MADRID

---

Day 5/Día 1- May 23, 2008- MADRID DAY 1… well, I had my first completely on-my-own flight today. It was a bit scary, but I survived the flight from Dublin to Madrid, where it was raining when I arrived. After a bit of being lost, I finally found the cabs and was driven out to Pilar’s home. Unfortunately, on top of the rain, Pilar’s home turned out to be a large, confusing building, but I managed to find my way soon enough. Pilar is spectacular—she is so sweet, she welcomed me with a warm hug and a kiss on each cheek (very European, I’m almost used to it now!). I have my very own room, an adorable little room with my own bed, dresser, desk, and bulletin board. Kimberli has an identical room next door, but she hasn’t gotten here yet. Pilar and I can communicate well enough, but I have a hard time understanding sometimes. She kind of showed the me the ropes today, showed me where everything was, gave me keys, etc. We talked a bit, and I learned that she has three children—two daughters, who are each married with children themselves, and one son, who is 38, who lives at home with her (no wife, no kids). She made me a delicious dinner (a hot sandwich, banana yogurt, and HOMEMADE tomato soup!) and we talked a bit. She actually complimented me several times on my Spanish, and said that she thought I grew up with at least one Spanish speaking parent, because my Spanish was so good! I’m flattered, but she might just be being nice, because it definitely is a bit of a struggle… nevertheless, I can tell I will be getting a LOT of practice, and am really going to love it here! She is wonderful, keeps her home ridiculously tidy and neat, and is very flexible—she doesn’t want me to have a curfew, etc, and wants me to be independent, but she still wants to help me, do my laundry, cook me meals, etc. She is SUCH a sweetheart! As much as I am excited for this though, this is probably the first night I’ve felt lonely and a tiny bit homesick—I still haven’t spoken properly to my parents yet, and I was so excited to do that tonight, but I am having major problems with my laptop and cannot get the wireless to work correctly. Hopefully I can figure it out tomorrow…. Besides that, I am just infinitely excited for all of this!! Viva Madrid!! 

Día 2- May 24, 2008- Today was my first full day in Madrid. I slept in today ( I had a lot of sleep to catch up from my crazy Ireland sleep schedule) till 11, and I had a quick breakfast and got dressed. Pilar took me to the store to buy shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. The walk was a few blocks, and she pointed out nearby shops and restaurants that I should try. Everyone walks everywhere here, and I have already started to really enjoy it. Many of the streets around here are named after southern American countries—there is the calle de Costa Rica, and many squares and areas named after the Dominican republic, peru, etc. I love the city already—Pilar told me that we are located in the North, and she will show me the buses tomorrow. Apparently my school is about a 45 minute walk, or a quick busirde, away from her home. I also met Kika, Pilar’s son who also lives here—I ahd a bit of trouble understanding her, but it sounds like he works evenings, because he has a strange schedule and sleeps for part of the days. I am still struggling a bit to communicate, but we haven’t had any major problems so far. This afternoon, I relaxed, finally took a shower, and read a bit of the book I brought, “Eat Pray Love,” It is a really interesting book, somewhat spiritual and a nice, light read. I almost forgot, you should have seen the meal she prepare for my lunch—she called it “enasalda de russo”, or Russian salad. It was BEAUTIFUL!! It was a salad of carrots, celery, beans, tuna, olives, and onions, in some sort of white cream sauce, but she had it arranged with bell peppers, hard boiled eggs, and white asparagus on top—it was so immaculately prepared, it looked like something out of a chef’s kitchen! It was interesting, wasn’t my favorite, but was still very good and I enjoyed it. Then, Pilar took a siesta nap. I too, accidently took quite a little siesta, and we began to take a walk together around 530. We got a call that Kim had arrived, and headed over on a bus to the Cis, or my school. A large group was waiting there, and we took a taxi back to Pilar’s apartment. We messed with the computers for a while, and unfortunately Kim’s computer has the same problem—neither of us can connect to the internet!  Then she unpacked and I hung around for a bit, and Pilar made us a nice dinner around 930. We wanted to meet up with some other students to go out, but it proved to be too difficult, as no one had mobile phones yet. So, instead, Kim and I went out on a walk on our own at about 1030, and explored a bit to see the streets around Pilar’s home. It was pretty quiet and empty, I was surprised. But, I have to remember that Pilar lives in the North of Madrid, probably in the outskirts, not near many bars, clubs, etc. Anywyas, it was another good day, and I’m especially looking forward to my tour of Madrid tomorrow. We will all meet at the school at 1030 AM, so I am heading to bed.. I might be getting sick, I have had a sore throat all day, so hopefully I can kick this one in the butt iwith a ton of sleep. Viva Madrid 

Día 3- May 25, 2008- My first full out and about day in Madrid! Our señora woke us up this morning in time to catch a bus to the at the CIS (our school) by 1030. We met all the other students in the group (and their señoras, who are all SO sweet and so mother hen-ly). There are 21 people in the group, and 6 of them are boys. I really really like all of the people I have met so far, and really had a chance to bond with a lot of htem today. We walked a bit and got onto a bus tour of Madrid, on a double decker bus… unfortunately, it happened to be the one random day where it absolutely POURED rain, so it was kind of a bad plan… we didn’t really have a place to go on the first floor of the bus either. Neverthelesss, we ended up at the Centro de Sol, the center of Madrid as well as the center of Spain as a whole. We went to the Corte Ingles, where we ALL bought cell phones. The funny part? 16 of us bought the SAME exact little red phone, and none of us can tell the ring tones apart! The poor people who worked at the store were so flustered, 16 americans who spoke basically no English came in all demanding phones and minutes! The phone cost me 39 Euro, and I bought 30 euro of service (to be used through text messages, calls, etc). Then, we were going to try to all go to lunch together, and our chapperones left, but Kim and I went in search of an Ethernet cord and decided to meet up with them right after. We found our cords, but ended up COMPLETELY lost in the pouring rain and coudlnt’ find the group! We resigned ourselves to sitting down in a little fast food place, until we finally got a call back from the group and we met up with them (after another half our or so of beign compeltey lost) and hten we all started to walk back, and again got separated into a smaller group (aparnetly 20 is a crowd to travel with!). We eventually caught our tour bus again, and rode around a bit, and finally took the metro back home. The tour wasn’t great, because the rain made it really hard to sit on top or to ssee, but it kind of seems like Madrid isn’t a great city to see from a tour bus—its mostly museums and old buildings, not something you can really appreciate from on top of a bus. Nevertheless, I feel like I’m already starting to get my bearings around here, and the metro was SO EASY! I really enjoyed myself today, and I love Madrid! It’s kind of like a combination of New York City and London—the buildings are old and majestic, but there are also big new ones too! People walk everywhere, and it is very urban and metropolitan feeling. Anyways… we had tried to get a group together to meet for Tapas at a bar close to our place, but most people bailed, and we ended up with 5. We went to Cañas y Tapas, and Kim and I ordered a Spanish tortilla (which is basically a glorified omelet with potatoes in it.. go figure?) and croquetes (which we thought were kebabs, but ended up beign these really really strange hush puppie-fried cheese meat things…. Weird) Needless to say, the tapas we ordered weren’t exactly what we had in mind, but they were good and a fun experience! Anwyas, classes start tomorrow and im absolutely exhausted (and possibly getting sick) so I’m gpoing to head to bed. Buenos noches y viva Madrid !

Día 4- May 26th, 2008- Today was my first day of classes! Kim and I took the bus for the first time together without Pilar, but the tirp went well! We arrived to class just in time, and most of today was spent on introductions and advice for the trip. We received a schedule of the museum trips we are going to take, and then split off into each of our classes. I am taking 266 and 311, and I think I will like them. Shelly Velasco, a professor for USC, is teaching my 311 class. Every day, we have to buy a copy of the newspaper, pick an article that interests us, and give a presentation in Spanish about the article. We then have a class discussion about it, and you have to be ready to answer questions about it. My other class, 266, is very similar to 265, which I took this past semester. There are short essays, presentations, movies, and readings that we have to complete. This class is taught my Vinciente (I can’t remember his last name), a professor that is from Madrid but received his PHD at UCLA. He is very nice and enthusiastic, but seems to be a challenging teacher. I am a little bit bummed, it seems like there is going to be a substantial amount of work for this class, but I think I will greatly improve my speaking, reading, and writing skills. Classes run from 930-1115, we have a quick 15 minute break, and then they run 1130-130. During our break today, Shelly showed us the Starbucks and VIPS (a chain restaurant, similar to Denny’s or McDonalds) that are nearby. On our way back, we ran into a woman with this TINY cute little poodle, it was honestly the size of a kitten but had this ridiculous curly poodle hair! It was so so so so SOOO cute! We all crowded around it, smiling and petting it, and she turned to Shelly and said “Este perrito ha cambiado mi vida! Antes de tenerlo, nadie sonrisa a mi. Pero ahora, TODOS sonrisan a mi! Que bueno!” For those who are Spanish challenged, I will translate . She basically said that the dog has changed her life. She said that before she owned the dog, no one would smile at her or look at her on the street. But now that she has the dog, everyone smiles at her. It was such a simple, sweet story; I thought it was so touching! It’s funny how something as small and simple as a smile from a stranger can impact someone! Anyways… after class got out, Kim and I took the bus home, had a quick lunch, and I did my homework assignment. Then, I took a siesta, which ended up being a LOT longer than I had intended—I slept for 4 hours!! When I woke up, we made some plans with a bunch of people from the group to meet up at the Centro del Sol at 11 PM to go check out some nightlife. I bummed around for a few hours, then Pilar served us dinner (leftovers… ) and we went out. We took the metro (which I officially LOVE) straight to the Sol, and ended up with a group of about 17. We slowly made our way over to the club we were supposed to go to, but it was closed!! Thankfully, a guy was wandering around with tickets for free drinks, and he directed us to another bar/discoteca where we went. It looked a little sketchy, and was totally empty, but we had a big group so we decided to brave it. After about 45 minutes of complete awkwardness, people finally loosened up and started dancing. I had SO much fun! I just danced and let loose, it was a blast! We kept it a short visit, and made sure to be back at the metro by 1:30 so we could catch the last train back. We got back with no trouble at all, it was a fantastic night! I got to know some of the people in our group even better, and I can tell that this is going to be an amazing (and maybe a little crazy) 2 months! Kim and I are getting to know each other a little better, and she is totally sweet and laid back. Great night! Viva Madrid!!
Día 5- May 27th 2008- Second day of classes- our first class went well, I presented on an article about geriatric medicine, which was really interesting. The class is pretty low key, and there are only 11 of us so we can easily have good class discussions. Then we had a quick break, and our second professor was going to show a movie, but the TV was broken! He decided to just cancel class, so we got out really early. I TRIED to be productive, and I went to the computer lab to start my homework, but I got totally distracted  I ended up printing out a few important things, but then we all started chatting. I finally met some locals- there are quite a few students at our school that are Spanish, and I met and exchanged numbers with 2 (cute) boys . We might meet up with them Thursday night after our welcome dinner so they can show us the good nightlife spots. Everyone is so friendly! Oh! And this girl had the world’s CUTEST little puppy, it was so young and still had puppy breath! She brought it into the computer lab and let it romp around, so of course I picked it up and started playing with it. Wouldn’t you know it, I only had the little fur ball on me for 30 seconds but it peed on me!! Haha and I only have 2 pairs of jeans… great!! It’s okay though, I forgive the puppy because it was so so cute. A few minutes later some of the group got him to start fetching a pen, which was almost as long as he is! It was probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Finally, when Kim got out of class, we decided to walk back to Pilar’s to see how long it would take us (we have been considering walking to and from school, to save money and to get a little exercise). It ended up being a totally manageable, very enjoyable walk of only about 40 minutes. Then we came back and Pilar made us a nice refreshing lunch of a salad and her homemade tomato soup. We chatted for a bit, and then I retired to my room to get some work done. (My internet got fixed!!) I did a TINY bit of homework, and mostly just wasted my day messing around on the computer… we had a nice dinner and I spoke with Pilar about some hot spots in Madrid. Towards the evening, I really started to feel crummy so I decided to go to bed early… tomorrow we are going to a museum that Pilar says is her favorite in all of Madrid—estoy emocionada! (I am excited!!) Me enctanta Madrid (I love Madrid)! Viva Madrid!

---