I Went to Africa!

For the Spanish spring holiday known as "puente" last weekend, Bronwen and I went to Morocco.  Ever since we both realized that we were going to be in Spain for the semester, we've both wanted to go there, so we planned way ahead and it actually happened.  We figured when we planned it that we would find more friends who wanted to come with us, but in the end, nothing came together and we ended up just the two of us traveling Morocco.  Though just a quick plane ride away, Morocco truly is another world and while there were definitely a few missing amenities from what we're used to, I feel that a trip like that is really eye opening to other cultures, religions, and ways of living.

Because it was such a unique and interesting place, my narrative of my entire trip could be a novel, so here are a few memories to give you a general idea of how it went.  If you want to hear more, we can chat over coffee at a later date...

• First crazy experience was the Tangier bus station, in which one second after jumping out of the cab, we realized that almost every person in the semi-crowded bus station was a man, some of whom were yelling at us trying to sell us bus tickets. Got our ticket from the old toothless man at the "higher class" bus company, hopped on the bus three minutes later, arrived in Fez 7 hours later (literally the scenic route through the Moroccan countryside)

• Had an awesome tour guide who took us around Fez (famous for its crafts) for the entire day, showing us a pottery "factory," rug co-op, looming workshop, metalworkers, embroiderers, a medicinal herbs shop, leather tanneries, some yummy fried potato snacks, a beautiful Arab mausoleum, the king's palace, and probably more that I can't remember now.  Tried to bargain hard, but it turns out the Moroccans have us beaten on that one, though the leather man did tell Bronwen that she bargains harder than a Berber, which is apparently a pretty good thing.

  

• The owner of our hostel ran into us in town and took us for mint tea at a hotel overlooking the city (mint tea is like water for those folks)

  

• Had a guide who was about our age in Moulay Idriss, a site where Muslims go to pay Haj (like a mini-Mecca) - pretty sure we were the only non-muslim tourists to roll through in a while.

We couldn't go into the mosque cause we're not cool enough

• Cab driver for the afternoon (whom I was attempting to talk to in French, which he didn't really even speak well) turned out in the end to want to come back to the U.S. with us - I think marriage may have been mentioned.  Tried to explain to him that that wasn't going to work out, thanked him for our drive, and went on our way.

• Arrived in Chefchaouen in the middle of a total downpour, tromped up the big hill toward the town, didn't know where we were going, paid a man 20 dirhams (2€) to take us to the hostel, which turns out I had booked for the wrong night.  Oops. Nice British hostel owner took us to another place which was just fine.

• Chefchaouen is cool.  Hiked up the hill with our new Spanish friend Patricia, then up another hill to a mosque for an awesome view of the blue-tinted city.

 

• Tried to take a bus to Tangier the next day, but it was apparently a holiday and all buses were full.  Took "shared taxis" instead, which involves stuffing 7 people in a normal-sized cab for an hour and half - twice (we had to do it in two legs).  Counted 37 mosques in the rural Moroccan countryside over a span of about 40 km.

 

 for some reason, there are men just standing in the middle of fields everywhere... not working, just standing

• Funny kid about our age shuffled us down the hill to our hotel from where our cab dropped us off in his Moroccan slippers
• Discovered a board game club outside the window of our really nice hotel in Tangier.
• Checked many different sources to determine the actual time of our flight the next day - it seems the entire country of Morocco was quite confused about the time change, including our airline...

El Maratón

At the beginning of the semester, I heard somewhere that there was going to be a Rock N Roll Marathon in Madrid this spring. Naturally, I signed up - though just for the 10 kilometer run, not the full thing (Haha, run a marathon after this crazy semester!)

Somehow, the event popped up this past weekend - a sick reminder of both my short time in Spain and my poor physical shape - but I was looking forward to it nonetheless. I went to pick up my bib at the exhibition on Saturday with Bronwen and Connor (who studied in France this quarter and was daring to run the whole thing). The exhibition was a great reminder of our skiing days and how crazy endurance athletes are. And there were A LOT of them.

We stood in line for a while to get our bibs, then moved on to another line to get our goodie bags (which don't translate to anything near as cute in Spanish), and then moved on to the longest line of all: the pasta feed line. I love how universal carbon-loading is. Turns out though, that it was only for those in need, aka the marathoners, and sadly they turned us away at the door after 30 minute wait in line. We had a great lunch from a nearby takeaway place anyway.

The next day, I arose bright and early (maybe my first bright and early Sunday of the semester) and dragged myself down the metro to the finish line, where I had to store everything I wanted at the end of the race. It wasn't hard to get from the finish to the start: I just followed the thousands of people wearing race numbers through the streets.

The start was incredible - unorganized, but incredible. Unsure of where exactly I needed to be, I worked my way forward in the mass of people and finally picked a spot.  I was surrounded by anxious runners stretching and chatting in many different languages.  The "chatter" of 20,000 people was a roar from within them and all attempts at announcements disappeared long before reaching my part of the crowd. All of a sudden, everyone was clapping and starting to walk, and we were off! For a marathon so big, I was expecting a cannon or something to start us off, but nope, just a round of applause.
The start was on one of the biggest streets in Madrid, and it was great to see it covered in thousands of runners rather than thousands of cars and motorcycles.  There was also quite the brigade of spectators, cheering us on from the sidewalks, bridges, and fountains.  As we neared the stadium and the second music stage, the split between marathoners and 10k-ers became imminent, and as we broke off, already headed home when they still had so far to go, there was a giant applause among the runners, wishing the best of luck to those crazy folks.

It's amazing how after all those years of ski team, there seems to somehow still be a base there, and 10 kilometers really went by pretty quickly. Before I knew it, we were running past the Puerto de Alcalá, into Retiro Park, and across the finish line, where they gave us sustenance and medals, in 52 minutes.  Not having known about the security situation of the storage, I hadn't brought anything with me and had no way to contact my friends who were watching, so, a little lonely among all the celebrating finishes, I jumped on the metro, still wearing my number, and got home just in time to see the runners going by, about 25 kilometers into their 42 kilometer run. I cheered them on, grabbed my things, and somehow managed to get to the finish line for the first finishers, at around 2:11!

The finish of a marathon is great - everyone is so relieved and excited to have made it - some are accompanied by their small children across the line, some are revving up the crowd, some are limping, a few are sprinting (but not very many). It's a wonderful reminder of why I did (and do) endurance sports.

I waited anxiously for Connor, who was predicting 3:30, but I had higher hopes. Sure enough, he rolled in around 3:22, having made a friend and pumping up the crowd, which had now been cheering for a solid hour.  We celebrated his accomplishment (I don't think mine could be considered one) with a beer and a burger and then went home to nap. I probably should have done work in the time, but just being around a person who has just run a marathon makes you tired. One day I'll run one.

An Incredible Place and An Incredible Loss

This past week was marked by my most cherished memories to date - many were created by an absolutely terrific week exploring northern Tuscany, while the others were brought about by the painful loss of my Grandma Sonya, with whom I have had more wonderful moments than I even realized.  As we explored the back streets of Pisa, made homemade pasta at our house in the tiny town of Barga, rode bikes through the walled city of Lucca and bartered with the leather men in Florence, my many memorable times with Grandma were constantly on replay in my mind - a fact that was saddening at times, but uplifting at others, as I came to realize how lucky I was to have such a great relationship with such a terrific woman.

Our trip was nearly a fairytale.  It all began last Christmas when my friend Nick stole the idea of renting a house in Italy as a family vacation from his family and converted it into a Pomona "family vacation."  There are literally thousands of houses for rent in Italy and we didn't really care where we went, but somehow it got narrowed down and we ended up with a house for the first week in April in the tiny hilltop medieval walled city of Barga, which is in between Florence and Pisa on the very northern, mountainous end of Tuscany.

I flew into Bologna and after a typical got-on-the-wrong-train story, ended up finally in Florence, where I met up with my friends Andrew, who is studying in Cambridge, and Marco, who is studying in Florence for the semester.  We wandered around, snacking on a lunch of tripe sandwich (the local specialty) and a bottle of wine on the Duomo steps.  Later, we went to see the David, which was everything and more that I had expected it to be since reading Agony and Ecstasy in eighth grade.  It was here, however, that I got the news about my grandma, putting me in a whole new state of awe.  Staring at something so perfect yet so old is strange upon realizing that not everything has such fortune.

world's smallest train

That night, Marco took us for aperitivo, the Italian tradition of buying a drink and getting unlimited food for free!  We filled up on an amazing array of Italian food, and then met up with my other friend Isabelle, who is also studying in Florence for some gelato.  The next morning, Andrew and I packed up and hopped on the train to Lucca, where we transferred to the train to Barga - all one cars of it.  We hopped off 45 minutes later, and with no direct plan for getting to the house.  Apparently the buses don't run on Sundays, so we called the English-speaking cab driver, Archie, who had been recommended by the owner of the house, but he had just had back surgery so was "out for a while. Sorry 'bout that."  The lady at the little bar next to the station was kind enough to call a taxi for us, but they didn't pick up.  How did we pick this place again?  Thankfully, a guy was kind enough to offer to call the numbers on the wall in the train station, and ten minutes later, Antonio arrived, who it turns out is Barga's primary/only cab driver.  After trying to follow directions in Italian for 45 minutes, we walked by a house where an old lady was sitting on the front porch and yelled at us in Italian, which I guess meant that she was the one who had the keys to the house.  After dropping our bags and gleefully opening every door and closet in the house, we explored the town of Barga, snacking as we went.

the view from our kitchen balcony

The next day we had planned to go to Pisa to collect Cati, Nick, Sydney, and Erica, who were all coming in from various locations.  We slept in and took the morning leisurely, planning to catch the 12:05 bus to the train station, but apparently stood on the wrong side of the road, therefore missing the only bus for the next two hours.  With nothing else to do, we decided to walk the 5 kilometers down the mountain to the train station, which, despite the funny looks the cars gave us, proved to be a lovely jaunt.  The road is so narrow and windy that big cars and buses honk around every corner - it's fantastic.  We made it to Pisa in time, took some pics of the tower, wandered the streets, had a terrific dinner, and returned to Barga, friends in tow.

walking to the train station

The following day it rained, but we just explored, bought a bunch of food, and caught up on each other's lives, as studying in Europe never comes without countless stories.  Cati and I built a Grandma Sonya-worthy meat and cheese plate, and Nick made an amazing stew for dinner from a recipe on a brochure he picked up at the tiny library when we were checking our email.  We went to bed well-fed and squeaky clean (see photos), ready for our Florence expedition the next day.  We caught the bus at the right time for this trip, but it turns out that the public bus is the same as the school bus, which made for an incredibly awkward and comical situation as we boarded a bus with forty Italian people our age staring at us like, why are you here?

Florence was just as great the second time as it had been the first.  We wandered the leather markets, walked across the Ponte Vecchio, had pizza for lunch, climbed the less-popular-but-equally-tall-and-cheaper-than-the-Duomo Campanile bell tower, ate the best gelato in Florence according to Marco, saw one of the greatest views of the city from Piazzale Michelangelo, and exhaustedly hopped on the return train, having picked up Charlotte in the process.  It turns out that that was only half of the day's adventures.  Three stops from Lucca, where we had to get on the smaller train, our bigger train stayed stopped at a station for 45 minutes.  Being on the last train of the day, we were worried about not being able to get back to Barga, and I went to the front where I tried to talk with some helpful Italian guys and the not-so-helpful conductor and basically just realized that there was nothing anyone could do.  I returned to the car, where my friends had begun to sing to fill the time, earning the friendship of two nuns in the process, who offered to have us at their convent for the night were we to not be able to return to Barga.  But through a chain of phone calls via Marco, we arranged to have Antonio drive the 45 minutes to Lucca to collect us.  It was an entertaining taxi ride as Nick, who was in the front seat, tried to chat with him the entire way.

For Thursday, we planned to go to the nearby town of Bagni di Lucca (Baths of Lucca) to test out the "natural springs," but again misinterpreted the bus schedule and then learned from the girl at the library that they were very commercialized and more like a fancy spa than a series of crystalline pools as we had envisioned.  Relieved that we hadn't made it all the way there only to discover a 50€ entrance charge, we restructured our day and went on the greatest countryside walk imaginable, followed by homemade pizza night (no matter how hard I try, I can't throw pizza dough in the air like the pizza guys do).

a snapshot of our Italian countryside jaunt

Nick, Andrew, Cati & Sydney with Barga behind

Friday we went into Lucca, where we wandered the narrow streets, had another fantastic lunch, met up with Cody, Michael and Wiley who were joining us for the weekend, and rented bikes to ride around the wall around the old city.  It was a beautiful day, which we hadn't had yet on our trip, and a great city.  We caught the 5:00 bus back to Barga, though, in order to ensure enough time for our homemade pasta to dry.  Marco, whose family is Italian, taught us all how to make pasta, which it turns out is really easy. Who knew?  Cati and I topped the night off with a pretty stellar apple cobbler using the recipe of: just add more butter, sugar and cinnamon.  Come to think of it, we didn't take any pictures of the cobbler.  We must have been too excited to eat it.

The next day was our final day in Barga, and it rained quite hard most of the day, so we spent most of it inside next to the fireplace playing cards, baking bread, and just enjoying each other's company.  For dinner, we had an assortment of Italian appetizers as we played cards, including seemingly unlimited meat and cheese, prosciutto and melon, and bruschetta, plus sorbet and prosecco for dessert.  There was some sort of procession in honor of Easter, of which we had a prime view from our balconies.  Then we did a whirlwind cleaning of the house before packing and hit the hay.  The next morning, we said our goodbyes to Barga, turned in the keys to Maria the neighbor, who offered us Easter chocolates, and went to meet the cab.  It must have been Antonio's day off, because it was a different guy, but we were sad to not get to say goodbye to our old friend.

I don't think they get a lot of visitors our age to the town of Barga.  At the end of the week, we had made a pretty big impact on the town and, in addition to Maria and Antonio, the butcher, the gelato woman, the librarian, the wine shop owner, all of the grocery store employees - even the cats knew us well.  That is why traveling to such small places is so great - everyone there was incredibly friendly and helpful, despite the fact that we couldn't really even communicate (except with the gelato woman who was Scottish).  I would go back to Barga.  Despite our endless transportation woes, its obvious isolation, and poor weather, it was an unbelievably beautiful place, and an excellent way to take advantage of life at a time when I'm realizing how quickly it can end.

This was maybe the most photogenic week of my life too.  Here are the pictures if you want to see them all. Italy Album

Spring

 It's a beautiful day to be writing an essay about the public education system in Spain...

Intercambio

One of the things that our program recommends we do while in Madrid is an intercambio, which is a language exchange with a Spaniard who is trying to learn English.  The goal is for you to meet with them and talk half in English and half in Spanish in order to improve both our speaking and listening proficiency.  During the crazy apartment-hunting time at the beginning of the semester, one of our helpers mentioned that she wanted to speak English with us in order to practice, but wasn't allowed.  We got along quite well and decided to do an intercambio once the apartment madness settled down.  Now, we meet almost every week (I'm gone a lot as you may have noticed) for two hours and just chat.  It's super fun - we use it as a chance to try out new restaurants or cafés, and we have a lot in common which makes nonchalantly talking for two hours not a problem at all.

Her name is Irene (pronounced ee-ren-ay) and she is from Logroño, which is a small city in the north of Spain and she's in her last year of studying translation at a university just outside of Madrid.  Her first foreign language is French, in which she is totally fluent as far as I can tell. But she has also been studying English for quite a few years, and as a student of translation, she understands the language perfectly and in general her only hiccups come from pronunciation and fluidity in spoken language.  She is also studying Japanese now, if the three languages weren't enough.  She just got a job (which is a miracle in Spain) with a translation agency, so she has been doing that while finishing up her classes, so there are few windows in which we're both available to hang out for a couple hours.

During our conversations we talk about cultural differences between Spain and the US, grammar questions that we have, politics, school, travel, and just life in general.  You don't realize how stressed it makes you to speak Spanish all of the time until you are with someone who is on an even playing field with you, and it feels so great to ask questions that you've always thought were too dumb to say out loud, like "what is the difference between perdón and perdona?"

Being friends with Irene has been one of my favorite parts of being in Spain, because it has proven to be quite challenging to make friends with Spaniards given my lack of direct interaction with them.  I'm not sure if there are things like this in bigger cities, but they are such a great way to mix cultures, make friends, and learn a language.

Barcelona

Barcelona is magnificent. From the prevalence of the unique Gaudi architecture to the live seafood market to the fútbol pride and surely not least the beach, it is definitely not lacking in culture or things to do. I met up with my friend Dominique (and later with her friend Jalynn) who are studying in Montpellier, France for the semester for the weekend and we saw most of these things, plus a few off-the-map destinations.

Our first day, Dominique and I checked into our hostel, which was quite brilliantly located in the center of Plaça Real, a smaller-scale Plaza Mayor with palm trees, and in a wonderful location. Then we made our way to Gaudi's famous Park Güell, via the amazing food market where we got a free juice from the juice man, and wandered through his architecture-blends-with-nature haven, getting a great few of the city and lots of dirt in our shoes along the way. At a café where we stopped for coffee, I ended up talking to the friendly owner for half an hour about Catalan (the language they speak in Barcelona more than Spanish), politics, traveling, and how he could find a way to pay the fine he got last time he was in the US without being detained next time he enters the country. About halfway through the conversation, he pointed to Dominique and said, she's quite serious," thinking that she had just been super quiet the whole time, though it was just that she hasn't had Spanish in a while.

That night, we visited the Sagrada Familia, which is stunning at night, and dined on paella and sangria, Spanish specialties for Dominique.  The next morning we wandered through the Gothic Quarter, picked up Jalynn from the train station, and got the freshest churros and chocolate (xocolata as they spell it in Catalan) I've had. That evening, we headed to Montjüic, a huge park that was the Olympic center during the Barcelona Olympics and also has a castle, endless gardens, some sort of concert venue (we could hear it), and a museum of Catalunian history that serves as the backdrop to the "Magic Fountain," a colorful dancing fountain not unlike that of the Bellagio in Las Vegas.  After twenty minutes of dancing fountain, we wandered down the hill in search of dinner.  Having spent way too much money on dinner the night before due to stupid tourist syndrome, we went to a one $ restaurant on TripAdvisor that was pretty awesome.  We ordered a paella, which was for two people, and an appetizer, and were going to order more when the waiter stopped us and said that was a bad idea.  And when the paella emerged in a pan that was almost two feet in diameter, I understood.  We did our best to finish off the meal and the incredibly strong sangria, but neither could be completely consumed.

Then, considering that the Barcelona soccer game that we had hoped to catch in the bars had already ended, we shifted gears and celebrated St. Patty's day in the seemingly prolific Irish bars of Barcelona, all of which were decked out in green balloons and Irish flags, and filled with people drinking Guinness and wearing the hats that come with any order of two pints.  It was quite an experience, and we met a bunch of great people.  As our hats said, it was the "friendliest day of the year." 

Our last morning, and with little sleep, we tried to go back to the open market that was so spectacular, but it was closed!  They take Sundays quite seriously in Barcelona, as almost everything was closed, but we managed to find some coffee and churros and get to the neighrobhood of L'Eixemple, home of Gaudi's famous Casa Batllò and Casa Milà.  We parted ways that afternoon, as the other two had an earlier train, and then I headed to the Picasso Museum, which I wanted to see because we're studying him in Art History right now.  After getting lost and wandering through the narrow-streeted neighborhoods where people actually live (I was semi-relieved to see that), I came across another of the city's famous parks, which was literally chock-a-block people.  You could hardly see the grass, there were so many people enjoying picnics in the sun and playing with their kids and their dogs.  It was a great sight, and one of my first moments seeing the actual people of Barcelona rather than just the city.  Still wanting to go to the museum, though, I tried again, only to discover just a couple blocks away that the line was at least an hour long.  With only a few hours before I had to be at the train station, I sadly accepted that it wasn't going to happen and somehow found myself at the beach twenty minutes later. This town has everything, I'm telling you.  The beach area was so great - there were endless rollerbladers skating among the crowds and musicians along the boardwalk flanked on either side by a beautiful beach and seafood cafés.  It was a wonderful way to end my stay.

Internship

In place of one of our classes, we had the option of doing an internship in Madrid. There is a company called EUSA (not sure what the acronym stands for) that finds the internships for us with organizations in sectors that we have expressed interest in.  Though a larger time commitment than classes, with a 15-hour minimum work week and a 20-page parallel project due at the end of the semester, I opted for it due to the opportunity to meet more Spanish people and practice my Spanish in a work setting. Originally I was placed at a business that arranged homestays for American university students, but with such a narrow and U.S.-centered topic, plus only one lady in the office, I wasn't very excited about the internship. So I started over and EUSA found me an internship with a company called OM Premium Sports that does elite sports marketing and publishing. Most of their work involves polo (yes, it's still alive and well), golf, and sailing, plus occasionally tennis, paddle tennis, and equestrian.

My supervisor is mainly in charge of the publishing, which involves a magazine called PoloLifestyle and a mini magazine called Sports Challenge. I spend most of my time translating articles because the magazine is bilingual, but I also occasionally research (and attempt to write) updates on, say, the American Polo Season, or the Volvo Ocean Race.  The translating can get quite tedious and it's amazing how certain texts can be so much more difficult than others, but I have gotten to read and learn about most of what the company does and I have been able to do it in a way that only I can help, which is a great experience.

In addition to the magazine translations, I have translated marketing publications soliciting sponsors for international events, a job that I was at first quite hesitant about - I kept asking my supervisor of someone was going to look over my texts before they were sent out to oh, I don't know, BMW or Michael Kors marketing execs. But then again, I'm the best English speaker they have, so who could do it better? Having been given such an important role in the company, I have taken it upon myself to ask a lot of questions and reread everything a billion times, which isn't hard, as the translating duties only go so far and I spend a lot of time just anticipating a PowerPoint for a meeting on Monday from the lawyers or the review of the new Mercedes Roadster from the car writer.

This past week was when the magazine went to print and things were pretty chaotic. Though it was slightly inconvenient considering that I was traveling to Barcelona for the weekend, I was honored when my supervisor asked me if he could send me some things over the weekend. It turns out this company really needs me, and that is really the most that I could ask for from this experience.

Island Living

Have you heard of the Canary Islands? I feel like they're one of those places that you think you might have heard at one point, but you're not sure if they actually exist.  They do. I went there.  A three-hour flight from Madrid (they are in the middle of the Atlantic off of southern Morocco) took is to Tenerife, a volcano island with black beaches and strong carnaval traditions. 

I went back and forth when trying to decide whether or not to go - I have many trips planned and knew absolutely nothing about this place, but the idea of an exotic island and the fact that it was the week of my birthday made me take the leap and buy the ticket, and as we came in for landing above the clear blue water and plentiful beaches, I decided that it had been a pretty good decision.

After attempts at using public transportation to get to the hostel failed, we grabbed a cab with three Chinese girls who were also using the same, apparently faulty directions to get to our hostel.  The bright yellow hostel was in a group of vacation homes right along the beach (I think it was originally one of them), but really in the middle of nothing.  They greeted us at the gate, and welcomed us to the huge front patio, with a pool, lounge chairs and all.

It was a very laid-back place with few guests, all of whom had the same goal: hang out and enjoy the sun, which was definitely plentiful.  One guy went to Boise State (small world), one from Belgium, a few from Italy. 

We walked for ten minutes along the road to arrive at the little town of Los Abrigos (ironically, "the coats") where we got sandwiches, followed by tropical drinks (I'm legal even in the US now, so I can say that) as we looked out over the ocean. Not a bad life.  Then the boys got involved in a heated soccer match against some little boys and we all eventually made our way back. 

It turns out that I have three friends who play Spades, which I was thrilled to hear, and we had a heated hours-long game on the patio, which Dennis and I sadly lost (pretty much because of me). The next day we hopped on the bus and took the hour ride to Los Cristianos, which is one of the more touristy areas of the island, and spent the day hanging on the beach, swimming in the ocean, drinking rum and coke, eating fresh seafood for lunch, and wandering through the carnival (the Canary Islands are famous for their carnaval celebrations, which last for weeks).  We topped it off with a sunset from the boardwalk and some carnival rides, then grabbed the last bus back, where we chatted with our hostel-mates and made grilled cheese for dinner (at 12:30).

Our last day, we went to the beach across the street from the hostel, grabbed a conejo (rabbit - a specialty) lunch and some relato, and walked back to pack up and head home.  As my grandpa said the other day, there is a difference between travel and vacation and this was definitely a vacation - very little effort or thought went into it, but we all had a wonderful time.

Mi Casa

Sorry for the onslaught of blog posts! Apparently I've been writing them and not posting them...

I already wrote about the process of finding my apartment, but I have never elaborated on the actual apartment.  When I found the room that I wanted, it wasn’t available for three days, so the dueña (landlady) said that I could stay in a small room in another apartment in the same building for a few days so I didn’t have to stay in the hostel.  My first night in this small room, two of the guys who lived there were hanging out playing the guitar, and I walked in and joined them in singing everything from Lady Gaga to Guns-N-Roses.  Over these days, as I met and talked with the people in this apartment, I became more and more excited about living with Spanish students and more and more anxious about how my new apartment (we call them pisos here) would match up.

When I moved on Monday, I was sad to leave, and as they were all still asleep, I didn’t get to say goodbye, so left them a note on the table.  Upon moving into the new piso upstairs (into a room that was much bigger), I discovered that the dueña actually lived there with her family in one half of the apartment, with their own bathroom and kitchen, which they locked off from the other inhabitants.  Additionally there was a Canadian girl who was nice, but never wanted to speak Spanish, and a girl from Holland who also never wanted to speak Spanish.  As I sat in my room, there was no guitar music and no “holas” as the main door opened and closed.  Two days later, I passed my dueña in the hall and spontaneously asked her if I could move back downstairs.  I used the fact that the two girls always spoke English as my excuse (Middlebury does have a rule that we can’t live with native English speakers, though they never actually check up on it), though everyone knew that I actually just liked it down here better. 

So now here I am, in my tiny, yet adequate room, living with Alba, Joaquin, Sofia, Gabriel, Gema, and Ruben – and I love it.  The piso is very long – it’s basically one hallway with all of the rooms, including the living room and the kitchen, behind doors.  My room opens up to a big garden between a bunch of apartment buildings, which is great because it’s really quiet, as opposed to the other side, which is right on a pretty busy street.  One day I’ll try to get up pictures, but for now, use your imagination – it’s probably making it better than it is.  We do have Nintendo 64 though… and a dishwasher.  And an oven, which is apparently uncommon here.  The washer is in the kitchen, and when it’s done (after the spin cycle that sounds like it’s going to lift the whole building off the ground) I hang my clothes on a line outside the kitchen window in a little internal courtyard-type space that goes up all eight floors (being on the first floor, we don’t get a lot of sun in our kitchen).

We have two of everything: bathrooms, refrigerators, microwaves, tvs… but there are seven people that live here, so it doesn’t seem to extravagant.  Trust me, it’s not.  Let’s just say that it’s a very good thing that the dueña cleans the common area twice a week.  But alas, it’s home and every day when I walk in the main doorway and say hello to the door lady as she sits there smoking and watching Mexican soap operas, and then unlock the door to one of my roommates watching MTV or the news, I do feel that this is a great place for me.

Lisbon

Two weekends ago, two friends and I did a very college-student-in-Europe-for-a-semester thing: we hopped on a bus at 11:00 on a Thursday night, attempted to sleep there for nine hours, and emerged from the bus station in Lisbon, Portugal as the sun was rising.  It wasn’t too bad (though we did plan a nap into our afternoon), plus we got super cheap transportation, three FULL days in Portugal, and two fewer nights of hostel to pay for. 

We had to wait for the metro to open, after which we took our things to the hostel, which had an incredible location on the busy walking street in the tourist area of Lisbon and just one block from its big famous square and… the ocean!  The hostel was really great – some friends of ours had stayed there a few weeks before and highly recommended it, and it is definitely worth its top spot on the hostel rankings for the entire continent of Europe.  The guy greeted us warmly despite the early hour, showed us around the hostel, and gave us a suggestion of where to go for breakfast (when it opened, of course).  We still had over an hour before pretty much anyone in Lisbon was even awake, but it was great to see the city completely without people.  In Madrid, early mornings and I are not well acquainted.  After checking three times, to the angry glares of the owner of the supposedly famous pastelería (Portugal is famous for its pastries, and every city has its own specialty), we were finally welcomed into a place that did indeed deserve to be the meeting spot of famous Portuguese intellectuals in the past. 

That morning, we hopped on an old-fashioned tram, for which apparently Lisbon is famous (turns out I knew absolutely nothing about Lisbon before going there), and went to Belém, where there is a massive monastery and a tower from which there’s an awesome view.  Somehow we unknowingly accompanied a Portuguese school group into the monastery and didn’t have to pay, which was great, but then we felt obligated to follow the group around for a while so we didn’t seem suspicious.      

La Torre

After the tower and endless comments of how great it was to see the ocean, we stopped by apparently the MOST FAMOUS bakery in Portugal (they were quite adamant about it), and the Lisbon custard pastries were indeed special.  A run in the warm sun through the narrow windy (and hilly, to my contentment) streets of Lisbon’s old neighborhoods and a nap led me to the evening, when the hostel employees made us a typical Portuguese dinner, which it turns out involve a lot of socializing, an open flame in the living room, and an endless supply of sausage and wine.  The people staying in our hostel we so interesting and fun, and dinner was a wonderful way to meet them all.  Then we met up with some of Thomas’s friends through an organization whose goal is basically to create worldly people by building international relationships between kids (he spent summers in Brazil and Germany and knows people all over the world).  In Lisbon, everyone just drinks in the streets because it’s warm enough, and it was quite a sight.

Zack, Claire, Thomas, me, and Ben wandering
around Lisbon (Zack and Thomas are in the
Middlebury program with me and we met
Claire and Ben there)

Saturday we went to a street flea market where they literally sell everything (the guy at the hostel was actually not kidding), and then just made our way around the various viewpoints and sights of Lisbon.  In the afternoon, we went to a free wine tasting.  Portugal is very into its wines, and it was great to learn about them all – they’re all so different, and there they don’t classify them by the grapes, but rather by the region in which they were grown.  They have such a unique system and such unique wines (port for one).  We had such a great time hanging around the hostel that we returned, picking up roasted chicken for dinner at the most highly recommended place by everyone in the hostel (there was a group of Australian guys who had eaten it “no less than six times”). 

The last day, Zach and I took a tour through the hostel around the peninsula on which Lisbon lies.  We went to Sintra, which was the summer spot for the king, and so is not only a posh area, but also has some pretty great castles and gardens.  The first was actually on top of a mountain, and we chose to forgo the inside of the castle for the opportunity to climb through the forest to the highest point to see the view.  Apparently no one else wanted to do this, as we were the only ones, and it was quite worth it – plus being in actual nature was a nice reprieve from my current big city life.  Then we went and had a great lunch, followed by Sintra’s famous local pastry, and moved on to another palace/garden, but this was special.  I think the guy that built this one would have been my friend, because his gardens were SO COOL.  It was built on a hill, and there were caves connecting various parts of the gardens.  Then we drove through the mountains and along the coast to the westernmost point in Europe, a very windy (there’s nothing to protect it) and stunning array of cliffs over the ocean.  Someday I would love to hike the trails that I saw running along this coast. 

We then hopped back into the van, stopping to see a Portugal beach, which would surely be superb on a slightly warmer day.  Nonetheless, Gudrun, my new German friend, and I did the typical run through the sand to test the water barefoot thing.  The kite surfers and wind surfers were having a hay day.  The last spot was Cascais, which is the famous ritzy summer getaway for Portugal.  We had the best ice cream in the world (“well, definitely top 100,” said our driver) as we watched the sun set over the port.  It was a good day, and definitely one to make us pass out on the bus that we had to catch at 9:30 that night back to Madrid. 

At 9:30 the next morning, I was in class learning about the EU and wishing that I had listened to my hostel friends’ requests to stay one more night.  

Update 1: School

Rather than write a silly little anecdote to describe my time here, I think I'll just give some general updates in the significant parts of my life:

School:

Despite what you may think after looking through all my pictures, I do go to school here.  Middlebury has its own center in Madrid with a support staff that is there only for us.  It's a small but nice space, with a small library, computer lab, lounge, and three classrooms.  The staff is great, the director is this soft-spoken man whose primary job I'm pretty sure is to walk around and make sure that no one speaks English.  The associate director, on the other hand, is a wonderful woman named Patricia who is constantly asking us how life is and if we have any questions - I think it's her primary job to give us a remote clue as to how to live in Spain.  English is prohibited in the center, and all the classes are in Spanish with professors from Spain.

My primary classes are Spain and the European Union, Advanced Spanish Syntax, and Art History in the Museums of Madrid.  My Spanish professor talks SO fast, but I suppose that's appropriate for someone trying to improve our Spanish.  Her name is Beatriz (we call them all by their first name, which I love), and she's pretty aggressive - a common Madrid trait - and gives no sympathy to cultural differences, so a lot of the students don't like her, but I'm a fan, though that might also be because her subject is nit-picky grammar things which are right up my alley.  The things that she teaches are basically all of the tiny things that are so hard to explain and so subjective that our high school and intro college teachers just decided to skip over them (such as the personal 'a' if that means anything to you).  But after every class, I feel like I am so much closer to understanding the convoluted jumble that is constantly spouted at me from every direction here.  Don't get me wrong, I understand most things, but it's not because I understood every word and the structure of their sentences, it's because I found a noun and a conjugated verb and put two and two together.  When I listen to my roommates talk among each other, for instance, I just can't help but think that I'll never be able to do that, but syntax is helping...

In Art History, we spend every Monday looking at powerpoints of paintings with the lights off, and every Wednesday walking around one of Madrid's three famous museums, which as students we always enter for free.  Needless to say, I think Wednesdays are better.  Our professor's name is Julia, and the six members of our class have yet to figure out if she loves us or hates us, though we tend to lean toward hate more than love.  She is very calm and friendly, but comes across as extremely passive aggressive sometimes, and we're not sure if it's just because she wants us to learn stuff or if she's just fed up with us being pathetic and not knowing anything.  Either way, she's brilliant - last week, she drew a map of the entire Spanish royal lineage since the 18th century from memory, which includes quite a bit of incest, and basically only four names: Fernando, Carlos, Felipe and Isabel.  It's really fun to go to the museums because we've already studied the paintings and we have our own personal tour guide - the problem is going to be remembering everything that she tells us on our upcoming test.  Art history is a crazy subject - there are so many aspects to it that I have no idea what to think about.  A painting is a result of the evolution of art, the artist's personal history, the political and social history of the area where it was painted or where the artist has been, and so much more.  It's fascinating, but impossible to study - plus they don't put the museums in chronological order, so my understanding of time periods gets seriously jumbled each Wednesday.  (Side note: when she occasionally says something in English, her voice and accent are tremendously British.  Best word: Enlightement.)

Because I have an internship on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I opted to take the EU class at NYU, which has a similar program to Middlebury's with their own academic center, and we can cross-enroll.  The professor teaches the exact same class at Middlebury, but the NYU time just worked out better.  At NYU, there are only 5 girls in the class, and it's a wonderful class - the professor, Tomás, is a short pot-bellied, overly passionate man, not unlike some of my favorite professors and teachers of the past.  Every day when we get there, he asks us to move the desks in closer, so that the five of us are literally jammed up at the very front of the room, inches from his face.  It is easy to see that the world’s problems weigh him down, and he has made it his goal to get us to understand them and solve them – when he wants to emphasize something he says it in Spanish and then repeats it in English.  We spent the first three weeks trying to gain an understanding of what is happening with the EU right now.  It’s a great subject to study because everything is so new, but as he said, it’s awful to teach because a meeting that is happening this afternoon may change everything that he taught us this morning.  He came in one day and said, “Well my map is now outdated, because they just admitted Croatia into the EU.”  Now, however, we’ve gone back in time and we’re looking at World War II, which is an interesting place to start to study the EU, which didn’t exist until the late 50’s, but after studying it, I can see how the internal tensions and the Communist influence during the Cold War play a role in the EU today.

The view from a hill in a park during Jorge's walk.
Not all the best places in Madrid are in the center!

In addition to these three, I have a biweekly culture seminar, taught by one of the nicest and friendliest Spaniards I’ve met (Jorge).  In our Tuesday evening sessions, we learn about the things that will make us better at speaking Spanish that don’t involve words.  Understanding the culture is so important to speaking a language that if you do it right, your imperfect (or total lack of) use of the subjunctive goes unnoticed.  For this class, we have to write a blog in Spanish twice a week (the link to mine is on the sidebar if you feel so inclined).  Many of the recent themes have involved cultural clashes, so don’t be alarmed if they seem negative.  He has also mapped out walks for us to take outside of central Madrid, one of which we did last week, and it was really interesting to see the suburban, built-in-the-70’s, tourist-free Madrid. 

My schedule on Mondays and Fridays (the only days that I have class except the seminar) is:

7:45   Alarm

8:55   Run out of the apartment (or tiptoe rather, as everyone else is still snoozing)

9:05   Jump on the blue line with the thousands of other people going the same place I am for the day

9:30   EU class with Tomás at NYU

11:00 Depending on the day possibly stop by my favorite pizzeria/cafeteria (coffee shop), where the waiters at the bar already remember me (I tend to stand out).  If not, hop on the bus to Middlebury, where I hang out until grammar.

12:30 Spanish class at Middlebury.

2:00   Head home (walk if it’s nice) to eat and hang out until art, or just stay at Middlebury to do work.

5:30   Art history with Julia

7:00   Emerge from a classroom or museum with a head full of Spanish art.

1:30   Bedtime (that’s a story for another day)

I'm Bad at This.

While I've been saying that I'm going to catch up for the last three weeks, apparently this has proven to be a task too daunting for me.  In the meantime, I'm much better at putting up pictures, which tell my story as good, if not better, than I can (especially considering that I haven't really told my story much).  Therefore I offer you my photos, which should keep you interested for a bit.  Each link is to a different album, and they're in chronological order.

Album 1

Album 2

Album 3

Album 4

Grocery Shopping

My neighborhood, while a little further away from the center of Madrid nightlife, is where the actual people live, which means that things like grocery stores, book stores, zapateros*, and mechanics are just a hop, skip and a jump away (though probably won't be needing a mechanic any time soon).  When I first moved in, after having eaten croissants for breakfast and bocadillos (sandwiches) for lunch every day, all I wanted was to start eating normal food again.  There are three grocery stores within half a block of my piso, but I chose the closest one.

Notable differences in Spanish grocery shopping:
A.  You cannot take bags other than purses into the store, so they have little lockers at the entrance that you deposit 1 euro into, put your bags in it, take the key, and then get your euro back when you leave.
B.  Everyone has these little carts to carry their groceries in, because not having cars means that they have to lug their groceries back to their apartment.  These aren't allowed in either, so they have these chain things with a similar locker system where they lock them up.
C.  You have to pay for all plastic bags in Spain (yay for the environment!!!). I think they're 5 cents.
D.  The cashier doesn't weigh your produce... you do.  They have the scales just like in our stores, but you type in the code of the fruit and it prints out a sticker. You could definitely cheat this system, but there seem to be a lot of opportunities to cheat the system here, and it still works out alright.
E.  Milk comes unrefrigerated in a box here, which is sort of weird.  You have to refrigerate it once you open it, but there's something about a whole aisle of milk boxes that says, "welcome to somewhere that is not America."
F.  The regular cheese, our equivalent of Kraft cheddar, is Manchego - I'm in heaven.
G. They're all about the canned fish here.  My curiosity got the best of me and I splurged on a 1 EUR three-can pack of calamari 'in its ink.'  I haven't thrown away the two remaining cans... yet.
H. Bread comes with the crust pre-removed - reminds me of elementary school.

Notes:
*Zapatero = shoemaker.  Quick story about shoemakers: The zipper on one of my new boots broke (possibly to my own blame), and there is a giant sign about zipper repairs on the first floor of my building, so I thought, 'how perfect - the 1 Hora Arreglas lady can hook me up!' But she didn't have the right sewing machine for shoes, so she sent me to a shoemaker.  It was a tiny little shop just up the street and smelled SO strongly of leather - it was pretty cool.  I gave them my boot, came back two days later and ta-dah!

Take-aways from this experience:
1) Zapatero, in addition to being the former Spanish president, is also a fun word to say.  "Stopped by the zapatero this morning..."
2) Shoemakers are amazing! I don't really consider shoes a fixable thing (probably because I buy the cheap ones), but watching him just recreate a heel while I stood there was pretty cool.

Piso Hunting

The first morning of orientation was as was to be expected: several lectures on academics, safety, rules, and general information.  The Middlebury center is basically just a large office space with a little library, three aulas (classrooms), a kitchen/lounge area, a computer lab, and some offices.  It's kind of funny to think that that space is where I'll be going to school for the next semester, but for 17 people, it is more than adequate.

Then the exciting part began.  They broke us into smaller groups and we began the daunting process of finding a room to rent for all non-homestay students somewhere in Madrid.  The only requirement was no native English speakers in the piso (apartment).  There were four "ayudantes" - or helpers - helping us with the process.  Renting a room in an apartment in Madrid is not uncommon, and there are a bunch of websites devoted to people renting out rooms or looking to rent a room in the city.  We spent the first afternoon in the computer lab, yelling out neighborhoods or streets aloud to get the "sí" or "no."  If we found one that looked good, the ayudantes would call to verify that it would work for us and to set up appointments.  This proved harder than one might think - a lot of people rejected us simply because we're American, some because we're students, some because they wanted more than a five-month commitment, some weren't yet available, and lots had already been rented.  Nonetheless, they managed to arrange a full schedule of visits for Tuesday (following a brutally long morning in the cell phone store getting phones for everyone).  


We literally ran to the first piso from the cell phone store; it was quite amazing how quickly Inés and Irene (the helpers) could move - and Inés can't be more than 4'10".  It was all for naught though, because the guy had already gone when we got there.  Piso #1: fail.  Then we split up again, three of us with Inés and the other three with Irene.  Piso #2 was pretty nice - it had five bedrooms, but none of which were filled except for that of the casera (landlady).  Other than the kitchen, however, it didn't have a common space.  There was one room that was really nice, with access to the huge terrace and tons of sun - you could tell had definitely been the living room in the past, but had been walled off to be rented as a bedroom.  Bummer.  Piso #3 was across town and wasn't bad except that it was bad.  Then we reunited and had a great Greek lunch (the waiter was hilarious - in his down time, he stood at the opening to the very small room with a wide stance and his legs crossed like a body guard, and he offered us a round of shots at the end for the price of Inés's phone number, which she gave him for no other reason than to not spare us a "cultural experience.").  


Piso #4 was one my friend Jake had found, and it was in a great location overlooking a really popular walking street.  The best part was the landlady whose name we originally thought was Baca (which means cow), but turned out to be Paca.  She answered the door in her bathrobe and slippers (at 3:00 in the afternoon), asked Jake his name, tried to pronounce it a couple times and then just said, "what kind of name is that?"  Her husband walked in at one point and she shooed him away, saying "we're talking here, can't you see?"  And at the end, when it was decided that Jake wanted this as his room, she went over all the rules and was talking about the other members of the piso, one of which is an 18 year-old Spanish girl, but "she's too tall for you anyway."  "Don't worry," she said, "you can find a Spanish girlfriend here."


We left the building laughing out loud and excited to learn that finding a room was actually a feasible goal.  The next person wasn't there.  When we arrived at the next meeting, there was no answer to the buzz, so we called and the lady said she was on her way and would be there shortly.  A few minutes later, a man walked up and said, "Are you waiting for me?"  Surprised that a man was  the one showing us the piso when she had been talking to a woman all along, Irene said that she had been talking to a woman but that yes, we were waiting to look at a piso.  The man said that the the only piso he had for rent in this building was in the basement and had to be rented out as an entire apartment, not by room.  But, he said, he had a great studio apartment for only 700 EUR just down the street and we should check it out.  This piso had been one that I had found, and I was super confused because I know that I never would have called on a basement apartment.  We told the man that neither piso interested us and moved on toward the next meeting.  When we were in the metro, Irene got a call from the woman asking where we were.  After explaining the situation to her, she said, "that son of a b*tch has been trying to steal my clients all week."  Turns out, he lives nearby and watches for when people are waiting for her, then proposes his apartment down the street - smart, yet ineffective considering that the piso we wanted to see was rented by the room and for students...


We saw two or three more that evening, got lost trying to find what may be the smallest street in Madrid, sat awkwardly for half an hour in a living room with a bunch of students who were studying, and called it a night.  The next day was also packed with meetings, the first of which was perfect in pretty much every way except that it turned out it wasn't free until February (bummer), the second of which was perfect for my friend Erin, and the next few of which were wrong for one reason or another.  I ended the day a little frustrated because so many of my friends had managed to find great pisos and I still wasn't satisfied with any of them.  But the ayudantes reassured me, and I figured that having not found an apartment after only two days of looking really wasn't too bad after all.  


Thursday we saw probably eight pisos, the first of which went to Ian, leaving only me and Irene for the rest of the day.  One was great, but empty, which meant that I couldn't be sure with whom I was going to live.  One had pretty much zero light.  Two were huge and beautiful, and in a convent, which was weird.  We revisited the one where we had been schemed and it was great except that they wouldn't accept a five-month lease.  And the last one was great.  It wasn't available for three days or so, so the landlady (Tessie) offered another room in another apartment that she owned in the same building.


Long story short, I never left.  Well, I did, but only for two days, because the people in the first piso were so fun that I was super sad to leave them.  My room is super small, but I live with five Spanish students from all over Spain and a Korean student - while a lot of them have studied English, they only speak Spanish in the piso, which is great, and we're actually planning to go out to dinner all together tonight to celebrate most of them being done with exams (this has been Spain's finals week, so most have been in the library).  


I am quite content.  I'll add some pictures a little later - I haven't uploaded them yet.

Un Poco Tarde

I should have started this a while ago, but one of the few things that is still the same with my life in Madrid is that I never stop moving.  A few of my friends from Pomona and I stayed at Las Musas Hostel for the first few days and had a blast.  I´ve never stayed in a youth hostel, but I´m convinced they´re the coolest thing ever.  Among my new friends: Pablo and David from Argentina, Gustavo who goes to Redlands but is studying in Morocco for the year, Sarah from Toronto, and Antonio the official party guy of the hostel.

Our very energetic tour guide

The journey from home to hostel was lengthy, but after sitting next to a guy (who ironically happened to be from Madrid) on my San Fran to DC flight who was headed to India and had a 7-hour and a 10-hour flight ahead of him, I decided that it really wasn´t that bad.  Actually, the most difficult part of the journey proved to be the shuttle ride.  Our driver was a toothless, yet well-dressed Spanish man who could not for the life of him figure out where our hostel was (I don´t blame him with the amount of tiny streets in Madrid).  We stopped at least three times to ask random people on the street where to go and, about an hour later, happened upon the hostel miraculously.  Having not slept in about 18 hours at that point, I was a little weary, but took that to be my introduction to the habitual lack of sleep for which the Spaniards are so famous.  We joined a walking tour of the city, which turned out to be three hours long, but was a great introduction to central Madrid and its history.  After guilt-tripping us into paying her by comparing her performance to that of a beer in euros, our friendly tour guide led us to a restaurant with a Menú del Día (the most common way to get lunch here, which is a prix-fixe menu including drinks, 1st and 2nd courses, dessert, and coffee).  It was pretty good, though we were a little bummed when the waitress brought my friend Zach steak instead of the rabbit that he ordered - that had taken up the majority of our table talk as we waited for the food, and then it didn't even happen.

Churros!

The first couple days were wander-aimlessly-around-Madrid days.  Despite my over 24 hours without sleep, I stayed strong, and that night all of the Pomona kids in Madrid united for Churros and Chocolate.  Then, Karina, Cati and I went to tango night at another hostel.  While there, we met Pablo and David and went out for drinks after.  The next morning we ventured to The Rastro, a blocks-long flea market in the narrow windy streets of the La Latina district.  It was another great way to begin our time in Madrid, there were street performers everywhere and they sold everything from used sweaters to crystals.

Bexers or Boxes? You pick.