Bethany's European Adventure

May 13

2009-05-14T03:10:00.000-07:00

5-13
Hello everyone. This will probably be my last post in Spain. I know, sad, right. But the plus side is that I will be traveling all over Europe with one of my best friends and some loser who calls himself my brother. (Hehe…just kidding Brent. Don’t hurt me!) So I’ll just get caught up with what’s happened here in the last week and a half.
Last Friday (I think…the days get mixed up) I finally got to go to the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales. This is a monastery founded by one of the sisters of one of the kings of Spain. Her name was Juana, but I don’t remember now what her historical context was. All the studying I’ve done this week has pushed any unnecessary information out of my brain. Anyway, I had tried to go 3 times before and once it was closed and the other two times all the tours were full. I hadn’t realized it was such a hotspot! So this time I went right when it opened after siesta. There was a long line already, and by the time I got to the counter they were already on the last tour of the day! But I did get in! Seven euros later… I think that’s the most expensive museum I’ve been in! Oh, except for Schloss Schoenbrunn in Vienna, but that was an entire palace and gardens, not just a little monastery. Oh well. It was beautiful. It was more like a museum than a church, with rooms filled with paintings and portraits, and little chapels along the walls of the hallways. There was even an entire room of tapestries! I’ve decided I want a tapestry in my house. The fact that it can take several months to make one square yard and therefore are exceedingly expensive doesn’t faze me. When I win the lottery I’ll have enough money to buy a huge one to cover the whole wall! Of course if I won the lottery most of that money would probably go to paying off this trip….
Next I went to the Archeological Museum, which was really awesome. The first exhibit was of ancient Greece, and they had some of those orange and black clay pots with the sweet drawings on the side of hydras and various cool things. They looked like they were in almost perfect condition and they were amazing! I immediately thought of Tiffany; you did a project on them for Greek and Roman, right? You would have loved it! I was fascinated, staring with my nose an inch from the glass. They also had some coins from 200 BC that looked almost new! Well maybe not new, but in very good shape. Hard to believe they were over 2000 years old! There was also an ancient Egypt exhibit, with some religious statues and two sarcophagi. (Wow, I actually spelled that right!) Then there were some Roman marble statues, and some more coins, and a couple of big stone burial box/tomb/things with carved sides from the Middle Ages. One of my favorite things was a sedan chair (those chairs that rich people sit in and four slaves carry them on their shoulders) from the 1700s. It was glassed in and was gilded on the roof with painted sides. It was really beautiful. I think it would be fun to ride in one, although I don’t know that I would feel safe being carried on people’s shoulders.
After that I went to the Anthropological Museum, which had exhibits from Asia and Africa. There was also an America floor, but it was closed off. There were lots of religious statues and icons, and clothes that workmen wore and tools used to farm and weave and cook and stuff like that. It was kind of interesting, but not great. There was one room with a skeleton of a giant. It said it was 2 meters and 34 (?) centimeters, and I’m not exactly sure how tall that is, but it looked well over 7 feet. 2 meters would be 6’6”, so I guess that’s about right. They also had a mummified person, which was fairly disgusting with its mouth hanging open and its brown, flaky emaciated body. There was a part where its leg had cracked a bit and it looked like wood. Very strange. There was a skeleton of a chimp next to one of an early human, and they looked almost the same. No wonder they say we’re descended. And what I hoped were sculptures of the heads of three people, although one of them looked like it might have been real and just well preserved. All of this in a badly lit room with no one around. It was just a little creepy.
Saturday Rosaura told me that the Royal Theatre was going to be doing an opera in the Plaza del Oriente, which is the big garden/plaza between the theatre and the royal palace. I thought it would be pretty sweet to see some opera in the great outdoors, so I went. There was a stage set up with a piano, and I nabbed a seat on one of the cement walls near the palace. There were 5 singers who did various areas and duets and such, all from Mozart operas. They were all dressed up in period costumes, too. It was fun. I felt so learned; there were only 2 or 3 songs that I didn’t know. They did several things from Don Giovanni and Magic Flute, which were all the ones I knew. I don’t remember what other operas were represented. It was outside and noisy and in Spanish, so I didn’t hear everything that was said in each introduction. I had fun, though. Even though it was hot and sunny and the back of my neck got burned. Hrmmm.
After that I tried to go to the Museo Cerralba, which is the home of some famous duke or other who was filthy rich and had a huge art collection, but it was closed for reparations. I swear there isn’t a single place in Madrid that isn’t under construction!
That afternoon I went to the Museo del Traje, which is the clothing museum! It was very exciting for me! They had clothes from medieval times and the Renaissance, though not very many because there are so few existing examples. (Just think of all the clothes you’ve thrown away in your life because they’ve worn out. Then imagine having your clothes last for over 500 years!) They are very careful with the care of the clothes. The lighting is dim, and the brochure said clothes can’t be displayed for long periods of time. I don’t know if that means a few weeks at a time or what. Each room had a brochure with little pictures of everything in that room, and they were all there, so they must rotate out entire displays at a time. There was a lot of clothing from the 1700s and 1800s, and I’ve decided (for about the 10th time) that my research and sewing ability needs to stretch in that direction a bit. I would just love one of those great dresses with the big bustle in the back. Or maybe one of those classic Dickens-esque caroler dresses with the cape and the muff. Yep, that’s definitely on my list! They had a display of women’s undergarments, with an animation of their evolution from the plain chemise in the middle ages, through all of the corset years, with all the different kinds and shapes of corsets, up to the modern bra and underwear. It was interesting to see how the silhouettes changed with the styles and fashions. Only a costumer would have any interest in that, I know, but I found it fascinating. The actual examples they had were mostly from the late 1800s and early 1900s. The clothes went all the way up through modern times. There was a display of Christian Dior and some other more recent Spanish designers who I had never heard of. It’s surprising how some of the things people think are new and trendy fashions are really just butt-ugly. To be fair, there were some nice things, too, but mostly a lot of very strange dresses. They didn’t allow pictures in the museum, but the papers they had for people to take had little pictures of each item, so at least I’ll be reminded of what they looked like.
Sunday I went with Patricia and Jeanette on the Tren de la Fresa (Strawberry Train). It’s an old fashioned train, with the wooden bench seats and the coal-powered engine, black smoke, and classic train whistle, that goes to Aranjuez, a city an hour away from Madrid. Strawberries are the traditional food of Aranjuez (that and asparagus. What a combination!!), so on the way there they give everyone a box of strawberries to eat. The workers on the train (there were actually just two girls) were dressed up in costumes, from the late 1800s or early 1900s, I think. I was excited when I heard that they were going to be dressed up, but I was a little disappointed. I’m just not sure a stretch velvet skirt and an elastic-cinched waist are period, even in the 1900s. But it looked cool from a distance, at least. They divided us into two groups to see the Royal Palace, and we were in the second group, which meant we had the whole afternoon free. We went to the Royal Barge museum, which is this tiny little museum in the middle of a park that has a bunch of boats used by the royal family through the centuries on the river that runs through the city. Some of them were very nice, but others were just down right ostentatious! One of them was so covered in gold I wouldn’t have expected it to be able to float! And of course all of them had a little covered pavilion where the royal family sat, with carpeting and cushioned benches. And then outside the pavilion were the plain wooden benches where the oarsmen would sit, in four or five rows, all out in the baking sun, sweating away while the king and queen sit back and relax. The life of the royal, eh? After that we walked around a few parks and gardens, just enjoying the nice weather. We ate lunch sitting outside, and I had gazpacho for the first time. It’s delicious! I think I’m going to have to find a recipe and make it at home. In the afternoon we went to the Royal Palace. This was where the Royal family went when they got bored of their palace in Madrid, their palace in El Escorial, their other palace in Madrid, their palace in El Pardo, or any of the other various palaces they own in the area. It was very similar to the other palaces I’ve seen, so I won’t spend a lot of time describing it. The most interesting thing was that there was a Museo de la Vida del Palacio (palace life). This had things like the toys and cribs of the princes and princesses, military uniforms, furnishings, royal clothing, horse-drawn carriages (without the horses), and the wedding dresses of the current queen, her two daughters in law and someone else, I think. They were some of the royal wedding dresses that Patricia had seen when the weddings were televised, and we got to see them up close. They all had a huge train, but as far as the body of the dress they were almost all very simple and elegant. Not what I would have expected, but I approved. One of them had a collar that reminded me of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, with the deep v-neck that comes up into a high standing collar. It was kind of bizarre. But the others were beautiful. The only problem with the day was that since we were the afternoon group there wasn’t enough time to go through the guided tour and then the museum before the busses left to take us back to the train station. We had to rush through the last few rooms without really getting a good look. But other than that it was fun.
This week is exam week. I had one on Monday and Tuesday, and two on Wednesday. Monday was lit, which I wasn’t really worried about. We only had two texts to worry about, and she told us the question ahead of time. The only problem was that we had only talked one day about each play, so we didn’t have time to ask questions or clarify any questions. She spent so much time on stupid poetry that we weren’t going to be tested on anyway that the actual test material was crammed into the last two days. It was badly organized. But the test itself was fairly easy. Tuesday I had lengua, which was a composite exam of everything we’ve learned this semester. It was a lot of reviewing, but I had learned almost everything before, so I wasn’t worried. I think I did well. Today (Wednesday) I had two. Estudios Culturales was this morning, and that’s the one I was most worried about. She said we were going to have 6 questions, and we needed to study everything. Everyone was really worried cuz we’ve learned a ton of stuff, but I don’t feel like we’ve really learned it very well. And she was going on about the artwork that we saw on our two field trips to the Reina Sofia museum, where she blabbered on about some things for 10 minutes, and others she just briefly mentioned, and we looked at like 15 paintings on each of our 2 trips. She gave us a list of things to mention if we were to analyze a painting, and there were like 8 or 9 different things she wanted. So everyone was freaking out. But it turned out to be fairly easy. With the paintings, she chose two of the easy ones and just said to do a comparison. She gave us 6 questions, and we only had to answer 5. I feel like I could have answered all 5 well, so I just picked one to eliminate. So that exam was a relief. My second exam today was history. It was a similar sort of thing, where the professor said study everything and we were going to get two general questions and we had to pick one. But one of the topics to describe was Francoism, and we’ve talked about that in nearly every one of my classes, so it wasn’t hard to write a summary. Now I’ve only got my cine final left, and she said it’s going to be a personal reflection on one of the eras of Spanish film (hehe I just wrote Spanich, like spinach lol), so I think that’ll be a piece of cake. I can’t believe that at this time tomorrow I’ll be done with school!!!
This afternoon I had a very frustrating escapade. Is that the right word? Whatever, I’m using it anyway. It’s a good word. So I’ve had some trouble ordering my plane ticket from Rome to Athens. First I ordered it through edreams, which is a website that searches all the airlines and finds the cheapest flights. Great, except they need me to fax or email a scan of my passport and credit card. I don’t have a fax machine or a scanner. So I scrapped that and went directly to the Olympic Airlines website. I waited a few days to make sure that edreams didn’t charge my credit card (I still haven’t heard back from them, but there’s no reservation under my account and nothing’s showed up on my card statement), so Monday I tried to buy my ticket again. Of course the cheapest tickets are all sold out and the next cheapest ones are 160 euros instead of 90. And that’s before tax. Total it’s over 200. But Brent and Danny have already bought their tickets for this flight, so I have to get this one. I enter my credit card info and it loads for a while, and then says there was a problem with your payment info. I check the numbers and try again. Same thing. Slightly freaking out, I email my parents to tell them it’s not working and to ask if they can buy it for me (I didn’t want to wait until the price went up even more!) and the credit card company to make sure there’s not a freeze on my card. That happened last week when I was buying tickets online, but fortunately I was skyping mom at the time and the bank called just after I told her my card wasn’t working so we were able to get it fixed right away. The bank emailed me back the next day saying there was no record of a freeze, so it should be working fine. Mom was at Mayo clinic with my aunt and didn’t have a secure site to order from, and Dad was at work all day but told me his card info. So today I tried my card again just in case a miracle happened, and then tried Dad’s card. Same thing. Frustrated, I called the airline, spent 20 minutes and $20 on hold, only to be told that I can make a reservation over the phone, but in order to purchase the tickets they need a copy of my credit card. Ahh!!!! This is the reason I didn’t do the other ticket! Plus, by this time I don’t have time to mail them a copy of my credit card and get a response back by the time I leave the country, even if I did feel safe mailing that info all the way to Greece. So, almost in tears because I have no idea how I’m going to get this ticket, I go back to the computer to try again, not really expecting it to work, but hoping nonetheless. Of course it doesn’t. Brent and Danny both said they didn’t have any problems when they ordered theirs, so I asked Brent to buy mine. Hopefully it’s all resolved now, but I haven’t heard if he’s done it yet or not. I’ve got my fingers crossed!
I’m not sure how much access I’ll have to the internet over the next month, but I’m not expecting it to be much if at all. So I’ll give a quick rundown of our plans now. We’re starting in Ireland with two days in Dublin, and then we’re going to spend a day each in Galway, Doolin, Killarney, Cork, and Kilkenny. Then we’re flying into Scotland; spending two days in Edinburgh, and then going north to the Isle of Skye, Cawdor, and Loch Ness. We have an overnight bus to London, and from there we’re going to straight to Glastonbury, Cornwall, and Stonehenge. Then we’re spending two days in London. We’ve got tickets to two musicals; we’re seeing Blood Brothers and we were going to see Spring Awakening, but I just got an email today that the show is going to close early, 3 days before we get to London, so we’re probably going to see Les Miserables instead. Another great play. Next we’re off to Paris for a couple days, then a day in Berlin, and down to Munich to see the Neuschwanstein castle! After that, Venice, two or three days in Florence, two or three days in Rome, and then (hopefully, depending on these stupid tickets!) flying to Greece for a couple days in Athens. Then, on June 17th we’re taking our respective flights out of Greece, the boys to London and then on to Dublin and Chicago, and me back to Madrid to pick up my maletas, I mean suitcases (that Spanish keeps rearing its head!) and the I’ll fly back on the 18th. I’ll arrive at 10 pm, which will actually be 5 am my time. That will be fun. Then a two hour drive home and I’ll be able to sleep in my own bed, with my fluffy, not-cardboard pillow! I’m so looking forward to that. And seeing my friends and family, of course! :)
I can’t believe this semester has gone so fast. But I’m glad. I’m sort of feeling like I’ve done everything there is to do in Madrid, and I want to go see new and exciting places. Only 5 more days!! And of course I’m looking forward to coming home, but as I’m getting more excited for traveling in Europe, my homesickness is taking a backseat. Plus, I’ll be with Danny and Brent, so it’ll almost be like I’m home. At least, with people I know. Traveling alone is nice, but I’ve often wished I could be with family and friends. Yay for everything! When dad first proposed the idea of staying on for a month to travel I didn’t really take him seriously, and I never thought it would work. But I’m so glad it’s happening. I don’t expect to ever have an opportunity like this again, and if I ever do get to go back to Europe it won’t be for this long, and I won’t be able to see as much. I feel so lucky that I have this opportunity! Another thing checked off of my list of lifelong dreams! There have been so many of those in the last 4 months!
So that’s my life for the next month. I’m sure I’ll have tons of stories when I get back. I’ll try not to forget them all before I can write my next blog. Maybe I should take notes in my notebook. That’s a good idea. Oh, and I’m finally caught up with my pictures on Facebook, so if you haven’t seen them yet you can check that out. Other than that, I think I’m about done. It’s almost dinner time, so I should wrap up. I love and miss you all! I look forward to seeing you when I get back in June!
Love, Bethany

May 4

2009-05-05T04:32:00.001-07:00

Hello again
This weekend was a rather eventful one, so I’ll briefly summarize the high points. Friday was a fiesta, el Día del Trabajo. I think it’s the equivalent of Labor Day. So most of the museums and places I wanted to go to were closed. Hrmm. I went to the Iglesia de San Francisco el Grande, which was a gorgeous church covered with frescoes on the inside. There was actually a wedding going on when I was there, which was interesting. I don’t think I would have liked if people were coming and going from the church during my wedding, but there were a lot of visitors, so I didn’t feel too awkward. After that I went to the Plaza Mayor to do some touristy shopping and buy some gifts. I didn’t have anything to do that night, so I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Spanish. J It was my first Friday without choir, but I didn’t even think of it that night. I guess I’m not missing it too badly.
Saturday was another fiesta, 2 de mayo. It’s the day when some of the people of Madrid stood up to Napoleon’s army and were killed, or something like that. I went to Sol and ran into a parade. I saw the procession of a few different military-looking groups, and a bunch of police officers. Then there were some guys on horses that started processing down another street. I don’t know if the parade changed route in the middle of it or what, but suddenly everyone started walking over to another place. It was strange. I waited a little longer at another place where there were a bunch of people, but I got impatient and left. I wanted to get to the museum before it closed. I went to the Academia de las Bellas Artes, which is a small art museum. It was nice, and it was free, which is always a plus!
Sunday I went with Katie to the Rastro, which is that huge flea market type thing that takes up an entire neighborhood. I got a pair of purple Converse shoes for 10 euros which I’m rather excited about! While we were there we saw a bunch of the other girls from AYA. With all the hundreds of people there, it was kinda funny that we ran into each other.
Sunday night I went to a bullfight! Jen and I were the only ones who hadn’t been, since everyone else went that day I had my choir concert and Jen came to see it. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I think it was better than I thought. Yes, there was blood, but it wasn’t all over the place, and yes they killed 6 bulls, but after the first one you got kind of desensitized. There were three matadors who got 2 bulls each. The saddest thing is how much the bulls are tortured before they’re killed. First they’re stabbed by a spear in the back, then 6 little mini spears are stabbed into their backs and left there, then a sword which stays in for a while before being pulled out right before it’s killed. Once it’s actually time for the killing the matador stabs it in the neck. Once it took only one stab before it died, but one bull lived through 4 stabs before it died. There are so many rules and so much ceremony and pomp and circumstance involved. I didn’t understand a lot of it. Manuel says there’s a reason for each of the things they do to the bull, but to the uneducated eye it looks like blatant torture. Sometimes the crowd started clapping for no apparent reason. The bullfighter did something good, but it looked just like everything else to me. I think Jen hated it, but I thought it was interesting from a detached, cultural perspective. I didn’t get all freaked out about it. I videotaped a couple of the bulls, if anyone’s interested in seeing it when I get back.
Today was the beginning of the last week of school! I can hardly believe it! Today it’s exactly two weeks until I go to Dublin to meet the boys! Ahh!!
I’ll write again soon!
Bethany

April 29

2009-04-30T03:09:00.001-07:00

4-29
Ok, so I’ve been slacking on the blog front again. Sorry. I’ve been busy, and when I do have free time I never think of writing a blog. But here I am now, so all is well.
Let’s see. Where did I leave off? I think I last talked about my concert two weekends ago. Well it’s been a busy time since then. I had a Lengua test last Wednesday, which was quite easy and only took about 40 minutes rather than the hour and a half we had allotted. In Cine on Thursday we watched a movie called “Semen, una historia de amor,” which translates to “Semen, a Love Story.” I looked at it on the syllabus and was like oh great, what kind of racy Spanish movie are we watching now? But it was a romantic comedy and it was actually pretty good. It’s about a guy who works at an artificial insemination clinic and falls in love with this girl that’s come in. He accidentally breaks the vial of sperm that’s supposed to be hers, so he replaces it with is own. It’s a completely unrealistic plot with absolutely no depth to it, but it’s funny.
Friday morning I went to the Fabrica de Tapices Reales, which is the Royal Tapestry Factory. They make tapestries and those huge ornate rugs in palaces and hotels and stuff, and they give tours. When I got there, there was a tour of American study abroad students that had just started, so I joined in with them. It was really cool seeing the huge apparatus that they set up with strings going up and down, kind of like a loom, and then they weave the crossways string by hand, changing colors according to the picture, so that it eventually comes out right. It looked super complicated. I would never have the patience for that! There were probably 50 spools of different color string hanging off the back of one that we saw that was halfway done. It was crazy. I wouldn´t know where to put what color to make it look right!
That night I had my last choir rehearsal. We don’t have classes this coming Friday, and the week after that is the weekend right before finals, so I decided I would just end it now. It was kind of sad, but on the other hand I’ll be glad not to have to travel an hour every Friday and sing for 4 hours straight. We started some new music; musical settings of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, a very famous Spanish poet. It’s very Spanish sounding music. Kind of reminded me of some of the stuff we’ve done in Collegium. Nuria (the director) let me keep all the music, both the new stuff and the Handel pieces, so now I can add those to my collection. I’m going to have to buy another suitcase to fit everything to bring home!
Saturday all the AYA people took the Ave train (the high speed bullet train) to Cordoba and Sevilla. It only took 2½ hours to get to Cordoba, as opposed to the 5+ hours it would take on a normal train! It was weird, cuz it didn’t seem like we were going any faster than we would have if we were on the highway. But the Aves go upwards of 150mph, so we were really flying!
We were only in Cordoba long enough to see the Mesquita, which is the mosque. It’s an incredible huge building with tons of pillars and arches, all in white with some red stripes on the arches. Instead of being destroyed when the Arabs were kicked out, like most of the mosques, it was taken over by the Christians, who built a big altar in the middle, still preserving the amazing Moorish architecture. It’s very interesting to see the contrast between the Arabic style, which is all white and simple, but with very ornate carvings, and the Christian style, which is opulent, dripping in gold and velvet. All in one building. It was beautiful.
We took a regular train on to Sevilla, and that took nearly as long as the Ave had! Sevilla is where Patricia had done her study abroad, so she knew the city well. It’s a beautiful city! Probably one of my favorites. We just sort of hung around the rest of that day. We went to a park, and the river, and walked around the city a bit. We went to the Plaza de España, which is outside this huge building where each province in Spain has a little alcove with a painting and a map of the province and some really pretty mosaicky tiles. There’s also a big fountain. It was sweet. That night the temperature dropped quite a bit. We went to three different places to get tapas for supper, and two of them only had outside seating. Jen shared her shawl with me and we sat there huddled together, shivering. Stupid coldness. It’s almost May, people!
The next morning it was raining, of course. Hrmmm. We went to the Alcázar, which is the palace fortress thingy. It was built by a Christian king, but in the Moorish style, so it had some architecture similar to the Mesquita and the Alhambra in Granada. There was a huge garden out back where we spent most of our time. There was a hedge maze. Yes, a real hedge maze. With bushes over your head and really narrow passages where you could go in and get lost. It was awesome. We didn’t go in very far cuz we didn’t want to wander around for hours, and the bushes were all wet from the rain, so we got relatively soaked as we traversed it, but it was fun nonetheless.
After the Alcázar we went and got something hot to drink, because we were all cold and wet. We did some touristy shopping before lunch, and then we ate at an Italian restaurant, of all things. It was really good, but not very Spanish . . . . By then it had stopped raining and the streets were actually almost dry already. We went to the Cathedral of Sevilla, which is the home of the world’s tallest altarpiece: over 60 feet tall! All covered in gold with little statues of the stages of Jesus’s life, culminating in the crucifixion at the top where you can barely see it. The coolest thing about the cathedral, though, was that you can climb the bell tower. There are no stairs, because they had wanted to be able to get up there with horses, so there are just ramps along each of the sides of the square tower. 34 ramps to the top. Once you get up there, there’s an amazing view of the city and all that, but also you’re right under the bells. They’re probably five feet above your head. I felt like Quasimodo or something! Just as I was getting up there one of them rang and scared the crap out of me! It was so loud! The tower pretty much made my day. It was so cool! We did some more shopping, more wandering around, and then took the Ave back to Madrid and got home before 10.
I had another exam on Monday, this one for Literature. It wasn’t too bad, although I’m not sure if I gave enough information for the last question about poetry. But I don’t care. I’m mainly just going to focus on passing the classes and not worry about grades, since they don’t count anyway. Of course I still want to do well, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
Today after school I went to this concert of Iberoamerican guitarists. There were two men, one from Chile and one from Argentina, who played music representative of their countries. It was in a little room at the public library, and there were about 25 people there. It was very cool. The first man was good, but the second guy was amazing. He played with so much emotion; it was spellbinding. I’ve never seen anyone hold a guitar the way he did either; he rested it on the chair between his legs and held it so that the neck was at a 45 degree angle to the floor. It was strange. But it doesn’t matter. He was great. I love classical guitar. Brent, you need to learn so you can serenade me!
I’ve been spending a lot of time planning our Europe trip. Big surprise there, I know. It’s slowly coming together. I think we may end being somewhat spontaneous, but hey, it’ll be an adventure. I probably need a little more spontaneity in my life anyway. As long as I can keep from chewing my fingernails off worrying about every little detail. I did get permission from Rosaura to leave my suitcases here for that month, which is a big relief. I could have left them at Patricia’s house, but she lives an hour outside of Madrid and my flight gets in at night and leaves in the morning, so it would have been a hassle to get out to Mejorada del Campo to collect my things. It’s much more convenient this way.
I’m just planning on doing some Madrid things this weekend, and writing another paper. Only one more week of school before exams!! I can’t believe it’s almost over! But there’s a definite sense of ‘it needs to be summer’ in the air. I’m getting more anxious to come home. I keep dreaming about going home. I can’t wait until Brent and Danny come and we start traveling. At least there’ll be something new and exciting every day then. I know that’ll fly by and then before I’m ready it’ll be time to go back to the states.
I’ve been thinking lately about things that I miss being here in Spain. Other than family and friends. I just realized the other day that I haven’t watched The Office since I got here. There’s a whole season going by without me knowing what’s going on! I haven’t seen Scrubs either. I saw the Simpsons once. I miss my shows. I also miss just plain beef. They don’t really eat beef here. There’s tons of ham, and a lot of chicken, but not very much beef. I had a hamburger at the cafeteria today and it didn’t look like beef. It looked like a turkey burger or something, I don’t know. It tasted ok, just not like what a hamburger should be. What I really want is steak on the grill. Or hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Basically I’ve just been craving grilled meat. Also, much as it may pain me to say it, I miss the American school system. This Spanish system is messed up. In nearly all of my classes we hadn’t had any graded homework until the last week or so. That sounds great, but then you have no idea how you’re doing in the class, and no opportunity to improve your grade. The final exam counts for at least 50% of the final grade in a lot of cases. It’s nerve-wracking! And there’s no structure. Almost all of the paper I’ve been assigned have been on any topic I choose, which is way too open ended! It actually makes it harder, cuz we don’t know what the professor expects of it! I also miss feeling like I’m learning something in my classes. I’m trying to think of something that might be useful on an exam from Cine, and I can barely think of anything! All we do is watch movies and then comment on them a bit. I don’t know if I’ve really learned anything about Spanish cinema. Hrmmmm. One last thing I miss is being able to call up anyone I want to talk to whenever I need to. Not only is it ungodly expensive to call the States ($1 a minute!), I have to worry about a 7 hour time difference. That means, in order to avoid the work or school schedules of both of us, we have to talk really early in the morning for them or really late at night for me. It’s so inconvenient! Stupid time difference.
Ok, enough venting.
Well, I think that pretty much brings us up to date. I’ll try to be a little more on top of the blogs, but I can’t promise anything. I’ll do my best. Actually, to be honest, I’ve done a lot better on the whole than I ever thought I would. I’ve tried to keep a diary before and have never gotten past 2 or 3 entries. I guess it’s different when I know other people are reading this and bugging me for more news J
Love to all,
Bethany

April 19

2009-04-20T03:37:00.001-07:00

Hi all
I’m just sitting here playing Solitaire, so I decided I should write a blog. This has been a fairly busy weekend. On Friday did homework all morning, chipping away at the mountain of work I have to do before the end of the semester in three weeks. (!) In the afternoon I had a field trip for my Estudios Culturales class to the Museo Reina Sofía. We went once before, but this time we looked at different artwork; more modern stuff. I still didn’t really like it. I like being able to recognize what I’m looking at without extensive analysis. Not to mention all those paintings that are nothing more than a few drops of paint haphazardly splashed across the canvas. There was one work of “art” that was all crushed hay pasted to the canvas with two strips of metal making an x across it. The professor made a comment that there’s a line of thought that works like this are only considered art because they’re in a museum, but if it was out on the street no one would pay any attention to it. I would agree, and add that many of the things I saw would be considered vandalistic graffiti. I’m not showing my bias here, am I? I really enjoy going to art museums generally, but when I start seeing things that my dog could create, I get bored. I like seeing skill and talent, not unintelligible randomness. Anyway, after listening to my professor jabber on about modern art for two hours, I stopped to get a sandwich, had a half hour at home, and left for choir. We had a concert on Saturday so we were polishing up the music we had sung at our previous concert. We actually got out a little early, which is unheard of in the time I’ve been there!
Saturday I did homework again all morning. It seems like as much as I work on it, it never gets any less! I have three papers, two tests, a debate, and a project I know nothing about yet to do in the next three weeks! Not to mention an entire play to read and five final exams to study for! But I did get a good chunk done this weekend. That’s good, because I hardly did anything today!
Our choir concert was in the evening on Saturday, and we had a rehearsal before. The concert was in a church in Aranjuez, which is an hour away. We had a bus that took us there from Leganés, where the university is, at three o’clock, which meant that I had to leave home at 2. Our rehearsal was from 4 until 6:30 or so, and then we had some free time. The concert went from 8-10. It went really well. It wasn’t quite so echoy, so it was a lot easier to hear everything that was going on. It was a charity for a group of nuns who run a homeless shelter, and every one of the 400+ seats was sold! We got a standing ovation at the end and we did an encore of the last song. The crowd was very impressed with us, if I do say so myself! J It was fun. The bus left at 10, arrived in Leganés at 11, and I had to take the train home from there. So I didn’t get home until midnight. 10 hours of my day were dedicated to that concert in some way or other!
This morning I went to the Museo Thyssen-Bournemisza or something like that. I don’t know how to spell it or pronounce it. The first floor was all modern art again, so I was a little worried that it would all be like that, but the second and third floors were real art. There were a few famous paintings that I recognized, like Picasso’s Harlequin with a Mirror (from the period before Picasso went crazy), and the portrait of Giovanna someone I can’t remember that is a famous Italian renaissance portrait that I knew from all my costume research. I was surprised and excited to see it there! There was a lot of Italian renaissance art, and a bunch of landscapes and 17th century Flemish paintings, and French impressionists, and a whole bunch of things. It was a nice museum. After that, I walked over to Sol and ran into this outdoor kind of market thingy with a bunch of jewelry and scarves and things like that. I think it might have been a part of the Rastro, which is the big market they have every Sunday, but it was after the Rastro closes, and it was just a little section, so it might have been something else. I went to Sfera, which is a clothing store, in search of capris because I, in my Wisconsin state of mind, didn’t bring any summer pants, but they didn’t have any. It’s April and they didn’t have any capris or even shorts! Only long pants and skirts. I was surprised; in the States they would have started selling summer clothes a while ago. Next I went to Corte Inglés to find some little shampoo bottles for the plane. I’d had a hard time finding them; everywhere else I went they only had huge bottles. There are some normal sized bottles of shampoo and that kind of thing here, but a lot of what they sell is at least once and a half the size of the bottles in the US, if not double. On the way home I stopped and got a kabob because it was after 4 and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet.
This afternoon I worked on my Europe planning for a while. I checked my email from my phone and found out that my Grandpa is in the hospital with aspiration pneumonia. He’s been in a state of steady decline for a long time, and it’s gotten worse since he was moved to the health center at the retirement home in February (I think), so I was worried to hear that he was in the hospital. Apparently he’s doing fairly well, though. They’ve got him on an IV of antibiotic, and they’re giving him blood because he’s anemic. Poor Grandpa’s in constant pain and has almost no strength. It’s all he can do to move from the wheelchair to his armchair with help. I don’t know if he’s going to be strong enough to recover. It would almost be a relief for him to go, because he’s got such a poor quality of life. But I hope he holds on at least until I get home so I can see him again. Must think positively: he’ll recover and I will see him again. I will.
Tonight I talked with my mom and discovered she’s in Illinois at my aunt and uncle’s house! So I got to talk with them, too! I haven’t talked with my aunt since she was diagnosed with amyloidosis, so it was good to hear from her, even though we didn’t talk about it much. She starts chemo and bone marrow transplants in May, so it’ll be a tough month for her and for everyone. But mostly we talked about Spain and happy things. We only had about a half hour because they had somewhere to be that afternoon. But it was still nice to talk.
Yesterday was April 18. I leave for Dublin for my European tour with Brent and Danny on May 18, and I return home on June 18. Two months until I come home. It still sounds so long when I say it like that. Better to think that I’ve been here almost three months, and I’ve only got three weeks of school left! That sounds better.
Well it’s almost midnight so I think I’m going to go to bed. G’night!
Bethany

April 13 again

2009-04-14T05:11:00.002-07:00

4-13 #2
Well here we are at the final blog of my spring break. It’s taken me hours to write these! Time I could have spent doing homework and writing all the papers I have to do for the end of the year. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice! J
I arrived in Milan at about quarter to nine in the morning. It was a little strange to wake up on a train. At first, I was rather disappointed in Milan. It had much more of a big city feel than I was expecting, and I had just come from Salzburg, which was, in all fairness, very hard to top. I was also not in a very good mood. I tripped going up the escalator and banged up my knee (the skin’s scratched open and there’s a huge bump and a bruise). Then I had trouble finding my hostel. The directions say get out at this metro stop and it’s 30 meters away, but they don’t say in which direction. I asked a guy (I showed him the address on my sheet so he would understand me) who asked another guy who asked another guy and I finally got directions. But it was complicated. And in Italian. They did use a little English, and I was able to understand a little of the Italian thanks to Spanish, so I understood the directions. I got in my hostel, dropped my stuff, and went exploring.
When I got out of the metro there were all these guys from Africa who were trying to hand out those little bracelets made from colored string. They were supposed to be good luck or something. This is another thing that added to my bad mood. Those men were absolutely relentless! I tried to walk past, this guy came right up to me, and I shook my head and said no. He dropped the bracelet on my shoulder. I picked it off and started walking away, intending to throw it in the nearest garbage can. He called me back, holding out his hand. So I thought maybe he wanted it back. I held it out to him and he grabbed my wrist and tried to put it on me. I said I don’t want it and he said “no, it’s ok.” I yanked my hand away saying “I don’t want it!!” and walked away. I thought that was absolutely uncalled for for him to actually grab my wrist. Not to mention it was a little frightening. I don’t think he meant to scare me, but he sure wanted me to take that bracelet. I think they give it to you and then ask for donations, but there was no way I was giving him any money, especially after that! And they weren’t just there; they were at several of the big touristy places. Though none of the ones I ran across later were that persistent. I just put on a scowl as I walked past and most of them left me alone. Most of them.
The first place I went to was the Duomo, which is the cathedral in Milan. Holy crap! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a stunning building. There’s so much carved stone and intricate detail that whole thing looks like it’s made from lace. It’s the second biggest church in Italy, second only to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The inside is filled with huge pillars and gorgeous stained glass windows. The floor is all patterned in black and white and reddish flowery designs. It was Maundy Thursday, so there was a service going on when I was there, and the priests were singing. It sounded so cool! They had this thing outside where you can take an elevator up to the roof, so I was like: yes please!! It was so cool! We got to walk around on the roof of the Duomo, surrounded by those carved peaks and statues, looking out across the city and the roofline. It was amazing!
I decided to do the Hop on hop off tour again, since it had been so good in Budapest. But it wasn’t as good. There was a double decker bus, which was cool, but on the top there were these huge yellow bars across to keep people from falling out, but they made taking good pictures virtually impossible. But if I sat on the bottom of the bus I wouldn’t have been able to see as much of the buildings. Also, in Budapest the busses came every 20 minutes, but in Milan it was every 45 or 50 minutes. So if you wanted to hop off to look at a church or something you had to wait so much longer to get back on. But on the plus side, it was an easy way to see the city and to get from site to site.
I took the bus to the Castello Sforzesco, which is the castle where the Sforzas and Visontis lived. They were two of the major ruling families during the Renaissance. I was happy because I had learned a little bit about some of them, namely Giangaleazzo Visconti, in my Renaissance Florence history class last year. There was a drawbridge that went over what was once a moat but now it’s just grass. Inside, there were a lot of open courtyards, some with gardens. There were also a bunch of museums: decorative art, furniture, tapestries, antique weapons, and Egyptian art. There was also supposedly a museum of antique instruments, but I couldn’t find it. In the art museum, there was a da Vinci painting of Madonna and child. I don’t know the name of it, but I recognized it. On the back it said it was removed from the panel on which it was painted by da Vinci and transferred to that canvas in 1758. I don’t really know what that means; if they actually moved the painting to a different canvas, or what. Can they do that? There was also a copy of da Vinci’s “Madonna of the Rocks.” At least, I assume it was a copy, since the original is in the Louvre, right? But there were also several other Italian Renaissance paintings I recognized. It was rather exciting. They also had a Pieta statue by Michelangelo. It wasn’t the one I knew, but it was still really cool to see an original statue by Michelangelo!
Behind the castle there’s a big park with a lake (and more of those accursed bracelet guys). It was such a nice day that I walked around a bit. On the other side of the park’s the Arch of Peace, which is a big stone doorway that’s a big monument. But it was all covered with scaffolding and tarps, so I couldn’t see it well. It was disappointing.
I got back on the tour bus and rode around the rest of the circuit back to the Duomo. Then I walked to La Scala Opera House. For the few of you who have never heard of La Scala (J) it’s only one of the most important opera houses in Europe. We talked quite a bit about it in my Romantic Styles music history class. Milan was one of the four major opera cities during the 19th century. There’s a museum there that I went to. I was able to peek into the auditorium area from one of the boxes. It was a stunning theatre; all red velvet and gold. It said no pictures, but I took pictures. Of course. The museum was cool. It had everything from instruments that were played during performances over the centuries, to portraits of famous performers, to the eyeglasses of . . . of . . . oh crap, now I can’t remember whose they were. I’m thinking either Strauss or Schubert. Anyway, some famous composer’s eyeglasses. There was also a bunch of jewelry worn as costumes and posters for the various operas that have been performed. It was really cool for a music nerd like me!
I decided after that to get some gelato (I’d never had gelato before. It’s amazing!) and go back to my hostel. There was a guy staying in my room who came in a bit after I did and we started talking. He was from England, near Oxford. I told him I was going to be visiting England in May and asked if he had any suggestions of places to see. He gave me a big list of ideas and tips. Then he asked what he should see if he went to America. I realized it’s really hard to pick out some “typical” American sites. I guess there are the touristy sights like NYC and the Grand Canyon and stuff like that. But there isn’t really any one place you can go and see the “normal” America. There’s so much diversity between the people and the cities and the landscapes and stuff. I tried to give him some ideas, but I told him it really depends on what kind of thing you want to see. Not to mention that they’re all so far away. It’s not like you can hop on a train in the morning and be on the other side of the country by the afternoon or evening like in England. Or pretty much any country in Europe.
Next morning I still had a few hours left on my 24 hour bus tour, and I hadn’t seen all of the red line (there are two circuits: red and blue. I had seen the whole blue line and only half of the red the day before). So I hopped on and made my way around. I got off at one stop, the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, which was mentioned in my research of places I should go in Milan. It was nice enough, but I was kind of disappointed. It was in a not-quite-excellent neighborhood. Not really bad, but not somewhere I would want to walk alone at night. And inside the church was small and there was paint peeling off of the paintings on the walls. It wasn’t really worth the stop and the 45 minutes of waiting for the bus to come back around. At that stop there was also supposed to be a roman amphitheatre, but I walked around and couldn’t find it. I was afraid I would get lost, and like I said, the area wasn’t the greatest, so I didn’t go out of my way to search for it. So I sat for a half hour at the bus stop and checked my email via my phone for the first time in a week. Those emails sure do pile up!
I went back to the Duomo and went in again when there wasn’t a service going on. I was able to go a little farther into the church, since it had been blocked off for mass last time. It was just as beautiful the second time!
I spent quite a while that afternoon visiting various churches. I went to San Ambrogio, San Marco, and San Maurizio. San Maurizio was also very unique. It was covered with paintings, painted directly onto the walls. Almost every inch was painted. It was beautiful. I think that was my favorite of the non-Duomo churches in Milan. San Ambrogio was also memorable. The church was nice, but what stood out was in the room just behind the altar where the relics were. Up to this point I’ve seen fingers, skulls, and various other bones of saints. But in this church there were three full skeletons dressed up in finery all the way from the crowns on their heads to the sandals on their feet. It was a little eerie. I wondered who got the job of dressing a skeleton. I think I would have passed that one right along to whoever was beneath me. Delegation is a skill worth using in some circumstances.
The last church I went to was Santa Maria delle Grazie, which is where the original of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper was painted and is displayed. I found out when I got there that you have to have reservations in advance, but I decided I’d wait in line anyway to see if there was an opening in a tour that was already going out. Then a guy came out and told all the people waiting that they were booked up for two weeks. So unless you had made a reservation two weeks ahead of time you couldn’t see the Last Supper. I wasn’t really expecting to be able to see it anyway, without a reservation, but who’s going to think to make a reservation two weeks ahead? Especially if they just find out when they get to Milan, as I did, that it’s there. It was dumb. They shouldn’t even have tours; they should just let people go in and see it on their own. It would save a lot of hassle and probably be cheaper for them. So I didn’t get to see the Last Supper. It was interesting, though; in a couple other churches there were what looked like imitations of da Vinci’s painting. One of them had the exact same setup, with the disciples and Jesus in exactly the same positions, but the style of painting was different. Their faces looked different. They weren’t as well defined or formed. I’m not sure exactly what it was about it, but it definitely looked like an inferior painter was trying to imitate da Vinci’s work.
After the church run I went to the Ambrosian art gallery, which is home to some of da Vinci’s original notebooks. It was so cool to see his sketches for inventions. And his backwards writing! There were also some of his paintings, along with those of Botticelli, Bernini, Caravaggio, and tons of others. There was even a preliminary sketch of School of Athens by Raphael (Danny, I’m thinking of you). It was in a beautiful building with stained glass and sweeping staircases. It was a very nice museum.
I had pretty much run out of things to do in Milan, so I went back to the Sforza Castle and sat in the garden for a while. Then I decided it was getting close enough to the time to head toward the airport. So I went back to my hostel and got my stuff, and went to the train station. I had to take a shuttle bus from there to the airport, which was about an hour away. Once I got there I went through all the normal airport hassle and then I only had to wait about an hour before boarding started. So I’m glad I left earlier than I had planned. I must have fallen asleep on the plane because it seemed a lot shorter than 2 hours. We actually landed 10 minutes early, but then we drove along the runway for a hundred years before actually stopping. I hopped on the metro and arrived home around 1:30am. I felt bad because I was going to have to call Rosaura and wake her up to let me in (they don’t let me take the key when I go on long trips), but they were still awake anyway. So I texted my parents to let them know I had gotten home safely and fell into bed.
The next morning was Sábado Santo, which is the Saturday right before Easter (Holy Saturday). Most of the processions for Holy Week in Spain are Thursday and Friday, but I had found a schedule and found out that there were two on Saturday. I was happy, because I didn’t want to miss everything! The first one was at 8am, which I decided wasn’t going to happen when my alarm went off at 7. The second was at 5pm, so I went to that. It was cool, but there were kind of a lot of people so it was a little hard to see. First came a drumline, and then a brass choir. Then the priests and various other church people processed out from their church, through the streets to the cathedral, and back to the church. They were all wearing those pointy hats that look like KKK outfits. Most of the ones in this procession were purple, but there were some black and red, too. After them came the statue of the Virgin Mary, all dressed up in finery, with her black cape and gold halo, surrounded by flowers. The statue was carried on a silver-encrusted thingy carried on the shoulders of four or eight men. I couldn’t see how many because there were tall people in the way. It was cool to see the Virgin coming down the narrow street, seemingly floating above the heads of the crowd. It’s funny to look at my pictures because you can see her progress coming towards me and then passing and getting farther away. So even though it was a smaller procession, I felt like I didn’t completely miss out on the traditional Spanish Holy Week celebrations.
Yesterday I went to Easter mass at the church whose procession I saw. It was the church of San Gines, which is the first Spanish church I ever saw. Rosaura took me there our first night together. It was nice to be in church on Easter, even though I didn’t understand all of the service and I didn’t know how to properly respond or when to sit, stand, or kneel. I sat near the back so I could imitate people. It was weird being away from home on Easter. It didn’t feel like Easter at all. I spent most of the day doing homework, writing blogs, and organizing my mess of pictures. I had bought a chocolate Easter bunny in Vienna that I saved and ate as a little Easter treat to myself.
Today I had off school still, and I was going to go to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, but it’s closed on Mondays. So I walked around Madrid for a while, then went to FNAC to buy Harry Potter 3 in Spanish. I also found Golden Compass in paperback (the one I had found before was hardback and I didn’t want to buy such a big book), so I got that too. I almost wasn’t able to buy it. Last time I couldn’t use my credit card because I didn’t have proper identification. This time I brought my drivers license, which has always worked as ID before. The lady at the counter said that I needed a passport. I have no idea why. She said only a passport was acceptable. She was nice, however, and let it slide this time. So I was able to get my books. If I had been denied again I think I would never have gone to FNAC again! That’s a stupid rule, though. There’s nowhere else where I need my passport to use my credit card. But I got my books, and that’s what’s important.
I spent this afternoon writing the last two blogs and doing a bit more homework. It’s dinner time now, and I expect Rosaura will be knocking on my door any minute now. So I guess I’ll wrap up. I had an amazing spring break! And all my fears about traveling alone were completely unfounded, which was a relief. I am glad to be back, though, and glad I don’t have to worry about planning this trip anymore! Now I can focus on what needs to be done for May! And on the mountain of homework that is slowly suffocating me. I only have a month and two days until the end of exams, and a month and five days until I leave Spain!! Time is just flying by! I’m sure it’ll go even quicker now that spring break is done. Yikes! So much to do!
Oh, one more happy little thing. I came back from my walk today to find an envelope on my table. Tiff and Irene sent me an Easter card! It’s one of those ones where you can record your message, so I was able to hear their voices. It was so sweet, and it made my day. Thanks so much, you guys! I put it up on my shelf so I can look at it. I just hope it doesn’t get bumped open and scare me when it starts giggling and talking!
Well, that’s it for now. I hope you’ve actually made it through all of this without falling asleep too many times! Love you and miss you all!
Bethany

April 13

2009-04-14T05:11:00.001-07:00

4-13
Ok, Salzburg. This was my favorite city, so brace yourselves for a long post! J
I arrived in Salzburg around 11:45 or so and went straight on to my hostel to drop my stuff. I gathered up some brochures and my map and planned a few things out as far as where I wanted to go and where they were in the city. Then I had about an hour before my first tour started, so I walked around a bit close to my hostel. There was a street nearby with a bunch of shops that I peeked into. There was one, and I saw several more later on, that sold traditional Austrian garb. There were lederhosen for the guys and those cute little dresses for the girls. Watch the music festival scene and the final scene of Sound of Music and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. It was so cool! I was so tempted to get one, but they were way too expensive. So I took pictures and I’m going to make my own! Much cheaper and much more fun that way. I also went into St. Sebastian’s church, which is where Mozart’s family is buried, if I’m not mistaken. I didn’t see the graveyard, just the sanctuary. As this was holy week, in most of the churches I went in the altars were covered with a purple cloth. Do they do that in churches in the States? I know in ours we just drape a cloth across the crosspiece of the cross, but don’t actually cover it up. Hm. I don’t know.
My first tour picked me up at the hostel at quarter to 2 and took me to the meeting place. It was a Bavarian mountains tour, and I think I was the only person on it younger than 40. Wait; there might have been one other guy who was upper 20s. There were only about 8 of us, and we were in a big van that drove up into the mountains. Not just mountains; Alps. We crossed the boarder into Germany (or rather Bavaria, since the guide told us that Bavarians don’t like to think of themselves as Germans), and spent most of the time there. It was so gorgeous. The most mountains I’ve ever seen have been in the Rockies when we went to Colorado ages and ages ago (I think I was probably about 12), but I don’t remember them being nearly as beautiful as these. As we drove closer to them, there were still patches of snow on the ground, and when we started going up there was as much as 2 feet of snow! We got out several places to admire the scenery. The tour was supposed to include a trip to the Eagle’s Nest, which was Hitler’s house in the mountains, but since it’s so early in the year we couldn’t get up there. I guess the road is very narrow and we would have had to take a shuttle bus, and I think there was still too much snow and ice on the road. But we could see it from a distance. At one place we walked out on the top of the snow to get a better view of it. There was a little stream running through the valley, filled with snowmelt, and I went up closer to get a good look at it. I was still about 4 feet away, when I went right through the snow! This was probably not quite a foot high, but it was high enough that I couldn’t get my feet out without them sinking right back in. I fell back on the snow and rolled over to get up. Everyone was like: oh, are you ok, and I was just laughing because I’m sure I looked like a fool! I’m just glad I wasn’t any closer to the stream or I would have fallen in. Or dropped my camera in. That would have been tragic!
There are so many cute little towns up in the mountains that we drove through, with houses that look like they belong in one of those Christmas villages. In at least one of the towns all the houses have names. I don’t know if it’s the name of the family living there, but on almost every house it said Haus something or other. We stopped in one town for about an hour. I wish I could remember the name of it. Something about a king, I think. All the buildings were different colors and so cute. There was one building, which was pink, which had been kept in its original state since the 1600s.
One of our stops was this beautiful glacier-fed lake with absolutely crystal clear water, surrounded by mountains. It was breathtaking. There was a bobsled track there, which I had no interest in, but our guide led us up to the top. The only interesting thing was that there was a better view from the top than from the lakeshore, but the guide seemed to have some kind of fascination with the bobsled and talked a lot about it. Anyway, the lake was so clear that I could see a log on the bottom at least 20 feet out from the shore. There was a boat tour that would take you out, and in the middle of the lake they cut the motor and play a trumpet so you can hear it echoing around all the mountains. But, of course, we couldn’t do that because we were already on a tour.
When we got back to Salzburg it was almost 6, so everything was getting ready to close. I went to the Mirabell Palace, which I thought was going to be an actual palace you can go visit. Actually, it’s where the government meets, so a visit isn’t worth it. The important thing at Mirabell is the garden right behind it. The Mirabell Gardens are like a small park with a Pegasus fountain and lots of statues. It’s the place where a lot of the scenes in Do Re Mi in the Sound of Music were filmed. (I didn’t realize that until after I took the Sound of Music tour the next day, so then of course I had to go back!) I walked around the city for a while. I saw the Kapitalplatz, and Universitatsplatz, where there’s a big market, and Residenzplatz, and a bunch of other plazas with fountains and statues. I went back to the hostel around 7 and went to their restaurant/bar for dinner. There weren’t very many people there except for me, the bartender, who was a boy a little younger than I from Australia, and a girl about my age at the bar (she was from Montana). I sat at the bar with them and talked for a couple hours about random stuff. Then I went back to my room to plan out the next day. After a while the girl from the bar came in: she was staying in my room! We talked a bit more before we went to bed.
The next morning I had the Sound of Music tour at 9, and I wanted to go see the Cathedral before then, so I got up early. The girl (whose name is Susanne, I later found out) asked me if she could tag along with me that day since she didn’t have any plans. I didn’t really have a problem with that, so she bought a ticket to the tour, which she had also wanted to do, and we set off for the Cathedral. I think I had gotten a bit spoiled from traveling alone for the past two days, because it kinda drove me nuts the way she walked a step or two behind me the whole time. I don’t know if I set a quick pace or what, but I kind a felt like I was dragging her along. But we only had about 45 minutes to walk to the Cathedral, see the inside, and be back to the hostel for the tour pick up. No time to dawdle! We got a bit turned around and walked all the way around the cathedral before we realized that’s what it was. This cathedral was a little different than others I had seen. Instead of a stone ceiling and walls, this one was broken up with paintings all the way up, surrounded by white plaster or something molded into scrolls and flowers and things.
We didn’t have time to get all the way back to the hostel for the tour pick up, so we went directly to the meeting point, which was closer anyway. Apparently the Sound of Music tour is a lot more popular than the mountain tour, because we had a huge coach bus full of people. This tour was so much fun! For those of you who don’t know, Sound of Music has always been one of my favorite movies ever. My mom likes to tell the story of when I was about 3 years old watching it. While Maria and the children were running over the mountains singing Do Re Mi I started crying. When mom asked what was wrong, I pointed at the screen and said “I want to be there.” I have always wanted to go to Austria because of the beautiful scenery in that movie. I would be lying if I said I didn’t get a little choked up when I actually was there. In fact, I’m getting a little teary even now. That’s the silly thing about fulfilling lifelong dreams: I get too emotional.
Anyway, the tour focused mostly on the sites from the movie that were filmed outside of the city center, with the assumption that we could see those ones on our own. We started out still in Salzburg, but a little farther away. Our first stop was Schloss Leopoldskron, which was the back of the Von Trapp mansion, with the lawn down to the lake. It’s private property, so we could only see it from across the lake, but it was beautiful. Seeing all these things made me realize it’s been several years since I saw Sound of Music, and I wished I had seen it more recently so it would be fresher in my mind. (The hostel shows it every day, but it’s at 10am and it’s a 3 hour movie, so that means you have to miss the prime time of day touring Salzburg to see it. Not worth it!)
We drove by Schloss Frohnberg, which is the bright yellow front of the mansion and the wall along which Maria is singing I Have Confidence when she stops at the gate at the first sight of the mansion. It was set pretty far back from the road, and, again, it’s private property, so we didn’t get to see it up close. But it was still exciting for an enthusiast like me! J
As we were driving through Salzburg the guide pointed out the mountain on which Maria is singing in the opening scene. It’s called Untersberg. Or maybe that was the one at the end when they’re fleeing to Switzerland. I can’t remember. In any case, at the beginning of the movie Maria runs down the mountain and back to the abbey in just a few minutes. In reality, that mountain is about 3 km (I think that’s what he said) away from Salzburg, so Maria would have been the fastest woman in the world! And the mountain at the end, which they’re supposedly crossing to get into Switzerland, actually boarders Germany. So they’re going in the wrong direction to escape the Nazis! Of course, none of this makes a whit of difference in how I feel about the movie. It’s just funny.
We stopped at Schloss Hellbrunn to see the famous glass gazebo. It was originally next to Leopoldskron, behind a wall. When my mom went to Salzburg the only reason she was able to see it was because she was high up on a bus and could see it over the wall. But in the intervening years they moved it because too many people were climbing over into the private property. So now it’s in Hellbrunn and we were able to go right up to it! It’s small! They used this one only for the outside shots, and then built a half gazebo for the inside shots so they could fit cameras and stuff. It’s a cute little gazebo, with, of course, the benches lining the insides. Mom asked if I went in; actually it never occurred to me. I don’t know if we could, though. No one did anyway.
The bus headed out to the town of Mondsee, which is about a half hour out of Salzburg. The church there, St. Michaels I think, is where they filmed the wedding scene. They didn’t do it in Nonnberg Abbey because it was too small and they couldn’t get all the equipment inside. So they did it there instead. We got about an hour to explore the church and the town. It’s a beautiful church. Inside, the walls are all white with pink molding, so it looks a little bit like a dollhouse. At least, it would if you took out all the churchy stuff inside. While I was in there taking pictures, my camera said there was no more room on my memory stick! I had filled it up in only 5 days!! Luckily I had another one, but 5 days!! I’m going to have to buy like 3 more for my month long trip in May!
On the way to Mondsee we stopped at what was one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever seen in my life. I looked back at my pictures and they just don’t do it justice. We were up on a hill looking over a valley. There was a little town in the foreground, and beyond that a lake, surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The lake was bright blue, and reflected the mountains around it. It was breathtaking. I don’t know what it had to do with Sound of Music, but I think we stopped just because it would have been a shame to miss it. Absolutely gorgeous.
That was pretty much the end of the tour, and on they way back they just played the soundtrack. Of course, a bunch of people were singing along. I remembered for the umpteenth time that I somehow don’t have the Sound of Music soundtrack on my computer. How I made such a glaring oversight, I’ll never know, but now I have to wait until I get home to correct it, and by that time I’ll probably have forgotten again. They also played a bit of a documentary about the filming of the movie 40 years later hosted by the woman who played Liesl. It showed a bunch of the places we had just seen and didn’t have too much new info, but it was interesting.
Back in Salzburg, I wanted to go see Festung Hohensalzburg, which is the Salzburg Fortress. I asked Susanne if she wanted to come along, phrasing it in such a way that she was welcome, but it was clear that I was going to do what I wanted to do whether or not she came. She decided to come, so we made our way over there. The fortress is up on a huge cliff, so you have to either walk up a very steep path or take a funicular. We chose the funicular. It was a really cool building. It’s over 900 years old, and you can walk through the galleries, the torture chamber, and state rooms. There’s a museum of more modern history, mostly about the 20th century, which I wasn’t very interested in. But they had some armor and swords and stuff that I liked better. J We could also go to the top of the tower, where there’s an amazing view of the city and the mountains. You get the added height from the tower and the mountain the fortress is on, so you’re up really high. It’s beautiful.
In the fortress complex there’s also a little church and what remains of the original chapel from hundreds of years ago. There’s also a marionette museum, which was fun to see. It was very small; just a couple of rooms with displays of plays or operas that were put on with marionettes. They had a set up from Mozart’s Magic Flute, von Weber’s Oberon, and several plays I didn’t recognize. They had a film playing of one of the shows, and it was amazing how coordinated the puppets were. I don’t know how the puppeteers get so much control over them!
After the fortress, Susanne said she wanted to go see this famous beer brewery and asked if I wanted to come. I had less than zero interest in that, so we parted. I was going to go the Residenz, which is the royal palace, but it was closed for state functions, so I couldn’t go in. Instead, I went to Mozart’s birthplace. Yep, more Mozart! It was another museum with a lot of portraits and scores and stuff. This one focused more on his family, since he only lived there until he was about 4 I believe. In the room where he was born, there’s a pendant that has a lock of Mozart’s hair. Mozart’s hair! That was cool. There were also little models of scenery for several of his operas, including Die Zauberflote and Don Giovanni. There was one room where everything was upside down. I have no idea why, but it was interesting. There was a mini model of Salzburg and the surrounding mountains on the ceiling, and stars on the floor. All the pictures of churches and buildings around Salzburg on the walls were hung upside down. It was very strange. According to the brochure it’s to reflect Mozart’s urge to turn everything upside down and see things differently. Whatever. I think maybe they just had an extra room and needed to invent something to do with it.
After that I decided to follow the little brochure they gave us on the tour with all the Sound of Music sites within the city. I went to lots of the places where they filmed parts of Do Re Mi: the Mozart foot bridge, the banks of the River Salzach, the Horse’s Pond statue, University Square, and the place in Residenz Square where you can hire horse-drawn carriage rides. I also went back to Mirabell Gardens for all the places there. There are two fountains, the Pegasus fountain and another, that they all walk around while they’re singing. There’s also the dwarf garden figures, one of which they all pat on the head as they pass, and the athletic figures, which are statues of fist fighters whose poses the children imitate. Most of these things are in such short segments that you would never remember them all if you didn’t have a specific reason. I also saw and walked through the hedge covered archway that they all dance through. And, of course, the steps they climb at the end of the song for the big finish. All little things, but still exciting for me!
I went to the fountain that Maria splashes water in during I Have Confidence, but it was all covered up for construction or restoration or something, so I couldn’t see it. I also went up to Nonnberg Abbey, which is Maria’s abbey. Visitors aren’t allowed in the abbey part, only in the church. I went in, of course. It was a very pretty little church, but I could immediately see why they didn’t film the wedding scene here, even though that was where Maria and the Captain were actually married. It was too small for all the filming equipment. When I went out I walked a little bit along the outside walls looking for the entrance gates. I was the only person around except for a teenage boy who was hanging around and looked kind of like a punk. I got a little nervous so I decided just to leave. So I’m not really sure if I saw it or not. After that I went to St. Peter’s Abbey, which houses the cemetery where the von Trapps hide from the Nazis. I didn’t actually realize it was the same place until I had already left and saw it on the list of places in my pamphlet. So I didn’t find the exact place where it was, but it doesn’t really matter.
Last on the list was the festival hall. I followed my map and found what I think was it, but it wasn’t called the same thing. At least not that I saw. So I’m not entirely sure if I was in the right place. I couldn’t go inside to see. But whatever. I saw so many things that I’m not upset if I missed one.
It was getting towards dark and I didn’t really have anything left to do, so I went back to my hostel, gathered my things, and headed off to the train station. I took a domestic train to Villach, and from there a night train on to Milan. It was a pretty sweet setup: I got a bed and I was the only one in my little (and I mean tiny!) room. There was even a little sink and a mirror, and a place to hang things up. I hadn’t intended to take a night train; I only did because it was the only time any train was available. But I’m glad I did. That way I got more time in each of the places instead of wasting a whole day traveling.
I arrived in Milan in the morning, and I’ll continue this story in the next post!

April 12

2009-04-14T05:10:00.001-07:00

4-12
We arrived in Vienna around 2:30, and by the time we found our hostel and got all checked in and settled it was after 3. The first thing we did was go to Mozart’s house (this was my city after all, and my choice of sightseeing. Jen had Budapest). The museum was really cool; they had some original manuscripts and scores, and programs of the premieres of Mozart’s works. There were also portraits of him and his family, and some decorations of the house the way it would have been. It was exciting to see Mozart’s clavichord! They also had this really cool thing where they had the scenery of Magic Flute set up in a little glassed off stage. Then they played a movie of just the actors with no background on the ceiling, and the way it reflected off the glass it looked like the actors were holographs on the stage set up. It was really cool!
By the time we were done there it was almost 6, and most everything was getting ready to close. Wait, we didn’t spend 3 hours in there. I guess the time was taken up by traveling. Oh, and I think we explored Stephensplatz for a while, too. That’s the square where St. Stephen’s Cathedral is. We saw it from the outside but didn’t go in that first day. Anyway, since everything was closing, we decided to grab some dinner and walk around the city. I think the Viennese have some sort of fascination with colored lights, because there were lots of colored flood lights shining on the buildings, and in one building there was purple light shining out of every window. It looked pretty cool, but wasn’t anything I would have expected. We found a big fountain that changed colors, too. It was nice sitting around the edge listening to the water and feeling the spray. The only thing was that it was after dark and I was getting cold. We went back to our hostel to get an earlyish night, since Jen had to leave super early the next morning.
Jen said she would wake me when she left at 5 or 6 so that I would know she got off ok, but when I woke up she was gone. I still had this huge list of things I wanted to do in Vienna, so I had my day cut out for me. First I went to Schloss Schoenbrunn, which was the one thing I wanted to see most. It was beautiful. The outside was bright yellow, which was kind of surprising. I heard later in Salzburg that all the palaces in Austria are yellow to imitate Schoenbrunn. I got to see the state rooms where the Hapsburg emperors lived, which was cool because we just got done talking about the Spanish branch of Hapsburgs in my history class. The inside of the palace was, of course, lavishly decorated, with carpets and upholstered chairs, and paintings and the like. There was also a set of rooms that were original from the time of Empress Maria Theresa, who was responsible for expanding the palace. (Fun fact: she’s the mother of Marie Antoinette). There was one room with bright yellow and blue floral wallpaper, which looked a little like it belonged in an old-fashioned kitchen. Actually, it was faded from age, but there was a sample recreation with the original colors, and it was vibrant. One of the rooms had the most extravagantly embroidered red velvet bed I’ve ever seen. There was a tour passing through that room when I was there, and the guide was saying that no one ever actually slept in the bed. It was used for state occasions, such as after a prince or princess was born, the empress would sit on that bed with the baby to receive guests. Or if the empress was sick, she would sit there for meetings or something like that. But it was a ridiculous bed. I would have been afraid to even sit on it and ruin the embroidery.
Behind the palace were gardens, a maze, and a zoo. I didn’t go to the zoo or maze, and I only saw part of the gardens. I was on a strict schedule, after all. But there was a really cool fountain of Neptune or something like that that was just across the way that I saw.
After the palace I went to Karlskirche, which is a beautiful church with a big dome. It was really cool, because you could take an elevator all the way up to the top of the dome to get a view of the city. It was cool to be that high up inside the church. I was really close to all the frescos of the angels and cherubs; I could almost touch the walls of the dome. I was close enough to notice that what looked like red and white marble from the ground was actually just regular stone painted white and streaked with red paint. Someone was taking shortcuts and scrimping on money. J The view of the city was awesome. You could see the spires of St. Stephen’s Cathedral not too far away, and the river winding through the buildings. It was beautiful. Back down on the ground, there was a little table with pamphlets telling about the “blessed” Emperor Charles, for whom the church is named. I picked one up to read later because I thought it might have some information about the church. I finally got around to looking at it after I got home, and it was just the story of his reign and I was about to throw it away. But then I noticed on the back: “Prayer.” There is a prayer to Emperor Charles on the back of this brochure. Now I’m not one to get all high and mighty about religion, but I balked a little bit at this. This man may have been a great king, but he wasn’t a god. Not even a saint. How does anyone get away with praying to him to “intercede with God on our behalf”? That seemed beyond strange to me. Anyway, back to the task at hand.
Next I went and saw the Staatsoper, which is the opera house, and I have probably destroyed the spelling of it. It is a beautiful building, with pillars and arches all along the sides and fountains out front on either side of the main entrance. I couldn’t go in, but seeing the outside was good enough. I just love all this European architecture! Not to mention imagining how many of the composers I know and love had performed there over the centuries! (Just wait . . . the nerdulation has just begun! J)
The Hofburg palace was next on the list. It’s a complex of buildings, most of which are museums. The museum I went to was that of historical musical instruments! (See, I told you.) It went from simple drums and bells from I don’t know how many thousands of years ago up to modern instruments, including a brief explanation of12-tone theory. It was really cool to see some of the predecessors to modern day instruments. There were tons of strings—violins, cellos, gambas—and also dulcimers, guitars and lutes. There were even a couple double guitars. There were also lots of reed instruments, including the precursor to the bassoon (which I though was interesting for obvious reasons) and several of these instruments that look kind of like snaky, spiraly bassoons or something. I really want to know what they sound like. There were lots of harps of different shapes and sizes, often with cool carvings or decorations on the pillars and soundboards. And, of course, there were harpsichords, clavichords and pianos of every shape and size. There was even this one that was an experiment of a portable piano. It was shaped vaguely like a harp, with an accordion-like keyboard along the side at the bottom, and a shoulder strap. I think it was a failure, because it looked to me like it would neither be very portable nor sound anything like a piano. There was even a bagpipe in one of the cases! It was very cool and extremely interesting.
After that, I went to St. Stephen’s Cathedral to actually go inside this time. One of the towers was burned during the bombings of World War II, and it’s still under construction or refurbishment or something, so there was a big thing covering that one tower. I don’t think I’ve seen a cathedral yet that hasn’t been under construction in some way or another! But about the inside: what can I say? Another beautiful cathedral with stained glass, tall columns, lots of paintings, and cold as the stone it’s made from. I have noticed something, though. In Spain, all the cathedrals are set up the same, with the chapels all the way around the outsides, the sanctuary area in the middle, and the choir area behind the pews, walled off in its own little section. In other countries, however, they’re set up differently. Most of the ones I’ve seen have had the altar in the front, chapels on the sides, and the organ up on a balcony above the door. There are some variances to this, too. Some don’t even have chapels at all, just paintings or statues lining the sides. I wonder if all the Spanish ones are the same because of the strict unified Catholic history starting with Ferdinand and Isabella. I don’t know when the cathedrals were made in relation to their reign. That would be something interesting to find out.
Next I went to Stadtpark, which is the city park where there are statues of a bunch of composers. The most famous one is the Johann Strauss statue, but there were also Schubert, Bruckner, and Zelinka (I think that’s a composer, right?). There were several other statues of people I had never heard of and I don’t know if they were composers or not. Around the city are several other statues and monuments to composers: Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart. I also went to see the houses of Strauss, Schubert, Beethoven, and Haydn, but since it was a Monday and everything’s closed on Mondays, I couldn’t go in. I went to the Arnold Schoenberg Center, too, but it looked like an office building. I went in and in the main area there were photos of Schoenburg, and it said “Arnold Schoenburg Center 4th Floor,” but when I went up there it looked like somewhere I shouldn’t be, so I left. That’s all right. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give my patronage to the man who invented 12-tone anyway! J Just kidding. But seriously, some of that stuff just barely qualifies as music. I know there are those of you who are shaking your heads right now and disagreeing with me, but I don’t care. You can listen to your Schoenberg and Webern and Berg, and leave me to my Brahms!
I went back to my hostel exhausted that night. I had fit in what was supposed to be two days of sightseeing into one. I was up and about for over 10 hours! And my feet were killing me. So I went back before it was even dark and read until bedtime. In the morning I got up early and hopped on the train to Salzburg.
To be continued . . . .

April 11

2009-04-14T05:09:00.000-07:00

4-11
Hi everyone! I just got back from spring break and I have so much to tell!! I think I’ll divide it up into separate blogs by city to make it more manageable. So I’ll start with last Friday.
Jen and I caught a plane from Madrid to Budapest in the evening. The plane was delayed an hour, and then the gate was changed without an announcement or anything, so we didn’t even realize it at first. We started getting confused when the tv screen that had previously said Budapest said another city, so we went to the information desk to ask and she said that it was at another gate. It was really stupid. How would we have known? They should have at least made an announcement. But it turned out ok. So we flew in a purple and pink plane (that amused me vastly) to Budapest and arrived after 1 am. The metro was closed, so we decided to walk to the hostel rather than pay for a taxi. It was interesting to walk through a strange city at almost 2 in the morning. It’s a side of Budapest we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. When we got there, we collapsed into bed without even changing. In the morning, we first had to exchange our money, since they don’t use the euro in Hungary. They use the forint, and there are about 280 forints to a euro. I exchanged 50 euros and walked out of the store with more than 14,000 forints! I felt like I should be nervous carrying that much money around! It was really confusing, because we never knew how much something cost. I spent a lot of time with my phone’s calculator that day.
We decided to take a Hop On-Hop Off tour. For those of you who don’t know, you get a 24 hr pass to get on this tour bus that stops at various points around the city, and you can get off whenever you want to explore something and then hop back on when it comes around again in 20 minute intervals. It was very nice because not only did we get the chance to see a lot of the important sights in Budapest, we also got easy transportation around the city. We saw St. Stephen’s Basilica, which I think is the most marble-encrusted church I’ve ever seen. It’s all reddish-pinkish marble inside, and really beautiful. We also saw the Opera House, which was exciting for me. There was a statue of Liszt on the outside, along with lots of other Hungarian composers like Bartok and Kodaly. There were also various monuments to these composers around the city. We also saw the academy of music where they studied. That was just the beginning of a music major’s dream trip! J I would have liked to go inside the opera house, but we didn’t have enough time. I think Jen thought I was weird cuz I was nerding out with all my music knowledge (here and in Vienna), but I just studied all these people in my music history classes and it was very exciting to see everything in real life. We also saw the Synagogue, which was a gorgeous building with two tall towers and lots of arches. We couldn’t go in that either, though, because it was Saturday and closed for the Sabbath. One of my favorite buildings was the Vajdahunyad Castle (yeah, we had fun trying to pronounce all this Hungarian!), which looked straight out of a fairy tale! It had towers and spires and a moat, and inside there was a little park and a church and the museum of agriculture. It was the cutest little castle! We walked by it again that night and it was all lit up and so beautiful! Right next to it was the city park, with a big zoo and the Szechenyi Spa, which is a Roman bath. But more on that later. Another of my favorite things was the Fishermen’s Bastion, which is a sort of wall that overlooks the city with little towers and crenulations and spires and stuff. It was really pretty.
Our tour came with a booklet of coupons, one of which was a free boat tour on the Danube! So we decided to take full advantage of that! It was a beautiful day, and it was lovely to be out on the water. Most of the important buildings in Budapest are on the river, so we got to see them from the street side and the river side. One of the most stunning buildings in Budapest is the Parliament building, which is just off the river. I never thought of government buildings being this ornate, but it was beautiful. It had tons of spires and arched windows, and a dome. I would have thought it was a palace.
The thing Jeanette wanted to do most was to swim in one of the Roman baths. We had a 20% off coupon in our booklet, so we went to the Szechenyi bath. It was nothing like what I expected. For one thing, the building was bright yellow! It was like a big courtyard with changing rooms and stuff in the walls and three outside pools: one for laps, and two thermal pools, one warm and the other hot. Both of the thermal pools had jets in various places in the walls and floors. There were roman fountains spraying water into the pools, and pillars all the way around the courtyard. I can’t imagine that it could have all been original Roman stuff. It looked too new. And they wouldn’t have let people play around stuff that old and priceless. It must be copies, or a roman themed pool using the same thermal waters as the Romans. But it looked cool. It was so relaxing to sit in the warm water being massaged by a jet after a day of walking around the city. I could use another bath right now! The only downside was getting out into the open air soaking wet. It’s only the beginning of April, after all, and it was quite chilly!
We were going to go the bus station sometime during the day to see what time the bus to Vienna left and to buy our tickets, but we ran out of time. So in the evening we still didn’t know when we would be able to leave, or even where the bus station was. I was getting pretty nervous about that. We got up at 6 the next morning to make sure we would have time to get everything figured out and still get an early bus. Turned out that there was a bus at 7, which we didn’t have time to get to, and the next one wasn’t until 11. So we had lots of free time. I wish we could have gotten an earlier bus so we could have gotten into Vienna earlier, but that’s all right. It was nice, because the bus station was having a special: 50% off bus tickets for youth! So my bus ticket was less than 20 euros! (I don’t know exactly how much since I paid in forints . . . .) It was a 3 hour drive to Vienna through pretty, though unexceptional, countryside. I read for a while, and slept. It had been an early morning, after all.
More about Vienna in the next post!

March 30

2009-03-30T04:37:00.001-07:00

3-30
What a weekend! I guess I really haven’t done all that much, but I feel like I’ve been quite productive. I saw a musical, visited a convent and fulfilled a life-long dream; I think that’s enough for one weekend!
Thursday night after class a few other girls and I went to see Grease. It was so much fun! We all know the music and the story backwards and forwards in English, and it was cool to hear it all in Spanish. I wasn’t sure the entire thing would be in Spanish, since in movies sometimes they dub over the dialogue but leave the songs in English, but everything was translated. It was quite funny to see the Spaniards’ interpretation of American teenagers in the 50s! It was quite different from a play in the States, too. There was a lot more audience involvement, with things like ‘if you think Frenchie should go back to high school, scream’ and stuff like that. The audience was also really into the music; they were swaying and doing the Greased Lightning arm movements, and I’m pretty sure some people were singing along at times, although it wasn’t so loud that it was distracting. It was a really fun night!
Friday morning I went to the Monasterio de la Encarnación. It was a 45 minute guided tour, all in Spanish, but I got most of it. There were a lot of paintings and frescoes, and of course the usual opulence of silver and gold in the sanctuary. There was also a room of relics, where there were bones or pieces of bones from I don’t know how many saints. All four walls were covered with glass cases that displayed them. There were even several with skulls. It was a little unnerving. And once again, I wonder: how do you go about getting the skull of a saint? This particular monastery is famous for its dried blood of St. Pantaleon, which mysteriously liquefies every year on July 27, the anniversary of his death. I strongly suspect there’s a duplicate vial somewhere in the monastery that gets filled with red water and stuck in the cabinet. I actually had a dream last night about that, involving a secret passageway behind the wall where someone could replace the vial without anyone seeing. Strangely enough, it was my uncle Tim who was the one sneaking back there to replace it. I have absolutely no idea where that came from.
Friday night I had choir rehearsal, and I still hadn’t received an email with the information about the concert on Sunday. I asked Nuria (the director) when the concert was, but instead of just telling me, she called over another person in charge of the emails and had me talk to him. So I gave him my email and hoped that he would send it before Sunday. Also, we had a rehearsal on Saturday that I wouldn’t have known about if she hadn’t mentioned it at the last minute. And I still didn’t know the time of the concert or of the rehearsal right before it, or what we had to wear. So I went home quite anxious and upset that night. I hate not knowing important things!
I still hadn’t received the email by the time I had to leave for rehearsal on Saturday afternoon. I was hoping it was at the campus, but I had printed out directions to the cathedral in case I got to the school and no one was there. I got there a bit early and asked one of my friends and she told me what I needed to know. So that eased my mind quite a bit. They did tell us at the end of rehearsal, so I would have known anyway.
Sunday I was going to go to the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales, but by the time I got there all the tours were full, so I couldn’t get in. So I just went to the Corte Ingles instead and picked up a gift for a certain someone. Then I did some homework and headed over to the cathedral. I have always wanted to sing in a European cathedral, and now that I knew what I was supposed to do, I was excited! It had probably a 3 second echo, which sounds awesome, but let me tell you, it sure makes singing a lot more complicated!! We had 2 hours of rehearsal before the concert in which we smoothed over most of the problems, and then had an hour free time before it started. The first guy I gave my email to last week asked me if I had received his email. I don’t know if he sent it Saturday after I checked or if I just didn’t get it. I didn’t check my email on Sunday. But I would have thought he would send it a little earlier than that!! (I hate not having internet at home!)
The actual concert went very well, for the most part. We sang two pieces by Handel: Dixit Dominus and the Coronation Anthem. We sang with a small orchestra, harpsichord, organ, trumpets, recorders, and timpani. There were also five soloists who sang on various pieces. It was a surprise when all those instrumentalists showed up at rehearsal on Friday, but I was really glad we weren’t just going to sing with the organ! Singing with an orchestra just adds a whole new dimension to the music. There were a few parts during the concert where we started speeding up and had to watch Nuria very carefully. There was only one part where the sopranos totally fell apart. I’m not sure if we had gotten ahead or behind, but it sounded very strange for a few bars. But we got back on before too long. The audience seemed to really enjoy everything. They started out clapping in between movements of the Dixit (have I mentioned how much I hate it when people do that? Apparently Nuria hates it too, because she made a face every time) but then they realized that they shouldn’t. But then they did again after a few movements. I don’t really understand why they suddenly started clapping again, but whatever. They were good on the Coronation Anthem. And we got a standing ovation at the end of the concert, which is always nice. Jeanette came to see it and support me. That was very nice of her. I’m glad she came. A couple of the other girls had talked about coming, but she was the only one who showed up. I was happy to see a familiar face in the audience.
So that was my weekend! Now I’ve got 4 days of school before I’m off to Hungary! I can’t believe spring break is almost here. I’m really looking forward to it, but I’ll be so relieved when it’s over. I’ll be traveling alone for 4 days, and it’s a constant worry at the back of my mind. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but it’s still there, nagging. But at the same time, I get to see Salzburg, and Milan in addition to Budapest and Vienna, which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I stayed with Jen, and that’s going to more than make up for any uneasiness in traveling!
Well, I’m off to school. Bye!
Bethany

March 24

2009-03-24T05:32:00.001-07:00

Hola todos
Today is March 24th, and we all know what that means. Well, maybe you don´t, so I´ll tell you anyway. Today is the 2 month mark from when I arrived in Madrid. It seems like I just wrote a blog exclaiming over how quickly one month had gone by, and now I´m already here again at two months. I think this second month has been a lot less eventful, with more school and less traveling. But it sure has flown by! I think the routine of school has probably had a hand in that. Time seems to mush together when it´s all the same thing day after day. Luckily there are plenty of weekends to have crazy adventures! :) I´m looking ahead in the calendar and realizing that I don´t even have two months of school left! I´m past the halfway point of Madrid (but not of Europe!), and I feel like I just got here! Well, in some ways. In other ways it feels like I´ve been gone for ages. This next month will be fun, because it includes spring break (Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, and Milan) and Easter, for which I´m hoping to find a mass to go to. I don´t think there are protestant churches in Madrid. At least, not that I´ve found. But it should be cool to see a Spanish Easter service. I don´t know if Manuel and Rosaura will go to church, but if they do I´ll see if I can tag along. It will be weird not to be with my family for Easter. That´s never happened before. And I bet there are no Easter baskets in Spain! Sad! Oh well. I´m getting ahead of myself. It´s still March, and I have plenty of time before then.
Speaking of looking ahead, I got my scheduling information for next semester and, as always, its an absolute disaster. There is only one Spanish class offered that I haven´t taken, and it conflicts with a music class that I absolutely have to take in order to graduate, that won´t be offered again for four semesters. So I don´t know if I´m going to be able to take any Spanish classes next semester, which seems to bode ill for my Spanish major. I don´t need any more credits for that one, and I could take two classes next semester to get all the requirements in, but I feel like I don´t want to skip a semester of Spanish, especially right after I get back from Spain. And if I don´t take it, I´ll be taking exclusively music classes. Now, there´s nothing really wrong with that, but I´m not sure how many classes outside of my major I´m supposed to have, so I´m a little wary about that. There is one class in particular, a theatre class on costumen construction and design, that I really really want to take, but it conflicts with not one, but two of my other classes. It´s a MTW class, and I have a class on MWF and another on TR at that same time. Go figure. And I´m most likely going to be jumping into a Conducting II class even though I haven´t taken conducting I (which is offered this semester, of course. I talked with the prof and she thinks I could probably learn enough on my own over the summer to not be completely lost), but I really want to take a conducting class, since I want to have a choir some day. I´m also debating taking Orchestration, which doesn´t conflict with anything, but that class looks hard and that might put me over the limit credit wise. It´s all a huge mess. I emailed my Spanish advisor this morning begging advice, but he hasn´t gotten back to me yet (I suppose I´ll forgive him since it´s not even 8:00am there!). I wish there could be one semester in my entire life where scheduling wasn´t a disaster! Why does Ripon College hate me so?!
Well, that´s enough ranting for one post. I´m sure more will come later. ;)
Bethany

March 22

2009-03-23T04:32:00.000-07:00

3-22
Hello everybody! I’ve had a busy weekend, and I’ve been too tired/lazy to write about each day when I got home that night, so I’ll combine it all into one blog. I’ll try to keep it brief-ish.
This Thursday was the Fiesta de San José, so we had off school! That in itself was exciting enough. A lot of people went various places far away (some girls in AYA went to Dusseldorf, Germany), but Katie and I decided it would be cheaper to do various day trips from Madrid, and that way we wouldn’t have to pay for planes or hostels or anything. Actually, we only decided this after we realized we had left planning for this weekend too late and the plane tickets to Portugal were way too expensive. But whatever, it’s fine.
Thursday we went to Salamanca. It’s almost 3 hours away by train. I got to use my Eurail pass for the first time! I’m still a little fuzzy on what the best way to use it is, but what I did worked, so I guess I’ll just do that again. It was good, because my ticket for there and back was only 8 euros instead of almost 30! My friend Yvonne from church was going to come with us, but the metro was having problems or taking a long time or something, so she didn’t get there in time and the train left without her. I felt really bad about that. So then it was just Katie and me. For those of you who don’t know, Salamanca is the home of one of the oldest universities in Spain. Or at least, one of the oldest Christian universities. I think the Muslims had some older ones before they were driven out. Anyway, we saw some of the buildings, which are all huge and amazing, with sculptures and statues and pillars and royal crests carved on the outsides. We were able to go inside the library (which is called the House of Shells because it’s got tons of conch shells carved into the outside) and the Universidad Pontifica, which was a church. Then we saw the Plaza Mayor, which is the most famous in Spain, apart from Madrid’s. The Plaza Mayors of Salamanca and Madrid are in competition for which is most beautiful. Personally, I think Salamanca’s is better. But that’s just me. After that, we went to the Cathedral of Salamanca, which has got a newer and an older section. We thought we were buying tickets to go inside, but it ended up being a ticket to climb the towers of the older, medieval part of the cathedral. It was really cool. There were little museum rooms where they displayed artifacts and diagrams and stuff. There was a display of medieval and renaissance instruments and music books. That was very exciting for me! Then we climbed up the scary spiral staircases to the towers. We got to walk outside along the roofline, where there was not only an amazing view of the city, but an amazing up close view of all the stonework on the cathedral itself. Then, back inside the cathedral, we got to walk along the perimeter, way above the ground, and get a bird’s eye view of the interior. It was so cool. A very different cathedral experience from any I’d had so far! We never actually got to go inside on the ground level (it was closed whenever we passed by), but this made up for it! After that we went across the Puente Romano, which is an ancient Roman bridge that’s still standing and functional. We wandered around the city for a while, and then took the train back home.
Friday we went to the monastery at El Escorial, which was built by King Felipe II in the 1500s. It’s sort of a mixture between a church and a palace, and it’s huge! There were royal apartments (Felipe’s chambers had a little portable organ that only had about 3 octaves of keys and was so cute!), state rooms, and other various things that were clearly the royalty part of the palace. But there were also churchy things, like the rooms where the bishop lived and worked, and several rooms of tombs where the various rulers of Spain are buried. We couldn’t go inside the Basilica because it was under construction or restoration or something. There’s also a famous library there, that’s got an amazingly painted ceiling and books from the Renaissance!! They were all behind cages, of course, but they had some of them open so we could see what they looked like on the inside. They were beautiful! They had brightly painted pictures and beautiful script that I couldn’t read for anything (I think it was Latin). They also had some instruments that scholars used, like one model (I can’t remember what it was called) that was supposed to show the solar system with the Earth in the middle and the planets as rings around it. They also had globes (one that didn’t have countries on it, but all kinds of wild animals and monsters; I’m not really sure what that was supposed to show!), and old desks, and all sorts of cool things! There were also several little museums: paintings, tapestries, and architecture, which included plans of the monastery and the tools they used to build it. They had this machine that had pulleys and a clamp thing that they used to lift the huge building blocks to make the walls. It was really cool! After the tour of the outside, we went out to the gardens that surround the monastery. There weren’t many flowers, but there were lots of cool patterns of hedges and little fountains. We walked back to the train station by way of the Park of the Princes, which is home to the Casita del Príncipe, which is a little palace were the royal family would spend the summers. We couldn’t go inside, but we saw the outside. Rosaura had told me about it, so I was expecting something pretty cool, but it just looked like a big house with white shutters. It was cute, but nothing spectacular.
That night I had choir, so I had to stop home and grab my music and rush to Leganés (that’s the city where the campus is). I arrived about a half hour late, but there was nothing I could do about that. Our concert is next Sunday, so the directors are getting anxious and a little short tempered. It doesn’t help that the students (just like in the States) insist on talking incessantly every time we stop. I guess some things are universal. I had a rather happy moment, though. There are two directors for the choir: one that does the warm-ups every other week, and one that directs the actual songs. The warm-up lady sits and watches the rehearsal when she’s there, and makes comments and suggestions to people or sections. It’s almost always something to improve on. So when she came up to me I got a little nervous. But she just said that my face was “fenomenal” and went on to another person. I was quite happy about that! Facial expression is one thing that I’ve always had problems with, and I’ve been working hard to improve. It was very nice to hear that it was working!
To get home from choir I have to take the train to the metro to get home. I can either take it all the way into Madrid and then take a short metro home, or I can take it to the bottom of my metro line and take the metro all the way to my stop. Usually I’ve been doing it the first way, but I think the second way is a little shorter. Anyway, I was glad I had discovered the second way, because when I got on the train there were tons of people on it, all probably high school or college age. They were all being really loud and obnoxious, and one girl was smoking, which is prohibited on public transportation. There was vomit on one of the seats, and there were so many people in the aisles that you could barely get through. Then a couple of the guys started breaking the glass that covers those hammers that you’re supposed to use to break the windows in case of an emergency, so there was broken glass all over the floor. I was expecting security to come any moment, but they didn’t while I was on the train. It was scary. There have been very few times I’ve actually been scared on public transportation, but this was definitely one of them. I was so glad that I had discovered the way home on the metro, because it’s only 2 stops on the train that way, and I was anxious to get off! That was crazy.
Saturday we went back to Toledo. This time Yvonne did go with us, and she brought one of her friends. It was so good to see her! We’ve been living in the same city for two months and we still hadn’t gotten together yet! We were going to take the train into Toledo, but there was such a long line for tickets that it had left before we were able to buy ours, so we decided to take the bus instead. We spent a lot of time wandering around the city trying to find where we were when we were there before. We went into a synagogue, and went back to the cathedral. Actually, we didn’t get to go all the way in. There was an entrance where you could go for free just inside a small part of it. I think it was so you could pray at a chapel or something. But it was like 7 euros to get in the whole cathedral, and we were feeling cheap. At least this way we could see it, even if we couldn’t walk through it. I wasn't so important for Katie and I since we had been there before, but it was the first time in Toledo for Yvonne and Laura, so they wanted to see it. But not enough to pay 7 euros. We had a lot of fun on the busses that day, too. We were trying to take a bus to a plaza where there’s a little tourist train that’ll take you across the river, because Laura wanted to see a famous view from one of El Greco’s paintings, but we got on the wrong bus and ended up driving through residential Toledo with absolutely no idea where we were. So we just stayed on until it got back to where we had gotten on, and then waited for the right bus. We spent so much time waiting for busses yesterday! It got a little ridiculous. But whatever. We just got to see more of Toledo that way, I guess. . . . Then when we got to the bus station the bus was there and ready to go, so we got in line, but right before we could get on, it was full. We had to wait another half hour before another bus came for Madrid. We didn’t get home until 8:30 last night, which was really long, considering I had left the house at 9:45 that morning. The day was longer than any of us expected, but it was still fun. I was absolutely exhausted last night.
This morning, I slept until 10:30, which felt amazing. I finished my homework and then sat down to write this blog. I was thinking of maybe going to the park to read today, but right now I’m feeling very lazy. Maybe I’ll just watch a movie here instead.
Bethany

March 15

2009-03-16T11:06:00.001-07:00

3-15
Today Katie and I went back to the Prado museum. It wasn’t free to the public until 5, so we went an hour early to see some of the sights around it. We were heading toward the Vertical Garden, which is a garden planted on a wall, straight up and down. We wandered into this art exhibition that our Estudios Culturales teacher had told us about, but we had no idea where it was. It’s called Arte en las Calles, which means Art on the Streets, and I think it’s collections of art that come to Madrid for about a month and then move on to another city. This month’s collection was all Rodin sculptures from Paris, including The Thinker. It was so cool to be walking down the street and suddenly, out of the blue, see one of the most famous sculptures in the world staring at me. There were eight statues total, all by Rodin. I think our teacher said it was the first time these statues have been out of the Paris museum, and I had wanted to see them, but I didn’t know where to look. I thought they were in another museum; I didn’t realize they were out in the open. I love how we always wander into cool things! Then we realized that the vertical garden was right there, behind the statues, and we had been seeing it the whole time while we were taking pictures without realizing it. It was mostly just green up a wall, since the flowers hadn’t bloomed yet. It was interesting, but nothing spectacular. The statues upstaged it by a long shot.
We still had some time before 5, so we decided to go into the Botanical Gardens that are next to the Prado. It was mostly green, and there were only a few flowers, but it still smelled heavenly. The flowers that there were were beautiful, and it was such a gorgeous day that it was very nice to walk through the little pathways amongst all the greenery.
In the Prado, we finished seeing everything in the permanent collection. We saw a lot of Italian Renaissance paintings, and I recognized a fair few of them. There was even the portrait of Mary Tudor that I used in my presentation about her last semester! It’s so cool to see the originals of all these famous paintings I’ve seen in books and stuff. We saw the treasure of the Dauphin, which was a collection of glassware, precious stone-encrusted gold and silver dishes, medallions, and little statues. There were even pictures that looked like paintings, but were actually made from precious stones like jade and amethyst. It was amazing. They were so detailed; I can’t imagine cutting the stones into such tiny little shapes and fitting it all together so perfectly!
There were also a couple of temporary exhibits that we saw. One was called Sleeping Beauty, and it was a collection of Victorian paintings that all depicted sleep in one way or another. There were some works that were sketches of the bigger paintings that were there. There was a set of three paintings that depicted scenes from the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, and one that was called the Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon or something, that showed King Arthur sleeping in Avalon until the day he’s called back to Earth. My favorite was called Flaming June, which is a pretty famous painting. There’s a huge version of it in the Pallas restaurant that we’ve been to in Brookfield or Wauwatosa or somewhere around there. It’s a woman in a bright orange dress who is curled up sleeping on a bench in front of the ocean. They were all really beautiful.
The second exhibit was called Between Gods and Men, and it was all ancient Greek sculptures. I think a lot of them were copies of the originals made during the Renaissance. I don’t think many of them were actually the ones that were carved a couple hundred years BC. There were a lot of sculptures of gods, naked athletes, drunken revelries, and naked women. A lot of them had missing limbs or heads, and some of them were just heads. And, of course, they were all in white marble. It was pretty cool.
I’m sitting in my room listening to Jesus Christ Superstar. I love King Herod’s Song! “Walk across my swimming pool!” Hehe.
Well, that’s all for now.
Bethany

March 14

2009-03-15T06:43:00.001-07:00

3-14

Hello again.

I haven’t written in several days, so I’ll just catch you up on what’s happened before I tell you about my trip to Avila today! This week was crazy. Lots of busyness and anxiety. Katie and I had a presentation in cine on Thursday about Spanish patriotic film. We were given our groups the week before last, and last week we met for about 2 minutes after class to see who everyone was. Last Thursday, one of the guys got everyone’s email and was going to send us all one so we could figure out what we were going to focus on and research. Mind, this is a week before the presentation. He didn’t send the email until Monday morning. That gave us three days in which not only to research and put it together, but to find a time to talk and figure out what the heck we were presenting on! I was getting so anxious! On Tuesday we finally met and picked our topics and assigned specific themes to everyone. After that it was easy, and the presentation on Thursday went fine, but I was so stressed out leading up to it! I hate group presentations! Especially when it’s with a bunch of people you don’t know, who live on opposite sides of Madrid and its surrounding areas, and people are always traveling on the weekends. It’s just not a good idea! And meanwhile, Jen was carping about the group presentation we have with her that’s not for another 3 weeks! She kept badgering us to think about topics of what we want to present on, because the professor left it hugely open ended, but Katie and I were super stressed about this cine presentation and we couldn’t think about the one that wasn’t for another several weeks!! It was very aggravating.

On Friday, Katie and I went to the Parque del Oeste, which is a park in Madrid. The main attraction there is the Templo de Debod, a 2200 year old Egyptian temple that was a gift from Egypt to Madrid at some point in history. It consists of two freestanding stone square arch and a multi-chambered temple, all in the middle of a pool of water. It was really cool. There were shallow carvings of hieroglyphics and those cool Egyptian drawings on the walls of the inside of the temple. They had some pieces of the original temple that had fallen off that had more carvings, and a diagram of what it had originally looked like. It had another arch in the front, and each arch had a huge wall coming off from each side. It’s hard to explain. I’ll put pictures up soon. I felt like Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Debod?), and I half expected a giant boulder to come rolling down at me or poisoned darts to come flying out of the walls at any minute! It was a really cool place.

After the temple, we walked around the rest of the park for a while. It was really beautiful; there’s so much green, and there were trees blossoming all pink and white! And it’s March! I love being out of Wisconsin and missing all the cold!! It’s been hot the last few days. This morning I discovered that my chest got burned yesterday! I had joked to Katie that I would get burned, but I didn’t really expect it to happen! Stupid fair skin. . . . After the park, I had to go home in time for lunch (can’t be late for that!), and then I had a few hours free before choir, so, having been inspired, I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. In Spanish. It was quite amusing. Then last night I had choir rehearsal, which seemed extraordinarily long, since I was so tired. I got home around 11:15 and went straight to bed. After reading for a bit, of course. J

This morning, Katie, Jen, and I went to Avila, which is a city about an hour and 45 minutes away from Madrid. We were going to take the 8:45 train, because Jen wanted to go early enough in the day that we could see things before they closed for siesta. So I woke up at 7:00 and dragged myself out of bed and to the train station. I texted them to let them know I was there, and Katie texted back, saying that her alarm didn’t go off and she was still at her house. There wasn’t another train until 2, so we decided to catch a bus. Of course, the bus station is on the other side of Madrid. It was a little before 9, and the next bus left at 9:30. Jen and I got there on time, but Katie had farther to go on the Metro, so she didn’t get there until about 5 minutes before, by which time they had stopped selling tickets for the 9:30 bus. So we bought tickets for 11:00 and found a Corte Ingles to kill an hour and a half in. We ended up not getting into Avila until quarter to 1, and siesta started at 1:30. The main thing we wanted to see that closed was the Convent of Santa Teresa (Saint Theresa of Avila). We had the hardest time finding it, and it was after 1:30 by the time we finally did, but we still wanted to know where it was so that we could come back at 4 when it opened again. Stupid siesta. So we went and found somewhere to eat. We ate at a Telepizza, which is like a Pizza Hut. It’s really good, which is good to know because there’s one right across the street from me. I thought it was just delivery pizza, but it’s not. Also, they had the Simpsons on in Spanish on TV. It was awesome! It was the Cape Feare episode, where Sideshow Bob is trying to kill Bart so the Simpsons move to a houseboat via the witness relocation program. It’s one of my favorite episodes (I love Sideshow Bob!), and it’s been so long since I’ve watched the Simpsons! After that episode another one came on; the one where Homer goes back to college. That’s got one of my favorite quotes in it: “You must find the jade monkey before the next full moon. . . Sir, we found the jade monkey. It was in your glove compartment.” Haha! I love Mr. Burns. “Excellent. It’s all falling into place.” Hehehe!! I know: I’m a nerd. I embrace it.

Avila has a wall all the way around it, preserved from ancient times. It’s the best preserved walled city in Spain. The walls are called las marallas. After we ate, we went up and walked along them. There are four sections where you can go up, and we went on two of them. The stairs to get up there are scary; they’re steep and uneven and there’s just a thin railing to hang onto. But once you’re up there, there’s a spectacular view of the city, the countryside, and, of course, the mountains. It was really cool. They were all crenulated, and we were imagining being besieged and what it would be like to shoot arrows down from the walls and have to dodge flying rocks hurled up by catapults. Leave it to Katie and me to start imagining that! We were going to go into the cathedral, but it was like 4 euro and Katie and Jen didn’t want to pay that much to get in, so we just saw a little bit of it through the divider before the ticket booth. I would have liked to go in, but that’s ok. All these cathedrals are much the same anyway.

By that time it was almost 4, so we started heading back to the Convent of Santa Teresa. Katie especially wanted to see it because St. Teresa is her confirmation saint. It was a beautiful little church, and there was an old woman who must have worked there who told us a little about various things. Not being Catholic, I didn’t know much about St. Teresa, but it was still very pretty. There was a little room off the church where the relic is kept; they have her ring finger, preserved and displayed. It’s fairly disgusting: half decomposed, but with two gold rings on it. I asked Katie and Jen, the Catholics, how churches got relics, but they didn’t know. I’m imaging people swooping down on saints as soon as they die, cutting off their fingers and pulling out their teeth to distribute to various churches. I’m sure I’ve just horribly offended every Catholic in the world. Oh well. J There was also a museum at the church, but it was also more expensive than we were willing to do. We meandered back toward the bus stations. We stopped in the Plaza Mayor to buy yemas de Santa Teresa, which are a kind of candy made from egg yokes and sugar that are characteristic of Avila. That put off Katie and Jen a bit, but Rosaura had said that I should try them, so I got a small box. They’re actually pretty good. They have about the same consistency as very soft cookie dough, and they don’t taste at all like egg yokes.

We caught the 6:00 bus back to Madrid and arrived back around quarter to 8. It’s 9:00 now, and I’m just sitting writing this, waiting for supper. There’s not much more to tell. Tomorrow Katie and I are going back to the Prado museum to see everything we didn’t see last time. It’s free Sundays from 5-8, so we’re going to do it then. Yay for free entry!

I can’t believe it’s halfway through March already. This month is flying by!

Bethany

March 8

2009-03-09T04:29:00.001-07:00

3-8
Today we went to Patricia’s house to cook Spanish dishes. We made tortilla de patata (Spanish tortilla, which is a kind of potato omelet), espinacas (spinach with onions, green pepper, raisins, and tomato), arroz con leche (rice with condensed milk, lemon, and sugar for dessert) and, of course, sangria. It was a lot of fun. We mostly chopped vegetables and stirred things, and Patricia’s neighbor did most of the “real” cooking, but we did get to help. There were 16 of us total, including Patricia’s husband and two sons, so everything was in mass quantities. We made three tortillas, I think; all bigger than a dinner plate. Probably about the size of a frozen pizza. You cook them like omelets in a fry pan and then when the time comes to flip it you put a flat lid on the pan, flip it upside down and then quick slide it back into the pan. It was rather impressive when Patricia’s husband did it; we gave him a round of applause. One of the ones we made was over an inch thick, but the others were probably only about a half inch. Everything was delicious. Well, the spinach was not so good. It was alright for a one time thing, but I don’t know if I would make it again. Maybe without the raisins. They gave it a weird sweet taste. Patricia is going to send us the recipes for everything we made (in quantities for 4 instead of 16, and with American measurements!) so I can make it for people in the States! We also had cheese slices and three kinds of sausage, including blood sausage which was actually quite good, and sliced ham. Delicious! We ate an entire platter of meat and cheese before lunch because we were all hungry, and then there was another platter during the meal. We ate for probably 3 hours between the pre-meal snacking and the very long, multi-course meal. Which, of course, is very Spanish. Their meals tend to be very long, social occasions. It was fun to get together with the AYA group again. We actually talked in Spanish most of the time this time because the neighbor and her husband and kids were there. The kids speak English, and I think the other two know some, but mostly it was Spanish. We sat and talked for a long time after we finished eating, too. We got there a little after noon and didn’t leave until 6!
When I got home I talked to my parents for about an hour and a half. It was a different time of day than normal, and a little longer than usual because I hadn’t talked to them for two weeks. When I was done and I brought the phone back, Rosaura told me that I can’t talk that long because she was waiting for a call from her daughter who usually called then because that was when her baby went to bed and she could only call on Saturdays and Sundays because she had work and yadda yadda yadda (as if I could talk to my parents who are 7 hours away at any time I please). First of all, I understand that she wanted to talk to her daughter. But I felt like she was giving me one of those classic Rosaura scoldings where I should feel terrible and never do it again type thing. I don’t know if that was her intention, but it felt like it. I was upset at her for tarnishing my good mood, but I tried to just let it roll off. I wasn’t going to let her make me feel bad! But I think in the future we’d better keep to our normal time frame on Sunday nights.
Well, that’s all folks!
Bethany

March 7

2009-03-09T04:28:00.000-07:00

3-7
Yesterday was a crappy day. Almost as soon as I woke up, I started worrying because I’m still undecided about what to do during spring break. I have a nonrefundable flight lined up out of Salzburg on April 7th, but then I would get back to Madrid and have a week with nothing to do and everyone else gone. So I was thinking about scrapping the ticket and using my Eurail pass to get trains to other cities and travel on my own. And I think for the most part that would be ok, except there are some trains you need to pay an extra charge if it’s a high speed or a reservation fee or something were it wouldn’t be free. So I’ve been trying to figure all this out, in the 20 minutes or so I have at a time on the internet between classes. So I started the day out worried. I decided to go to Sol because I wanted to go to FNAC (the book/music store) to get the second Harry Potter in Spanish, and I needed to buy toothpaste and stuff from Corte Ingles. At FNAC I found Golden Compass, the Hobbit, and Pawn of Prophecy in Spanish too, and I was so excited! I could buy them and read some of my favorite books while still practicing my Spanish. But they wouldn’t take my credit card without ID, and they wouldn’t accept my international student ID card or a copy of my passport (it has to be the original passport). So I ended up just getting HP with the 20 euro I had in my purse. I was so mad. It was so stupid. So, then after that I only had 5 euro left for Corte Ingles, so I couldn’t get everything I needed. I was in a really bad mood. Not to mention, I was still worried about spring break. I stopped in the locutorio for a little bit (it couldn’t be very long because I didn’t have very much money) to try to figure out some of the eurail stuff, and what little I found was just discounted tickets, not free. All I wanted to do was talk to my parents about things to try to sort some stuff out, but we’re not going to talk until Sunday. I also found out my grandpa had a mild stroke (either that or an MS ‘attack’). The way it was presented it didn’t sound like that big of a deal, so I wasn’t really worried, but it didn’t help matters! I came home and decided to watch a movie to take my mind off things. I watched V for Vendetta, which isn’t a happy movie, but it’s so good it didn’t matter. I was in a little better mood when I went to choir in the evening, and after singing Handel for four hours I was a little happier. But still. I texted mom to make sure Grandpa was ok, and she called back, so we did get to talk a little. We didn’t get anything resolved because we didn’t talk for long (it’s expensive via cell phone!), but just being able to talk with her cheered me up a bit. So then I spent the rest of the night (until 1 am, to my surprise) looking at the train timetable that came with my Eurail pass to try to figure out which trains needed reservations and extra fees and which ones would be free/very cheap. Then I decided that the day needed to end so I went to sleep. All in all, not my best day.
Today we had a field trip for my cultural studies class. Actually, it was two field trips in one. First, we went to the Reina Sofia museum to see Picasso’s Guernica and some other works by him, Salvador Dali, and a couple other vanguardia artists. It was a lot of cubism and surrealism and all that other kind of stuff that I’m not really into, but it was still interesting. Our teacher talked so long about everything that we ended up spending two and a half hours on one floor, and I don’t think we even saw all of it. Guernica is huge and impressive and disturbing. It’s about the size of a wall in a normal sized room. It is named after the city that was bombed during the civil war, but according to our reading it’s a general anti-war work. It’s the most famous painting in the Reina Sofia, and the one that they bought to draw people in (against Picasso’s express wishes that it stay in the Prado museum, I might add). It is jealously guarded: there were two museum employees for that one painting alone, and if anyone gets too close a buzzer goes off. They wouldn’t even let Jen sit on the floor during our lecture. I have no idea why. But it’s under so much surveillance because at one point it was stabbed. I don’t know when or why, but I assume it was probably some pro-facist/pro-Francoist fanatic. Anyway, not an attractive piece of work in the slightest. But I suppose it gets across the message of the horrors of war as well as anything.
Later this afternoon, we went to Valle de los Caídos, which is a monument built by Franco to commemorate those who fell in the civil war. It’s a very controversial place. It’s about 40 minutes outside of Madrid, up in the mountains. There’s a huge cross that stands on the top of one mountain that can be seen for miles. It’s 50 stories tall, and the base is another 50, so in total it’s 100 stories. Beneath it, carved into the mountain, is a basilica where about 30,000 or more soldiers are buried. The whole thing was built by prisoners of the civil war; republicans who lost to the facists and were captured. The prisons were overfilled, so Franco used them to build his monument instead. Hundreds of them died while hollowing out the mountain and building the cross and basilica. At first, Franco wanted to bury only those soldiers on his side who had died, and because no one wanted their loved ones to be buried so far away in a mass setting like that, he made it mandatory and had tons of bodies moved there from their previous burial places. Then in the late 50s, Franco decided to make it a more unified symbol and said that any republican soldier who died in the war and was Catholic could (must) also be buried there, so there was another huge batch of bodies moved. Because of this, there are thousands of unidentified bodies, and lots of people don’t know where their parents/grandparents are buried. In addition to the soldiers, the founder of the Falange (fascist group) Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera and Franco himself are buried there. There was a huge controversy about what should be done with the monument after Franco died; some people wanted it destroyed, and others wanted it preserved as a part of the nation’s history. The current president made a law in 2007 that it will be preserved as an apolitical monument, and they are starting to try to identify the unknown bodies buried there. A huge project, since there are more than 30,000. I hesitate to say that it was a cool trip, because the history behind it is so horrible, but seeing that huge cross amongst all the mountains is certainly beautiful. Maybe it would be better to say it was impressive. It’s hard with things like this, because the Spaniards have such strong opinions when it comes to Franco, since it was so recent in history, and I don’t always know who thinks what or why. I don’t want to unthinkingly say anything that would offend them. It’s very different for us, whose country has been free for hundreds of years, than for the Spaniards, who had a dictator less than 35 years ago, and the majority of the population lived through it and remembers it. It’s weird for me to imagine that. As Americans, we take such pride in our freedom; I can’t imagine living without it. It seems like something like dictatorship should be a thing of the past, or at least be somewhere very far away (I suppose I am very far away, aren’t I. . .). But it was a reality for everyone here. It’s weird.
Tomorrow we have our cooking class at Patricia’s house. One of her neighbors is a cook and she’s going to teach us to make some traditional Spanish dishes. So when I come home I can cook Spanish tortilla and flan and stuff for you! I can’t guarantee it would be good . . . . But it should be fun. She gave us the bus number and the name of the street to get off on, but we’re sort of supposed to find our way on our own, which should be interesting. Thank goodness I’m going with Katie! It’s such a relief to have another person; that way, if you get lost at least you’re not lost alone!
We have a 4 day weekend coming up in a couple weeks because Thursday the 19th is the Día de San José and there’s no school. Katie and I were going to go to Portugal, but everything was so expensive that we decided to scrap that and take day trips instead. There are a lot of places we want to go within a couple hours of Madrid. We want to go to Salamanca, Cuenca, Guadalajara, maybe return to Toledo, el Escorial, Aranjuez; there are more places than we have days! I think this’ll be better than one big trip because it’ll be a lot cheaper!
There’s someone in our apartment building that plays the oboe and always practices around this time and I can hear. He/she is really good, and it always makes me happy to hear oboe music coming from the open window!
Well, I should probably get some homework done before supper. Later!
Bethany

March 2

2009-03-03T04:56:00.000-08:00

3-2
Happy March, everyone!! I just got back from Barcelona this morning! It was amazing!! It’s the second largest city in Spain, after Madrid, but it has a totally different feel. Everyone kept telling me it’s more European than Madrid, but I don’t know what that means. I guess that it’s less modernized or something, but I don’t really understand. The streets are much wider and airier, and it’s on the Mediterranean! It’s a 7 and a half hour bus ride, so we took a midnight bus. At the termanial, I asked a guard for directions and he started hitting on me!! It was weird. He asked if I was English, and I said no, American, and he told me he had never met an American before. Then he said he wanted to see me again after this and asked if he could give me his number. I told him I wasn’t interested (I didn’t know what to say!), and then he started wheedling. He said he had always had a dream to date an American. (I don’t know if this is because of the reputation American girls sometimes have of being easy or what.) I told him he should visit the States and maybe he could find a girlfriend there. The he asked me if it was because he was black, and if I didn’t like black people. I was like no, that’s not it at all! Then he was like: have you ever had a black boyfriend, you should try it. He was going on for like 5 minutes about all of this. Finally I said I’m sorry, I’m not interested, and I’m going to be late. I have to go! It was a very uncomfortable experience!
I went with Katie and her friend from home, Greg, who’s studying in London this semester. We got on the bus (the midnight bus, mind you) and this lady came on with a 2 year old girl. For the first half hour or so they were making weird noises, like baby noises, and talking. Then the girl started crying. I was like shut your kid up or I will do it myself!! It was like 1 in the morning!! Grrr! Fortunately, after a while she must have fallen asleep, because I didn’t hear anything more the rest of the trip. We stopped at 2:30 and again at 4ish for a break/change of drivers, and each time they turned all the lights on and made an announcement over the loudspeaker, so it was impossible to sleep through. I did fall asleep in some form, but I don’t know for how long or how well I slept. We got into Barcelona around 7:30, just as the sun was rising. It was very to pretty to see the sunrise over the city! We found our hostel and were lucky enough to be able to check in right away. We decided to take an hour or so to sleep because nothing was open in the city anyway until 9 or 10. Our hostel was really nice (it should have been, for 25 euro a night!) and it was right in the middle of things. We could walk almost everywhere.
We decided just to start wandering, and right away we found the monument to Christopher Columbus, which is at the port. It’s a huge obelisk thingy with a statue of Columbus on the top pointing to the spot where he landed in Spain after discovering America. The pedestal has a statue of Queen Isabel and various scenes of him petitioning the trip and stuff. It was cool. After that we went to the Cathedral of Barcelona, which was, of course, under construction. They were restoring the front of the building, so they put up a huge banner thingy with what it was supposed to look like when it was done, complete with a giant Telefonica logo. All you could see of the actual building was the peak and the spires. Stupid construction. It was free to go inside, though, and we were able to take pictures. It’s weird: I’ve seen so many cathedrals now that I don’t really know how to describe them any differently. They all look very much the same, and yet there’re still always worth visiting. Just being there and seeing such a huge, beautiful, historic building is so cool, that it doesn’t really matter if it’s not that different that ones I’ve already seen.
Our next stop was the church of Santa Maria del Mar, which was basically a cathedral except maybe a little smaller. Very beautiful, with lots of stained glass windows high above the altar. While we were there, a man started playing the organ, so we got to hear it reverberating around the church. It was awesome.
Our next stop was the Museo Picasso, which is (obviously) the Picasso museum. It had a bunch of his sketches and lesser known works. At least, they were lesser known to me. And since I am the ultimate authority on everything, if I don’t know it, it isn’t famous. I was surprised at how much of his stuff wasn’t cubist. I didn’t know he had such a long normal period. Much of his work was intelligible and pleasant to look at. I was glad, because the whole abstract, cubism thing just doesn’t make much sense to me. I like to know what I’m looking at. There were several different styles of paintings; some portraits, some still-life, even one that looked just like a Monet! There was also a room that talked about his collaboration with Diagilev and the Russian Ballet, which we studied in 20th Century Music! There were photos of the set and costumes he designed for one of the ballets (of course now I can’t remember the name of it. It wasn’t one I knew). They talked about Satie’s Parade, which is one of the ones we studied, but there were no pictures of that one. The most famous of his works, like Guernica, are in other museums. We’re going to see Guernica and some of the others in the Museo Reina Sofía with my Estudios Culturales class on Saturday. Should be interesting touring a museum, with my class of 60 kids . . . .
After the museum, we wandered a little bit more. We ended up at the Arc del Triomf, which is a huge gateway type arch in the middle of a long walk with statues and cool lampposts and stuff. It was very cool. And kind of random. That’s one of the things I love most about Spain though; there are so many random statues and monuments just hanging around on the street, oblivious to the modern world around them. It really gives the cities a different feel from anything in the United States.
Next we went and saw some Gaudi stuff. After a little bit of confusion in which we got slightly lost, we found the Casa Batllo, which is one of the houses Gaudi built. It was just a tall, narrowish building in the middle of the block, but boy, did it stand out! It was all colorful with wavy stone balconies and pillars, and cool little spires on top. I read somewhere that Gaudi often emulated eroded stone in his buildings, and the smooth, rounded edges of both Casas does look like that. It also looks to me like it’s melting. The Casa Mila, which is the other building he designed, is an apartment like building with more of the cool wavy balconies. This one isn’t colorful, but it’s got spires on top that remind me of Dairy Queen ice cream cones, with the same kind of swirly twist. The Casa Mila also has these really cool wrought iron-like railings on the balconies that look kind of leafy. We would have gone inside the buildings, but they were 15 and 18 euros, and that seemed a little expensive for us, so we just looked from the outside.
Then we went back to our hostel to rest for a while. It’s tiring walking all around a city! After maybe an hour or so, we went out to Port Vell, which is the seaport. There was a mall and an aquarium and an IMAX and a movie theatre and a whole bunch of stuff there. You couldn’t really see the ocean from there because of the buildings and all the tall ships. We were going to go to the aquarium, but it was like 12 euros, which was too expensive. Then Katie and Greg wanted to see a Monsters of the Deep ocean movie at the IMAX in 3D, but I vetoed that. IMAXes tend to make me a little sick sometimes, and I hate 3D stuff, so both of them together sounded less than fun for me. Although, I suppose the ocean one would have been better than the Dinosaurs Alive movie that was also showing. But we decided to just go see a regular movie. We saw Slumdog Millionaire in Spanish. It was a good movie. I was pleased by how easily I understood everything. I didn’t like the end, though. Well, not the end of the movie, that was fine, but when the credits start . . . well I won’t ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. I just thought it ruined the mood. After the movie Katie and I went back to the hostel and Greg went to meet some friends of his who were also visiting Barcelona this weekend.
Sunday morning we went to Colonia Guell, which is a little town 20 minutes outside of Barcelona where Gaudi designed the church. This is the one my aunt Janny told me was her favorite of all the Gaudi buildings. Only the crypt was completed when the patron withdrew funding, and even though they’ve added some more to it after his death, it’s still not finished. It was really cool: there was a sort of stone canopy over the entrance with rounded pillars that Greg said looked kind of like spider legs. There were lots of roundish stained glass windows with cool little peaks over them. Inside, there was a one room chapel. They had just finished holding mass, so you could still smell the candles. It was beautiful, with all the stained glass and the unique ceiling and curved pillars. I think there was an upstairs, or more rooms somewhere, but it was closed off. There were stairs outside where you could go up on top of the church by the bell tower, where there was a cool view of the colony. I definitely thought it was worth the trip, but I’m not sure if Katie and Greg liked all the Gaudi stuff. They kept referring to it as gaudy, and I don’t know if they didn’t like it, or if they thought it was interesting, but just a little ostentatious. I’m pretty sure Greg used the word obnoxious once, but I don’t agree. I think it’s cool.
When we got back to Barcelona (much later in the day than any of us had expected) we went to Park Guell, which is the park Gaudi designed. It was a million and a half miles from the metro station, and at the top of a huge hill. There were 7 or 8 escalators in the hill from the bottom, plus two very steep blocks to walk up. When we got there, we had to rush through because it was getting late and we still wanted to see the Sagrada Familia before it closed at 6. So we saw the main gate entrance, where the gingerbread house-like buildings of Gaudi’s are (a lot of Gaudi’s stuff reminds me of desserts, apparently), and we saw a little bit of the grounds. I wish we would have had more time, but what can you do? What we did see was really cool.
From there we rushed off to see the Sagrada Familia, which is Gaudi’s famous unfinished cathedral. Another hugely long walk back (though a different route this time without the giant hill), and a couple metro stops later we got there, at almost quarter till 6. Greg and Katie didn’t want to pay 9 euros to get in, but I knew that if I didn’t, I would regret it forever. So I went in. The inside is almost all under construction, because they’re still working on building it from his plans, so there wasn’t a whole lot I could see. I saw the outside walls and huge windows and a few stained glass windows. There’s an elevator you can take up one of the towers, but it was closed by the time I got there. So I stayed inside the compound until about 10 after 6. There were still people there, but all the workers were starting to leave, so I decided to go out. That’s when I got pictures of the outside, which is the most impressive part of the church. There are two façades, on opposite sides of the building. The nativity façade is beautifully carved, with pretty figures. There were musicians carved around the stable scene, and one of them was playing the bassoon! So I got a close up picture of that! J The passion façade, on the other side of the church, is the crucifixion, and all the figures are very angular and strange looking. Both of them are immensely complex and detailed; so much so that it was hard to see everything. It didn’t help that it was so immense. There are four spires on each side built so far, that tower over everything nearby. These are supposed to be the shortest of the 12 towers in the plans. I don’t know how much they’ve scaled down Gaudi’s original plans, but I think they’re still going to make all the towers. The Sagrada Familia is the most impressive of the Gaudi things I saw, just from the sheer size and detail of it. It dominates the plaza, and it’s hard to look away because there’s just so much there to see. It was awesome.
After that, we didn’t really have any plans. Greg wanted to go find a beach, so we went back to the Port and walked along the seaside until we found sand. It was just starting to get dark, so it was really pretty with the sea and the lights from the city. We took off our shoes and socks and waded in the water. So cold!! When we were done freezing our toes off, we went up to a convenience store type thing that was close and bought some wine coolers and chips and sat on the beach in the dark, listening to the sound of the waves for a long time. It was really beautiful. And it smelled so good! But it got cold after a while, so around 8 we headed back to the hostel. At 9 we went downstairs to the restaurant owned by the hostel people and had dinner. I had paella for the first time in Spain. It was yummy. Katie and I got one to share, and the waiter asked us if we wanted two, because the one was small, and held out his hands to about a 6 inch circle. We didn’t want to pay for two, though, so we still got one. When it came it was at least a 12 inch pan! I don’t think we would have been able to eat a whole one each! Stupid waiter trying to get more money out of us . . . .
After supper we went back and went to bed. We got up at 6 this morning in order to get to the airport before our flight left at 8:30. It was less than an hour flight and we were back in Madrid. Much better than 7 and a half hours on a bus! I had a couple hours home before I had to go to class, so I showered and sorted pictures. It doesn’t feel like it was just this morning that I was in Barcelona!
Well, I think that concludes another of my Spanish adventures. Sorry for the long blog, but if you’ve made it this far, you win a special prize! And that is . . . you have been granted the knowledge of what I’m doing in Spain!! Woo hoo!! Wow, I’m in a weird mood. I think I need to go to bed.
Good night all!
Bethany

February 24

2009-02-24T09:19:00.001-08:00

Today is February 24. That means I´ve been in Spain for a month! It´s kind of hard to believe. In some respects, it feels like it´s been longer than that, especially the first couple weeks. (Although when I look back at that, it seems like it´s been much longer than just a month.) But in most ways it´s gone by really fast. This is a good thing and a bad thing, I suppose. I am just as glad now to have the time go by fast, so that I can come home and see all my family and friends sooner. But I´m sure once the time comes, I won´t want to leave. I also feel a little guilty because I had intended to start speaking Spanish with my friends after the first week, and it hasn´t happened yet. And now all of the sudden it´s been a month! We to speak in Spanish every once in a while, and I´m finding that even when I´m speaking in English I sometimes incorporate a little Spanish, either in a phrase or sentence construction or something, but I had far better intentions. So that´s going to be my goal for the next month. Hopefully less than a month. It´s also weird to think that I´ve known the people I met here for only a month. Since we´ve done so much together it seems like I´ve known them for much longer. I still don´t know them all well, but it seems like it´s been more than a month.
Barcelona plans are well underway. We´re taking the bus Friday night, and we decided this morning to for sure take a flight back on Monday morning. Our hostel has a 2 night stay minimum, so we figured we´d take advantage of that and then catch an 7:30am flight back and get back around 8:30 or 9. Then I can have some time to sleep before classes start at 4. That´s the wonderful thing about having Monday mornings off! Janny gave me some recommendations of Gaudi sites to see there, so I think we´re going to take advantage of most of those. I´m getting really excited, I´ve heard Barcelona is one of the best cities in Spain.
I´ve hit a snag on my spring break planning. I can´t remember how much of this I´ve told before, so I´m going to briefly sum it up. Jen and I were going to fly to Budapest, then take the train to Vienna and Salzburg, and then fly home from Salzburg. Later that night (after we bought the tickets), she decided that would be too much money, so we decided to cancel those tickets and do a round trip from Budapest, and from there a round trip bus to Vienna. We would scrap Salzburg entirely. I found out last night that my ticket home from Salzburg is nonrefundable. So I either have to absorb the 164 euro ticket and buy a new one, or find a way to get to Salzburg, probably on my own. I´m not really sure what I´m going to do yet. I messaged Jen but haven´t heard anything back yet. This whole planning thing is so complicated!! It´s so much easier when someone else plans and I just tag along! But I guess it´s a good learning experience. And if I do have to travel alone, it´ll be practice for June when I think I´m going to end up going from Athens to Madrid to Chicago on my own. So I´m trying to think positively.
I can´t think of anything more of interest that´s happened lately, so I´m going to go catch the bus home now. Bye!
Bethany

February 22

2009-02-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

Hi all
This morning we went to the Rastro, which is this flea market type thing in the streets. There were about 3 or 4 streets with stalls on both sides filled with all kinds of things, most for really cheap. It was fun to see, but we only spent about 30-45 minutes there because Jen had to leave to go to mass with her senora, and so we all left. Katie and I walked back to Sol via the Plaza Mayor, where there was supposed to be some kind of celebration for Carnaval. All there was was a man who was doing something with a backhoe. I think it was supposed to be some kind of dance with the man and the backhoe. He was in the scoop and it raised up, and then he hung from it and then curled up, and it was weird. It was kind of boring so we just walked by and didn´t stay. Katie and I went to Corte Ingles to get shower shoes for our hostel next weekend in Barcelona, but the cheapest flip flops we could find were 15.50 euros! I wasn´t about to pay that much. Maybe once it gets closer to summer I can find something cheaper. I´ll figure something else out in the mean time.
I came to the internet cafe today to post pictures on Facebook. I got my email for the first time since Thursday, and there were two from my aunt. For those of you who don´t know, which I assume is most of you, my aunt Janny has been at the Mayo clinic for the past week and a half or so. They found out that she has amyloidosis, which is a blood disease that involves the heart, nervous system, and skin. Without treatment, she could die within 3 years. With treatment, which involves a lot of chemotherapy or bone marrow transplant, the time of survival is 5-10 years and growing with each passing year. But there´s a 1 in 3 chance of not surviving the first year of treatment. Her disease is still in the early stages, even though the symptoms have been going on for 5 years. The doctors said she probably wouldn´t have problems with the transplant, and that it could happen as early as April. The danger would be that the treatments wouldn´t work and it would continue to spread. (If I´ve mistaken anything here, please correct me.) So that was a blow. I started crying in the middle of the internet cafe. Fortuanately, I don´t think anyone noticed. It´s a scary thing to find out someone you love may not have as long to live as everyone expected. She´s got an amazing attitude about everything; far better than I would have. She said she knows God is looking out for her, and that whatever happens He will be there. (Great, now I´m starting to cry again.) All of this really makes me wish I weren´t halfway across the world. I would like nothing more than to be with my family now. But obviously that can´t happen. So there´s really nothing for me to do other than pray. Any good wishes you would be willing to will toward Jan, whether it´s in prayer format or not, would be appreciated.
I don´t have any more plans today other than homework. It´s not due till Tuesday, though, so maybe I´ll just do a little and then curl up with a book and try to forget about the world for a while.
I´ll write again soon,
Bethany

February 21

2009-02-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

2-21
We went to Segovia today! It was a beautiful city! I think it might be my favorite of the cities we’ve visited so far. Either Segovia or Toledo. We took the train, which took about 2 hours and 15 minutes because it stopped at every single station on the way. But to take a direct train we would have had to use the Ave high speed train, which costs a lot more. So we got into Segovia around 12:15. We took a bus into the city center where the Roman aqueduct is. It was amazing; there’s a huge section of an aqueduct from the Roman Empire still standing and in almost perfect condition. It was enormous, and all put together without mortar and at a time without modern engineering. I don’t know how they got the stones that high up in the air. The wonders of slave labor, I guess. There was a place where you could go up near the top and get a view of the whole city and the surrounding countryside, bordered by mountains. Beautiful! After that we went to the Alcázar, which is the palace/fortress thingy where a lot of the old kings and queens lived or stayed. It was built around the 12^th century; at least, that’s when the earliest documentation of it is. But it could have been around a lot longer since the city obviously existed during the Roman Empire. It has nine rooms that visitors can see, where the royalty lived. There’s the throne room, the royal bedroom, the chapel, and various other places. In one, called the Room of the Monarchs, there are little busts of all the kings of Asturias, Leon, and Castilla lining the walls just below the ceiling. I’m not when it was built, but there are tons of them so it had to be a little later. The brochure says it was commissioned by Felipe II, and if I knew my Spanish history a little better I might be able to tell you when he ruled (I just looked it up, and I actually did know! I just had a brain-fart. We studied him in class last semester. He was the king of Emperor Carlos V and he ruled in the late 1500s). The rooms were all really lavishly decorated, of course, with lots of red velvet and tapestries and paintings. We were actually allowed to take pictures here! I need to get to the internet café to post a bunch of pictures. (Stupid school won’t let me download ActiveX to upload them. Hrm.) In addition to the courtly rooms there was an armory, which was exciting. It was a lot smaller than the one at the royal palace in Madrid, but it had some cool stuff. And, again, I could take pictures! There was also a museum of the Royal Artillery School, which had a bunch of information about artillery and science from 1764-1862. There were lots of little models of cannons and guns and stuff, and actual examples too. They had some antique ammunition, too. I took lots of pictures of the guns and stuff for Dad, but they were all in glass cases, so I’m not sure how much of what you can see is the display and how much is a reflection of me taking the picture. The last thing we did there was climb the tower of Juan II, which had 152 steps to the top, most of which in a Judson Tower-like spiral (except the stairs were a lot taller here). It was a breathtaking view, though. You could see the whole city, plus the empty plains and hills beyond, and then the snow-covered mountains in the distance. My favorite was the view of the cathedral and it’s domed steeple, with the mountains in the background. Beautiful!
We found a kebop (sp?) restaurant to eat at that had a great view of the aqueduct. It’s funny: I’m in Spain and I’m eating Turkish food! They’re delicious, though. We discovered them in Granada. And they’re cheap, which is a big plus. They’re only 3.50 or 4 euros, as opposed to 8-10ish at most restaurants.
After lunch we went to the Catedral de Segovia. I love these cathedrals! They’re so delightfully European! This one is technically the last Gothic cathedral, but it has a lot of the Renaissance aesthetics, with it’s concept of space and luminosity. I’m looking at the brochure as I type this, in case you couldn’t tell. J This cathedral wasn’t nearly as opulent as the one in Toledo, having been built at the beginning of the Renaissance rather than later in the Baroque era. But it was still beautiful. There was a simplicity in the walls and ceilings that contrasted the ornate sculptures and artworks. There wasn’t that feeling of being draped in gold when you walked in. The stone walls were plain, and the columns not carved or painted or anything. It’s so cool to walk into a huge building that’s hundreds of years old, with the ceiling towering over your head and gold statues and paintings everywhere. It makes me wish I had brought Pillars of the Earth with me so I could have finished it. It’s all about building a cathedral in the Renaissance. I’ve actually seen it here in Spanish and contemplated buying it. But it’s not worth it. I do which, however, that they would turn on the heat a little in these cathedrals. Ancient stone buildings are cold! I think it was colder inside than it was outside. Of course, it was very sunny today.
After the cathedral it was getting late-ish, so we checked the bus schedule to get back to the train station. We had about a half hour before the bus came, so we wandered around some of the streets, going in tourist shops and stuff like that. We took the bus back at 5:30, because we thought the train left at 5:57. But it turns out we were looking at the arrival schedule, not the departure schedule. The train didn’t leave until 6:55. So for 45 minutes we wandered around near the train station, which is on the outskirts, and only has these little cheapo stores that have a bunch of crap that no one would actually buy. Then we went back to the station and sat in the warm until the train came. It was a quicker trip on the way home than the way there. I think it took less than two hours to get back into Madrid, and then a little longer to get to my stop. But I got home earlier than I had expected, which was nice, because I’m tired!
Tomorrow we’re going to the Rastro, which is a big flea market in Madrid. It’s also Carnaval until Wednesday, so we might go to Plaza Mayor to see some of the celebrations. Rosaura said there’s a parade in the afternoon that goes to Plaza de la Cibeles, so maybe we’ll catch that. It’s cool being here during the fiestas! Carnaval is a lot like Halloween; all the kids dress up in costumes and walk around. Adults dress up too, and have parties. Apparently in a lot of the smaller towns everyone dresses up and parties in the streets, but it’s less of a big deal in Madrid since it’s such a big city. But it should still be fun. All I can think of is the Simpsons when they’re in Brazil and Bart gets swallowed by the python and you can see his body shape inside the snake, and he says “Don’t be sad; it’s Carnaval” and starts to dance. Ok, it sounds weird when I describe it, but I know Danny at least is cracking up right now, and maybe Brent too. It’s sad: I don’t have anyone here to share in my Simpsons quotes. That’s one show that Katie doesn’t watch. So I have to contain myself and laugh in my head.
Well, I don’t have anything more to write about now, and I’m really tired, so I’m going to bed. I’ll write tomorrow about the Rastro and Carnaval.
¡Hasta mañana!
Bethany

February 20

2009-02-22T08:05:00.000-08:00

2-20

Today I met with Jeannette to plan our trip to Austria and Hungary over spring break. We had originally planned to go to Budapest, Vienna, and Salzburg, but now it’s looking like we’re going to skip Salzburg. *tear* It was too much money to do all three. So maybe I can still go to Salzburg in May/June. But anyway, we’ve got at least part of the trip planned out.
I also had my first choir rehearsal today. Patricia met me at the train station and drove me the rest of the way. We were a little late because I had to come all the way from Jen’s house (almost an hour away) and then we got lost driving there, but we got there around 6:30. I had a mini voice test so the director could see my range, and then I jumped into the choir. I would guess there are about 50 people in it, both students and community members. We’re doing all Handel music for this concert in honor of the 200 or something-th anniversary of his death. I was happy to find that out; I wasn’t sure what kind of music to expect. And I just did a concert with all Handel, so I’m nice and practiced up. Even though it’s been over two months since I’ve sung seriously. The music is all in Latin or English, which is kinda funny. I go to Spain and sing German music in English. Go figure. It’s cute to listen to the choir singing English in their Spanish accents! There’s a concert at the end of March that’s held in a cathedral in Leganés, which is the town where the rehearsals are. It’s just south of Madrid. I’m not sure if I’m going to be in the concert or not, since I’m jumping in in the middle of the rehearsal process, but I’d absolutely love to sing in a cathedral! I think I will be able to do it, though, as long as I’m not traveling. Apparently a lot of the people in the choir don’t read music, so one of the directors was talking constantly about how important it is to learn your parts and listen to the music and stuff. So I’ve already got a leg up on them, being able to read. I didn’t sing perfectly, but I was probably almost as good as some of the people who’ve been singing this music for a while. So I don’t think there’ll be a problem with learning it. There’s a part in each reahearsal where groups of 2 or 3 go up into a little room for a vocal technique session with another teacher (who’s from England, so she speaks English!). Basically, it’s just to go over any problem sections. I went with the girl sitting next to me and her friend. They are the kind of singers that will sing when someone else is singing with them, but not on their own. After a 10 minute session, the teacher was telling them to sit by me and listen so they can learn their parts better. That made me feel pretty good about myself! J I got to talking with the two girls that sat on either side of me. Both of them told me that I could speak English with them if I wanted, and they were both talking to me in English the whole time. One of them was translating a lot of what the director said, which wasn’t really necessary most of the time, but it was nice of her to do. She made sure I knew where we were and everything, too, which was good because sometimes when they say where we’re starting it’s all a blur and hard to catch. The rehearsal is four hours long, which I thought was going to be atrocious, but it wasn’t too bad. There’s a long warm up time, then sectionals, during which we go out to our vocal technique things. Then we take a break and come back with the whole choir. So it’s pretty well broken up. It went faster than I expected.
The director arranged for someone who lives near me to show me how to get back home, since I had come in a rather circuitous route. She was a very nice woman who talked to me about lots of different things and gave me her phone number in case I had any questions. We took the train home, but the director drove us to the train station, so I’m still not sure how exactly to get there. Next week we’re going to take the metro and compare travel times. I think the train would be faster, but it’s kind of far from the campus.
When I got home at a little after 11, I found that Patricia and Jen had been calling and calling, worried about where I was. I realized that Rosaura and Manuel had forgotten I was going to choir. I had told Rosaura I would be back in the afternoon, but the planning session with Jen took a lot longer than I expected, so I went directly to choir. Yesterday Rosaura asked me if I was going to choir and I told her I was going today, but I guess I didn’t tell her what time. They were apparently waiting for me to eat, and Manuel called Patricia, which made her worried, so she called a couple times, then she called Jen, who then got worried and called me several times, and it was a big mess. Plus I got another scolding from Rosaura for not calling and letting them know I wasn’t going to be there for supper. Another one of those ‘you need to use your head and have some sense’ talks. I apologized profusely, but she kept going on, and there’s only so many times I can say I’m sorry. Especially when she did know I was going to choir. Yes, I should have made sure she remembered, but we did talk about it yesterday. Of course, when I told her I thought she knew because we had talked last night, she said she didn’t remember. I sometimes remember if her memory is all there, because she tends to ask me things several times. So I should have taken that into account and made sure she knew. But I didn’t. And I got scolded. Whatever. I’m not taking this one to heart.
So yeah, that was my night. I have to get up early tomorrow so I can meet the girls at 9:15 to go to Segovia. I’m excited; it’s supposed to be a beautiful city. I’m sure I’ll have lots to talk about tomorrow!
Good night,
Bethany

February 19

2009-02-19T04:41:00.001-08:00

Hola
It´s been a few since I wrote a blog, so I thought I´d catch you up on my life. Not much exciting has happened since the Granada trip. Just school as normal. It´s the end of the second week of classes, and things are settling into a nice little routine. I suddenly got loaded with homework on Tuesday, but most of it isn´t due till next week, so I´ve gotten it all done already. Which is good, because I don´t want to have to worry about it this weekend. I think my favorite class so far is Spanish. We´re learning phrases and expressions that are actually useful in everyday life. How to invite someone somewhere, how to ask for things at stores and restaurants, that sort of thing. The professor is really nice, too. She´s the one who teaches Colloquial Spanish, which I wanted to take but couldn´t, so she knows all the modern phrases and stuff. I also like cultural studies. We watched La lengua de las mariposas yesterday, which means The Tongue of the Butterflies or something like that. It´s a movie about a boy going to school during the second republic in Spain, right before Franco. It was really good, but had a sad ending. The professor in that class is really cool too. In literature we started reading a book called Sonata de Otoño (Fall Sonata) that´s from the beginning of the 1900s. It´s really flowery and romantic and hard to follow. Luckily, it´s pretty short. We had to read half of it for next tuesday, and i finished that yesterday. Not sure I understood all of it, but hey, that´s what class discussion is for. History, the class I was most excited for, has turned out to be kind of boring. I like learning about the history of Spain, but it´s nothing but lecture for 3 hours a week. We just got into the middle ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire. Maybe once we´ve gotten into material I know more about it´ll become more interesting. My last class is film, and we´re studying surrealism now. We´ll be watching Un perro andalúz (An Andalusian Dog) today. He gave us a sheet with a synopsis, and it makes absolutely no sense. I don´t think I really like surrealism. Maybe I should hold back judgement until I see the movie, but I don´t have high hopes.
Tomorrow I´m getting together with Katie and Jen to plan a trip to Segovia this Saturday. It´s about an hour and a half bus ride away, so we´re going to do a day trip. Jen´s host mom is going with us. Apparently she knows a lot about the city and where we should go. I´m looking forward to it. We´re also going to plan to go to Austria for the beginning of spring break. I´m really excited for that! I´m glad I´ll be able to go then instead of in May because it didn´t sound like Brent and Danny were that interested in it, and then we can spend more time in places where they really want to go. I really want to see Vienna, Salzburg, and the Alps. I think we´ll go for 3 or 4 days, depending on when Jen´s other plans start. Katie will be in London, so she won´t go with. I don´t know yet what I´m going to do for the rest of spring break. I have yet to figure that out. I´m thinking about spending a day or two at the end of Holy Week in Toledo or Segovia or somewhere close by so that I won´t have to pay for a hostel. All the hostels are probably sold out already anyway. Holy week is a huge deal here. They have processions all day where they take the statues out from all the little churches and march them down the streets of the city to the cathedral and back again. It´ll be interesting to see, but I don´t necessarily want to spend two days looking at processions.
This weekend is Carnaval. Patricia´s sending us a link to the website that has all the activities. I want to check out some of the parades and stuff. A lot of the bars and stuff have free drinks, and I´m not really sure what other things there are going on. I think it´s not like Brazil where everyone dresses up everywhere. Some people dress up, but not as many.
Next weekend I´m going to Barcelona with Katie and her friend! I´m very excited!! Her friend is studing in Germany, I think, and he wants to see Madrid. So they´re going to hit the Madrid hotspots on Friday, then we´re taking the midnight bus to Barcelona and staying there till Sunday night. It´s about a 7-8 hour bus trip. Katie´s dad knows someone whose sister or something has a hostel in Barcelona, so we´re hoping to stay there for cheap or free (cross fingers).
Well, I´ve got to go to class. Ta ta!
Bethany

February 16

2009-02-17T02:37:00.000-08:00

2-16
Warning: this is a long blog. Very long.
We just got back from Granada last night. Wow, what an experience that was! It was a student-led trip from the university, and it had to be one of the worst-planned and organized trips I’ve been on. I enjoyed the city and what we saw, but it was just so disorganized that it would have almost been worth it to go on our own instead.
We left Madrid on a huge double decker coach bus at 8:30 Friday morning. It was a 5 and a half hour bus ride, and we drove south through all of Castilla La Mancha into Andalusia. Those are two of the autonomous communities, in case you didn’t know. Granada is in Andalusia, which is the southernmost of the communities. It’s close-ish to the sea, but doesn’t have any coastline. It’s warmer there than Madrid, too; it was about 65 or 70 in the sun every day, but much colder in the shade. The scenery was beautiful; lots of rolling hills and fields. In some of the fields there were the ruins of little buildings with half a wall or no roof or something. I don’t know if they were ancient or not, but they looked like it, and in Spain you never know when something is 500 years old! When we were driving through Castilla La Mancha, there were a couple of times I saw Don Quixote-like windmills on a hill in the distance. They weren’t the windmills from the story (I think there’s a place where the supposed real ones are that you can go see), but it reminded me of it. And it was in La Mancha, so it was very cool. On the bus, we met three Italians that we hung out with for a lot of the weekend. There were two girls, Alessandra and I think Maria, and a boy, Riccardo. It was Riccardo that we hung out with most. He spoke English, but the girls only spoke Italian and Spanish. It was cool; they spoke Italian with us and we spoke Spanish with them, and we all understood each other! I knew that the languages were very similar, and I had heard that you could communicate using different languages, but it was a lot easier than I expected, and it was cool to experience!
When we got to Granada, they dropped us off at our two hostels. In the email they sent, they had told us we would be staying in hotels. I wasn’t sure if that meant a real hotel or a hostel, so I brought shampoo and soap and a towel just in case. But most of the other people in AYA who went were expecting a real hotel with all the accommodations included. Ryan (one of the guys in AYA) even said he expected there to be an iron and everything, which I thought was a bit much to expect even from a hotel. So they were all really upset about that miscommunication. The hostel we stayed at was down a narrow alley and it was a little dingy. It was pretty clean, but we were still wary. It was weird; when you walked in the front door it led into a kind of courtyard with an open roof and little balconies on the windows of the rooms above. It was pretty cool, except that the main area was then cold because it didn’t get much sun.
When we got there, they gave us a few hours to eat and do whatever we wanted before we took a walking tour of the city center. We didn’t know where we were or where to go, so we found somewhere close to eat and then met up for the tour. It was led by a student who seemed to know quite a bit about the various places, and I took lots of pictures. Granada was where the Muslims lived before they were kicked out in 1492, so there’s a lot of Muslim architecture and influence, with mosaic tiles and intricately worked plaster-ish stuff on the walls. A lot of the tourist shops had Arabic stuff in them. Granada also was the place where Christopher Columbus got permission from Ferdinand and Isabel to voyage to America. There’s a big statue of Columbus and Isabel in the Plaza de Isabel la Católica, which we used for a meeting place all weekend.
After the tour they dropped us off in the city center and gave us some more free time. We didn’t really know where we were or where the hostel was. This whole weekend, if we asked how to get somewhere the leaders told us to just ask someone on the street. They didn’t know how to get anywhere. So we just wandered around for a while and then eventually found the meeting place. We took a bus to this flamenco thing that was on our itinerary, which I assumed was at a theatre, but it wasn’t. Well, first the bus took us to the Almaycin, which is the ancient Muslim neighborhood with all white buildings were there’s a famous view by the church of St. Nicholas where it drops into a valley and you can see the Alhambra on the next hill, all illuminated at night (it was about 10:30). It was pretty, but it was freezing and we didn’t need to stay there long. Then the bus took us to the flamenco. Ryan described as an underground speakeasy, which is kind of what it seemed like. It wasn’t covert or anything, but it was in a small, low-ceilinged, long, narrow room where we sat around the perimeter so there was a kind of runway in the middle of the room. There were people that danced flamenco individually or in pairs, really close to us. It was kind of cool; we could see all the fancy footwork. It was like a kind of tap dancing; they would stamp out intricate and very fast rhythms with their feet, using their toes and their heels alternately, sometimes with guitar and singing, and sometimes with just people clapping. It was very loud in that little room, what with the stomping and at least two people clapping all the time.
We left the flamenco a little after midnight. On our itinerary, it said there was going to be a party at a club called L’Scandalo starting at midnight. Instead, we went to another club first, until about 1, and then moved on to L’Scandalo. I have no idea why they changed plans, but no one told us about it. We stayed at the other club until about 1:30, and then we wanted to go home, because we didn’t know where to go and we had a full weekend ahead of us. So all the AYA people and quite a few other people told the leaders that we wanted to go back to the hostel, and they sent one of the leaders with us. Only, he didn’t know where to go. We were wandering around the streets with a map, asking random people on the street how to get to our hostel. I think that if you’re going to be organizing a trip for students, you need to at least know how to get back to where you’re staying. That’s a must. It was ridiculous. It took us about a half hour to get home, and at one point when we were getting close, we got to a point that Ryan recognized and knew how to get home, but the other people thought it was the other way, so we split up. They ended up getting there a few minutes after we did. By this time it was 2 in the morning and we just went to bed.
The next morning we got up and went to the breakfast provided by the hostel: toast and jam. Really gourmet, but whatever. At 11:30 we got on a bus to go up to the Alhambra. I don’t think our bus driver knew where he was going, because we turned around at least 3 times, and it took us like a half hour to drive there (it only took about 20 minutes to walk back to the city center afterwards. Granted, there are a lot of one way streets and stuff, so that’s probably why it took so long). I don’t know how much everyone knows about the Alhambra, so I’m going to give a brief description. It’s an ancient city where the Muslim sultans lived in the 1100s. It was a city, but it’s really quite small, and all encompassed by the city of Granada today. It took only 20 years to build, which is amazing, because it’s several large buildings, and it’s very intricate. There were about 2000 people living there when it was used for that purpose. It’s got a main palace complex and then extensive gardens called the Generalife. When the Muslims were expelled from Spain in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabel were in Granada, but they didn’t live there. Their nephew, Emperor Charles (Carlos) V was going to make it the basis of his Spanish empire, and he lived there for about 6 months. During that time he had it added on to, making a round, Romanesque plaza sort of thing with columns where today they hold concerts and parties. It was only because Carlos V built onto it that the Alhambra wasn’t destroyed. All the other mosques and Arabic buildings were demolished in an attempt to wipe out all “heathenism.” After 6 months, though, Carlos decided that it was too far away from the hub of things to make it his home, so he moved somewhere else and abandoned the Alhambra. So, the Alhambra is one of the best and most famous examples of Muslim architecture in Spain.
It was beautiful. There were tiled mosaics on the walls and ceilings, and intricately carved plaster or something, I’m not really sure what it was made of. There were even some original carved wood shutters that were preserved by rubbing oil and dust into them. The ceilings were tall and pointed so that the middle was taller than the sides, and there were arches everywhere. The Muslims had tapped into a water source somewhere at the top of the hill and brought water into the complex where it had previously been all dry. They had some fountains, but also a lot of courtyards with pools of water that run so slowly that it looks like the water isn’t moving at all, so there’s a perfect reflection of the building. It was really cool. After the palace part of it, we went into the Generalife, which are the gardens. It’s on a hill, so there are different levels, and it has tall hedgerows that you can walk through and pathways with fountains and flowers (cheerily blooming in the middle of February!) There was even one huge bush I saw that had the middle carved out of it so you could walk inside! The Generalife was filled with all sorts of things that look like a stereotypical palace garden. It was beautiful. At the end of the tour, we walked down a street, I think it was called the Paseo de los Tristes or something like that, that is one of the oldest streets in Granada. It was downhill on cobblestones with small steps every few feet, and loose stones and very treacherous, so we couldn’t really look around at the buildings, but it was still cool.
When we got back to the city center (at about 3:30), our student leader was like: now’s free time, go do whatever you want. But again, we didn’t know where we were or how to get back, so we wandered until we found something familiar. The next thing on our itinerary was a party at a bar called Mae West, which said time to be determined. We realized after we separated from everyone else that they hadn’t told us what time we were supposed to meet. Of course. We assumed that it probably wasn’t until midnight or so, since that’s when the party the night before was, so we didn’t worry yet. We looked around some of the tourist shops, but once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, so we decided to go back to the hostel to shower and rest for a while. We managed to find it on our own this time (yay!) and so we were there for about an hour when the rest of the people from AYA came back. We hung out in the hostel for the rest of the afternoon. We found out from our Italian friends that the party was going to be at 12ish, so we had a few hours. The club we were going to was supposedly a dress up one, so we put on our nice clothes and Ryan did everyone’s hair and Jillian did everyone’s make up and it was a fun little makeover session. We found out at about 11 that there had been a pre-party party at 10:30 that no one had told us about, but I’m not sure if that was for everyone or just a smaller group. But it didn’t matter. We were having fun in our hostel.
We didn’t even all meet to go to the club together. They had given us the name of it, but no directions or address, so some of the people in our group went on the computer downstairs in the hostel to MapQuest it and find out where the heck we were going. Right before we left, the Italians told us that they heard we were going to a different club first, that was close to Mae West. We all went together, which was good, because none of the AYA people knew where we were going. The first club was small and crowded, and I kept getting bumped and jostled, and it was annoying. They played some American music, but there was also some Spanish music, which is different from the other clubs I’ve been to. I actually tried to dance and have fun, and it was pretty ok for the first hour or so. But then I just got bored. Around 2:00, all the Erasmus students were herded out of that club, counted, and then taken over to Mae West. It looked like it was in a shopping mall. It was weird. But there was a huge flight of stairs that people were climbing and waiting in line to get in, and there was also an elevator. I don’t know why, but we all got in line for the elevator. Which took about a half hour longer than it would have if we had just climbed the stairs. That’s when we also got our coupons for two free drinks. There were basically two rooms to the club, off of a mall-like hallway. The bar part was absolutely packed; you had to wade through people, shoving them out of the way to get anywhere. It was ridiculous. We got our first drinks in there (I got a lemonade and vodka, which pretty much just tasted like lemonade even though there was a lot of vodka in there) and then went over to the pub. That was less crowded. Relatively. You could stand up on your own with a little bit of personal space. They played American music in there, but it wasn’t the normal bad club music. They played some Bon Jovi, and a Spanish version of “I Wanna Be Like You” from the Jungle Book, and Greased Lightning, and some other fun music. I decided that I might as well use my other drink ticket, because it was free and I couldn’t imagine two drinks would kill me. So I got vodka with orange soda. Again, a lot of vodka in that little glass. I’ve never had two drinks before in my life. I was a little dizzy, but I’m not sure how much of that was the alcohol and how much was the fact that it was going on 4 in the morning and I was about to fall asleep on my feet. I was feeling completely lucid, though, and perfectly fine other than that. When it was almost 4, the AYA people started talking about leaving. We all met in the hallway to make sure we had everyone. There were two people who had decided to go back into the bar, so we were trying to call them to let them know we were leaving. One of them didn’t have her phone on her, and the other one picked up, but we weren’t sure how much she could hear. Finally we got through and said we’re leaving, and she said ok, but we didn’t know if it was an ok you can leave or ok we’re coming. So Ryan went around the bar like 4 times looking for them, and finally we decided just to leave. We walked home with no incidents or getting lost (which was a huge relief) and got back to the hostel about quarter to 5 in the morning. I was so tired. Apparently the other girls got back about 15 minutes after we did, but I was asleep by that time. It was way past Bethany’s bed time.
The next morning we had to be out of the room by 10:30; a cruelly early time for us. Five hours of sleep just isn’t sufficient. But we did it, and then found out that there was no breakfast waiting for us. No idea why. So Katie and Jen and I went out into the city and found a little bakery/café where we bought breakfast. We were going to go to the Corte Ingles to buy some supper for the bus ride home, but it was Sunday, so it was closed. The Corte in Madrid is open on Sundays, so we weren’t expecting it to be closed, but I guess Madrid’s is just open because it’s a bigger city. Almost everything in Granada was closed except tourist shops and restaurants. In Spain, everything is closed on Sundays and often Mondays. What is open those days is generally closed from 2-5 for siesta. So the reason we were staying in Granada until the afternoon with nothing to do? I have no idea. We wandered around for a while, then got lunch and sat there at the tables outside in the sun for 3 hours (it took almost that long from the time we got there to the time we got our check; we only sat out for about a half hour after we paid). After that we found another bakery, bought food for the bus, and then sat on a bench along the street for another couple hours. We went back to the hostel to pick up our bags and found the rest of AYA there, so we chatted with them for about a half hour before it was time to meet up to go home.
The original email we had gotten said that we were going to get back to Madrid in the afternoon, so I told my señora I would be home for supper. But when we got there we found out that we weren’t leaving until 4. The bus was supposed to pick up the people from the other hostel at 3:45 and then come get us at 4. Of course it didn’t arrive until 4:30. But then we got on and drove home. I tried to sleep for the first part, and I think I almost succeeded, but not quite. I just listened to my iPod for the rest of the trip. We got back to Madrid at 10:15, and by the time I got home it was about 10:40. I talked to my parents for a while and then went to bed, glad to have a real bed again. I don’t have classes till 4 on Mondays, so I was able to sleep in this morning. I slept until 11:30, and by 2:00 I was ready for a nap! But I forced myself to stay awake and finish some homework. Now it’s 10:30 and I think I’m going to go to bed soon. 5:00 in the morning really is too much for me!
Oh, one more thing about how disorganized the trip was. Two girls from our group had a class on Friday morning, so they bought their own bus tickets to come after class. They arrived around 5:30 or 6. The Erasmus people had put them on a list of the hostel rooms so they would for sure have a room. I know they did that, because when we were all signing up for rooms, we switched one of them out so they would be in the same room (they had been in separate rooms) and I would take her place with my friends. Then the Erasmus people put up a big stink because they said we couldn’t switch it like that, so we put it back the way it was. When the girls got to Granada, they called the leader and were told to just ask people how to get to the hostel. Luckily they had picked up a map from the bus station. They found the hostel and then were told that there was no room for them there. So they went to the other hostel and were split up. One of them was told that she was going to have to room with 5 boys she didn’t know. I’m not sure how she got out of that, but I wouldn’t have done it either! Somehow they ended up together in a room full of strangers, but I have no idea how their hostel got changed. They said there were people there sleeping on the floor on mattresses, so I guess there weren’t enough beds for everyone. Then they didn’t know where we were or where we were meeting when, so they wandered around the city for a couple hours. They just happened across us when we were all gathering to go to the flamenco, and we left 5 minutes after they found us, so if they hadn’t been walking by at that exact time we would have left them. I couldn’t believe that the leaders were that irresponsible with two of their group. It was inexcusable that they weren’t given a place to meet or a time, and that their housing accommodations were changed without telling them, or that they weren’t given directions, or anything. The girls were almost in tears when they found us because they had no idea what they were going to do. It was unbelievable.
Anyway, that’s my rant/story about the weekend. All in all it was a good trip, just badly planned and organized. I’m glad I got to see Granada, but I wish we could have gone with Patricia instead. She would have made it a great trip. But whatever. It’s over now. And I’m going to bed.
G’night!
Bethany

February 11

2009-02-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

I. Hate. The. Internet.
I tried for 45 minutes today to connect to the wifi on campus so I could Skype mom. I went to 4 different places with varying degrees of connectivity. Even when it said I had excellent connectivity, it wouldn´t connect. I got the internet to come up a couple of times, but only for a minute. Skype never connected. I have no idea why. I thought since there´s wifi on campus, surely I would be able to tap into it and use Skype. But no. I have no idea what´s going on, and frankly, I´m very angry. I don´t know if it´s my computer or the connection here, but somethign isn´t working. I´m inclined to think it´s my computer, because as far as I know other people are able to connect on their laptops just fine. I ran a diagnostic thingy on Internet Explorer and it said I couldn´t connect with HTTP or HTTPS or something else, and it may be related to my firewall settings. I tried turning the firewalls off, I tried turning them back on again, nothing worked. I don´t know what to change and I don´t want to screw anything up. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?
Bethany

February 10

2009-02-11T06:27:00.000-08:00

2-10
Second day of classes. Everything went really well. I think they’re all going to be interesting. My film professor is a little hard to understand because he speaks more quietly, and he has huge powerpoint slides that I’m trying to read as he’s talking, which never works out well. But in general, it was good.
I have another tiny señora story. Nothing bad, just a little odd. For my Spanish class we’re talking about introductions, and I had to speak with a Spaniard and get some information about them to write about. I decided I’d ask Rosaura, since I seem to talk more with Manuel in general. I waited until after supper because I wasn’t sure if she would want me to ask about homework at the dinner table. I went into the kitchen and asked if I could ask her some questions for homework. She said oh, you should have done that when we were all at the table eating, and then she called Manuel in to answer my questions. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but I just thought it was weird that she couldn’t do it herself. It was just a few questions about them growing up and where they went to school and simple stuff like that. But she had me wait while Manuel finished brushing his teeth and came in from the other room to do it. I don’t know if she didn’t understand that it was that simple, or if she didn’t want to help me, or if that’s just Manuel’s job to help with homework, or what. But it was a little strange. Oh well, the homework’s done, and now I know that if I need any homework help I should go to Manuel. Lesson learned.
I would like to take this opportunity to make a few cultural observations and comment about differences between Spain and the US.
1. PDA is everywhere! People make out on the streets, metros, busses, parks, stores, restaurants; everywhere! It’s weird. That’s private, please go find a room.
2. A lot of people have dogs and walk them down the streets. (That’s not the difference!) Half of the dogs aren’t on leashes, and a couple of them don’t seem to have owners anywhere nearby. Also, they are allowed to poop anywhere they want and the owners don’t pick it up. So there’s dog crap on the sidewalks. Gross.
3. Notebooks aren’t lined; they’re grids. I had such a hard time picking out school supplies because I didn’t want to write on a grid! There are notebooks with really big lines, that are for kids learning to write. So now I have vertical lines going through my words. I’m not sure how this is going to work out. Notebooks are also really expensive. The cheapest one subject I could find was 1.80 euro! Also, I couldn’t find any folders. Anywhere. The closest I got is this little portfolio thing held together with an elastic band. I’m a little nervous about it because the papers aren’t held in place by pockets or anything; just that little elastic band. I hope nothing falls out! If I’d known school supplies would be so hard to come by I’d have brought my own!
4. This one isn’t really a difference between countries, but more between big cities and little ones like Ripon or Oconomowoc. People don’t wait for the walk light to turn green before crossing the street. If there’s not a car coming they just go. Or sometimes even if there is a car coming they run. It was very unnerving at first, but I’m getting more used to it now.
5. The siesta is very annoying! All the little shops (not the big department stores and things like that) and some museums and other touristy things are closed from 1:30 or 2 until 4 or 5. That’s some of the prime shopping/touristing time during the day! It would be nice if I worked in a shop to have a time off, but when I’m trying to give them money and they’re closed, it’s frustrating. It’s also a little eerie, because the streets are sparsely populated during that time and I sometimes feel vulnerable when I go out then.
6. According to Katie’s señora, professors are rarely on time to class. I’ve had mixed experiences with my two days of classes. But I think in general Spaniards tend to be late for things.
7. Everyone always talks about how Americans eat so much and have such huge portion sizes. These people have not been to Spain! Each meal has 3 courses: a vegetable, a meat, and dessert. Usually I have a plate of steamed spinach (I told her I liked it the first time we had it and now she’s made it every day except one for a week! Ahh!), fish or meatballs or beef, and cheese for dessert. Plus a side salad. The other day I had eaten the salad and spinach, and she was giving me fish filets. She put two on my plate and when I said I didn’t want a third, she asked why I wasn’t hungry that day. Because I didn’t want three fish filets! Maybe their portions are a little smaller (it depends on the day and the food for me), but instead of Americans going back for seconds, they just have more courses. It’s a lot of food!
8. Along the same lines, Spaniards don’t snack. At least, not in my house. If you want something to eat between meals, you cook it. They do have chips and stuff, but I think a lot of people don’t buy them. I think they’re more popular among the younger people.
9. There are no dryers. People hang everything out on a line. This gives the streets a very quaint feel. But I’m used to fabric softener. My clothes feel stiff and rough when I put them on. I like dryers. But on the other hand, the clothes don’t shrink up, so they fit bigger. Which makes me feel like I’ve lost more weight and I need to go shopping for new clothes.
10. After washing, people iron everything. Ironing in itself is different from most Americans. But they don’t just iron shirts or dress pants or things that are wrinkled. I’m talking about jeans, pajamas, even underwear!! It’s awkward enough having a stranger wash my underwear, but when she irons it too, that’s just beyond weird. She makes so much more work for herself than is necessary! Who’s going to know or care if your underwear is ironed, anyway? I think this trend is mostly with the older generation. I don’t know how much ironing the younger women do.
11. I feel like in general people on the street are more amiable than in the states. If you stop someone to ask directions they’ll do it willingly and kindly. If someone sits next to you on the metro they don’t sit on the very edge of their seat as far away from you as possible and stare in the other direction as if you don’t exist. It’s common to greet people on elevators, or your bus driver, or other people you encounter. It makes me wonder if I seem rude if I don’t acknowledge someone I pass on the street. There are some people that don’t fit this description, but for the most part, people seem nicer here.
I can’t think of any more right now. I’ll add to the list as they come to me.
Well, I’m going to go to bed. G’night all!
Bethany

February 9

2009-02-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

2-9
I just finished my first day of classes! It was actually a pretty easy day. My first class was from 4-6 and then I had one from 6-7. I got to campus before noon, though, to sign up for a trip to Granada hosted by the Erasmus Student Network for this weekend. That should be fun. Then I had 4 hours to kill, so I spent a lot of time on the internet emailing and researching plane tickets and hostels and the like.
My first class was Spanish Literature. It’s taught in two different sections, depending on the language ability of the students, but for this first week the professor who teaches the lower one, which is the one I’m in, is on vacation, so we were all supposed to meet with the other class. Of course, almost everyone forgot. There were like 15 or 20 of us waiting in this classroom for 15 minutes before we figured it out. So then we all trekked over to the other building. The class was pretty interesting. We talked about the pre-war genre of decadent literature. Then we started reading this weird book about a Countess whose daughter is supposedly possessed by the devil. It’s called Beatriz, and I’m not sure who the author is. They gave us a photocopy that didn’t have the title or the author on it. I thought that was strange. Anyway, our homework was to finish reading the handout, which was only about 5 pages. I’m already done.
The next class was History of Spain, which I’m pretty excited about. It covers all 3000 years of history, but very quickly. He wanted to know what periods we were interested in so that we could cover them more thoroughly. Most people said Franquismo, (the era of General Franco) or the Inquisition, which would be what I’m more interested in. I have a feeling we’re going to be spending more time on contemporary history rather than ancient or modern (modern meaning since the Renaissance), which would be more where my interests lie, but it will still be interesting. Well, I suppose we will spend a while on at least part of the Ren if we talk about the Inquisition. Anyway, I like history, so it should be good regardless.
Tomorrow I have 4 classes, but they’re all an hour or an hour and a half, so it won’t be too bad. I have one at noon, and the rest are all clustered from 2:30-6. I like not having classes early in the morning, especially since it takes 40 minutes to get there, but then I feel like I don’t have as much time at night to do homework, so then I feel like I should get up and do it in the morning. But I’m too lazy for that! I’ll have to see what the work load is like.
So, it’s looking pretty good! I’m really starting to feel settled here. It’s been a few days since I last wished I could go home right now! I’m so glad it’s getting better! I still miss everyone, of course, but it’s more tolerable now that I’m getting used to being a madrileña! (That’s a citizen of Madrid, in case you couldn’t figure it out.)
Chao!
Bethany

February 8 again

2009-02-09T03:31:00.003-08:00

2-8 again
Manuel and I were talking at dinner about the universal health care system in Spain. Well, mostly he was talking and I was trying to keep up. He said that everyone, including immigrants, gets free health care, or at most they have to pay one euro, and many people bring their families from other countries here to be cured and then leave again. People also bring boatloads of people from Africa who are dying. He said they pay 4% in taxes for the health care system, and that way there’s plenty of money to keep up with the most up to date health care. He said people in Spain would rather pay more in taxes to provide health care for everyone else who needs it, rather than save money and deny health care to anyone. It was kind of funny, because he was getting more and more adamant and started talking faster and faster, and between that and Rosaura washing dishes and the radio playing American music I was having a hard time understanding everything. But it got me thinking about that difference between Spain and America. That willingness to give of your own money to help people you don’t know who are dying just doesn’t seem to be as present in the US. Maybe I’m just being cynical, and I’m sure Dad will call me out on this, but it seems like Americans would rather not pay taxes to save lives, and the health care businesses would pull their strings to keep it from becoming universal. Now I’m not going to pretend that I know a whole lot about the health care systems of these two countries. But it seems to me that health care is something that everyone is going to need at some point in their life, and I don’t think people should have to choose between getting cured and putting food on the table. A little compassion for others when it comes to your pocketbook would go a long way if we could get this system in place. I told Manuel that this was one of the big issues in the election, and that Obama wanted to start moving toward universal health care. I said I didn’t know if it would happen, but it was being talked about. He said that Clinton wanted to do that too, and it obviously didn’t happen, and he was very skeptical that it will happen under Obama. He said it was the cowardice of the US government that would keep it from happening. At that point my American patriotism got a little offended, but he was so adamant that I didn’t want to say anything and get pulled into a conversation way over my head, politically and language-wise. But regardless, I think the opportunity to have free, or at least cheap health care would be invaluable.
I wish I hadn’t left so soon after the election. I don’t know anything that’s happened with Obama since he froze the government salaries. In the airport in Philadelphia they were making a big stink about the music at the inauguration that was taped instead of live, and I was like seriously? This is what you’re worried about? Who cares? But I don’t watch TV here, and most of the news is Spanish or European anyway. Whenever there is news about America on the radio, I can’t really understand what’s going on. I feel very out of the loop with our new government. I suppose not a whole lot has happened in only 2 weeks, but still I wish I knew. This coming from me, who usually doesn’t care much about news or politics. Maybe when I’m on the internet tomorrow at school I’ll look up cnn.com or something like that.
Sorry for the political debate. It just got me thinking.
Bethany

February 8

2009-02-09T03:31:00.001-08:00

2-8
So after all that hype about the seven story club we were going to go to last night, it ended up not happening for me. It’s kind of a long story. Jen had told me on Friday that we were going to meet at Sol at 10:00 last night. I got there 10 minutes late and no one was there, so I called her. She said she had sent around a message that it wouldn’t be until 10:30 or 11 that we met, and if Katie hadn’t called to tell me that, she might not know either, so would I call her to make sure. So I called Katie, and she said she knew, but she had just gotten the message a few minutes ago and had forgotten to call me. So I figured by that time it was only 15 minutes till 10:30 so I would just wait there. I was going to go inside a store to wait and get warm, but they were all closed, so I just waited outside. A little after 10:30 Katie and Sara showed up, so we were all waiting for Jen and her boyfriend. Then we get a text. The club doesn’t open till 12:30, so let’s meet at 12:15. After we’re all there already. So we have almost 2 hours to burn. So Sara and Katie and I sat in a restaurant drinking juice for an hour and a half. I was hoping to leave the club by 12:30 at the latest so I wouldn’t miss the metro home, because I did not want to take a taxi. And Sara said it cost 15 euro to get in, which wouldn’t have been worth it if I was only going to be there for an hour or so. So at midnight I decided to go home. As I was leaving, we got another text from Jen saying that she’s there and what’s happening. We’re all like: we have no idea; you’re the one calling the shots. So I just got on the metro and went home. So, all that came out of last night was a nice conversation with Sara and Katie for an hour and a half while we waited. I felt kind of bad not going to the club since it was for Jen’s birthday, but I feel like we already celebrated that last weekend when we went around and saw the Andalusian horses and all that, and I wasn’t feeling the greatest to begin with. When we were going to be getting there two and a half hours later than I expected, I just wasn’t willing to do it. And I was a little frustrated with the lack of organization involved. So I went home, read Harry Potter, and went to sleep.
I didn’t wake up this morning until quarter to 12, and then I lay in bed for another half hour. I shouldn’t be as tired as I was, but I didn’t feel like getting up. So now it’s 12:40 and I think I’m going to get some tea from the kitchen. I don’t have any plans with anyone today. I was thinking about going to some of the shops around my house. It looks like some of them have some pretty good sales. And I don’t really feel like doing anything big today. I’ll see what happens.
Bethany

February 7 again

2009-02-09T03:30:00.000-08:00

2-7 again
Katie and I just got back from the Royal Palace a little while ago. It was beautiful! There were three sections open to the public: the pharmacy, the armory, and the official rooms. We went to the pharmacy first. It was a huge collection of ceramic and glass jars that held all manner of herbs and liquids and remedies and spices and stuff like that that were used by kings in the past. I think most of them were from the 17- or 1800s. Most of them were labeled in Spanish, but a good few were in Latin. There was also a reproduction of a distillery, where there was a juice press thingy and lots of flasks and stuff like that. It was interesting, but one room was much like the next so there wasn’t a whole lot to see.
Next we went to the armory, which was awesome! The first room was dedicated almost exclusively to the armor of King Carlos V and his son King Felipe II. In case you don’t know, Carlos was king in the mid 1500s, and then obviously Felipe was right after him. It was weird to see things that belonged to people from history that we studied in school. There were swords and shields and helmets and gauntlets, as well as tons of plate armor for the people and their horses. I don’t know how many sets of armor each king had, but there was an entire wall dedicated to each. I would guess there were probably 10-15 sets for each wall. Not all of them were complete, but most of them were. There were also about 8 life-sized horse-and-rider models showing how the horse armor was worn over the cloth thingy whose name I can’t remember embroidered with the lord’s pattern, and the human dummies wearing full armor carrying lances. It was really cool to see. I was surprised at how ornate the armor was. There was some that was inlaid with gold, some with patterns etched into it, some with little scenes etched or painted on. It seemed a lot of work for something that’s going to be destroyed in battle. But they were beautiful. In that room were also a bunch of huge tapestries that were made for the kings. The room wasn’t well lit, and they were so big that you had to stand far away, so it was difficult to see them clearly, but they were amazing. I can’t imagine the work it would take to make something that huge! The biggest was probably 30x50 feet. It was hard to judge, though, because they were high up on the wall. There was another huge room with a bunch of smaller displays of armor and weapons that belonged to other nobility from the 1400s to the 16-or 1700s. There were even sets of armor for the princes; they were so small that they couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 years old! No child that young should have need of armor! But there were more horse and rider displays of stunning armor, and tons of swords and shields and guns. (The following description is for Dad J) There were some really cool ancient guns, inlaid with gold and ivory. Some of them were small enough to be held in one hand, but there were some that must have been 10-15 feet long! But they didn’t look like canons; they looked like rifles with really, really long barrels. Even I was fascinated by them. I wish they would have allowed pictures so I could show dad, but of course, like every other cool place, pictures aren’t allowed. They also had an extensive display of really ornate saddles, with paintings or etchings of mythological scenes and courtly stuff on them, and lined with brocade or velvet. They were beautiful, and in amazingly good shape for being so old. I think the armory was my favorite part of the royal palace.
Last were the official rooms, which were breathtaking. I can’t imagine actually living in these places! Although, I should mention that the current king and queen don’t live there; they live in a more modest palace somewhere else in Madrid. Modest palace, ha! Anyway, this building is just used for state functions. It’s mostly set up in the way that Kings Carlos III and IV had it back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, although the building was used by kings up until 1931. Anyway, enough history lessons. The point is, that it was extravagant and beautiful, but hardly a place where anyone should feel comfortable living. There was a fresco on every ceiling, glass and crystal chandeliers, huge mirrors, damask and velvet wall coverings, tapestries, paintings, brocade curtains, marble floors, statues, you name it. We saw the drawing room, the throne room, what used to be the king’s bedroom and the room where he ate lunch (which looked nothing like a dining room and had a huge circular bench in the middle of the room with a giant golden statue on the pedestal in the middle), the dining hall, which used to be three rooms of the queen’s chambers but was converted at some point, and several other rooms. There was also a room displaying their silver collection, including dishes and silverware, but also decorative stuff. It was really funny, because there were a couple little silver cups with barcodes on the bottom! I don’t know if they were bought more recently, or if they were reproductions, or what, but it was strange. In one room was a model about a foot and a half high of Cellini’s Perseus, which is the statue Tiffany and I presented in our Renaissance class last semester. It made me miss Tiff! It was cool to see, even though it was so small, because it’s hard to get an idea of a statue from flat pictures. It really is a gruesome statue! There were lots of Romanesque statues too. There was a tour in front of us so we heard some of that as we were walking through. An English woman behind me said: ‘these people have all this bloody money and meanwhile the people outside are starving . . . it’s sick.’ Which is totally true; I can’t imagine how much money it must have taken to build the palace. Way more than I’ll ever see in a lifetime, that’s for sure! But it was amazingly cool to see.
After the palace Katie and I went to El Corte Ingles so I could buy some school supplies. Holy cow: their notebooks are expensive! The cheapest I found for a one subject was 1.80 euro. And they all have grids instead of lines, which I don’t understand. I ended up getting just one 6 subject notebook for now. And I couldn’t find any folders, so I got a little portfolio thing with dividers. But I think that’s going to bother me because the papers are just stuck in loose only being held in by the elastic that holds the binder closed! Grr! Had I known school supplies would suck so much here I would have brought my own from home!
Anyway, that was my day. I came home and tried to take a nap, but never actually fell asleep. Now I’m waiting for mom and dad to call. I’ve got to go to this club tonight, which I’m kind of dreading, but I don’t want to not go since it’s for a friend’s birthday. Maybe I’ll just duck out early. I don’t know how late she wants to stay, but I heard something about taking a taxi home, which means it would be after 1:30 when the metros close. Then she was talking about sharing a taxi home and splitting the cost, but I’m on entirely the opposite side of the city from everyone else. And I’m not willing to stay out that late two nights in a row. I had a bad enough experience last night to keep me away from late night excursions for a while.
Well, there’s nothing more really to say. I’ll write again soon.
Bethany

February 7

2009-02-09T03:29:00.000-08:00

2-7
Last night we went out to the Ballet Folclórico de Madrid, which was a sampling of folk dances from all around Spain. It was amazing! There were so many different kinds, and yet all of them were distinctly Spanish. Each region had its own costume, with lots of bright colors and fringe that fanned out when they spun. There were also tons of castanets (I think they call them castañuelas or something); almost every dancer had them in every dance. I’m still trying to figure out how they play them. There was such control with the precise rhythms, and everyone played exactly in unison. Patricia told us the theory behind how to make a sound: you hang them from your thumb and shake your had to get it to click, I guess. They also made a sound like a drumroll, where you run your fingers along it really fast, which sounded really cool. But she said it’s really hard to master. All I know is that every time I’ve tried I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe now that I’ve seen it done and tried to study the technique I’ll be able to do it better. There was a group of musicians along the back wall of the stage that played for all the dances. It was mostly guitars and bandurrias, which are lute-like instruments, and a regular lute, but there were also accordions, drums, tambourine, a string bass, and singers. It all sounded very Spanish. There was one set of dances that used a bagpipe band! It was so cool, albeit unexpected. There were two bagpipes, but they weren’t the traditional Scottish kind with three drones and all. These had one drone that stuck up over the shoulder, and there was one thing that looked like a drone that came off near the chanter part on the bottom. I don’t know if there’s a specific name for that kind of bagpipe. They were fantastic, though. I’ve never heard bagpipes play so well in tune, whether they were playing unison or harmony. They played with a drum and . . . and . . . oh, what was the other instrument? Crap, I can’t remember. Maybe some kind of stringed thing. That along with the castanets, of course. It was really cool.
The first half we had to sit up in the nosebleed section (which actually wasn’t super high because it was a pretty small theatre) because we came in late. This makes me mad: we were waiting on one of the girls, Katie, who’s always late. We were supposed to meet at 7:45 for an 8:30 show, and by 8:30 she still wasn’t there. We actually forgot about her at first and started walking to the theatre, and then someone realized she wasn’t there, so Patricia and a couple other people went back for her and the rest of us went on. Around 8:30 Katie called one of the girls in our group and said she was at the metro station but didn’t know where Patricia and the others were. She said she was late because she was drinking with a guy who kept begging her not to leave. And she said she hadn’t taken into account the time it would take to travel to the theatre. My two cents: if you get lost or something that’s one thing. But if you’re going to be late because of something like that you need to call so that the rest of us can go in and watch the show. It wasn’t fair for her to ruin it for everyone else because her drinking buddy didn’t want her to go. So we called Patricia and she came on back with the tickets so we could all go in, and then I think she waited for Katie outside. We were only about 5 or 10 minutes late, but it was still frustrating. And then we got stuck up at the top. Which was actually not too bad, because we could see all the cool formations of the dance. It seemed like a lot of it was based on different shapes. There were some that worked primarily with circles, and different ways of manipulating the circle while still all holding hands. Another dance involved mostly straight lines and squares. That was the set with the bagpipe band. We were still close enough that we could see most of the details, but far enough away to see the big picture, too.
The second half we went to the seats on our tickets, which were first and second row! I was in the front. It was harder to see the formations from there, but it was really cool because we were probably 10 feet away from the stage so we could see everything! The stage was low enough that we could see the dancers’ feet and everything, along with the details of their costumes. I spent a lot of time trying to see how they played the castanets, but it mostly just looked like they were flicking their hands around.
At the end of each dance, or even in the middle of them after something particularly good, people in the audience were shouting things like ‘ole’ or ‘guapo,’ just like all the stereotypes of bullrings and stuff. It amused me. Also, sometimes the dancers would shout things too, while they were dancing. It gave it a very informal, folksy feel. Which I guess is the intention.
So after this night of amazing dancing most of the group decided to go to a black and white party that someone’s friend was having. I was the only one who didn’t want to go, so I got to take the metro home all by myself at like 11:30 at night. The theatre is at the north end of the city, so it took like an hour. And all the while, there were getting fewer and fewer people and I was getting more and more nervous. Finally I got to the last time I had to change metro lines, and the sign that normally says how long until the next metro said the next metro will not admit passengers. Oh no! So I wasn’t sure if there was going to be another one after that that would, but there were a few other people waiting so I decided to wait. No metro ever came that wasn’t admitting passengers, so I don’t know what that was about. But I had to wait about 15 minutes for the next one to come. I was so relieved when it did, let me tell you. There wasn’t really anything shady going on, and there were enough people waiting that I didn’t feel really uncomfortable, but I was so ready to be home. And then of course when I got off there was a guy puking in the metro station. Gross. Anyway, it wasn’t a pleasant metro ride home.
Today I’m going to the Royal Palace with Katie. (Not the same Katie that was late.) I’m excited; I’ve seen pictures and it looks beautiful. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Bethany

February 6

2009-02-06T06:52:00.001-08:00

Hi
I just got my final(ish) schedule for classes. I´ll put it on here in case anyone cares to know.
Monday I have Spanish Literature from 4-6 and History of Spain from 6-7.
Tuesday I have Cultural Studies from 12-1, Language from 2:30-4, Film from 4-5 and Spanish Literature from 5-6.
Wednesday I have Cultural Studies from 11-1 and History from 4-6.
Thursday I have Language from 2:30-4 and Film from 4-6.
Friday I have completely off!! Except if I decide to join the college choir, which meets from 6-10 Friday nights. I ´m going to go this Friday to check it out and see if it´s something I want to do.
So that´s my week. It´s nice I won´t have to wake up early any days, but it kinda sucks that they all go into the evening. Oh well, you can´t have it all.
Tonight we´re going to a show that includes a lot of different types of Spanish dances, including Flamenco, Fandango and some others I don´t remember. It should be fun.
Tomorrow night we´re going to this club that has 7 floors and is supposed to be really cool. It´s for Jeannette´s birthday. I was under the impression that we had celebrated her birthday last weekend, but she was like: I´ve been telling you about this! I don´t remember ever hearing about it. Anyway, we´re not meeting until 10, and she doesn´t know how long she´ll stay. If it´s past 1:30 when the metros close I´m leaving early, because I´m not taking the late bus home! She sort of said ´you´re coming, right?´ as if it were assumed, and I felt weird saying no, especially since it´s for her birthday. And she´s one of my friends, so I want to celebrate with her, just not really in that way. Hooray, another club. . . .
I´ve been thinking about spring break the past couple days. Jen´s pushing us to make plans, and I´m having a hard time thinking that far ahead already! I want to see some of the Spanish celebration of Holy Week, but maybe only for a day or two. I was thinking it would be a great time to do some traveling around to places we´re not going to in May, or to places where we were going to go mainly for me that the boys aren´t as interested in. I was thinking maybe I could go to Austria then, and maybe the Neuschwanstein castle and Munich. Jen was trying to get a group together to go to Rome, which would be cool, but that´s one of the places we´re definitely going to in May. So I kinda want to go somewhere else. But I also don´t want to go by myself. So I´m trying to find out what other people are doing.
I finally got both my Carlos III and Ripon emails working!! I had 81 new emails on my Ripon one!! I guess that´s what happens when I don´t check it for two weeks!
Well, I guess that´s all for today!
Bethany

February 5

2009-02-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

2-5
Hi everyone,
I’ve been slacking a bit on the blog front. There hasn’t been much to tell the last few days. I had my oral placement exam yesterday and it went pretty well. It was really easy; just ten minutes or less of her asking about me and my Spanish experience. Patricia sent an email with the results of our placement testing, but obviously I didn’t get it. One of the other girls told me I´m in the high advanced level. The different levels are intermediate, advanced, high advanced, superior, and 2 levels of bilingual. I’m going to the university tomorrow to get the schedule for classes. I’m also having trouble activating my Carlos III email, so I’m going to try to figure that out too.
Yesterday afternoon I didn’t have any plans so I popped Shrek into the computer and watched it in Spanish. It’s funny to hear how they try to get the voices close to those of the original actors. Shrek was pretty good, but Donkey was kind of annoying. After that I started reading Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal. That’s right; I have Harry Potter in Spanish. I am just that awesome. I was going to buy the other ones when I was at a bookstore here, because I only have the first one, but the only ones I could find were in English and French. I suppose that’s because I was in the international section. It doesn’t make much sense to look for Spanish books in the international section of a Spanish store . . . . Oh, I did find them in another place, too, but they were hardback and too expensive. So I’ll have to look around. I know, I’m nerding out a little, but hey, I’m ok with that! J
Today I met with 4 other girls to be touristy. We were going to go to the Planetarium, but it was closed when we got there at 2:00. Stupid siesta. It wasn’t going to open again until 5, so we decided to save it for another day. We decided to go to Goya’s tomb instead, so we went to the metro stop closest to where it was, and then were trying to figure out where to go. This nice old lady saw us looking at the map and helped us (in English!) find where we were headed. She also gave us recommendations of places to go, like a couple of convents and stuff. We were heading toward Goya’s tomb, but we were all really hungry, so we found a restaurant to eat. They have 2 course meals here, with dessert and drinks included for a pretty reasonable price, so we did that. But there was only one person that we saw working there, and the service was really slow. It took us at least an hour and a half to eat lunch, if not more. By that time we were getting kind of tired and decided just to go to the Plaza Mayor (which was really close) to shop. We did that for a while, and then we went to another part of the city where there were lots of stores. It was getting late-ish and we were done shopping around 7 so we just went home. So I don’t feel like we really did much today. But that’s ok; we have plenty of time for sight-seeing.
I’ve been listening to piano music today. Currently playing: Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major, movement I (Allegramente). I had iTunes on random and then a Billy Joel piano piece came on and I got in the mood for piano music. I went through all my music and made a playlist of just piano solos and concertos. Oh, and I think there’s a duet in there somewhere. Good stuff. And I figure at least the instrumental music doesn’t get me thinking in English. I need to buy some Spanish music to listen to.
Manuel was encouraging me today at supper to find somewhere to teach English. I am still torn about that. I had thought about it before I left, and there was a time when I felt really strongly that I should and wanted to, and then I felt like maybe I didn’t want to and it would be too much. I think he was talking about a private tutoring kind of thing with just a couple students. I don’t know; it might be good, but on the other hand I don’t know if I have enough time I want to give up for that. I have classes into the evening almost every day, and I don’t really want to give up weekends. I don’t know! I’m torn. (Danny, are you thinking what I’m thinking? A certain song just popped into my head and I know it’s all your fault! J)
I found another, closer internet café on my block and then another one right next to my house. I don’t know how I missed them before. I just walked past, so I haven’t tried it out yet, but the closest one looked pretty nice just judging from looking in the window. I have to check that it’s still 1 euro an hour. But that was a nice surprise that it’s right next door!
I feel like I’m starting to get a cold. That sucks, because I was just recovering from one when I came here. I’ve been congested and runny since yesterday afternoon. (Side rant: How is it possible to be congested and runny at the same time?!?! It makes absolutely no sense and should not be physically possible!! Pick one so I can take the appropriate medicine and get better! Sorry, just had a little moment there. . . .) I hope it’s just allergies. Hrmmmm.
I think I’m going to read some HP and then call home.
‘Night all,
Bethany

February 2

2009-02-04T07:31:00.001-08:00

2-2
Today was the first day at Carlos III University. We took a written placement test first thing in the morning, and then had a welcome reception. They served alcohol, and there are a few people in our group who apparently can’t control themselves. I’m sorry, but it is not necessary to have at least 4 glasses of wine at school. It’s school, not a bar. In the afternoon we had the professors from half of the classes come and present their topics. There are a few classes I’m really excited to take, like history of Spain and cultural studies. I think I’ve decided not to take the art class. Even though it would be really cool to have class in the museums, I have enough other classes I want to take more, and that would be the only class on a Friday. Otherwise I’m done at 6 on Thursday until Monday afternoon. I’m not sure of a definite schedule yet (I’m waiting for the other half of the presentations tomorrow to decide) but I think I’m going to take cultural studies, history of Spain, Spanish film, the mandatory Spanish grammar class, and either Spanish literature or short stories. I was thinking of taking a colloquial Spanish class, which I think would have been really good, but it conflicts with film. Stupid scheduling conflicts. I have an oral placement exam on Wednesday or Thursday. After tomorrow, it looks like there’s not much on the orientation except the oral exams. So the rest of the week should be easy. And it probably will drag on endlessly. Fun.
Today was all in Spanish, and I understood almost everything! Well, I guess that’s a lie. We still spoke some English among the AYA group. But there was a ton more Spanish today than ever before. And I knew what was going on! The professors are mostly easy to understand, and it seems like it’s not going to be any harder than the Spanish classes at Ripon. There will just be a lot more of them. I think the majority of the students studying at the study abroad section of Carlos III are Americans. At least, I heard a lot of American English. I’m not sure how many of them are going to start speaking seriously in Spanish. The professors stressed a lot today that you need to attend your classes, so I guess they’ve had problems with students skipping out and not being there to learn. So I wonder how many of the people there are just looking for an extended vacation. It makes it sound so intimidating when they’re talking so much about how important it is to be in classes, and how your grade will suffer if you’re not there, but then I remember that that’s what I do all the time anyway. They just make it sound like a big deal.
I’m tired. Concentrating so hard on what everyone is saying all day is exhausting. There’s probably not enough time for a siesta before supper, but maybe I’ll go to bed early. I feel like I say that all the time since I got here! Being in a foreign country is tiring!
Well, nothing more on my end tonight. Later, y’all.
Bethany

February 1 again

2009-02-04T07:30:00.002-08:00

2-1 #2
I just got yelled at for having my slippers on the couch. I was lying down reading and I had my feet up. I don’t even think the soles were touching the couch. She came in to tell me supper was ready and freaked out. She was like: don’t put your slippers on the couch, it costs a lot of money to wash and iron it (there’s a cover on it that I’m pretty sure she washes every week anyway because there was magically a different one on it today), you’re too used to the university but in a house you need to take care of things, put your slippers on the floor when you are on the couch, yadda yadda yadda. Then she rushed over to smooth out the couch cover, as if having slippers touching it would wrinkle it more than a person sitting there. Calm yourself, woman! They’re just slippers! They’ve never been outside; I only wear them in your freakishly clean house. It’s no different than putting socks or bare feet on the couch. I actually purposely put the slippers on because I thought she might not like my bare feet on the couch. Obviously I was wrong. I understand that she doesn’t want slippers on the couch, and that’s fine. But she could have just asked me not to do it instead of freaking out. I don’t remember the last time I was scolded like that. It doesn’t help that I’m super tired and a bit on edge. I wanna come home! No, I don’t. Only a little. I just won’t ever wear slippers on the couch again and it’ll be fine. I hope.

February 1

2009-02-04T07:30:00.001-08:00

2-1
Katie and I went to the Museo del Prado today. It’s one of the three major art museums in Madrid. Again, no pictures allowed inside, but I got some of the outside. That alone is beautiful. It’s a huge museum. We were there for four and a half hours and only saw one floor. By the end we were like: this is too much art in one day! I know Janny would be shaking her head in disgust at us! J But it was really cool to see all these famous paintings and sculptures. Today we mostly saw late Renaissance and a lot of Baroque paintings, and some Classical-era sculpture. It was hard to believe that what we saw was 2000 years old and still in as good shape as it was! I wonder how many of the exhibits are originals and how many are copies. There are probably a lot of copies, especially with the older pieces. We saw a lot of Goya, and his Black Paintings. I think that’s what they were called. They were all really dark and grotesque. We saw some of his other stuff too. We saw Velazquez, el Greco, Rubens, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Murillo, Van Dyck, Poussin, and tons more. There were also a whole lot of portraits of royal families. I wish I was more into paintings. I like them a lot, but I know many people who would have gotten a lot more out of such an amazing collection. There were a lot of the paintings that were really beautiful, but there were some really horrific ones, too. There were two of Saturn eating his son. The first one, by Goya, had the head and arm already gone and Saturn was biting off the other arm. That one was weird, but it wasn’t as terrifying as the other one I saw. I don’t remember who it was by; I think I was concentrating more on looking away after I saw it. Saturn was holding his son on his lap and taking a big bite out of his chest. It was so disturbing. If anything would give me nightmares it would be that. Ew. Anyway, Katie and I are going to go back another day to see the second floor. I think that has more of the earlier paintings, like the Italian Renaissance ones that I’m eager to see. It’s nice because the map of the museum they give you has a long list with thumbnails of masterpieces to see. So if you want an abbreviated tour of the museum the highlights are all right there. But we want to see all of it, of course! And I’ll have plenty of opportunities to see the museum because the art history class I want to take is held in the Prado! So that’ll be cool.
Today was tiring. I slept till 11, and it’s only 7:40 and I’m exhausted. It was funny; my señora was asking last night what my plans were for today, and I told her that I wanted to sleep in this morning. I got up at 11, took a shower, and didn’t even emerge from my room other than that until noon. She came in and asked if I wanted tea, and then she told me she was surprised I was up so early! Here I was thinking I slept the whole morning away. I wonder how late I would have to get up in order for her to consider it sleeping in.
Not much more to talk about now. Tomorrow I start school stuff! I’m looking forward to seeing what the classes are all about. This past week has been nice to explore the city and all that, but I want a set schedule. Then I’ll know how to plan my time and when I can talk to people on Skype!
Bethany

January 31 again

2009-02-04T07:28:00.000-08:00

1-31 again
I forgot to mention that while we were out we made our way to the Plaza Mayor, where we stumbled across a show of Andalusian horses. There were tons of people there, so it was hard to see, not to mention the fact that there was a giant flag on a pole in front of us. But what I could see was interesting. I’m not really into horse shows and all that, but they did some crazy things. The horses danced almost in time to music, and did tricks. They reared up on their hind legs and jumped, and Katie said one of them clicked their back hooves, but I didn’t see that one. They also had a couple of the horses hop across the ring on their back legs like kangaroos. I wasn’t sure if it was cool or cruel. But anyway, I got to see a Spanish horse show in Spain! Jeannette was really excited because that was on her list of things to do and we just came across it accidentally.
The rest of the day we just shopped and looked for boots for Jen. Nothing exciting. But the horse show was kind of cool.
Bethany

January 31

2009-01-31T10:02:00.000-08:00

Here I am at the internet cafe again!
Today we went out to explore the city. It´s one of the girls in the program´s birthday on Monday and she wanted to get together today to celebrate by just wandering around and shopping. It was fun, but a very long day. I´ve been out for almost 7 hours! Tomorrow I have no plans, so I think I´ll just relax and maybe watch a movie. I´ve been thinking about buying a computer game that I can play that doesn´t use the internet. I don´t know how much free time I´m going to have once I start school, though.
We start our university orientation on Monday with a placement exam. Welcome back to school! After that the professors are all going to talk about their classes so we can get an idea of what we want to take. They gave us a list already and I´m thinking about taking a Spanish art history class, a Spanish movie class, a history class, and maybe colloquial Spanish. There´s also a regular Spanish class with grammar and all that stuff that everyone has to take. We´re required to have 5 classes so we will be considered full-time students. So we´ll see how that goes.
I don´t really have much to talk about today, so I´ll keep it short.
Missing everyone!
Bethany

January 30

2009-01-31T09:59:00.002-08:00

1-30
Hi all! We just got back from Toledo. It is a beautiful city! It’s quite a bit smaller than Madrid, so it had more of that small town feel, and the streets were tiny. I swear some of them were less than 10 feet wide! It looked like a wide sidewalk, but there were cars and all the pedestrians had to plaster themselves to the wall in order to avoid getting hit. In the morning we went to La Catedral de Toledo, which is the Cathedral of Toledo. It was the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen! They wouldn’t allow any photos, which really is a shame, but in a way it was good because then I could concentrate on just drinking it all in instead of taking pictures. They gave us a brochure that has some pictures on it, so I took pictures of the pictures so you can see it. They’re not very good quality, but at least it’s something. It was huge, and almost every inch of the walls was carved or painted or gilded. There was a tour in English that we heard a little bit of and I think he said the main sanctuary area was five stories tall. On the sides were those little hollows with the statues and paintings, and there were effigies of cardinals and archbishops. They had a display of a bunch of the ornate golden jewelry that the bishops wore, and gilded crosses, and those things that swing the incense around (you can tell I’m not Catholic). They even had General Franco’s sword. I’m not sure how that got to be in a church, but it was there. The pillars inside the church were huge, and all made from stone. The floors were all marble. All of the ceilings were gilded or painted too. In the sacristy were a bunch of original paintings by El Greco and other famous painters I can’t remember right now. It was amazing to see them in person. There were also portraits of all the archbishops since medieval times. My absolute favorite part of the cathedral was the display of the archbishops’ vestments. The oldest one I saw was from the 14th century!! They were all elaborately embroidered, and I was trying to see on each one how the designs were sewn. Some of them even had pictures of biblical scenes, like a panel of tapestry in the front of the robe or, in one case, the entirety of the cape. They were fantastic to look at. I don’t know if everyone knows this, but medieval and Renaissance clothing is a huge interest of mine. To see garments from that era in person was surreal. I spent so long in that room that everyone else was done with the cathedral and waiting for me. Oh well, that’s just too bad; I wasn’t going to rush my chance for such an incredible experience.
After that we went to a little store where they made all sorts of things with this special technique; I don’t know what it’s called. I think it’s made on iron with 24 carat gold and silver thread pounded into an intricate design. Then it’s burned and the iron turns black and the gold and silver stay their same color, so the result is a dramatic contrast between background and pattern. Apparently there are only 12 people that make these things by hand, I think in the world. They do this on earrings, pins, plates, pictures, anything that can be decorative. There was even a picture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza made from this in the store. It’s really beautiful. The man that makes it for the store was there working, so we could see how he did it. He had a piece of gold thread that he pushed into the iron with an awl-type thing. He worked really fast and it looked easy, but it isn’t. The store owner said it takes two days of 9 solid hours of work each just to make one 1-inch necklace pendant. I can’t even imagine how long it takes to make some of those plates or pictures! It was very cool.
We also went to the Museo Sefardi, which is a museum of all things Sefardic (the Jews that lived in Spain before they were kicked out). I can’t remember if this was just the first time in 711 or if there was also stuff from the Reconquista in 1492 under los Reyes Católicos Isabel and Fernando. It was in a synagogue, which was beautiful. There were artifacts like bits of pottery and tablets with Hebrew writing. There was a lot of gold jewelry and ancient books with beautifully painted pictures. There were some clothes there too, women’s and men’s formal religious garments, I think. Gorgeous! It was a small but interesting museum.
Toledo is where they make a lot of swords and things like that. Toledo means rapier in Spanish. So all of the little shops sold swords. There full size ones and daggers, and little letter-opener sized swords. I actually saw one of the daggers that I have hanging in my room at home at one of the stores. It was really cool, because at one store in the middle of the sword rack was a replica of King Theoden’s sword from Lord of the Rings! There was another store with a whole window display of LOTR stuff, like Sauron’s helmet, his gauntlet with the One Ring, a foot high statue of Legolas, the Evenstar, and little metal figurines of all the characters. It made me happy! J
Toledo only about a 50 minute bus ride from Madrid, so I think some of my friends and I are going to go back some weekend. It really was a fantastic trip! Now I’m really tired and I think I’m going to go to bed early.
G’night!
Bethany

January 29 again

2009-01-31T09:59:00.001-08:00

1-29 #2
I asked my señora if it would be ok if I read in the living room. She said that the living room isn’t for reading, only for TV, because the light is really bad. I know it’s ok because there’s a lamp in there that I was reading by the other day. But she said the light is better in my room and this is where they always go to read when I’m not here. That didn’t exactly answer the matter of whether or not I was allowed in the living room, but she didn’t say specifically that I shouldn’t be in there at all. So maybe I misunderstood about the living room being just for them. I wish I knew more Spanish so this wouldn’t involve so much guesswork. If they’re watching TV tonight I’ll probably ask if I can watch with them and that should hopefully answer it once and for all. The only other circumstance I can think of is that I would be watching it without them, and I don’t think that’ll ever happen. Rosaura has made it very clear that she hates TV unless it’s the news or debates or stuff like that. I think if I watched something else in her house she might flip. Maybe I should put on the most ridiculous, offensive show I can find the next time she comes home. Just kidding; I’m not that mean. I had another longish talk about her sewing and TV, and then they told me that the metro stop where we’re supposed to meet tomorrow to go to Toledo no longer has a bus stop. I called Patricia and she’s checking online and is going to call me back. That would have sucked if we all got there and then had to go somewhere else instead. But anyway, I’m feeling like things are pretty good with the family right now. We’ll see what happens.
I can’t believe I haven’t even been here a week. Four months seems endless. School needs to start soon. I can’t believe I’m saying that.
Bethany
PS. I have re-come to the conclusion that Brahms is amazing. Whoever said that German was ugly clearly never heard the German Requiem. Incredible!

January 29

2009-01-31T09:57:00.000-08:00

1-29
I just played a Solitaire game on my computer with a store of 725! That’s the highest score I’ve had in a long time! Mom and I used to have competitions with who could get the highest score. I got 735 once which was like 20 points higher than either of us before, and then mom got 740 within a week or two. I was so upset! But I’m rather proud of my little 725. J
Anyway.
I talked to Patricia yesterday about the living room thing with my señora. She didn’t look happy, and said it was unusual. I said I might have misunderstood some of it, and she encouraged me to ask outright if it was ok if I sat in the living room and read or something. I’m not going out tonight, so I think I’ll try it then. I’m so nervous to ask her anything like that now. But I’m just going to suck it up and do it. Maybe if they’re watching the news or something it’d be ok.
Last night some of the girls and I were going to go to a Flamenco bar that Hannah’s tour book said was free. I thought that would be fun so I agreed to go. It didn’t start until 10:30 so I knew it would probably be a late night. We found out soon before then that you need reservations and it’s not free to see the show. So they said they were going to go somewhere else. I thought they meant another flamenco, so I still went. But no. They wanted to go to bars and clubs. We first went to a really cute restaurant for sangria, but we were required to order two things of raciones with drinks, so it ended up being a lot more expensive than any of us expected, And the sangria was really strong and not very good. After that we went to a club. Actually it was the same club we went to the other day, but it was almost deserted last time and it was Ladies’ Night last night so it was busy. I have come to the conclusion that if I never go to another club in my life, it would be totally fine. There’s loud music, flashing lights, big crowds, lots of smoke, and drunken people. The music is so loud that you can’t hear the people you’re talking to, and the people are so loud that you can’t understand the music. The only things to do are drink and dance, and I don’t like to do either. So I’m not going to go out again.
I talked with my señora this morning about my diet and what I can and can’t eat. I told her that I had been losing weight for a year and a half by not eating carbs and I had taken it easy for the first week to experience Spanish food, but now I needed to crack down. She asked some questions, and then started talking about how this complicates her cooking and how if she’d know about it she would have given me to another señora who was more used to cooking for diets. I was like: oh thanks a lot. I don’t feel unwelcome enough here, so just tell me that you don’t want to have to deal with my diet and you’d prefer I lived somewhere else! I wrote on the housing sheet that I didn’t eat carbs, but I also said I didn’t think it would be a problem because I can usually find something to eat in every meal. So I guess they didn’t tell her at all. That was my mistake. I should have been more insistent with it. I think it probably would have been ok, because she does serve some things I can eat, but she pushes the food on me so much that it’s more difficult. I’m used to where the food is in the middle and you can just take what you want, but she serves only one course at a time, so if it’s spaghetti or something that I can’t eat at all, it’s already on my plate and probably considered tainted, instead of being in the communal bowl. She understood that I can’t eat macaroni, but she was going on about spaghetti and how that would be ok because the noodles are so thin and the sauce is all natural tomatoes and stuff. I told her I can’t eat spaghetti and she went back into the thing about complicating her life. She also talked about how I can just eat the regular stuff but smaller portions. Which is partially true, but even a half a piece of bread has as many carbs as I can have in probably two meals. It was a very awkward conversation. I think that she’ll comply up to a certain point, and the rest of it I’ll just have to not eat it. If I leave it enough maybe she’ll finally get the idea that I won’t eat it. She said her daughter was on a diet once, but it was so long ago that she doesn’t remember what she ate, but it was a lot of natural stuff. Natural is all well and good if it’s the right things. I did tell her not to buy any more yogurt, and then she was like, well what about the natural stuff which doesn’t have any sugar or fruit in it, and I wasn’t really sure about that because I’d never had it. So I said I would try and see if I like it. I’ll probably just tell her I don’t like it. I have my doubts about even natural yogurt. Anyway, I hope it turns out ok. I feel like everything I do pushes her buttons in some way, and I’m not even hard to live with. Except for the food thing, I guess. This morning she told me to be careful not to bump my purse on the doorframe. My cloth purse. What’s it going to do, leave a dent? Scratch the wood? I don’t understand. Oh, and she also asked me to turn off my computer when I leave, which I understand because it saves energy and they’re really energy conscious here. But that wasn’t even the reason she gave. She wanted me to turn it off because it gets hot when it’s on. Because the heat from my computer is going to scorch the table or burn down the apartment. I don’t have a problem doing it, it was just a weird reason.
I feel like I’ve done nothing but complain on these blogs; I’m sorry for that. I really am enjoying the city. Today we didn’t have any activities with AYA. We were going to go to a real flamenco tonight but she found a different one that was either better or cheaper (I’m not sure which one) for next Friday. So today was all free time. I got to sleep in until 10! That was exciting for me. Then Katie and I went shopping around Sol. There are a lot of really quaint shops. We went in one that was selling all the decorations for churches like statues of Mary and Jesus, and bibles and ornate pedestals and stuff like that. It was a lot of really beautiful stuff, but I felt like I shouldn’t touch anything. Katie’s mom wanted her to get her a rosary, so she found one for 9 euros, which was a lot cheaper than I thought it would be considering the nature of the store. There were lots of touristy shops that were fun. I bought a little spoon with a picture of the royal palace for my collection. We also found a party/costume shop which was really fun. They have so many American cartoons and shows on their balloons and plates and stuff. There were Pirates of the Caribbean, the Disney princesses, Winnie the Pooh (which I think is actually originally English) and a lot of other things like that. They also had sets of plastic breasts with elastic to strap to your body. It was so weird. They’re a lot freer with that kind of stuff here. We ate at a cute little deli that had really good salad. It’s called Rodillas, which means ‘knees.’ I don’t know what that’s about. We also went to Fnac, which is a huge store that’s like a Best Buy and a bookstore all in one. I think it had 5 floors. We had fun looking at the Spanish translations of all the American movies. Some of them were exact translations, but a lot were completely different. For example, there are posters everywhere for Role Models, but they call it “Mal ejemplo” which means Bad Example, and takes all the irony out of the title. It seemed like most of the movies there were American. It really tampers with the concept of being in a foreign country when there’s so much that’s familiar.
Tomorrow we’re going to Toledo! I’m so excited. It’s supposed to be one of the more historic, beautiful cities. It’s smaller than Madrid and I think it’s about an hour away by bus. I can’t wait.
I’ll let you know how the confrontation with Rosaura goes. Bethany

January 28 again

2009-01-28T07:54:00.001-08:00

I´m finally on the internet! There´s an internet place two blocks from my house where you can use it for €1 an hour. I´ve already written blogs up till this afternoon, so I don´t really have much to write now. I´m going to see about posting some pictures here or on facebook, but the computer´s kind of slow, so I don´t know if I´ll end up doing it or not. If not now, I´ll wait until I´m at the university where the internet is free.
You have no idea how good it is to be able to be on here. I can´t do skype here I don´t think, because it´s just a row of computers with tiny dividers, and I don´t want to carry on a conversation here. But hopefully I´ll be able to find a place at the university where I´ll be able to. Oh, except I won´t be there at night when people are available. Hmm. I´ll have to see.
Anyway, enjoy reading about my first few days in Madrid, crazy as they were. Are.
Bethany

January 28

2009-01-28T07:52:00.002-08:00

We went to the Museo Sorolla today, which is the house where the impressionistic artist Sorolla lived, turned into a museum. It was amazing. They had a lot of his original furnishings, although they had removed some of them so people could walk around, and the walls were covered with his paintings. You could even see his studio where there were still his paintbrushes sitting on the table. I liked the art. It was something I could identify without a lot of interpretation and personal inflection and all that crap that modern art is supposed to be. He painted a lot of really wonderful water and beach scenes. One of my favorites was a group of people playing instruments out in the garden. The house is huge, and there’s a really exquisite garden outside with statues and a water fountain and everything. The stairs and a lot of the walls surrounding the yard have little mosaic-like tiles, and there are iron coats of arms on one of the walls above a bench. It was hard to believe someone actually lived there, and not very long ago. It was very cool.
After that we went back to the Parque del Retiro. It was so warm today, I took my coat off for a little bit. Then the wind picked back up again. But it doesn’t feel like January at all!
I’m going to go mosey over to the internet café now. I hope it’s not closed for siesta. It is so weird to me that stores are closed for the afternoon. Oh well, it’s not very far away; if it’s closed I’ll just walk back.
I think we’re going to go to a flamenco show tonight around 10:3. That should be fun. I hope it doesn’t go too late. I want to catch up a little on my sleep.
Hopefully I can post these today!
Bye,
Bethany

January 27 again

2009-01-28T07:52:00.001-08:00

I just had an intelligent conversation over dinner with Manuel and Rosaura about what I did today, and the metro system, and gas vs. electric cars, and the weather, and various other topics. I didn’t make a fool of myself today! I understood almost all of what he said and I could answer well. I feel like I participated in the conversation, too, instead of just listening, although I did that, too. When he said that it was going to rain Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I made a face and said ew, and he got a big kick out of that, but I’m not really sure why. I guess they probably don’t say ew here. Oh well. It’s a noise that expresses my feeling, not a word, so I’m not going to stop using it. J Rosaura told me for about the fourth time that this winter was the first time in 30 years that it snowed. I wonder if she doesn’t remember she already told me or if she assumes I didn’t understand, or if she just wanted to restate her point. Again. I really don’t mind, it just seems like she repeats herself a lot. I feel like Manuel is more willing to just talk about random stuff, whereas Rosaura mostly asks questions about what my plans are and when I’m going to leave and eat at home. And makes me feel guilty about not eating everything she makes, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, I’m feeling pretty good about myself right now! J Even if we don’t really mingle or communicate much outside of mealtimes, maybe we can still connect over supper.
I’ve got nothing more to say. I just wanted to share my happiness!
Bethany

January 27

2009-01-28T07:51:00.002-08:00

Today was a cool day! We went to Mejorada del Campo, which is the city where the Patricia, the Directora of AYA lives. We took the bus, which was an interesting experience. The driver was smoking as she drove. I hate how everyone here smokes! Patricia said that they were going to pass a law prohibiting smoking in public buildings, and at the last moment they added on “unless the owner chooses otherwise.” For the first week they tried without and of course lost their customers so they chose to allow smoking inside. She said they are talking of changing it again to enforce the no smoking, but that won’t happen while I’m here.
Anyway, in the city we got our month-long passes for the bus/train/metro, instead of the week visitor passes we had. Then we went over to this cathedral that is being built. The man (Justo) building it used to be a monk who got TB and left the order. He decided to build a cathedral, and has been working on it mostly by himself with a few volunteers for about 40 years! He uses slightly deformed bricks that have been donated by construction companies that rejected them, and uses coffee tins and paint cans and stuff for the molds for columns and other things. Some people have come and painted frescoes in the sanctuary and there are some stained glass windows. It’s still a work very much in progress, but all the walls are up and the ceilings and domes have the framework up. It’s huge, too, not just a little chapel. There are cloisters and a crypt (I think), and towers, and a whole bunch of stuff. It was really cool to see. Apparently Coca Cola used his story as a commercial about dedication for an energy drink. It brought a whole bunch of tourists. We saw him down there working away at mortaring one of the walls. Patricia said he’s about 80 now, but he still works on it every day. One time there was a service in it and he said it was the most important thing for him. It was an amazing thing to see.
We were going to meet some of Patricia’s English students for lunch, but we were a half hour so they had already gone. I got some kind of French omelet with ham and cheese, which was really good at first, and then just go really salty. I feel like they use a lot of salt here, which I’m not used to at all. They played Piano Man at the cafetería, and I thought of Dad. J Also of Tracey’s wedding when they played it at the end and I was the only one who knew the words. Seriously, who doesn’t know the words to Piano Man? Anyway, I digress.
After that we went back to Madrid and four others and I went to the Parque del Retiro, which is a huge park in the middle of Madrid. It has a whole bunch of ancient royal buildings and a couple lakes. We didn’t see all of it, because it’s so big. But we saw some amazing stuff. There were two fountains (only one was on) and a monument/tomb of one of the kings, maybe Alfonso XII? I can’t remember. That was very Romanesque, with columns and a huge monument with lots of statues on it and topped with an equestrian statue of Alfonso XII. It was right against the lake, so it was hard to take pictures from close up from the front. There were four lions facing the water with different statues beneath either two or all four of them. The two rows of columns were curved into a circle and the monument was in the middle. It was beautiful. We also saw the Palicio de Cristal, which is a giant building made entirely of windows that houses art exhibits. It was also by a lake; more like a large pond this time, complete with a waterfall! It was breathtaking. We wanted to go inside but it was closed.
I took tons of pictures today. For some reason a lot of them look very blue, and I don’t know why that is. Try to imagine them without the blue tint and it’ll be more accurate.
I found an internet café a couple blocks from my house that’s one euro for an hour. I guess maybe I’ve never seen an internet café, but it was completely different than I expected, with everyone getting their own little cubicle. I might try that out. It looks a little intimidating. I want to see also what the internet situation is at Carlos III (the university). It would be easier and probably free to use that, but we’re not going to get a tour until next week I think.
I bought a Spanish phone today for 19 euros. It’s one of those rechargeable prepaid phones, and it comes with 12 euros worth of use. I didn’t add more on yet, although I should have done that then. I think I’m just going to use this one for Spain and still have people call me from the States on my old phone. Calls received are free on both phones I’m pretty sure, but then I won’t have to give out another cell phone number. I’m not sure how much it is to text to the US from this one, but I’ll probably just avoid it and use the other phone if I absolutely need to text someone from home.
I need to buy a map of Madrid. Some of the girls bought one today and I was going to but I was afraid to spend the money. I think it’s a necessary expense, though. All I have is a metro map and that’s useless for streets. There are maps at all the bus stations and a lot of the metros, too, but it would be much easier just to have my own.
I was gone until about 5 or 6 today, which was nice. I feel awkward being around my host parents. Since we ate while we were out, I haven’t had to sit and eat with them except for breakfast (which consisted of tea, since she only has these little donut things). I don’t have the energy right now to brave going out of my room. I’m afraid she’ll eat me if I go sit in the living room or kitchen. Dinner conversation will be painful enough; I don’t want to add to it.
My friends and I are still speaking in English with each other. I know, I know, don’t scold. It’s a relief not to have to concentrate so hard, at least for the first week. I think next week we’ll switch to Spanish--at least mostly. Patricia is speaking English too, which is nice, especially when she’s giving us important information. She said she’d give us a break the first week. But I think we’ve been gradually adding Spanish phrases in here and there, and of course we have to speak in Spanish when we talk to anyone else.
Oh, last night we went out late. There were five of us girls wandering around Sol. We got offered a free shot at an Irish pub (which I didn’t take), a free beer, which turned into two (which I also didn’t drink) another shot which we all turned down, and free I can’t remember what they were called, but they were like shots of this cherry-ish drink that was kind of good and kind of tasted like cough syrup or very concentrated kiddie cocktail. I did drink that one, though not like a shot, because I figure I should participate a little, and since it was fruity there was a chance I would like it. I don’t think I would do it again. Even with that one I could feel it sitting in my stomach and although it didn’t affect me like getting me drunk or anything, it made me feel a little sick. I think I’ll stick to water, or maybe sangria every once in a while. I was glad the other girls didn’t pressure me to drink when I told them I didn’t want to. There was just no way I was going to take a vodka shot! It’s not that I’m chicken, it’s just that . . . wait, yes I am. I don’t want to experiment with alcohol when I’m in a foreign country in a big city alone or with few others and need my wits about me. So in those pictures that might show up of me holding a shot, it was just for the picture. I swear. Go ahead and be proud of me, mom. I had fun hanging out with the girls, but I didn’t like all the loud music (almost all American music) and smoke. At least one of the bars had hookah! I don’t know if that was the weird smell I noticed or if it was something else. Either way, it was gross. We were out until about 12:30 and took the metro home, which was a little weird cuz there weren’t a lot of people. Sondi and I went together (I am eternally grateful that we live so close!) so I felt better about it, but when I left her to go to my house it was a little creepy. It’s only like a block and a half, but there was no one on my street, which made me edgy. Fortunately nothing happened. I’d been having key problems earlier in the day, and I’m not sure if I actually opened the door by myself or if my señora opened it (btw I did open it by myself today, so it works at least part of the time). I had expected her to be in bed. I think she thought I was going to stay out later than I did. We actually came back early by Madrid standards. I wasn’t really even tired. I don’t think I’m fully adjusted to Spain time yet. I had a really hard time falling asleep, and I don’t feel like I slept much at all, so I’m going to try to go to bed early tonight. I didn’t nap today, even though I’m feeling the need to now, so I hope I’ll be able to sleep.
Well, I don’t really have anything to do between now and supper in 50 minutes, but this blog is already plenty long. I’m writing way more than I ever thought I would! Probably way more than anyone really wants to know, but whatever. It’s good to have an outlet.
I’ll write again soon. I hope to try out that café tomorrow, so hopefully you all will be able to read these!
¡Chao!
Bethany

January 26 again

2009-01-28T07:51:00.001-08:00

I’m sort of feeling like I’m not welcome here. I’m sure that’s not true, since they volunteered to host a student. But I feel more like I’m intruding on their lives rather than becoming a part of it. Being assigned my own things is fine; I understand why she wants to keep stuff separate. But I just went out into the living room to force myself to be sociable, and no one was there; the señora was out and Manuel was in his study. So I sat on the couch to read. I was looking for how to turn the light on and Manuel was coming out and he showed me (it’s on the cord, not on the lamp itself, in case anyone wants to know) and he didn’t say anything about me being there. But then the senora came home (by the way, I asked the Directora and her name is Rosauria or Rosaulia or something like that, but I think I’ll just call her señora) and asked me why I wasn’t in my room. I got sort of flustered and said I didn’t know, and I was about to say to be social, and she said the room is for her and her husband, and if they’re out I can watch TV. At least I think that’s what she said. I apologized and she said it was ok, but I didn’t know if it was ok this time or if it would continue to be ok in the future. I watched TV for a little bit with Manuel earlier this afternoon and he didn’t seem to have a problem with it. But apparently she does. At least, if I understood correctly. Manuel keeps encouraging me to ask questions and talk, but she doesn’t seem to want me underfoot. This isn’t what I expected from a host family! Am I supposed to see them only at mealtimes? (Which have to be exactly at the specified time every day.) Here I was trying to be social and I feel like I got rejected and sent to my room. I hope this changes soon! Maybe I’ll spend all day at the University whether or not I have classes. Everyone else has stories about their host families and how great they are and how they’re letting them cook their own meals and watching TV together. I wish mine was like that! This doesn’t make adapting to a foreign country any easier! Don’t get me wrong, they’re very nice and pleasant when we do talk. It’s just that I don’t feel like I connect with them on any level. And I wonder if I’m going to spend all my time cloistered in my room. I can’t wait till classes start so I’ll have something else to do and somewhere to go.
Sorry, I just had to vent.
Bethany

January 26

2009-01-28T07:50:00.002-08:00

Today all the AYA kids met for breakfast at Puerta del Sol. I thought I remembered how to get to the Metro from my house, but I obviously didn’t, because I got very lost. I wandered around for a while and then when I asked directions they sent me to a different station. I was supposed to meet Sondi but that didn’t happen. Fortunately, I got there on time-ish, but it was a little scary. Then we went on a walking tour of Madrid. I took lots of pictures. J We saw the Palace, the Royal Cathedral, the Plaza Mayor, and a lot of cool buildings on the streets. The architecture here is fantastic! She showed us the oldest restaurant in the world, and the restaurant where the conspirators of the Spanish revolution (I think) met in secret to plan. There are so many different kinds of paving in Madrid, but none of them are just plain concrete; it’s always some kind of paving stone or cobblestone or something cool. I took pictures of the streets too. When we were done touring, we went inside El Corte Ingles to buy shampoo and stuff like that. That store is ridiculous! There are like 4 or 5 different buildings, all with different things. There’s one for books and one for electronics, and one that’s like a department store, and I don’t even know what all else. It was very confusing to find everything we needed. There was a phone there that a lot of the kids are going to get that was 19 euros and comes with a plan where it’s 5 cents to call the others on the plan. I think you buy a certain amount of minutes and when they’re used up you can recharge it. I was debating getting that for here and then still using my cell to call home.
I told my señora I wasn’t sure if I would be home for lunch because I didn’t know when the tour would end. She didn’t like not knowing, I think. I totally would have been home on time, except Sondi and I got lost on the way out of the Metro. We were going to find her house and mine, since we live near each other. We got so turned around; it was bad. So I ended up getting home about a half hour late, and of course I couldn’t get the stupid doors open (the downstairs one pushes, not pulls) and I had to ring the bell at the apartment because I couldn’t get that one to open either. It shouldn’t be that hard; you turn the key twice and the door pushes in. I don’t know why it wouldn’t work. Then I got a talking to about how meal times are sacred here. She said it was ok because the first couple days are crazy, and I apologized profusely, but now I’m afraid to ever be late again! She sort of told me how to get to the Metro, and I’m slightly more familiar with the area now that we walked around it a lot unintentionally, so I think I can find it now. Sondi and I are going to meet some of the other girls tonight after dinner (which I made sure I would be there for!) and I think I remember how to get to her house. I hope!
I confirmed with my señora that there is no internet here, so I’m going to have to find an internet café. We saw one on our wanderings, but I can’t remember now where it was.
Not much more to talk about. I think I’ll try to be social with my family now (cross fingers).
Later,
Bethany

January 25 again

2009-01-28T07:50:00.001-08:00

I went walking through the city with my señora tonight. We went to get churros and chocolate, which was good but the churros were huge and the chocolate was really rich. I was still full from lunch, but I felt bad not eating it since she treated, and the she guilted me into eating it all. Hrmm. Now it sounds like she’s cooking again. I feel like I haven’t done anything but eat since I got here!
We took the metro down to the Plaza del Sol (which is just called Sol) so that I would know how to get there on my own tomorrow. It’s really easy, as long as I go the right way! I know I’m gonna end up on the opposite side of town someday. AYA gave us week-long visitor passes for the Metro to use until we get more permanent ones. When we got off the Metro there was a mariachi band playing outside of the station! We didn’t stop and watch, which I kind of wish we had, but we had places to go. There were other people playing on the streets, too, like a string trio that played Pachelbel’s Canon at least twice (once when we were walking by each way) and another piece I know but can’t remember the name of. Yesterday, we heard people playing guitars and pan flutes, which was cool. There was one guy playing “If I Had a Hammer” on the pan flute while accompanying himself on the guitar. It was kinda weird.
My señora and I walked to the Teatro Real, which is a theatre, and the Palacio Real, which obviously is the palace. There were cool gardens in front that still had flowers! They were faded and wilted, but I was shocked to see neat little rows of pansies. There are also lots of cow statues in front painted in crazy designs. I think it’s one of those weird environmental art things. It kind of took away from the cool antique architecture to have them in front of the palace, but whatever. There were lots of people taking pictures of them. We also went into the cathedral of San Gines, which was my first European cathedral experience! It was beautiful! It was smaller than I expected, but with gorgeous statues and paintings and such. There was an organ concert going on when we got there, so there were lots of people and we got to hear a bit of music. I can’t deny I got a little choked up seeing it. It was very cool.
On the way home we stopped so she could buy carrots and meat, and we went into this department store called El Corte Inglés (The English Court) so she could look at sunglasses. I swear there are more Corte Ingléses in Madrid than there are Walgreens at home! There are two of them right across the street from each other! Actually, I’m not sure if they are separate or just one business spread into two buildings. But there are still a lot.
I really wish I had internet here. It feels pointless to write these blogs and not be able to share them. I feel so cut off from everyone. I wish there was a cheaper way to communicate than phone that didn’t require the internet. It’s so frustrating because the computer says there’s a free wifi access in range with good signal, but it won’t connect for some reason, I have no idea why. I’m angry. I feel bad leaving everyone without updates, and I haven’t talked to my friends since I got here! This is very frustrating. I feel like everything will be old news by the time I get it up, but I guess it won’t be for you. Then you’ll have a whole bunch to read!
Haha, someone’s playing the “Summer of ’69” next door (I don’t know if that’s the actual name of the song, but whatever). That makes me think of Dad. J One of the taperías we went to last night was playing the English version of 99 Red Balloons when we came in, and then played American music the rest of the time. It was weird to hear that in Spain. It almost felt like I wasn’t actually in Spain, but just on vacation somewhere in the US. It’s starting to feel more real now that I’ve been around the city and today was all in Spanish. I can’t believe I’m going to be here for a whole 4 months! It still doesn’t seem possible. I’m not getting homesick yet, I just wish I could communicate!
Tomorrow I’ll see the students from AYA again. It’ll be good to see some familiar faces, even if we’ll probably still speak in Spanish. Today has been kind of overwhelming. It didn’t seem so at the time, but it’s catching up to me a little now. I think I’ll go comfort myself with a little English reading. J
Bethany

January 25

2009-01-28T07:49:00.001-08:00

I got my housing assignment today! I’m living in southern Madrid in an apartment with an elderly couple. The husband is Manuel, and I can’t for the life of me remember the señora’s name. I’m actually not sure if I was ever told. They seem very nice, but they’re very clean, ‘wipe your feet on the doormat, wear slippers in the house’ type of people. I’m afraid they will be stricter than I’m used to. I have a designated towel, fork, spoon, napkin, and bathroom. I got the feeling that I might be in trouble if I used someone else’s things. I have my own room, which is nice, and there aren’t any other students living here. My room is quite cozy, with a futon and a table and a bed that folds up into the wall during the day. It’s really hot in my room, too, which is completely the opposite of what I expected. I heard that the heat isn’t very good in most buildings, but I’ve had to keep the window open. Hopefully that doesn’t mean it will be even hotter in the summer. My señora will provide two meals a day and I’ll eat lunch at the university or out somewhere. On weekends I can pick whether I want lunch or dinner at home. We had spaghetti for lunch today, which had a weird flavor. We also had meatballs which were really good. My family berated me for not eating enough, but I wasn’t very hungry. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and my body’s still thinking it’s 7:30 in the morning. Breakfast is usually coffee, tea, or cocao (sp?), which is a very thick hot chocolate type drink, plus a roll or sweet bun. I’m really worried about the carb thing, but I don’t want to be a nuisance, especially since it’s just her and her husband normally. I hope I can balance it out.
It was hard getting through lunch concentrating on the language that much. I guess in English I take for granted the ability to half pay attention to a conversation and still understand. It was difficult, but my family was very nice about it. I can understand almost everything, or use my super-duper deductive reasoning, but sometimes I get lost or miss something. I’m working on not feeling like a fool for only being able to speak at a grade school level.
One of the girls from Ripon, Cassondra Meyer, is living across the street, so we’re going to meet at the Metro station tomorrow morning to travel to Sol where the AYA group is gathering. Most of the other people from AYA are living just a few Metro stops away, so hopefully we’ll be able to get together easily.
I can’t get my computer to connect to the internet here, even though there are a few public access networks listed. Hopefully I will be able to finagle it, otherwise I’ll have to find an internet café or go to the university. Dangit, I would have loved to have internet here. L So I’m still writing on Word and waiting to post until I have somewhere to do it.
I have an hour and a half until we’re going out to explore the city, so I think I’m going to rest. I’m still pretty tired.
Miss you all,
Bethany

January 24

2009-01-28T07:47:00.000-08:00

Hi from Madrid!
My flight was yesterday. I got to Chicago around 10:30 and found the terminal with only a little difficulty. We checked in and got my baggage checked and then hung out in the attached hotel’s restaurant until time to go through security. I said my goodbyes to mom and dad with only a few tears (although they’re slightly resurfacing now for no good reason) and met my friend Katie at the gate. The first flight was only an hour and fifteen minutes, which hardly seems worth it after how many hours of waiting beforehand! I saw one of those jets that leaves the white streaks behind it from above, which I thought was pretty cool. We had a five hour layover in Philadelphia during which I sat at the gate and read. It is very difficult to concentrate on a book in a busy airport, let me tell you! Our flight to Madrid actually left about 15 minutes early. They served dinner, this “chicken” entrée that was like four tiny chunks of chicken amidst rice and beans and corn. Real healthy low carb there. . . . There was also a side salad that was more carrots than lettuce, I think. Anyway, I actually fell asleep for a while, a couple of times. About an hour and a half before we landed, when I was asleep, they turned all the lights on and came around asking “Do you want a pastry?” No, I do not want a pastry!! I want to sleep! It’s like 2 in the morning! Shut off the lights! Grr. . . .
Anyway, we arrived in Madrid about 30 minutes early and got our luggage with no problem. We were supposed to meet the directora of the program by the American Express office, so we waited there for like an hour and a half, getting more and more anxious. Finally, Katie called her; apparently there was an American Express office outside the gate and customs where they were all waiting. It makes total sense that that’s where they would be since they couldn’t come in that far, but we were at the American Express office, and we didn’t want to go leave and look, because we thought that would be when she would come looking for us. So we got in this huge van to go to the hotel around 12:30. Oh my gosh! I couldn’t pay attention to what the driver was doing or I would have freaked out. The streets are so narrow and cars were passing just inches away! Our driver stopped and changed lanes in the middle of a roundabout, two things which I know are illegal, at least in the US, and then he stopped in the middle of the street to greet a friend he hadn’t seen in six years and exchange phone numbers. He also went down this tiny alley where cars were parked along one side. I swear we were going to hit the cars or the wall, but we didn’t. We got honked at a lot.
What I could see of the city was cool. Of course we could only see like the bottom two or three floors because of the van windows, but there were a lot of buildings with cool balconies and facades, and we passed a statue of someone I can’t remember anymore. There’s a lot, too, that just looks like any bit city. There’s graffiti everywhere, on signs, on cement road barriers, on buildings, much more than I’ve ever seen in the US. It’s really a shame. We got to the hotel and I crashed for about 3 hours. I’m still pretty tired, but I can stay awake until time to go to bed, I think. Then I woke up and took a shower. The shower’s weird! It’s one of those that stand up on its own, and it has a curtain that turns the corner to meet the wall on 2 sides. The showerhead is on the sideways wall, spraying the short way instead of the long way! There’s also one of those extra toilet things that spray water on your butt and always make me think of Crocodile Dundee. At least, I assume that’s what it’s for. I didn’t try it out.
It’s 4:45 now. We’re meeting the whole group at 7:30 for tapas. I’m kind of nervous for the food. I don’t know what kind of stuff they eat here. I just realized I haven’t eaten all day, but I’m not hungry. One of the girls in my room is feeling sick and she thinks it’s because of something she ate. Oh well, I’m sure it will be fine.
I’m looking forward to getting to my house tomorrow so I can unpack and get all settled in. I still don’t know where or with whom I will be staying. I emailed them a few days ago asking about it and they told me that we didn’t get assigned until we got to Madrid. But Katie got hers and her host mother was told to email her before she left. I don’t know what’s up with that. I just wish I knew what I was getting into.
I’m feeling a little lost right now. I don’t know if it’s because I’m still tired. I think it’ll get better once I have something specific to do and a set schedule. Right now we’ve had the whole afternoon off, which just feels weird to be left on our own the first day in a foreign country. I’m not so sure about the whole big city thing. I hope my house is a bit outside the city. It’s a little daunting with all the big buildings and crazy traffic. I like my small towns where I’m not afraid of getting mugged at every minute. But I suppose I’ll find that out tonight or tomorrow.
I’m writing this at the hotel on Microsoft Word, but it’s not letting me connect to the hotel’s wireless internet without a username and password and I don’t want to have to figure it out right now. I’ll post this as soon as I can. (I really hope my house has internet.)
Love to all,
Bethany

My first blog!

2009-01-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!
I thought I'd start a blog of what I'm doing in Spain for anyone who wants to know. I've never really been good at this whole diary thing, but I'll try to keep it updated.
I'm leaving on Friday (the 23rd) and I'll be flying from Chicago to Philadelphia to Madrid. I'm flying with a friend who's also going to Madrid, and we figured we'd rather face the airports together than alone. :) Then after school is over in May, Brent and our friend Danny will be flying over and we're going to tour Europe for a month. Exciting!
I don't really have a whole lot to tell yet. I don't know who my host family will be or where I'll be living, other than somewhere around Madrid. I found out that my church friend Yvonne is going to be studying in Madrid this semester too, at a different university, so I'm hoping we can get together there. There will be about five or six other people from my school there, but I don't know them very well.
As for me, I've just been packing and hanging out at home. Really exciting, I know. I'm watching Saved right now. Great movie. Anyway, I don't think I really have anything more to say right now, so I'm gonna go and play hammered dulcimer!
I'll write again soon,
Bethany