. i actually spent several hours in the afternoon
with the dutch and germans, wandering in shops in Madrid center and taking care of buying a spanish SIM card. central Madrid is beautiful, with slightly curving streets, 4-5 story buildings, all with pretty windows and delicate little balconies... there were too many people around for me to get a pretty shot of the streets, but you get the idea.i'm not going to lie, i was pretty miserable yesterday. i didn't want to be here and would've taken pretty much any excuse to go home. today it's a little bit better, as i've seen that there really are prospects for friends. their lifestyles seem to be very different than mine, though... i'm really not interested in going out drinking all the time, or even weekly - i don't like anything enough to pay that much for it and being around drunk people isn't my favorite. still, i'm not worried about it... if it means just seeing them in the day and being a total lame homebody at night, i'm fine with that. i actually got invited to two different gatherings - one at a club or something, another at someones house - but i'm tired, my feet hurt, the metro is expensive, i have a skype date right at the beginning of things, my options include social time mixed with substance abuse, i'm scared of walking around/riding the metro at night by myself... you get the picture.
it was really fun meeting foreigners, they had a lot of questions about what the US is like, Texas in particular... they were surprised at our lack of public transportation and walking culture, and several times the conversation turned to things such as universal health care, the economy, and obama's election. really stretched me to have to form opinions and back them up, but i didn't hate it.
tonight i'm going to spend the night at home, be productive and organize and such. tomorrow i think i'll sleep in as late as possible (last night i woke up at 230 and couldn't go back to sleep until about 530, but definitely didn't want to get up at 8...) read, clean, maybe go to the grocery store, then pack a lunch and head to the park. i think it's withing walking distance of me, and my metro pass doesn't start til tomorrow, so i'm really trying to not have to get on it unless i have to. i'll just nap and read, relax before classes start. people here are interesting enough that i don't think it will really bother me to be by myself, i'll just people-watch.
oh, and some of you will be very proud of me... this is what i ate for my first meal in Spain:
some sort of sausage, rice, and beans soup thing. AND today i drank carbonated lemonade and ate all sorts of h'ors deurves that i had no idea what they were. AND i took like a 15 minute shower last night! that's probably the most impressive of my accomplishments... ah, the things i'll do to survive... but really. and my hair dried nicely overnight, so i didn't put anything in it (also because i have
nothing to put in it... haven't figured that out at the store just yet...) but it's done just fine today. so the new european kristina eats and drinks what she has to, takes short showers, and won't be using hair product until forced to. yay! i felt very european in my outfit today, too... white v-neck, oatmeal cardigan, charcoal/tan tweed wrap skirt, brown tights, black flats, charcoal scarf and my black peacoat. mmm...
oh, and below are a few pictures of my room. it's small but convenient, and i'm in love with the front door to the apartment...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
i leave tomorrow
but this still just feels like something i'm talking about, not actually doing.
it'll probably sink in after i've been there a week and miss speaking english.
adios texas!
it'll probably sink in after i've been there a week and miss speaking english.
adios texas!
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