Prado, Retiro and Bull fight, 10/24

We are in the middle of midterms right now. Last Thursday we had our anthropology midterm, and this coming Tuesday I have my art history midterm. Therefore, I am in the middle of doing a lot of studying. This morning I woke up, ate breakfast, and then got to work. For art history we will get three slides from each part of the class, slides in class and the Prado, and will have 10 minutes to identify each slide and write as much as we possibly can about it. Thankfully in the slide part from class the professor narrowed it down to only 35, but we have quite a list of paintings we have to know from the Prado.

I met up with Laura and Julia at 1 to study the paintings in person at the Prado which I found really helpful especially in differentiating the different time periods. Then after that we went to the Parque de Bien Retiro which I have run in a lot, but haven't had my camera with me before. It is amazing. Really large with lots of different walking areas and gardens along with cafes and a lake in the middle where people can rent a boat and row around.

Then I went with Laura to the bull fight. The season is March to October, and this is the last bull fight while we are here. There are 3 matadors and each has 2 bulls. It starts with the bull entering the ring, and there are banderilleros who have bright pink and yellow and wave the capes making the bull charge at them and then they run behind little wood walls. The matador also joins in making the bull do a series of passes. A lot of this was done very artfully and with style.

The next stage involves the picadores on horseback who use long lances to stab the bull behind the mass of muscles on its back cause the first loss of blood. It is a combination of stabbing the bull, staying on the horse and directing the horse so it doesn't get trapped between the bull and the wall. It didn't seem good for the horses at all even though they had a lot of padding, and I didn't like that they appeared to be blind folded.

After that the banderilleros take turns each trying to stick two sharp barbed sticks just behind the head of the bull. They are doing this without capes to distract the bull so have to make it charge at them and then stick them in as they jump out of the way. There are a lot of other banderilleros around to distract the bull and make him go in another direction after this happens though.

Then finally it is time for the matador. He first comes in with his red cape and makes the bull do a lot of passes. This is where it gets really tricky and skillful with the matador trying to stay still and have the bull pass as close as possible to him.

Finally after a certain amount of time he switches to a real sword and goes in for the kill. I thought it would be a faster process, but after he sticks the sword all the way in and it stays there, the banderilleros tire out the bull very rapidly by surrounding him and making him very confused trying to charge in all the directions at the same time. After a while he falls over on his side, and one of the banderilleros comes up with a sharp dagger and stabs him just behind the scull three times to finish him off and make sure he is completely dead. Many times the bull will try to respond after the first one, but it is the best way they have to make the rest of the death as fast and a clean as possible.

The first and last bulls of the six weren't as aggressive and not as interesting. The second bull was a lot more aggressive and at one point got the matador on the ground trapped under his head but the banderilleros were there quickly to distract the bull. The third bull was the most exciting and the bull fighter the best. He was very skilled and artful in what he did and the audience really liked it. At one point he ended up on the back of the bull but other than that did a great job. The audience really liked him, and after he killed his bull people from all over the stadium were standing up cheering and waving white handkerchiefs or white pieces of paper in the air. This signaled to the judge (or whoever his is) that the people thought that he did a really good job, and he was awarded the ear of the bull, which is a valuable prize for bull fighters.

Classical Spanish Theatre, 10/24

Two Fridays ago I won tickets to see any play of my choosing in Madrid for up to 20 euros for having one of the best group presentations in the tour of Lavapies. Tonight I met up with Lauren and Ebryonna and we went to see El alcalde de Zalamea at Teatro Pavón that we visited during our tour.

The little information booklet that they gave us when we entered says in the first line that El alcalde de Zalamea is, along with La vida es sueño, the play most universally known in Spanish classic theatre. So I guess that it is a famous one.

The theatre felt more intimate than others I've been to in Seattle or other places. Row 13, seat 15, and only 2 rows behind us. I really enjoyed the play a lot and am glad that we saw classic theatre. The actors were really good and the whole thing overall was really interesting and intriguing. A lot of it was difficult to understand word for word exactly because it was in Spanish, but I got the general idea using a lot of context. Below is a brief summary (translated from Spanish to English using google translator):

A group of soldiers, which has been many days without rest and passes Zalamea (municipality in the province of Badajoz) when they go to Portugal. The soldiers are housed in Zalamea. The sergeant makes the allocation of houses, and the captain chooses a rich villain who has a beautiful daughter, Isabel. The captain believes that the villain will always be a villain and that therefore no interest, but is staying in the house of Pedro Crespo villain.

When the captain will be staying at Peter's house, is that the villain has hidden his daughter Isabel. The captain, attracted because Isabel is hiding, Rebolledo fakes a fight with this deception enters the room where it was hidden Isabel. The captain falls in love with Isabel. Peter and his son John was unaware that the master has come into the room by the way, and start a discussion where they are very clear ideas of the villains opposite to the general. Don Lope comes Meanwhile, the general, and to know the reason for the discussion decided that instead of being the captain, who was staying there, be it.

At night, the captain, making fortunes, manages to kidnap Elizabeth and takes it up the mountain to rape her. But there is John that hurts the Captain. Then, in the village, the captain wound healing and is subject to trial by the new Mayor of Zalamea (Pedro Crespo). The captain is executed and Isabel will be taken to a convent. Soon comes the King, is interested in the case and decides that an execution has been entirely fair and makes perpetual mayor Pedro, he has done justice prevail.

3rd day in Barcelona, 10/17

Today was our last day in Barcelona and we saw a little bit of what didn’t fit in with old or new Barcelona in the earlier days. We started our walking tour at 11 am walking though more of the city making out way to la Iglesia Santa María del Mar, the second cathedral in Barcelona with the one we saw the first day in the Gothic neighborhood being the first one and la Sagrada Familia being the third. We only saw the outside because it was Sunday and there were services going on and we didn’t have a lot of time.

On one side of that we saw a monument to the massacre on September 11, 1714 of Catalan patriots by the Bourbon king ruling from Madrid. From that day the king outlawed Catalan culture and its institutions. Then we finished our tour in the Paseo de Born, which is a cute little square that used to be a jousting square but now has many nice restaurants in the evening and is a popular place for younger people during the nights.

Most of us headed to the Picasso Museum after that having to wait in a bit of a line to get in. It was really cool and I’m really glad that we went. There weren’t a lot of his most famous pieces, but the rooms evolved along with his years as an artist and it was really interesting to see his progression and the different types of art that he studied. Some of it seemed very realistic, but the parts I liked the best weren’t the beginning or the end, but the part before his signature style where the figures were a little off from normal but you could still easily tell what they were. The gift shop was also had a lot of really good stuff and I was thinking about getting a poster, but none of them really spoke to me.

Lunch after with Laura Rachel and Kevin led us to an udon noodle place nearby. It was good which was nice because ethnic food isn’t usually good in Spain. We took the metro back to closer to our hotel since we had walked a ways that morning. Where you put the tickets in is opposite to in Madrid, so when Kevin tried to go through and it didn’t work we then pointed out to him that it was the other side. He switched to the other side but it still wouldn’t let him through. He thought he had run out of time, and since we had paid, he ducked under the turnstile.

The security guard only saw this last part and started yelling at him. Thankfully there was a man from Barcelona that saw the whole thing and quickly explained to the guard what had happened. We all thought he was going to get arrested or something like that. After that Kevin got an embarrassing lesson from the security guard about how to use the metro. Evidentially you have to remove the ticket before the turnstile will let you through which was the whole problem in the first place.

Then we walked along some of the more modern and larger streets on our way back to the hotel where we then got our bags, took the bus back to the train station and took the train back to Madrid. A very fun weekend trip, and I’m glad that we went here with the program because of everything we got to experience because of it and having informative guides to explain a lot more of the city to us.

New Barcelona, 10/16

Today we saw more of the modern part of Barcelona. We walked through the more modern streets of Barcelona and made it to the famous houses by Gaudi, la Casa Batlló and La Pedrera. We only saw the outsides of them, but I headed back to la Casa Batlló with some friends in our free time in the afternoon. Then we hopped on the bus and headed over to the Sagrada Familia, the church that was originally started by Gaudi and is still under construction. They expect to be done in 2020 or so.

La Sagrada Familia was amazing. It is a huge church and we started on the side with the façade made by Gaudi. Obviously it is very religious, and has lots of Christian figures carved into it. There was so much detail and so much going on one could look at it for a very long time. It was carved in stone too which seemed very different for me compared to a lot of the other things we have seen. There are also 12 very tall towers in the church representing the 12 apostles.

The inside really surprised me because I didn’t know what to expect. There were columns everywhere to create the image of being in a forest. The inside was equally well decorated in interesting ways with different walls having different modern designs and large stained glass windows and spiral stair cases. We couldn’t get to all of it because of the construction, but it seems like it will be an amazing place to visit when it is done. Rick Steves says in his book, “If there is one building in the world that I would like to see, it’s the Sagrada Familia… finished”.

Lunch was at a restaurant next to the park made by Gaudi, and just plain bad. It was probably chosen because of it’s location, but outside it had pictures of the food and said “fast food / comida rapida”. It took 2 ½ hours for all of us to get our food because they only had 2 waiters in the entire place. (We took up all the tables except for 3) Blah salad, bland dry chicken with an egg on top or a cheap lasagna, a drink, and a dessert.

But after lunch we had a small tour of Parc Guell the one designed and created by Gaudi. It was supposed to be a park and a fancy area for rich people to live, but people just didn’t want to move there. I really like Gaudi and his art. It is very modern with lots of colors and designs, and just a lot that one wouldn’t expect to see at all. There is the famous dragon that people use to say that Gaudi might have been part of the masons, two houses that look like gingerbread houses, a plaza with curved seats covered in broken tiles in designs, and lots of paths throughout all of it an lots of greenery. The paths are even art with different covered areas with cool designs and ceilings with the rocks.

We had free time after that when I walked around the park with some friends and then we headed back to Casa Batlló. The outside is simply amazing with its designs and colors. There are parts that look like bones, trees and masks. Gaudi took a lot from nature for his ideas, and used almost no straight lines in the entire place. The inside is decorated with as much care and detail as the outside so I’m really glad that we decided to return.

All the rooms are different with lots of color, and there are areas in the middle to let in natural light. The windows are smaller at the top and larger at the bottom to have equal light in each level of the building, and the color of the tiles gradually changes from nearly white at the bottom to a dark blue at the top so it appears to be all the same with the sunlight coming in. The roof was also amazing with a part that looked like a dragon, and then the chimneys had been turned into castle type things so they made the house look better rather than the usually ugliness of chimneys on buildings.

After that most of us headed to a free exhibit at the other house by Gaudi nearby. This was called Mariscal at la Pedrera that featured the works of Javier Mariscal. I didn’t know what to expect or who the artist was but it was a lot of fun to see. A little bit random and modern with lots of bright colors and interesting designs yet again. It started with a room filled with early sketches covering the walls and coming down in columns creating a maze to walk through and then it went to a part with letters and fonts that he created for his art and as art. The next part was graphic art on the street, which was posters, bags, magazine covers and other things that he had created and gotten printed. Later there was a little exhibit with drawing that were cut out and turned into 3D and set in boxes or scenery or other 3D art pieces. Finally there was a bit of a film section but we didn’t get to see it because the people working there told us we had to leave, even though it was 7 minutes before the official closings.

After that we went out to dinner together. Not being able to go to the first place we wanted to that listed milkshakes, chicken nuggets and guacamole on its sign outside the door, we ended up at an Italian restaurant which was absolutely delicious! The pizzas were thin crust with just the right amount of ingredients, and for the people who got pasta that was also really good. Some of us had been told by our art professor that we had to try cava (champagne) and crema de cataluña, which is like a crème brulee. We headed out and found another restaurant that had both of those so went in. It seemed like a nicer place and the price for their “menu of the day” was about 20 euros compared to the usual 10 euros at touristy places so it was definitely higher quality. Without much money on me I opted to not have the champagne and split an apple pie type dessert with Kelly. Delicious.

Then we headed out to find the rest of the people in our program who were going out at Espit Chupitos. Chupito means shot, and it is a chain type place all over Spain. They probably have at least 100 different shots, each for 2 euros, and it isn’t just a shot but a show. Most of them include fire and or other props. But it is all very safe and controlled with the bartenders having a lot of practice and knowing exactly what they are doing. The first one I did with people had a circle of fire around it that then went on top of the shots that we then had to drink very quickly with a straw.

Most of my night was just hanging out with people there, but later I did one that included half of the outside of an orange where some sort of substance they put on top was lit on fire, then we drank the first half of the shot out of the orange and then the rest of it an the juice from the orange was squeezed into the second half of the shot that was left in the shot glass. Then I did one last one later in the night along with 3 other people where there was a shot glass in a bowl with the shot and more around it that was set on fire. Then a larger glass was set on top of the shot glass and with the fire it all went up into the glass and the fire went out. When the glass was removed the liquid fell back down filling up the shot glass that we had to drink quickly with a straw and then inhale out of the larger glass that had a vacuum in it that the bartender lady was keeping covered with her hand to hold it in. It was a fun show, but I’m pretty sure that the alcohol there wasn’t as strong as normal hard alcohol.

Then to finish off the night we headed back to the first restaurant we tried to go to and just hung out there in a calmer environment for a while with one of the girls from Barcelona and some people shared cold tapas or chocolate magdalenas which are chocolate muffins because the kitchen was closed. We got back to the hotel about 2:30 after a very fun and full day.

Old Barcelona, 10/15

Bright and early we all met up and took the AVE which is the high speed train in Spain. From the inside it didn’t seem that much more phenomenal compared to other trains, but it was a lot smoother and quieter. They also had a sign at the front sating our speed and we got up to just under 300 km/hour.

Once we got there we hopped on a tour bus that first took us up to Monjuic which is a hill on one side of the city where we got a view of all of Barcelona from the ocean beaches and port to the dense city filled with buildings until it hit another large hill on the opposite side. Then we headed to the hotel where we dropped off our stuff and then walked to a restaurant near the hotel for lunch.

Our tour with our guides followed lunch where we walked around the old part of Barcelona. We saw the walls and part of the aqueduct from when the Romans originally occupied the area, and saw the outside of the cathedral and several major plazas from the time period. This was the Barrio Gothico, or gothic neighborhood. I really like the small pedestrian only streets that we got to walk around in along with the really old houses and buildings lining either side.

Then we walked a bit in the Ramblas to finish the tour. It is a large pedestrian only street that is extremely touristy leading from the central square down to the waterfront. There is a lot going on and street performers all along it. We were warned many times about pick pockets in Barcelona and especially in this section, and I found out later that one girl got her wallet stolen when she stopped for just a moment to take out her camera and take a picture.

There were some Spanish students with us, 2 guys from Madrid and 2 girls from Barcelona to be our guides in our free time, and we were going to see the good shopping area with them but got separated. We (6 of us) ended up just shopping a little bit in the stores nearby, I bought a black cardigan, and then headed back to the hotel. It took us at least an hour to try and find our way back compared to the 15 minutes for the groups who knew where they were going. We all had maps, could speak Spanish, and had cell phones so I was a lot less worried than everyone else with us.

After that we met up with the Spanish students and other students from our program at 9 to go out to tapas for dinner and then out for the night. After tapas we headed to a chupiteria, but they said we couldn’t go in because our group was too big. We went to the taverna next door, owned by the same people, and it was a lot more spacious and relaxed where we could share pitchers of drinks. I ended up with half a class of a tequila sunrise after sharing with a pitcher with 5 other people.

Then a bunch of us headed to a dance club with the girls from Barcelona. It cost 15 euros to get in, including a drink, but that is the usual here. There weren’t many people when we first got there because it was early (midnight?), but as the night progressed it got a lot more crowded and fun. I got back to the hotel at 4:30 am leaving in the first large group that headed back to the hotel.

Fiesta Nacional de España 10/12

So today is the national day of Spain, so it is a holiday for everyone and we don't have work or school.

There is a big parade every year, so I made plans with Emma to meet up and then we would go see the parade. Her host mother had told her where the parade would go really close to where they live so we met up 11 to go find it. We had some time so we stopped and got a coffee next to the road where we were told was to be the last part of the parade. We found the perfect spot on a bridge overlooking the main road, but then after a while when everyone on the road was walking away from us we decided to go down and follow them.

view from the bridge

After talking to a very nice policeman from Sevilla he told us that the parade wasn't going that far this year because of money and the crisis. So we headed up farther still and found another spot to sit to see the parade and also to meet up with Audrey who was on her way there. Then when we heard loud sounds in the distance but still couldn't see anything we asked another security guard and he told us that it was even farther up than the first guy had told us and that it was over.

We walked quickly up to where there were masses of people and could barely see, but saw the tail end of band and some of what I guess were the royal guards all dressed up and on horses. After that was a giant motorcade and everyone started getting really excited and screaming. The king and royal family are part of the end of the parade, and we didn't exactly see the king himself, but we saw the car he was riding in. That's almost the same as seeing the King of Spain right?

We finally met up with Audrey after that and headed over to the Museo Sorolla which was near by. It was free for everyone because it was a holiday, and was the painter's house converted into a museum. The gardens in the courtyards were very nice, and there were a lot of very large rooms inside whose walls were covered in his paintings along with other artsy artifacts that were in his house while he was living in it.

I really liked his paintings, and especially in the first room that showed his progression through the years, I could definitely see how he developed his style over time. It started out not as precise and then he got better and it all was much more realistic. His style in many of his paintings used broad brush strokes, and looking at small pieces up close, it is really surprising how he can get it to all work together so well and turn into such a beautiful piece of art. My favorite paintings of his were ones with both people and moving water in them, many of them with wind too because they were at the coast. I wasn't as fond of his landscapes.

The picture below has an uncanny resemblance for me to an exact location and view at Sea Ranch. Do you agree?

Then this afternoon when I was going on a run, this old man, maybe in his 80s, was walking along the same promenade along the river where I was running started talking to me. I took my music out of my ears and then asked him what he had said. He repeated himself and asked my why I didn't have a boy running with me and if I was running all by myself. This was in the middle of the day in a very popular and populated area so there wasn't any danger at all, I think he just thought that a pretty girl like me should have a boy running with me for the company. I told him that I sometimes run with other people but not today. I then told him that if he wanted to he was welcome to run with me. He laughed and told me that he couldn't because my legs were longer than his and then sent me off. It was quite a cute little old man encounter.

rapid fire recent days

Thursday October 7

So at the end of our class in the Prado, our professor told us that in El Mercado de San Miguel they were having a special promotion today and had tapas with truffles for just 2 euros. I've never had truffles before (no incredibly expensive mushroom type not the chocolate type) so I headed over there with 3 friends to check it out. It is an old building with a fancy iron structure and the inside has lots of different vendors with different types of tapas where you can just buy one of each type and get to sample a lot of different kinds. I wasn't too impressed my my truffle concoction el chupito de otoño which was a mix of many different things. After that I tried 2 more tapas with delicious fish on top of a cracker for 1 euro each and they were absolutely delicious.

From our art class we had homework to visit another museum, but when I tried to find it this one was also closed and had been so for quite some time. So far 2 museum visits, and both have been closed for quite some time. The professora isn't going to be happy about this.

Friday October 8

We don't have classes on Fridays, but the center organized free trips or activities that we can do. Today it was a tour around the neighborhood Lavapies which is near my house. It used to be a quintessential traditional Spanish neighborhood, but there have been a lot of immigrants to the neighborhood and according to my anthropology teacher it has caused some conflicts.

As part of the tour we were paired off and each assigned a location. Our job was to find the location as we walked around and talk to people about it to find out what it was and then we had to explain it to a video camera. Kelley and I got the first one, Teatro Pavón which is a theatre that does traditional Spanish plays. We waited in line trying to ask the lady at the counter about it since no one else really knew much about it, but ended up just getting our information from the program.

Other locations were a church which I really liked, two other theatres, El Reina Sophia (museum I plan to go to at some point), a library, a social center with classes, and there was this old tobacco factory that had been converted into a social dance place where different ethnic groups would have dances or other activities. There was an African dance being led by someone when we got there and after a bit the majority of us joined in and it was a lot of fun.

Then later that night I went out to Mexican food with 5 friends from the program at a place recommended by our art history professor. It was a lot of fun to go out with them. The chips and guacamole were delicious, but my tacos definitely weren't that great. What we have all learned from experience and being told so by many different people, is that ethnic food just isn't good in Spain and we should wait until we go home or somewhere else. Nothing here is spicy- at all! My señora has warned me a couple times that the dish is a little bit spicy, but I've almost never been able to taste the spiciness at all.

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday I did a lot of homework in my room trying to read an article for my anthropology class. It just doesn't make sense to me that a 20 page article takes me 6 hours in order to figure out what it's saying and what it means.

Saturday night I went out with a bunch of people from school. We went to El Tigre a local bar that gives you free tapas with drinks and then headed to Kapital after which is a dance club with 7 different floors and each floor has a different theme with a different type of music and a different drink featured on that floor.

Sunday I slept in and enjoyed my lazy day while trying to do a lot of research for my anthropology project. It isn't due until November 25 but is 40% of our grade and I want to get started earlier rather than later. I'm working with Ebryonna and we are comparing the family and the issue of divorce in the time of Franco and now. I'm doing the now part and there just aren't that many scholarly paper or books talking about the current times (because they are current) but I'll keep looking and hopefully it will be okay to use more newspaper articles and interviews with people who live here.

Monday October 11

Today I went back to my volunteering job in the morning and then had flamenco class in the evening. We had a test where we each had to get up in front of the class and do one of the dances all by ourselves for a grade and only one girl out of the whole class didn't get told that her rhythm was off. This is a girl who also has done tap dance for many many years. That part wasn't as fun but the class overall is great!

Then since we don't have classes tomorrow because it is the Día de España and a holiday I went out to La Latina with some friends. It was very low key and just hanging out and having a few tapas. None of us had been to La Latina before but it is a neighborhood (a 15 minute walk from my house) that has a lot of little bars and tapas restaurants that are very alive in the evenings and early night. We were all pretty tired and headed home about 11:30 or 12. An early night.

school week 10/4-7

This week in school has been extremely busy. On Monday and Wednesday I (finally) had my first days of my internship/volunteering location where I go to a hospital and visit patients who are there for a while. This is always with a partner and never on my own, and the people we visit are people who don't have anyone else who comes to visit them so for many of them we are the only people who come and talk to them other than the nurses and doctors. I'll talk more about this later when I have more time.

For our Spanish class we have to write essays every so often, and then we get them back with markings on them that say what parts are wrong. We then correct our essays, without help from anyone else, and turn them in again for a final grade that is an average of the two papers. The first one was due last week but the corrections were due Tuesday.

Then Wednesday I had to give a presentation in my Spanish class. We take turns to present a newspaper article that we found interested and then start a class discussion off of it. I chose something about some squatters who had been illegally kicked out of a building on the day of the general strike. I spent a lot of time preparing for it, but lets just say that it didn't go as well as it should have.

We also had a 2 page essay on the Rumba Catalana for my flamenco class due on Wednesday. It is a type of music and dance popular in Barcelona that originated with the gypsies and is a mix of flamenco and Cuban-African beats and music. The dance is similar to flamenco but a lot more happy and lively. I was up late on Tuesday preparing for my presentation, so in the two hours between the end of lunch and when I had to leave for class, I wrote my essay. It actually turned out really well especially since there was extremely little information actually available about it.

I was up late again Wednesday night preparing for an exam in my Spanish class on Thursday, but got to sleep in Friday morning so that was good. And I'm pretty sure that I did well on the exam so it was worth it.

El Rastro, 10/3

Every Sunday in Madrid there is a famous open air flea market, El Rastro. I met up with Rachel and Sara and we started out at Plaza Mayor and then made our way all the way down to Puerta de Toledo which is really close to my house.

We started at 10, and already there were tons of people around but it wasn't too crowded. Little booths lined both sides of the street with vendors selling different kinds of clothes, tourist items and all sorts of things. In some areas there was more second hand clothes or just household objects and then there were some places with movies or CDs. Everything was at least a bit cheaper than is found other places, but I ended up not seeing anything that I needed or really wanted so we just walked through. By 11 it was extremely crowded and actually a little difficult to make our way through.

It took us about an hour to get through all of it from one end to the other not stopping that much, but it was still a fun experience and I feel like a good thing for us to have done and experienced while we were here.

Professor's Studio 9/30

So today after our art history class in the Prado we went as a class on the bus to our professor's house and art studio to see it, hang out with our two professors and have some wine and snacks.

Linda the younger lady professor is the one who does the classes on Thursdays, and on the way to Alfredo's house she took us to show us another form of art. This ended up being the market near his house which was really cool to see, but I think a big part of it was her wanting to show all of us off to all the people there she knows so well. We even took pictures with people from 2 different stands.

Alfredo's apartment-studio had been changed so that half of it was a space to live in and the other half, the half next to the windows, had been converted from 3 different rooms into one larger room where he paints. It was full of many many different paintings and there were paintings on the walls too. He is a really good painter and has paintings in some museums and people from all over the world have bought his art. It seems like it would be really expensive, but his art would be something that I would enjoy having on my wall in my future house some day.

Then Linda brought out a little cart with some olives, cookies and potato chips (there are a lot of stores here that make their own) along with some wine and little dixie cups. We just sat around hanging out and talking until about 10 when we all headed back to our houses. It was extremely enjoyable, and I think we might be doing a tapas night with the class or something like that in the future. One of the highlights was that one of my friends Audrey sang opera for us only after many requests from Linda, and it actually left Linda crying a little bit and was really amazing.

Huelga General 9/29

So I'm jumping around a little bit, but just want to make brief notes about some of the things that have been happening here recently.

Leading up to today (september 29) there was a lot of build up about the huelga general (general strike) where we were hearing from pretty much everyone that there would be a country wide strike. The last one was about 2 years ago, and from listening to our directors and teachers, they said that it would be almost impossible to use the metro because last time there were rows of people 6 deep trying to get on the metros and busses that just didn't stop sometimes because they were too full and couldn't fit any more people.

Because of this I decided to look up how long it would take to walk to school. The metro takes me about an hour, so I was really surprised when google maps told me that it would only be an hour and 20 minutes. It is a lot more direct and there isn't the waiting between metros.

The walk is really nice and I get to walk to walk by the palace and along some of the major and more important roads. When I got to school some of the people had taken the metro and said that it was actually working better than it usually does because everything was still on time and there was almost no one using them. I guess they were all scared away.

I ended up walking the rest of today too. I didn't really notice many changes in the city with the strike other than seeing no busses and some stores just closed for the day, but one thing that I'm really glad about is that it happened so I could figure out how to walk to school. It is so enjoyable and on the days when I don't have to get to school early or am not in a rush, I'm able to walk a lot more because of it.

Another plus is that it makes the city seem not necessarily smaller, but more put together. I understand it a lot more and can find my way around if I'm somewhere I'm not completely familiar with.

October 2, Segovia

I took a day trip to Segovia today! Segovia is most famous for its incredible Roman aqueduct that is still there today and was used up until the 19th century. I met up with a group of 8 other people at the bus station, having bought our tickets there just this morning, and we headed on the hour long bus ride out. I borrowed the first Harry Potter book in Spanish from my host mom here, and being able to easily read it, it was a fast ride. Five minutes from the station we made it to the aqueduct. I had seen pictures of it before, but it was still quite astonishing when I saw it. It was built in the 1st century AD and its highest point is 28 meters. It is sort of just right in the middle of the city too with everything built up around it.

From there we headed towards the plaza mayor and the cathedral. This was an incredibly beautiful sight of gothic architecture with lots of details. One of the people from our group had actually been in Segovia the weekend before and gone into the cathedral and said that it was just like other cathedrals we have all seen so we decided to just admire it from the outside rather than pay the extra money to go in.

After that it was a very short walk to the Alcazar. This is the palace that inspired Walt Disney for his tower in Sleeping Beauty. When buying out tickets we had a choice to pay 2 euros extra to climb the tower and all but one of us decided to do it. First we wandered through the different rooms, some with full suits of armor and weapons and others reconstructed to look like what the palace looked like before a lot of it was burned. Lots of beautiful paintings and tapestries along with very detailed work on the ceilings and walls.

When we bought the tickets to climb the tower there were warnings that it was 156 steps and not for the faint of heart. From the outside it didn't look that tall, and for me, wasn't that bad. The climb was steep on a very narrow spiral stair case where you had to get quite close to people if you had to pass. Everyone else seemed really tired after the climb, but I climb 7 flights of stairs to my apartment here so was just fine. The view from the top was phenomenal with a 360 degree view including both the town of Segovia and the countryside around it.

Wandering back towards the aqueduct to find lunch, we walked through the Jewish quarter which I think I enjoyed more than other people. I really like the old winding streets with houses smashed together but I think the others just saw it as a way to get back to the center.

We had a recommendation for lunch at a very good restaurant from our art history professor, but at more than 20 euros a person for lunch, we decided to go to the cafeteria nearby that was a lot cheaper and had a great view. I felt gross after lunch. I ordered the marinara sandwich that had fish, shrimp and asparagus. What I got was 2 pieces of incredibly white wonder bread, a tiny bit of fish, maybe 2 or 3 shrimp the size of a dime if that, and a few little pieces of asparagus all drenched in a red mayonnaise sauce. Along with a few french fries I was feeling incredibly unhealthy and not satisfied after that.

group minus kevin

But after that we headed to La Granja that was a 30 minute bus ride away to see the Palacio Real and gardens there. We decided to skip on paying to enter the palace since it was similar to a lot of other things we have already seen, and walked around in the gardens. There were incredibly beautiful and we all decided that we want to have gardens just like that. It was built to be a mini versailles and has lots of green areas and fountains. The only drawback was that they turn off the fountains in the summer. My host mother just told me that it is because they are very old fountains and don't recycle the water, it comes in from one place and then leaves.