Botellón

I went out thursday night, friday night and saturday night this week. I am SO TIRED! It's getting easier to stay out really late like 5, but i don't think i'm up to staying out until the metro starts running again at 6. although when i write that it really only is one more hour, but i usually am ready to leave before five and it just takes a while to get home unfortunately. luckily- i have figured out the night bus system, so i feel very accomplished. my friend and i are one stop apart so we take it together.

this weekend it is carnival, which is some sort of halloween/mardi gras hybrid. we had plans to go drink a bottle of wine in a cute café we found during the day, but we ran into a friend at the metro station and she easily pressured us into coming with her. first, we went to the gay district, Chueca, and we hung out in the big plaza there and everyone was botellón-ing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botell%C3%B3n) It was insane to see so many awesome costumes. because we were in the gay barrio there were tons of drag queens dressed like belle from beauty and the beast or marie antoinette or bert and ernie or just vampy women. i noticed that it is less like halloween in america because the girls actually wear interesting costumes instead of wearing no clothes and being slutty. they were actually wearing lots of clothes surprisingly.

we went to a party at these spanish kids' apartment after and i was one of the few without costumes (no time to go costume shopping really). i was really glad that we went to it because it is really uncommon for the spanish to have house parties. in spanish culture, no one really hangs out at each other's houses, so you always have to go out somewhere to meet up and hang out, which is disappointing because there have been plenty of times when i wish that i could just watch a movie with friends and stay in together but this is not an option. our spanish parents would think it was so so bizarre if we did that. and usually kids live with their parents until they are around 30. so, this party was kind of a once in a spanish lifetime experience haha. the year-long kids invited us because they are friends with the spanish guys, so we met a bunch of spanish people and other international kids our age. i was not planning on staying out late because the night before i got home after five, but somehow it happened again. thus, i am sleepy.

saturday night amanda and jess and i found a new barrio and went to a pretty fun discoteca although the drinks were way overpriced. we pretended to be from different countries every time someone asked us were we were from. we easily convinced a bunch of people we were from finland haha. we run into all kinds of people from everywhere when we go out, it's pretty entertaining to hear spanish that is just as bad as ours.

friday amanda and i started our watercolor class at the art studio. we had gotten our supplies on wednesday, which basically entailed us giving the list of supplies to the person who worked at the art store and having them find everything. we had no clue what most of the words on the list meant, and every store would say "oh we don't have that you have to go to a different store" so we had to go to three stores in all to get about seven things. ridiculous. so, we went on friday and manuel the teacher looked at all of our stuff that we had gotten and was like "what is this? i have no idea what this is! why did you get this?" and we were like "we don't either! we just showed the list and that's what they gave us!" then, he started explaining what we were supposed to do to prep our piece of paper. the whole thing was so funny. he would tell us exactly what to do, but we didn't understand a lot of the words so we just started doing something and he would say "no! what are you doing?" we were so clueless about everything. if i had known how to do anything with watercolors before that would have been helpful, but we are learning how to do it from the beginning in spanish we only half understand, so to me it was hilarious. i could not stop laughing because i had no clue what he was telling us to do. but eventually we got it and started to copy/paint this picture of a lighthouse on a beach. FOUR HOURS LATER we had to leave, but mine is almost done. it's comical how bad we are at art, but it was really fun at the same time. my friend jessica is at the same studio doing etching or engraving or something so it's nice to have friends with me. usually we won't have to do four hours at once, we can break it up throughout the week to make four.

photo of the day: picnic

Zumo

So i did indeed go back to the park and had a lovely picnic with some buds. We had a feast of bread, some unidentified cheese, olives, beer, and boxed sangria that was horrible. to my surprise i tried an olive and it was actually very tasty. normally i hate olives, but these olives tasted really different. a pity i don't remember the name of them. We spent several hours in the park (again) and then went to have a late afternoon, aka six-thirty, snack of patatas bravas and ice cream. patatas bravas is a tapa, basically potatoes with a spicy kind of tomato sauce on top. in spain, potatoes are called patatas, not papas like in latin america. at dinner, we watched this show about madrid people in other countries and this show was about boston. in the middle of watching, some madrileño was showing the show his meat shop, and my host mom asked me if i had tried this thing that i don't remember the word for. i said not that i knew of, she said it's really tasty but that if she told me what it was i would never want to try it. then she burst out into a hysterical laughing fit. from what i gather it is some strange animal part mixed with blood or something. i reaaaaaally wish i remembered the word haha.
Monday was fairly uneventful. I didn't have class until 5:30 so i hung around at home reading and doing a bit of homework. I'm reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon and i have only have about 100 pages left! It's a murder dectective mystery that takes place in an imaginary Jewish settlement in Sitka, Alaska. as i started reading it, i thought to myself, i don't remember all those jewish places everywhere when i was in sitka... so i looked it up and it turns out that Sitka was one of the places they wanted to make kind of a jewish commonwealth after the war but instead Israel was chosen. But Chabon chose to set his novel as if it had actually been Sitka. Anyway, it's a really interesting book, very well written. Then after I had grammar class, we went to go buy tickets to see Carmen. It seems like they have re-invented it into some kind of flamenco-esque thing instead of the traditional opera. We are going the first week of March, because it's all sold out until then.
Today- a full day at the university! On a whim, I went with my friends to check out a new class called Migration and Human Interconectedness under the Anthropology department, and i really liked it! the teacher was SO EXCITED that there were so many Erasmus kids and United States kids in it, to get our different views. It seems like perhaps a lot of outside work, but all pretty do-able. he speaks pretty clearly and slowly because he said when he was in the united states everyone would talk fast and he didn't know what they were saying, so he knows what we're going through. Then, i had my second class of the day, Social Transformations in 20th century British Writing. I like this class a lot. The teacher spent today explaining Modernism, and just lectured, but next week we are starting to discuss texts so it will be more exciting. Mrs. Dalloway is first up on the list, which i have read, but in a completely different setting, and i liked it anyway so i don't mind reading it again. After class, my two friends i'm taking the class with and i went to the international bookstore to buy Mrs. Dalloway, and amanda and i ended up spending about an hour and a half in there. it was incredible! they had so so much paul auster and murakami and really obscure authors that you perhaps wouldn't even find in american bookstores! i found a collection of short stories edited by Jeffrey Eugenides called "My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead," and it's a collection of great love stories from chekhov to munro. i am excited about reading it. they also had a really great section about spain; i feel like i should return and buy a book about history or culture here. I really don't know that much about Spanish culture. I understand the civil war and franco and stuff, but that's just scratching the surface. perhaps i will gain some insight from my migration class about spanish culture? one can hope.
tomorrow's goal: put more money on phone and buy painting supplies/perhaps paint.

Preciosa

Highlight of the last few days: Parque Retiro! I finally went yesterday for the first time and it was such a gorgeous day- 60 and sunny! of course, the Spaniards were still pretty bundled up but my New England self was loving that i could just wear a t-shirt (also pants). I went with some friends and we wandered around for a few hours, just looking at all the fountains and people. we stumbled upon this palacio cristal that had a small exhibit from the Reina Sofia museum that was pretty cool. It is a lot different than Central Park in that it is not as green and there are no rocks, but perhaps that is because it is february and the possibility that things will get green is pretty likely. in the mean time, i am returning there today to have a picnic! hopefully it will be the site of many many picnics in the future as well.



after the park, we went to see a movie that we thought looked interesting based solely on the posters in the metro to cross another cultural activity off the list for the month. Turned out to be about this girl who gets kidnapped and raped and then tells her best friend who is a boy, and then they start dating and he rapes her and abuses her also. So far, out of two plays and two spanish movies i have seen, there has been at least one graphic (as in, more than would be shown in the usa but less than a porn obviously) sex scene, and two rape scenes. I don't know if it's just the ones we have been choosing, or if this is how spanish things work. My host mom was like "why do they make you see spanish movies? they're awful!" so far i agree...
we also had to go to this art fair exposition thing on friday. I had no clue what it was, but we got out of the metro and there was this huge building in front of us, which apparently is the potential spot for the olympics if madrid hosts them. so we bought our tickets (21 euros jeez!) and it turned out to be this huge huge art gallery show basically. it was in a bunch of super big rooms that were sectioned off into little areas for each gallery. it was really neat. this is a bus that looks like it is made out of bones.



then at night on friday, we went to the moncloa barrio and went to this bar that was decorated like a cave inside. when you order the drink of the house- "panther's milk" they take a big goblet the size of my head and milk starts coming out of the ceiling while the bartender pours a lot of various alcohol in there, and tops it with cinnamon. it was a strange drink. then we went to club scruffy, which was appropriately named. while waiting in line for the bathroom, my friend and i met this very intense drunk spanish girl who was SO EXCITED that we were american and invited us to dance with her and her friends. she was pretty hilarious. our blatant american accent gives us away, even when we are speaking in spanish they know we are not from around here. because i am blonde, i automatically get pegged for being from the united states. i myself am getting better at distinguishing americans in madrid. you can tell because of their footwear- flats without socks, flip flops, sandals, running sneakers.. or like yesterday if they were wearing a t-shirt without a jacket.. or simply because they look like a natural blonde. i like to play the game of guessing if someone is american on the metro and usually when they start talking i am right. you can tell if someone is actually spanish if they are wearing winter clothes, or if they are hardcore making out with someone. there is no concept of or word for p.d.a. here. i would say that because yesterday was valentines day, there were more couples making out everywhere, but that is not true. every day is like valentines day if you are spanish.

Cacahuetes

Ah, miercoles. I don't know how to say hump day in Spanish but i certainly welcome its arrival.
We had a wonderful intercultural therapist woman come in and do a seminar with us yesterday about integrating into Spanish culture and understanding the differences and why they exist. For example, you aren't supposed to have bare feet at home, because Spanish people think you will get sick if your feet get cold or something. Also, they think feet are unseemly. I looked down at my feet in tiny flats without socks realizing that it is hard to adapt to a different culture. Also, Spanish people have absolutely no problem with not saying "Excuse me" when they barrel past you and knock into you, but they insist that you always say hello to them when you enter a store or something. Also, they stand really close to each other when speaking, relative to American standards. The woman was really helpful with making us realize that we can't just instantly adapt and be able to speak the language. She mentioned this theory by some linguist that i forget the name of, but his theory was that to acquire a language the formula has to be I + 1. As in, to learn a language, the input needs to be what you know, plus a little bit. Most of the time it feels like I + 23409834987569875, but i am supposed to feel okay that i don't understand much because it's way above +1. that put my mind at ease a little, although it still is really frustrating to not understand what is going on.
After class yesterday, I went with three friends back to the same theater I saw the other play in Lavapiés to see one about crazy women in an insane asylum during the civil war. This one i didn't like as much as the first, it was longer and just didn't hold my interest as much. Then, we got out and it was 11:30 so we decided to search for dinner and stumbled upon an Indian restaurant and happily went in. Not that I don't like Spanish food, but it can get a little bland, and Indian food feels more familiar to me. It was a good meal.
Today, I went to check out the art studio where amanda and i are going to take watercolor painting class. it seems really low-key; there are no scheduled classes, you just come in with your stuff and do work there, and the instructor will sign a piece of paper saying that you did one hour or whatever. so i think i'm going to do two hours a week of that to equal one skidmore credit, which i don't really need anyway. then, instead of going to buy our supplies, we went topshopping. a weakness indeed. the topshop here is no where near as big as they are in london, but i love it still.
also, bananas are really really good here. they have tons more flavor and the texture is a little more dense. they call them "platanos." i have noticed this phenomenon in spanish language, where there is kind of a false cognate. like, what would they call plantains? or, shrimp are called "langouistinos" but what about a langoustine? or clementines are called mandarinos, but what about a mandarin orange? these things i wonder about.
anyway, i have a long day of testing out potential classes tomorrow at the university and am not looking forward to it. i thought i was going to have to go today but i got all ready (reluctantly) and realized that it ended the same time my class at skidmore center started and the two are about 30 minutes apart, so i couldn't take that class. i was so glad to not have to go to school by myself for the first time. tomorrow my english lit buddy and i are going to a bunch together so i'm happy i won't get lost on my own.

and now for something completely different

BLINK 182 IS REUNITING!!!!! oh happy day.




as cool as this is, their last album kinda sucked. i'm hopeful that the new one will be better and like the older ones.

i'm still holding out for the talking heads reunion. as long as all of them are alive, there is always a chance.

Pincelada

So, much has occurred since last time. So much that my brain cannot remember all of it. We went back to the Prado again, this time with my Civilization and Art class at the Skid center. We had learned about a bunch of post-impressionist Spanish painters in class and were going to see them, but they were in the process of moving them, so we had to see the Velazquez and Goya again and hear the same explanations. But, then we got to see the crazy Francis Bacon exhibit. Here is an example of his work:


apparently his deal was to capture the spirit of man without god, as in, animalistic. everyone in the paintings were either screaming or bearing their teeth and had crazy mouths. i was not sure how i felt about it.
And thennnnnn.. Thursday night we went out for real! We found this cool German bar that gave us "VIP" cards that apparently do absolutely nothing, and hung out there for a bit while the night was still young (i.e. until one in the morning hah) and then we to our first discoteca! They play a lot of american music here, so obviously much dancing was done to "all the single ladies." It was nice, because on friday we didn't have to be anywhere until one in the afternoon....
which was the Reina Sofia museum! The reina sofia has most of the modern art in Madrid, like Picasso and Dali. I GOT TO SEE GUERNICA IN REAL LIFE AND IT WAS SO SO AWESOME!!!!! It's so huge and you can see things you can't really see in a picture, like the bird in the background. And everything looks smoother or something, it's hard to describe.


Then, we had to go back to school to have yet another information meeting about university classes, which we had already heard about a million times, so my friend and I went to the movies instead. We picked out this movie that we thought would be about modern day Germany and be fun and interesting, called "the wave." then it started and we were like "oh shit this is actually IN german, with spanish subtitles!!" and then as it progressed we were like "oh shit this is actually about neo-fascism!!" and there is a bloody school shooting at the end. Needless to say, this is what happens when you cannot understand the synopsis. but i surprised myself with how much i could understand of the movie, which was positive.
Luego, on Saturday, we went to the this royal monastery palace thing called El Escorial. It is about an hour north of Madrid in the mountains, so it was really really cold. And we didn't know it would be so cold, so we were all freezing. It snowed and it was really windy and the castle had zero heat inside. Also, in terms of royal castles, Versailles is totally cooler. This one was okaayyyyy but.. meh. Kind of bland.


Which leads me up to today, which was a great day. We went to El Rastro which is kind of like the Portobello Market of Madrid, except a lot bigger. We were pretty overwhelmed with how big it was and how many people but i liked it a lot and plan to return. it's notorious for pickpockets, so i went without a purse and was totally fine. Then we met up with some others and went to see one of the movies that is on our cultural activities list, called "dieta mediterranea," which turned out to be one of the strangest movies i have seen. This is this woman who is in love with two men, and marries one but is still in love with the one, and they end up just becoming a threesome and having sex all the time and running a restaurant together and sleeping together and it was just bizarre. it would never be a movie in america haha.
Then we had chocolate caliente and churros at the famous place to eat them and they were delicious!



Classes start at the university this week.. ayyyyyy i don't want them to.