My bi-monthly update (or is it semi-monthly...?)

Hola chic@s,

So it's been a loooong time, once again. I started out with these grand plans of updating once a week every week and somehow immediately fell out of that pattern. The last time I updated was February 6 I think. That weekend we went to Toledo (Spain, not Ohio) which is a gorgeous city about an hour south of Madrid. It has, among many other points of interest, one of the most beautiful and oldest cathedrals in all of Spain, the Catedral Primada Santa María de Toledo. It also has a synagogue which was converted into a church, and mosques (many of which were destroyed or converted into churches). Christianity reigns supreme in Spain. I felt transported to a different century, walking down the narrow cobblestone streets. That is until a car wanted to pass by and you had to press yourself against a wall in order to avoid being run over. We ate dinner one day and lunch the next at an awesome restaurant called El Trebol. Dinner there was seriously one of the best meals I've had since coming to Spain. Also, the program had a photography competition where you could send in your three best pictures from Toledo and Luis, one of the coordinators, put them all on Facebook so people could "vote" by clicking "Like". I entered a picture of Chris imitating a statue of a hunchback and got 3rd place! Which wins me 30 euro to redeem for extracurricular activities (wish it were travel money instead but beggars can't be choosers...).


That week (February 7th) we started classes at la UAM, which I told you a bit about. I tried out 3 classes (wanted to try out 4 but will explain in a minute why that didn't happen). The one I went to on Monday was called "History of Culture and Mentalities of Modern Europe" or something like that. It was a bizarre class whose lengthy reading list reminded me far too much of Modern Mind at Tufts with Jay Cantor (Dev, you know what I'm talking about). The professor came in 15 minutes late (they always do), droned on for 45 minutes about the strange syllabus (with two reading lists: a general bibliography which consisted of about 7 or 8 books, and a required reading list which was like 30 more books... wth??), and then left. I had no idea what he said but I really hoped I would not end up taking that class.


Tuesday (the 8th) I tried out a class with Pilar Toboso Sanchez, one of the professors who came to the program to give us a little taste of her class, History of the Modern World Part II (History of Spain since 1939). It seemed like an interesting class and gelled well with material I had learned the previous semester in my class on Spanish Literature of the Post-Civil War. So far it's been a class about Franco, Franco, and more Franco, from the perspective of Franco. But at least Dana and Carlos are in the class with me (Carlos, you ARE staying in Pilar). Afterwards I tried out a class with Ariane called La Mujer Escritora (The Female Writer), taught by a professor called Dolores Noguera. Dolores (not what I call her to her face) is a very hippie, bra-less feminist but super chic and looks like a student with her trendy hair and hipster-ish clothing. She's a bit hard to understand because she kind of mumbles a bit but I like her and I think she'll go easy on us (at least I hope??). Also Juan, our guide for the Filo y Letras tour from last month, is in the class, so he should be able to help us out. Also I'm getting a tutor. I am definitely taking this class. Tara recommended a lit class to me called Modern Spanish Narrative (from 1975 till now) that she took and really liked, but unfortunately there has not been a single session of the class so far because, as I've heard, the professor was recently diagnosed with cancer. The class officially starts March 1st (not sure who's teaching it) but since we had to tell Mayte today our official class selections, Ariane and I decided to go with the one we've been to versus the one we haven't. Another thing about the UAM- professors sometimes just don't show up. And there's no warning or indication. They just don't come. I've been lucky so far; I've made two pointless trips to la UAM but both times there was a sign posted saying that we didn't have class that day, so at least I didn't hang around waiting for the professor to show up when he/she was never going to.


What else what else... the weekend before last I met my intercambio Ramon for the first time. Intercambios are Spanish students who the program sets you up with, kind of like a pen pal, so that you can have Spanish friends. I have 5 intercambios technically but I've only ever spoken to Ramon (because he did the work of finding me and messaging me on Facebook). Anyway Ramon and I have spoken a few times since late last year but finally the weekend before last I met him in person. On Saturday, Ramon, Dana, Ariane, and I went to a bar near Santiago Bernabeu and then afterwards to a discoteca in Tribunal. It was really fun! The next day (Sunday) Ramon had invited me to a "spa" (sports facility) to go swimming with him and some of the people he volunteers with who have Down Syndrome. The facility was super far away in Alcobendas but it was a chance for me to see places I would never have otherwise. I would never have gone to this "spa" on my own and it was a lot of fun. We swam for like 2 hours (in this huge pool with all sorts of fountains and waterfalls) and I got a chance to talk to some of the people he volunteers with. There were only 3 of them: Nacho, Dani, and Araceli. Nacho and I talked the most and almost immediately he said to me, "Your Spanish isn't very good, is it?" That was a bit discouraging, haha. But he was super nice so it didn't bother me so much. Ultimately it was a very cool way to spend my Sunday.


This past week wasn't particularly exciting... I saw Valor de Ley (True Grit) in English with Chris and Dana on Tuesday night. I know my mother probably wouldn't have liked it (too much shooting/violence) but I thought it was awesome. And hilarious! I didn't expect to laugh so much. Next up on my list of movies to see is Biutiful with Javier Bardem. I'm seeing that on Wednesday with some people. I also recently saw Grapes of Wrath for funzies at the Circulo de Bellas Artes, the place with the cool rooftop with the great views. It also has a neat theatre that shows English movies sometimes. I hadn't seen GoW since 8th grade and I had forgotten a lot of the story. Good movie, and Henry Fonda was a fox!


On Saturday, possibly one of the grossest days so far (both cold and rainy), my friends (Carlos, Dana, and Ariane) decided to go to Avila for the day (we know how to pick 'em!). Avila is pretty close to Madrid; it took about 2 hours by train (the slow and cheap train, not the fast expensive one). When we got out of the train station we found ourselves in a pretty normal looking town. We had to walk through the ugly modern part to get to the beautiful old part, surrounded by the super-old muralla or wall. We spent a good portion of the day walking around the wall, which offered some great views of the town and surrounding countryside (and mountains!). Avila is basically built on a hill so the views are amazing. Besides the wall, which occupied most of our day, we saw the Avila Cathedral and the birthplace of Santa Teresa, some crazy old lady who also happened to perform miracles. We also saw the ring finger of one of Santa Teresa's hands, now 500 years old. It was pretty gnarly. And was wearing an emerald ring. Google "Santa Teresa's finger" and you can find pics! The day was a lot of fun despite the weather (and the company, haha -- just kidding!).


That's about it for now. This weekend those same friends (C, D, and A) and I are planning a suuuper last minute trip to Granada to see El Alhambra among many other awesome things. I'm super excited!! And in just a couple of weeks my REAL family will be here. I hope Maggie's ready to use her Spanish!!


Besos,
Chelsea

A few weeks in

To all my seven followers: I am so sorry that I haven’t posted in so long!! It’s been almost two weeks since my last post, yikes. I really should update this more often so that every time I update I don’t have to recount 2 weeks’ worth of activities.

Okay, so last week Laura was here!! I am actually going to direct you to her very complete blog entries detailing every aspect of her week here so that I don’t have to describe our adventures in my blog (because it would take foreva). Suffice it to say, we had a lot of fun (as per usual with Laura)!! We went tapas-ing and bar-ing and museum-ing among other activities. Sadly, last Monday I escorted her to the Atocha station to catch the direct bus to the airport for €2. She left later than she intended to because we got coffee at Mickey D’s before heading over, so I hope she made it to the airport on time!! I actually have no idea how she’s doing because I haven’t heard anything from her since then. I’m sure she’s fine but I worry! She had a flight to London first, a five hour layover in Heathrow, and then a flight to Delhi where she had to wait for 8 or 9 hours until the program came to pick students up. Laura, if you’re reading this, I hope everything went OK and that you’re having fun!! I miss you!

(4.2.11 update: I have heard from Laura, she is safe and well in India and already doing cool things like seeing elephants, which does not surprise me in the least!)

Okay so what else… One thing Laura couldn’t have told you about was the program’s trip to El Escorial last Saturday. El Escorial is a really old, really cool castle/monastery thing. Literally it is both a castle and a monastery (or it was, back in the day). Lots of Spanish kings and queens have lived there and are now entombed in the mausoleum there. It was very beautiful but unfortunately, as it is several centuries old, lacked a proper heating system. Saturday happened to be freezing so I spent a great majority of the tour shivering my ass off.  I was also starving and more than a little sleepy – my eyes kept closing during the first half of the tour which is why I can’t tell you more about El Escorial, as I missed most of what the guide said. Whoops! After the tour they let us loose in the little town to get lunch and I felt much better and more awake after getting something to eat. We explored the town for a little while afterward, which was fun, but I had worn completely the wrong shoes for icy/snowy cobblestone roads and so walked in constant fear of slipping (always a possibility for me no matter the road conditions). We took some nice pictures set against the mountainous backdrop and then in typical fashion made complete American fools of ourselves by taking ridiculous pictures of each other and starting a snowball fight in front of El Escorial. We definitely desecrated some sacred ground there, whoops.

Monday, after saying goodbye to Laura, I went to visit/explore la UAM (la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) with Ariane and Dana, two of my friends from the program. Autónoma was designed by an architect who also designed prisons and believe me, you can tell. The campus is not the prettiest and the buildings are all kind of squat and ugly. But, for the next four months it’s my school, so I’ll try to love it anyway! Getting to Autónoma is also kind of annoying because it’s pretty far north of the city. You have to take the commuter rail (cercanías or RENFE), which can be confusing, and it takes a while to get there. I’m thinking of taking a class that meets at 9am on Wednesday mornings and if I do, I will have to get up sooo early to ensure that I’m not late for my class.

But so anyway, Dana and Ariane and I practiced taking the cercanías so we’ll be prepared for when classes start next week. When we got to Autónoma, we went with Dana to the gym/athletic center because she wanted to register for flamenco classes. Then we found the Filosofía y Letras building, where the three of us will take most of our classes. We had seen this building before on our little guided tour of the university a couple weeks earlier, but it was very confusing and I remembered feeling lost, so we wanted to see if we could navigate it on our own without the help of our tour guide Juan. Entering the building, I happened to glance to my right, and saw a man and woman in a passionate liplock. The man was seated on the bench with the woman straddling him, her knees on either side of him. I feel like I’m writing the intro to a porno! This kind of thing (extreme PDA) is commonplace in Spain, although what I’ve seen so far has not been quite so… HBO after midnight. Anyway, we were amused by the couple but didn’t really think anything of it. Forty-five minutes later, after getting a quick lunch, we walked down the same corridor again, and the couple was STILL THERE, making out in the exact same position, as if they were a modern art installation. After FORTY-FIVE minutes. I would have thought they’d have progressed in their activities (perhaps smoking a post-coital cigarette by the time we passed them again?) or found another space (i.e. more private) in which to continue their seminar on Anatomy 101. Or if nothing else, gotten bored and gone home. But nope, they were still at it… Anyway I have spent a long time detailing this and I did not mean to. Back to more important things, like lunch. So, pretty soon after entering the building and admiring the temporary Modern Lust exhibit, we realized we were starving and decided to check out the caf and get some lunch. We followed signs to “cafetería,” but the first room we walked into had microwaves and little else. Then we found the real cafetería, which had actual food for sale but no discernible way of getting said food. There was a long counter with a lot of food displayed, but no money being exchanged over the counter, and a couple of islands where cashiers sat looking bored. After watching other students navigate the caf, we finally figured out that we had to look at the food at the counter, decide what we wanted, go over to the cashier (who was very annoyed with us by the time we figured this confusing process out), tell her what we wanted, pay, receive a little ticket with our order on it, and take that to the counter to give to a guy who finally, finally served us food. It was a miracle I was able to obtain a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of OJ. There was a legit “menú del día” with 2 courses and whatnot but I have no idea how to order that/ where you get it from. I should probs figure it out though, because though my ham and cheese sandwich was not too bad, it wasn’t filling enough. Later we went to a coffee-shop style café and Ariane and I split the hugest chocolate/croissant looking pastry I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, after our confusing lunch we realized that it would be more helpful to tour the Filo y Letras building with some idea of where our classes might be, so we headed to la biblioteca to find the room numbers of some of the classes we were considering. We could not for the lives of us (what a weird construction…) figure out how to log-on to the computers (should probs figure that out) so we waited until someone vacated one without logging off and jumped on it. Room numbers in hand, we set off back towards the Filo y Letras building where we wandered around the hallways for a while, orienting ourselves. The building is divided into six or seven “módulos” or pod-like things which each span three floors. So, a class could be in Módulo VI, Aula (classroom) 203. It’s not too hard once you get the hang of it but it can be tricky because if you take a wrong turn you can end up in a completely different building, as the Filo y Letras building is connected to the Facultad de (School of) Formación de Profesorado y Educación (all cognates but I don’t really know what it means), which is a completely different department. I don’t feel 100% confident about finding my classes next week but I definitely feel a lot better about it (except for a couple classes I’m considering which didn’t have room numbers posted online… that’s cool…). Anyway, then we headed back to da city for our grammar class at Recoletos (the program center) with Miguel, one of the program coordinators slash just a generally awesome dude. Miguel speaks extremely clearly and slowly and enunciates really well so he’s one of the people I understand best at the program center. All of the program coordinators are super neat people.

Okay so this blog post has been in a lot of detail… That was just Monday of last week. Tuesday I had my Imaginando las Américas (Imagining the Americas) class at the program center, which basically looks at the colonization of the Americas by Spain in terms of how Latin America has influenced Spain. It’s been very interesting so far but reading and writing for this class (and for the grammar class) have been a rude awakening that yes, this is school. I hope starting real classes next week (gah, the horror) will jolt me into a more academic mindset… yeah, probably not. I have no idea how to manage time here and have ended up doing all my assignments (well, the few I’ve had so far) at the last minute even though I have plenty of time to complete them earlier. Whoops! On Wednesday, Dana, Carlos, and I went to see “También la Lluvia” at a theatre on Gran Vía. It was an assignment for the Imaginando class I just described. The movie starred Gael García Bernal (from Motorcycle Diaries, among many others) as a director filming a movie about Columbus’s arrival in the Americas from the indigenous people’s point-of-view. However, they are filming the movie in Bolivia (where they can hire movie extras on the cheap) during the water shortage in 2000. Bolivia had begun to privatize many of its once public systems, including the distribution of water, and water costs had skyrocketed while people’s meager wages remained the same. So, the movie presents an interesting parallel – namely, the white/rich man’s subjugation of indigenous people – between the colonization of the early 1500s and the globalization & privatization occurring hoy en día (today). It was an excellent movie and I was pleased to be able to understand the vast majority of it. It helped that the movie wasn’t super dialogue heavy and a lot of it was conveyed through action (like the protests led by one of the Bolivian actors hired for the movie).

From Friday to Saturday the program took us on the first excursion of the semester, to Toledo. I believe Toledo merits its own blog entry which you will probably see here in another two weeks (just kidding, I’ll try to update sooner than that). Until then, ¡chao!