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
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