Madrid, Spring 2009

Home

This is weird.  

3 days ago I was in Rome making meals out of gelato and wishing at fountains.  

2 days ago I was in Madrid eating chinese food under Plaza de España and saying goodbye to my señora.

Yesterday I played futbolin at SLU Madrid and ambled around sol and through Plaza Mayor one last time.

Now, a sleepless night and a sleepless 10 hour flight later I’m home, sitting in my bed in Houston which has inexplicably been given a purple lotus flower comforter (and sheets to match) by my mother in my absence.

I have slept in a lot of different beds the past four months.  Sometimes I try to remember them.  Beds mark the beginning and ends of days, and in trying to remember and hang on to every minute of every day of the past semester I figure maybe it’s helpful, or necessary, to start at the end and beginning.  

Sharing a cramped yet comfortable (cozy?) bedroom in Bologna, Italy exactly one week ago, Greg, Chris and I shared some pillow talk about the nature of memories.  How memories are fragmented by nature, how it’s easiest to remember how things look and harder to remember how things smell or feel, and how that’s kind of sad.  I can’t remember every detail of January-May, but maybe that’s okay— we agreed memories are never really lost, and that often times memories are better left to be triggered and serve as random reminders days, months or even years later.

Like the May morning I sat in spanish class, lightly tapping my feet an anticipation of 11:50 only to notice a bit of dust rising from each beat in a sun beam from the window, and only later still realizing that that was not just any dust, but that I’d worn those shoes over Spring Break and managed to coat them with sand while riding a camel around the Great Pyramid in the crumbly Cairo desert.

Or like just a few hours ago, when I was more concerned with trying to carry my overweight suitcase up to my front door than trying to remember the perfumery of the honeysuckle and wildflowers lining the Cinque Terre, but couldn’t help but recall that beautiful hike in passing my mother’s favorite rose bush, in full Spring bloom, as it caught my nose through the sticky Houston air.

And now, sitting in my bed, my Houston bed, I can’t help but think of the many other beds I started and ended my days in the past four months.  More often than not, a bed is just a bed, a place to sleep (though at times a sketchy one, in the roughest neighborhood in Athens just around the corner from a few gentlemen shooting heroin on the hood of a car— at least it was only 11 euros/night).  But to me, this bed, my home bed, though strangely adorned in a purple lotus flower comforter with matching sheets, marks a final beginning and end to the past four or so months.  

I remember well waking up in this bed for my flight to Madrid via London heathrow back in January, reluctant to finish packing, impossibly trying to imagine the coming months.  And now I’m here, back to the headboard, reluctant to start unpacking, impossibly trying to begin to understand the past four months. 

Above all though, beds are for sleeping, and so I’m off to do that, and for a long time, jet lag or no jet lag.  

More tomorrow.

Hala Madrid!

P.S.  I realize I have not blogged in over two months, and that this blog has been dead for as long.  I have always had my journal with me, and have plenty to tell about what I’ve been up to since March.  The hardest part about this blog has always been uploading pictures, as I have so many and editing and uploading take a long time and got the better of me.  The next few weeks I plan on typing up some entries and uploading some pictures and filling in the blanks.  After that, it’ll look like I was a perfectly responsible blogger and no one will be the wiser.  

Cool!

15 days

since my last blog.

Oops.

To be fair, the past two weeks have been busy with tests and papers and making travel plans and a ridiculous weekend on Spain’s southern coast. I’d try and type up a nice update right now, but tonight I need to pack and get some sleep before I start my spring break.  Tomorrow I fly to Athens, Greece; after a weekend in Athens the plan is to take a daytrip to Delphi and then another daytrip dotting through a few islands in the Mediterranean.  At the end of next week I’ll fly to Cairo, Egypt to ride camels and see the pyramids and swim in the Nile, all while trying to keep my pocketbook secure and my livelihood intact. With any luck, I’ll be on the tarmac at Barajas airport around 3:45 am Monday morning, just in time for a few hours of sleep before my Spanish class at 11.

I will have my laptop the whole time so hopefully I can do some writing here and there and post pictures as my week unfolds.

Until then!

This blog is

not dead.

Not yet anyway! This week and next week are midterms so I am on the busy side but this weekend looks to be laid back so expect big things!

Normal Things

In an effort to make this blog more than just a once-a-week log of what I did over the weekend, this post will involve no mention of planes or trains or traveling or airports—just some thoughts on Madrid and Spanish life.

PDA

The Spanish are an affectionate people— the double cheek kiss is commonplace and people are generally more intimate in conversation, etc. That’s only the start of it. People shamelessly make out/neck/snog/whatever on the metro, waiting for the metro, on park benches, at McDonald’s, buying cigarettes, everywhere. It’s kind of shocking at first, but after a while it becomes endearing in a Spanish, oh gross, seriously though stop it kind of way.

Really, it’s fine.

House Slippers

If you are planning on studying abroad in Spain, make sure you pack a pair of house slippers. My first week here, my señora saw me in the apartment barefoot and said walking around without my slippers was suicide because the floor was freezing and that I’d catch a cold through my feet. More than that, they’re considered a necessity because feet are dirty and it’s just the polite/right thing to do. Pack house slippers.

How to Sound Like a Local

In Spain, the spanish equivalent of “yeah” or “right” is “vale”. In Spain the ‘v’ is more like a ‘b’, so it’s pronounced something like “bah-leh”. I probably hear the word “vale” about 800 times a day. People also like to say “claro” a lot, which translates as “clearly” but is generally used to affirm anything/everything. Also, where we say “uh…” as a filler word, they say “es que…” and “pues….” Spanish made easy!

Tuesdays at Harry’s

Lately (or the past two weeks anyway), Tuesday night has meant going to Harry’s bar down the street, getting drinks and having awesome jam sessions. Last Tuesday’s jam was strictly The Beatles, but last night we spread our musical wings a little bit and played songs that included but were not limited to: Tiny Dancer, Stacy’s Mom, Louie Louie, Your Song, Don’t Stop Believin’, and Closing Time. And of course we played a good sampling of The Beatles’ catalogue as well. Late Tuesday nights at Harry’s make for interesting Wednesdays, but if it became a routine I think I’d be okay with it.

Okay, my spanish homework won’t do itself, but more tomorrow. Also stay tuned for pictures from Barcelona!

Lucerne and Zurich, Switzerland

Last weekend 8 pals and I decided to do something crazy and see what Switzerland was all about. Before this past weekend, in my mind at least, Switzerland was a snowy, neutral, alpy country where people made knives and toblerone during the week and yodeled in the mountains on the weekends. Also something about bank accounts. While I found out that there is definitely no shortage of army knives and chocolate there, I also learned something else about Switzerland— the people are genuinely kind and the country is genuinely beautiful.

Friday

On Friday, we caught a 9 am flight to Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland. From there we took a one hour train ride to Lucerne, a popular destination well known for being on a nice lake/being in the shadow of the alps/being awesome. After consulting the totally-vague-yet-somehow-extremely-accurate walking directions from the train station to our hostel (“The lake is in front of you and the river to your left. Follow the river until you see a wooden bridge with a large water tower in the middle of it…”), we made our way to the hostel, dropped off our bags and had a nice lunch. Here’s a (crappy) picture of Lucerne and one of its 14th century wooden bridges.

(Unfortunately the memory card with most of my Lucerne pictures was corrupted so this is like the only photo I have of the city.)

After lunch, we headed back to our hostel to check in and were greeted by maybe the nicest man in Switzerland. The hostel owner was incredibly friendly, accomodating, and he even reserved us a table for 9 at a great, legit restaurant for dinner that evening. After relaxing for a few hours, we went to explore the town and enjoy a fondue dinner by candlelight.

Friday night ended with a few more drinks at a bar and a good night’s sleep in preparation for a big day on the mountain.

Saturday

I’ll cut to the chase. On Saturday we went up 7000 feet by gondola, above the cloud layer, above the altitude over which only really pretty things like the Swiss Alps can exist, to the top of Mount Pilatus. Pictures really do not do our day justice, but we can try anyway.

Going up through the fog and clouds. At times we couldn’t even see the cables that pulled the gondolas up. Crazy!

The last leg of the gondola ride after breaking through the clouds. It looks like the ocean or something.

7000 feet later.

Insane. The peaks poking through the clouds look just like islands and the clouds look like water. 

We’d had plans to go sledding or tobogganing that afternoon, but after understanding exactly what we were in for, we were all perfectly content to take a 2-3 hour lunch outside and just soak it all in. Below are pictures of our delicious beer and meat/cheese plates.

Tasty.

After spending all morning and afternoon on Mount Pilatus, we headed back to our hostel, grabbed our bags and took the train back to Zurich. Our hostel in Zurich proved to be kind of hard to find, but after some teamwork and a little while wandering around in the cold we eventually found it. Saturday night we spent at an amazing, super Swiss restaurant that had really great food and probably my favorite beer I’ve ever had: Schneider Weisse Original. Dinner consisted of pork ribs, potatoes and sauerkraut. So good. After dinner Josh, Chris, Ruthie and I went to a bar or two while the other 5 girls went back to the hostel to get some rest. We actually ended up going back to the restaurant where we had dinner because we so badly wanted more Schneider Weisse. After many more drinks and a nice cab ride courtesy of Alex from Nigeria, we made our way back to the hostel in time for a few hours of sleep before our morning flight back home to Madrid.

On Mount Pilatus, it was very refreshing to see rows and rows of seated elderly Swiss people facing the sun/view just sipping on their coffees and listening to a guitarist and accordion player all day long. Chris and I agreed that after we retired, we would definitely celebrate with a trip back to Lucerne.

After a great Swiss weekend, this week has already offered new, fun happenings to my already busy Madrid day. On Monday, my friend Katie Becherer and I taught our first English as a Second Language course. The courses are offered for free from SLU Madrid; as such, the students vary widely in both age and level. Our class has students aged 16-54. Katie and I were assigned the “Intermediate” level english class, which was lucky because I’ve heard that the beginning classes can be pretty difficult to teach. Things are a bit ambiguous— Katie and I are in charge of our syllabus and make our own lesson plans and can essentially do anything we want. Also, we heard that we would be teaching the classes a bit late and ended up planning out our 7 pm class at around 6:30. Monday evening involved introductions and trying to get on the good sides of our 18-20 students.

After Monday, I will admit that while I felt confident about the class going well, I still felt nervous about our next class on Wednesday. However, this evening’s class was amazing— after doing some exercises about our daily routines, Katie and I proposed a writing activity that I actually did in my spanish class the week prior. Each student was to take out a piece of paper and copy a sentence that we’d written on the board. Today, we came up with “Kate and Albert rode their bikes to El Corte Inglés.” (El Cote Inglés is the biggest department store here in Madrid). After they copied the sentence, they were told to add another sentence of their own, making it the beginning of a story. After they’d written their own sentence, they swapped papers with one another over and over, each time adding the next sentence of a story written by different members of the class. 

It ended up going better than we could have ever imagined. All of the students were totally into it, laughing the whole time and enjoying each others’ contributions. I noticed two businessmen in their twenties who were giggling the whole time and it reminded me of myself and Greg doing the same exercise the week before in our own class. Anyway after 15-20 minutes of writing the students got to read their stories aloud. My favorite story involved me falling off my bike, breaking my leg, having flowers sent to me in the hospital from Penelope Cruz and falling in love. We didn’t get a chance to hear about half of the stories tonight, but I’m excited to hear what they came up with next Monday.

This weekend we are headed to Barcelona. I’ll let you know how that goes!

PS Happy 21st Paul! We’ll have to do a sake bomb at Blue Fish next time we’re both in Houston (whenever that may be).

Monasterio de Piedra; Toledo

I know, I know. I am bad at blogging. The truth is, I feel like I have been doing so much that to try and remember and blog all of it is so tall an order that I am often discouraged from even trying.

Anyway, tonight I’m playing catch up.

Monasterio de Piedra

Last weekend (which seems so long ago) I took a Saturday day trip to Monasterio de Piedra, 250 km Northeast of Madrid. The monastery was founded in 1194 by thirteen Cistercian monks. The monastery itself has somewhat decayed— the actual church was destroyed in the early 19th century. That so much of it has survived so long and so well is amazing in itself. 

More striking than the monastery itself was the place that surrounded it. Monasterio de Piedra translates as “Monastery of the Rock”. The monastery is enveloped by cliffs, caves and hills and carved by all kinds of waterfalls and rivulets. It was all sorts of unreal.

Toledo

Sunday I went to Toledo. Toledo is a city 70 km south of Madrid famous for the art of sword making, “La Convivencia,” or the coexistence of people from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths, and being the city the artist El Greco lived. There’s also an amazing cathedral there too. Unfortunately pictures weren’t allowed in the cathedral and it was raining for much of the morning. By the afternoon it cleared up enough to enjoy a great (cheap!) lunch and a bottle of wine and to get some shots around the city.

The next few weeks will be pretty travel-heavy. Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Switzerland for the weekend and next weekend I’ll be in Barcelona. Hopefully I’ll have the following weekend to relax in Madrid before I head to the big Carnival in Cádiz. It’s proving to be tough to maintain a good balance between traveling and staying in Madrid— people are constantly traveling everywhere and it’s hard to resist going to Switzerland or Morocco or Lisbon on a whim. Madrid is awesome to live in and learn in though, and is much more than a simple launching pad for other trips. I’m thinking these consecutive weekends away will make me appreciate it even more.

Oh! Last night I tried my hand at busking in the metro for the first time. I chose the Alonso Martinez metro stop since it has three lines running through it and I figured there would be a decent amount of traffic moving through— I was right. At first, I wasn’t really sure of what to do. I kind of walked around surveying the different tunnels until I just picked a spot and sat down. I started playing a few songs I’d recently written, but people either walked by without looking or gave me a small smile and went on their way. After a couple of songs I decided to play some Beatles songs (since The Beatles transcend language/time/love/whathaveyou) and the change started to drop. All in all, after 35-40 minutes of playing I’d made 13-14 euros. Not too bad! Since people could hear me before they saw me, It was fun to see people rounding the corners tapping along with the beat or even singing a little bit. It was definitely fun and I plan on doing it again, and often.

Anyway, when I’m not busy busking or jumping on trains, buses and planes, I’m probably in class or having a drink with some friends in the early afternoon/late evening. Even though I feel like I am accomplishing a lot, my lifestyle here is still very relaxed and laid back.

It’s European. And Spanish.

And Awesome.

Tengo prisa

The weather in Madrid has been a little weird. It’s warmed up into the 50s, but it’s been rainy and kind of dreary the past few days, making the 15-20 minute walk to school less than ideal. Today was especially windy; I can hear the wind knocking over trashcans on the street below my bedroom. It sounds a little like thunder.

Things have gotten a little busier here. After a first week for orientation, two days of classes and consecutive nights of going out, this second week here in Madrid has been a little bit more rounded. First, I have kind of learned my daily routine for school days— for most here, a day of class involves arriving at 10 or 11 and an hour or two between classes in the afternoon. This first week anyway, it seems like most people just stay at school during those short breaks to grab lunch or a drink and to get some work done. It’s nice, and definitely laid back but being at school all day reminds me a little bit of high school. It’s not bad, but being at/around school from 11-5 or 6 is definitely different from going home between classes. I like it though— I get my homework done so I can go out in the evenings and it’s fun to kill time in the afternoon at one of the many bars around campus. How European.

Other than class, it’s been fun to continue to learn Madrid. Since most people only have class Monday-Thursday, it seems like Friday will be a day for recovering from Thursday night and spending the afternoon around the city. This afternoon, I met Chris and Josh in Sol for lunch at a pizza place that was both delicious and cheap. I didn’t have my camera, but we each got a great thin-crust pizza and a drink for 5 euros each. During lunch, we figured out that  El Prado (the big, super legit art museum here) is free from 6-8 every evening. We decided to go, leaving us 3-4 hours to kill in the city centre. We kind of just walked around and window shopped for an hour or so, and then we went to Retiro, the biggest park in Madrid. Even though it was kind of a gray, windy day it was still gorgeous and we anticipated many weekend afternoons spent with our guitars and a bottle of wine canoeing around in the water and enjoying the Spanish spring (which I’m told will come sooner or later). After enjoying Retiro, we stopped for a quick drink and then made our way to El Prado.

El Prado is huge and filled with all sorts of paintings, it’s kind of overwhelming. Being as economical as we are, we decided rather than try and see everything in two hours we’d just make our way back on separate evenings after 6 to take it in for free. We saw a lot of religious paintings by Spanish artists; a lot of them were absolutely enormous, and I recognized a few from my Art History textbook from senior year of high school. Anyway, it was kind of crowded and we were tired from being out all day so we left a little bit early knowing we’d be back soon.

Tomorrow (Saturday) and Sunday I am going on day-trips to a town whose name I can’t remember but is apparently really pretty and Toledo. Next weekend a few of us are going to Zurich, Switzerland and then the weekend after that we’ll be in Barcelona. My camera battery charger will see a lot of use these next few weeks. In the meantime, now that things have settled down a little bit I hope I can keep up with this blog better. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot but I’d hate to forget any of it. Keep me accountable!

Food and Drinks, Segovia

Agh. I am stuffed. Tonight for dinner Maria made us chicken soup, salad and croquetas— she always offers us seconds for everything and I end up having to power through the end of the meal so I don’t feel rude. Afterwards, she said she didn’t care if we finished the food, just that she didn’t want it to go to waste— I guess she means that if there are ever leftovers we can expect to have them in the next few days, which is fine with me because she’s a great cook.

I am finding out how difficult it can be to keep up to date with this blog, and how important it is that I actually do it. I haven’t blogged in only three days and I already feel like so much has happened. Here are some highlights.

Friday afternoon, Chris and I decided to do some exploring in the city centre since we don’t have class Fridays and we wanted to at least get out a little bit before dinner. After meeting in Sol, we visited Chocolateria San Gines, a really popular place in Madrid for late-afternoon snacks and early morning cure-alls. San Gines is popular for its churros— they’re essentially spanish donuts, fried until crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and served with a mug of melted chocolate for dipping. Here’s what mine looked like:

And here’s Chris enjoying his:

They were delicious. Later, we stopped into Plaza Mayor, a big square in the city centre surrounded by apartments with balconies. It’s just a big open space that’s nice for having a café con leche to pass the afternoon.

After breaking for dinner, a bunch of us met up that night at a bar in Sol called Dubliners. It was crowded, loud and full of Americans, to the point that ordering from the bar was a 20 minute ordeal and there was nothing really to it other than standing around drinking, yelling over the loudness of the place and bumping into the people crammed next to you. While it was fun to see a lot of people we knew and though the beer was pretty good (and we drank a fair amount), I don’t think we’ll frequent that place very much at all. Worse, we planned on leaving around 12 or 1 to catch the metro home since we all had to be at school at 9 the next morning for our Segovia day trip. Things didn’t go as planned, and we didn’t leave until the bar closed around 3. Only 4-5 hours of sleep before an early start and day of walking might sound miserable, but it worked out okay; it helped that Segovia was awesome.

Segovia

About an hour bus-ride north of Madrid, Segovia is a popular day-trip for its castle, cathedral and huge aqueduct. One of the most interesting things about Segovia was its general lack of cars— while there were some narrow streets around the outside of the city that cars could use, the inside of the city was mostly pedestrian walkways; it made for a quiet, lovely afternoon.

Last night Josh, Chris, Mike (Chris’s roommate) and I went to a german bar called Harry’s, which is a short walk down my street. We went on the recommendation of a friend who was here last semester, and I’m glad we did— the beer was delicious and came in litre sized glasses and the owner, Carlos, was really friendly. He even gave us free shots of 160 Proof rum mixed with some kind of coffee liqueur. Also they were on fire. He called them “cockroach shots” because after he brought them aflame to the table, he stamped them out with a coaster. We toasted to Carlos and our semester in Madrid, and despite the name (and 80% abv rum) the shots were delicious too. We’d said we needed to find our regular bar here, and in Harry’s I think we’ve found it. 

Great!

First Day

Mis Clases

After two days of orientation, today was our first day of classes. After a few days of just meeting people and getting to know the city it was tough realizing that I actually have to go to class this semester. It helps, though, that my classes (so far) are awesome. Mondays and Wednesdays I have Spanish 115 at 11, then Post-Colonial British Literature at 2:00. From what I gathered from class today, Spanish 115 will be pretty difficult. After I told our professor Olga that I’d only had one semester of experience of spanish back at the home campus, she stressed that spanish classes here are “mas, mas dificil” than the classes back in stl. I have all the motivation I need to want to learn though, so I think it’ll be a good class.

Even more interesting than the classes were my fellow students in them. They’d told us about the international student body here at SLU Madrid (among the 600 students here, more than 50 countries are represented), but it didn’t become real to me until we introduced ourselves in my two classes today. In my spanish class (about 12 people), there was a boy from Norway, a boy from China, a girl from Brazil, a boy from France and a girl from Ukraine, not to mention the 4-5 of us from the States. 6 countries between 14-15 people is pretty awesome. Things got even better in my Lit. class- during  class introductions, I met people from Portugal, Trinidad, Italy, Slovenia, Ireland, China, Zimbabwe, Spain and a few fellow Americans. All in a class of 14 people.

Ridiculous.

I think that’s one advantage of SLU-Madrid over other study abroad programs offered by SLU in other cities— not only am I having a throughly Spanish experience, but I also get to feel like I’m in the United Nations during class. Everyone I’ve met has been really friendly too; a few of us went out for a drink after my Lit. class and it was so great and interesting to hear where everyone was from and how they ended up in Madrid. I think that since SLU-Madrid is so international, students here are so used to being surrounded by people different from them every day that it makes for an incredibly convivial atmosphere. It’s really amazing to head to class and hear 5 different languages on your way there. I have three new classes tomorrow, and I feel more excited about meeting my classmates than I do about the coursework itself.

Este Fin de Semana

Since I don’t have class on Fridays, my weekend technically starts tomorrow night. This is true for a lot of other students too. Apparently in Madrid, a typical weekend night out begins with some kind of dinner (whether it be at home or having tapas at a few bars) around 10, staying at the bar until 2 or 3 and then heading to the clubs until dawn (the clubs stay open until 7 am). I think tomorrow some of us will try and pull a Madrid all-nighter; I’ll let you know how it goes.

Saturday, a lot of us signed up for a day trip to Segovia, a city about a half-hour train ride north of Madrid. It’s famous for its huge ancient Roman aqueduct, its castle and a big cathedral. Apparently it’s also gorgeous. I’ll be sure to take a lot of pictures and post them here! One of these days I’ll take some pictures of my apartment and the campus and everything else too. 

¡Hasta luego!

More of mi residencia, El Chapandaz, Aranjuez Day Trip

Mas de mi residencia

Today was the most I’ve walked in a really long time so my brain is rattled and my thoughts are scattered but I thought I’d share some more about my time living in this apartment so far.

-Mealtime here in mi casa is always a great time. Last night our dinner consisted of some kind of pumpkin purée that was delicious for the first course, ensalada for the second course, pollo y arroz for the third course and a mandarin for dessert.  Unless you are having tapas, dinner is typically served in this manner. Maria is a fantastic cook- yesterday she asked what my favorite dish of hers was so far but they’ve all been so great that I just ended up randomly picking one.  Also, I have been offered some kind of orange/mandarin at every meal I’ve had here so far; the spanish really have a thing for oranges, and I can see why— there are orange trees everywhere here, and they’re delicious.

-Utilities (gas, electricity, water) are a lot more expensive here in Spain than in the States. For example, when I want hot water for the shower, there is a manual gas water heater in the kitchen that I have to turn on before I shower. Turning it on involves the following instructions, as I understand them.

1) Turn the gas on

2) Turn some random knob from “off” to the “picture-of-a-lightning-bolt” setting

3) Strike a match and stick it in a hole in the heater far enough so a small yet still frightening fire ignites within

4) Push and hold another button for a minute or so

5) Twist the random knob from the “lightning bolt” setting to the “wavy lines” setting

6) Hope for the best

7) Go shower

8) Twist the gas off (or else the apartment explodes)

I feel a little more confident using it now that I’ve done it a few times, but it’s still scary. I am bad with flames and explosive gases.

-Today it snowed. The snowflakes were probably the biggest I’ve ever seen. It also snowed this past weekend. People here freaked out—apparently it only snows once every four years or something. Moreover, last friday 3 inches of snow fell in Madrid. Madrid hadn’t seen that much snow in ten years. Anyhow, despite the snow and not wanting my camera to get wet I snapped a few pictures of some familiar faces for any skeptics out there.

Walking from campus to the train station to take a train to the town Aranjuez.

The senator’s striking, hooded profile.

Greg and Dom.

El Chapandaz

Last night, wanting to celebrate our newfound legality a group of us ventured to a bar called “El Chapandaz,” which is a bar whose insides look like a cave. It took a while for all of us to meet (at the Moncloa metro stop, about a 10 minute train ride from my stop), but once we got together and walked to the bar we were pleasantly surprised. I didn’t bring a camera to take a picture, but here’s one someone else took:

The bar has a drink called Pantera de Leche, which translates into Panther’s Milk.  It’s got milk, cinnamon, rum, bailey’s and all sorts of other stuff in it I think.  I didn’t try it myself (I’d heard it wasn’t anything too special), but whatever it might lack in taste it makes up for itself in presentation: the mix was dispensed through a stalagtite suspended from the ceiling. Pretty swell. I opted for a pint of Amstel (which was kind of meh) and a pint of sangria (which was kind of awesome). El Chapandaz is a nice, cosy, cavey bar and we will be sure to go back.

Aranjuez

For our second day of orientation, we had more presentations in the morning and went on a day trip to the nearby town of Aranjuez in the afternoon. We took a regional train there; it was about a 40 minute train ride and we got to catch up with Ian Schillebeeckx who’d just arrived the night before. It would have been a nice visit, but it was raining. This, coupled with the superawesome temperature of 34 degrees made for a pretty miserable walkabout. Aranjuez is known for the Palacio Real de Aranjuez, a royal palace, and its surrounding gardens and strawberry fields. Unfortunately, it was way too cold to find the palace interesting and the winter time is not too kind to gardens so there wasn’t too much to really see. This was bad news bears, especially since our trip was to last five hours. We probably walked like 7-8 miles just galavanting around in the rain. It was way too miserable and rainy for me to take any pictures but here’s a pretty watermarked picture of what the palace looks like on better weather days.

My feet and legs are sore from walking around Madrid yesterday and Aranjuez today and my shoulders are sore from carrying around my backpack for two days straight. All that walking plus the two mile walk from my apartment to campus makes for a lot of walking in 48 hours! Regardless I’ve seen and done a lot and I’m excited to be here. This Saturday, a lot of us are going on a day trip to Segovia, which is supposed to be gorgeous and a lot of fun. In the meantime, hopefully I’ll get a chance to take and post some pictures of where I live and the neighborhood and SLU-Madrid campus and the surrounding area. 

Also, tomorrow is the start of classes. I don’t start until 11 everyday, and I also have Fridays off. I’m taking Spanish 115, Theo 100, a Post-Colonial Brit Lit class, Political Development in Contemporary Spain and a Digital Photography class. Mondays and Wednesdays I only have two classes and I’m done by 3 o’clock. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have class at 11 and 12:30, then at 5 and 6:30. I don’t really know what I’m going to do with so much free time- I guess we’ll find out. Wish me luck!