Senderísmo

So, it's been a while. After I got back from Copenhagen, I took my grammar exams and passed each of them! That weekend, I went hiking outside of Madrid with Amanda, Jessica, and Travis. We took the train for an hour, then arrived in a little town. We had to walk all the way through the town to get to the park, and then the trail was this old Roman road. Unfortunately for the Romans and for us, the road lead directly up the steep mountain. As I possess little to no leg muscles, it was a difficult climb for me, but the beautiful scenery made up for it. When we got to the top of the mountain, there were still patches of snow! Crazy!







The program took us on our last trip together also. This one was just a day trip, not an overnight or anything. They took us up north a bit, to a few cities so small that no one's host parents had heard of them. We saw Roman ruins, so obviously I was really excited. The Romans were really smart, and took advantage of the landscape to build the houses in this area, because there were a lot of rocky cliff type things, so the Romans just carved out of the rock and built mud structures coming out. On top of one cliff, we saw the floorplan and foundation for what is said to be the biggest Roman house in Spain, and it was pretty big, probably the size of the ground floor of my house in Clinton. All of it reminded me of the Southwest and pueblos and stuff. There was wild thyme growing everywhere, and the sun was heating it up and we were walking all over it so the whole place smelled delicious. We got to walk through an aquaduct that had been carved through rock, like a tunnel. It was pretty scary because at points there was literally no light and everyone was blind. And we ate a delicious lunch, and went to the largest fortress in Europe that is like a mile long or something. The landscape was so beautiful, a patchwork of different colored fields as far as you could see. I was glad to go, especially because it's really nice to have the whole program together! It seems to never really happen anymore, and there are people I really like but just don't see all that often. Also, I'm going to miss living in a place where Roman ruins are so common. Europe is awesome for that.

The Mansion:


House?
Fortress


Besides that, my life has been pretty scholastic. I had my poetry presentation last week, on Tuesday. I wrote out everything that I was going to say, like a script, and just read from my paper. We, the Americans in my class, all decided that it would be okay for us to do that, instead of standing up there and winging it like some of the overachieving Spanish kids. My presentation was a little rough, I was really nervous and had some problems pronouncing the words I was reading. Especially since my poet was all crazy into alliteration! Here is an example:

¡Tengo tantas tonterías! …
tentempiés, tímpanos, témpanos,
tengo tinta, teterillas,
tengo pompanos y púrpuras

Admittedly pretty cool, but hard to read when you are a nervous American.

Currently on my plate is my art history paper. I changed my work to Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein because I wasn't finding any information on the Miró I wanted to do originally. I'm slowly trudging through researching and writing. I think tomorrow I'm going to the Reina Sofia library to see if there are any books on it.

I'm trying to balance having a lot of work with enjoying my last weeks here. Thursday night some kids from the Paris program came to visit, and we hung out in their hotel room for a while and then went out to a discoteca. I didn't end up getting home until 5:30 in the morning! Probably only the second time that I've done that my whole semester, but it's so normal for the Spanish kids to do it. I don't understand how they can do that every weekend! Then, the day after Jessica and I went exploring in the middle of the city. We walked all around La Latina, Sol, and Tirso de Molina area. Jessica had randomly run into this guy that is friends with her boyfriend at Bard on the metro the day before, so we met up with him and showed him around. We had chocolate y churros, and then went to the Retiro and rented a paddle boat! It was really fun and really cheap, only 4 euros for all of us. Then we walked down to the Reina Sofia, and parted ways with him. By this point, Jessica and I had been walking around for 6 hours and decided it would be a good idea to go home for dinner. He was really nice, and i love doing the touristy things that we never get to do otherwise.

Today, I finally met my host dad's son. I had met his daughter before, but both of them came over because it was his birthday yesterday/today? No one actually told me specifically that it was his birthday, but I figured it out. He got the speakers that I have for a present, so we both thought that was pretty cool. His daughter brought over their dog, but Luisa FREAKED out because she is scared of dogs, even though this dog was a tiny little thing. So the daughter had to drive it back home haha. And so here I am.. my art history paper is so strange. It's just different categories that we have to answer, not one coherent paper. We have to number and letter each section, and they don't flow very well. Ugh. Well..