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.