Wednesday, January 26, 2011

livin la vida broke-a

SHOOT I can't find my debit card anywhere which really sucks because that's the only way I can get euros. Some places accept my credit card but a lot don't and I have this nervous feeling like you get when you lose something. Typical of me. So typical. I need to watch it on my spending anyways - so maybe this will teach me? I only have 10 euros left and haven't come up with a plan of action... should I cancel the card? I'm sure the second I do, I'll find it. Oh well, you win some, ya  lose some.. Last entry was a week ago! Today was another great Wednesday here in Alcalá. I'm still pretty cold but the heater is on RIHGT now as we speak and my feet and shins are all up on it.......So I just took a little blogging break for my hot dog dinner - not bad, really. Jane Anne took the reigns on that one (good job juanita) since Pilar is at a meeting and Fede's in the den with Fede Jr. watching Real Madrid play Sevilla. I need to get into fútbol more while I'm here. All I know is that Casillas is pretty easy on the eyes.

 I don't think there's too much to say about the past week really. We just kinda took it easy and hung out in Alcalá. I could get used to this not having class on wednesdays or fridays thing. Oh but Saturday, sheesh. Some of the people with our group decided to go to a pub crawl in Madrid and see the big city by night. So we thought, eh why not? Did I mention it was called the MADRIDE pub crawl? enough said. So we get there, to this statue in the Puerta del Sol where we're supposed to meet this pub crawl master or whatever he is and come midnight he stamps our wrists, making it really official, and we were on our way. The first place we went to was really fun! Great band, played some classics, and it was so crowded that for the first time since I could remember I wasn't shivering and that right there made it worth while.  From there we just hopped around to different places and danced and met randos. Actually we met some girls that are Au Pairs and we hung out with them the rest of the night - they were so cool and all from different countries! It isn't fair that they all know English so well and they seem to be on to mastering a third language. Why can't America get the memo? It's not even that cool to be bilingual here, it's like normal. So 6 AM rolls around and our group could finally head back to Alcalá since the morning trains started to run again. Me and juanita thought-But wait! It's Sunday in Madrid! Anyone ever heard of El Rastro? It's this HUGE flea market in Madrid that takes place every Sunday morning. We were misinformed that it started at 7, so we thought, why not kill an hour and hang around for the Rastro? Well, 8:30 was more like it, it was FREEZING outside, and you'd be surprised how many places aren't open 24 hrs in Madrid. We got lucky and took cover in a cafe until the sun came up, but as you can imagine we were getting pretty delirious at this point. We got to see the Rastro, finally, and then decided we'd come back when it gets warmer. But it really is something to see! They have anything you could ever imagine! Fede even told us they have monkeys for sale - I don't know about that. We found out Fede is a chief steward for Iberia airlines! Go Fede. I can so see that, I wish he'd be my flight attendant one day. I also wish he'd hook me and juanita up with some cheap airfare. maybe we can discreetly plant that seed in his mind one day. speaking of travel I'm going to belgium next weekend! thats all for now
       Here's how crowded El Rastro gets! If you aren't the first people there..
Juanita y yo en Madrid



Wednesday, January 19, 2011

BURR

I'm cooooooold and I never gonna get warm!! Can't find mi guantes. My gloves. I don't even like blogging beucase I have to do it in English for all you peopl ewho don't know spanish. just kidding, it's a nice break from having to use mi mente all day. my mind. that's one thing I've noticed since being here though; you get in the habit of thinking of the spanish word for everything if speaking in English. mayyyybe thats why I have a headache 24/7 here or mayyybe thats why I can't seem to get enough sleeeeeep. or maybe thats why i dont give a hoot about my punctuation and typos. one day ima go back and correct it all. mmhmm. JUANITA's bday was monday. Thats Jane Anne, by the way. I was calling her juana, or juan, but then Pilar said that was an ugly nick name. She said Juanita suited her much better. Then I told Pilar  i loved to give people nicknames and that i usually take the first letter of their name and add  money or dog to it. So ima call her p-perro. like pdog. and juanita gonna call her p-dinero. We'll see how she likes that. But back to juanitas bday. we had a 3 hr film class where we watched a movie called language of the butterflies. I like that class but staying awake is gonna be a struuuugle. then we went to this irish pub place to celebrate with some people! it was so cool and theres a real fire and a fireplace so we foo shoo gon be hittin that up again. then we came home and pmoney had prepared a torta de queso for juanita! how sweet. reminded me of home-- shout out, BRO. your cheesecake's still my fave, dont worry. even though who am i kidding, you aren't following my blog. mom, tell ben that. yesterday we went to madrid to meet a family friend that's lived here a while so she gave us some pointers. We have no class today!! love wednesdays now. so we just took our time getting to campus for a pointless meeting. on the way we stopped at this store, it was so great. they have these stores called chinos that are run by chinese people obviously and they sell everything for real cheap. i bought a 2011 space jam planner and some notebooks. the chinese lady gave me and jane some free suckers that were gross. we accidentally told her we were sisters. OH and then we just stumbled into mcdonalds so we figured we'd get a diet coke. mcdonalds always has the BEST fountain diet coke, isn't that right Mrs. Paige?! but not in alcalá. mine was flat sadd day. good thing a size large drink here is like the size of a kiddy drink in America. next entyr gonna be less sloppy for sure an dmore organized mhmm

JUANY is TWANY (years old)

mmmm!!1111!!!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

IUAFKJBEIWUKJNSFOEIF

Where do I start?? Gosh I really don't know what to say. How do I sum up the events of the past 3 days? I HAVE NO WORDS, seriously. I have been avoiding this blog and contact with people from home at all costs because I was so distraught about our living situation. Think about it, if we spoke this past week was I acting strange? Probably. Not to mention its too cold to be inside and not under a blanket and I have to put gloves on to do anything around here, like write in my journal for example. So some pretty noteworthy things have happened that would have been fun to blog about but instead of writing them down I was freaking out about Pilar. But don't worry- its resolved! So here's what happened. Me and Jane felt pretty uncomfortable here and unwelcome and we would go to school and hear all of the other people talking about their ballin families and we'd be like uhh and then the people at the Universidad were like tell us ASAP if you're unhappy with your home, happens all the time, so no big deal. So we went to talk to Ana, the housing coordinator who also happens to be our phonetics teacher. She said no big, we'll switch you. They were going to call Pilar Sunday night (TODAY) and tell her, and then tomrorrow we would move out. Awkward, right? I literally felt sick to my stomach just thinking about it. Of course we went home after talking to Ana, and Pilar becomes some cross between Mother Teresa and Julia Child. We were like SHOOT what do we do now? I can't even begin to explain how different it was, she was so nice to us! But we figured it was too late. We sent Ana an email saying if the move was too much trouble, we could stay. After not hearing back from her for a couple days, we started packing our stuff while they were at church this morning. Then, Jane got an email back from Ana telling us to stay. So we unpacked all our stuff again just in time for Fede and Pilar to get home and not know anything about it. EVER. I hope they never find out. Maybe culture shock had gotten the best of us? Who knows, but whatever concerns we had are fine now. Fede's funny. Not to mention he knows English. Like really well, probably way better than I know Spanish. Along with French, German, Italian, and Swiss. I'm not really sure why they didn't mention his knowing English before, maybe so he could be their little spy or something? Who knows what he heard me and Jane saying, as we like to make comments in English pretty often that any Spaniard might take offense to.
 And she is turning out to be a really great cook! Aside from the fact that she leaves meat out overnight to prepare for the next day's meal. I thought I was brought up believing that meat had to be refrigerated? Apparently it's a myth, because I have yet to get sick. Something interesting about Spanish meals - they don't like to mix their food. Like if we have a salad and chicken and vegetables, we would eat them all separately at different times. They told us how strange they thought it was that Americans put it all on one plate! I'm sorry for all you readers out there that this is so long and scatter-brained. But I really think I can blame it on circumstances. BUUT from now on, I think I'll just blog with more pictures and some categories. Like cultural differences, low points, words of wisdom from the padres, and what we did. I forgot to say we went to Madrid on Friday! We had a tour with the people in our program and then ate with some Auburn people after. I got a caesar salad with chicken and it was SO American! The people we ate with left but me and Juan wanted to stay because Madrid is the bomb! So we walked around but refrained from buying anything except the biggest cup of coffee I've ever had from Starbucks. It was amazing. and then we people watched for a real long time. We went back to Madrid yesterday to and hung out with David Boyer, who's studying in Seville this semester. For those of you who don't know, that's Christina, one of my best friend's brothers. MISS YOU TINA! Sorry for the length of this entry. I promise to be more brief and entertaining in the future. 


Here some pictures!!


strike a pose, Pilar
sorry it's sideways, it's worth turning your head for

a courtyard on campus

some cool hallway

la Universidad de Alcalá

La Plaza de Cervantes



MADRID!



my new friend Maitrie!


Jane holding up the Plaza Mayor

some weird tapa


david!

she get it from our mama

Fede y Pilar

¡pulgares arribas!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Ham, not my jam

YO yo yo so I wrote a really good entry the other day that didn't save because the internet sucks here so its not my fault that I don't write very often. I think what I said was that I really can't eat anymore ham. Even the smell of ham makes me wanna yak. and the way Pilar stares at us while we choke it down makes me wanna yak too. It's quite scary. But at least we have the huskies. Here's me and jane with neva. At leaast she loves us, even if it's only because she gets our leftover ham.



 What else is new since the last entry? Hmm.. well, we didn't quite make it to Madrid to watch the  national championship. It's not that we didn't want to, believe me, we tried. After we attempted telling the madre how big a deal the game was and even though she didn't advise that we went, she agreed to take us to the train station. Buuuuut no one was there. So then we had to walk back to the casa and we had no idea where we were. We made it though. And the next morning Pilar woke me up with a Buenos Dias. After I remembered who the heck she was I realized that my clock was an hour off. So no wonder we didn't see anyone at the train station. We went an hour early. shoot. But its cool because Auburn won WAR EAGLE anyways. So yesterday and today we had orientation. Oh wait no today was our first day of class. But the two days before were orientation. We were 20 minutes late for our first class because the bus takes forever and I guess because we left later than we should have. That was bad enough and then we realized we were in the wrong class. So then we were REALLY late for our first class, Icons and Traditions of Spain. It's our conversation class. Our teacher is nice and bald. I think it might be kind of hard though. And then we went to Phonetics. I like Ana, the teacher. And there's a good amount of Auburn people in the class. And next was literature with Maria. For some reason she made us start the movie Finding Forrester but it was in English and no one could see because it was so bright in the room. That's another thing I like about SPain - it always seems to be sunny! Love that. What else? Oh ya!! Padre came home from the business trip so we met him! He's kind, doesn't say much though. Looks kinda like nicholas cage, in a Spanish sort of way. But back to the ham. It's like the people here have some kind of connection with ham. We met a lady on the bus today that helped us when we were lost. Her name was carmen and she told us ham was something special. And we went shopping with Pilar and I don't even think they have turkey here. Some ham legs are like $100! or euros or whatever. I think Jane Anne has pictures of them on her blog, which is so much better than mine so you should all just read that. It's spainlovesjane.blogspot.com. They even have ham potato chips! EWW. This picture was taken at a grocery store where me and Jane tried to find peanut butter after we couldn't get down our ham sandwich yesterday. When they didn't have it, we tried to leave and apparently you're only supposed to leave by going through the check out line and it was this big ordeal and they checked her purse. As if we would steal from the grocery store hha it was pretty funny. We were kind of lost in the ghetto of Alcalá at that point, and getting a little delirious. I feel like we are always a little on the delirious side here. Maybe it's part of adjusting ? WHo knows. 

Sorry for the typos, it's siesta time and I;m fallig aslleep. Hasta luego, people.

Monday, January 10, 2011

and so it begins...

Alright people don't get used to this daily updating business. I just figure since today was the first day in España, I should probably write something about it so I remember! Where should I start?? Well, our flight left Dallas last night around 6 and we arrived in Madrid this morning at around 10:30 local time. The Madrid airport is like a big modern puzzle so good thing I was with two other people that I could just follow around to catch the shuttle. We got to the Plaza Cervantes in Alcalá where we met our new madre! Her name's Pilar Zaldivar. She drove me and Jane to her house where we found our rooms and our two new pet huskies, Duke (pronounced dookie) and Neva (after some Russian person-didn't quite understand the story behind that one). Sadly, we don't get to meet papa Federico until Wednesday because he's in Germany on business. Oh, and we learned that not only do we have a sister, Irene, we have a brother, who she didn't mention in the family background letter.. interesting.. Both of them don't live here because they're older which is kind of sad because little spanish kids are the cutest!! I think it's annoying in America when kids are yelling in malls and airports but when kids yell spanish words its just the cutest thing. Love that. So aanyways, we have our own rooms and they're very nice! Mine's got blue walls, blue drapes, a blue bedspread, a blue ceiling. A whole lot of blue. Everything in Jane's room is yellow. THere's Jesus pictures EVERYWHERE. He's calming the storm right above my bed and knocking on someone's door above Jane Anne's bed. At first I thought it was cool and then I saw a menorah and was like huh? So they're Jewish. Oh and then I saw the Book of Mormon on my shelf and then she told us she belongs to the church of latter-day saints and now I'm confused. We told her we were Protestant and I don't know what she thought about that. I guess we've got a whole semester to figure out what Mormons believe and how its different from us; religious conversations in Spanish are confusing as if regular conversations in Spanish aren't confusing enough. We kind of freaked out thinking oh shoot maybe she hosts exchange students so she can convert them! No thanks, Pilar. Don't get me wrong, though, she's a great host. Me and Jane share a bathroom separate from the padres, which is nice. But I need to make sure I use the hand towel when drying my face off, not the body towel. Pilar didn't like that. Oh, and she's kinda went a-wall on jane for turning the light on in her room. Good call on that flashlight, mom. We were staaaarrrrving by the time we moved all our junk into our rooms so she told us she would prepare some macarones. I wasn't sure what it would be but it was just like noodles with cheese and some different types of mystery meat. I gotta study my food vocab so I actually know what I'm eating here. Table talk was pretty good.. except for when she told us we were without a doubt going to gain weight like all the other students she hosted. And we were like uh lets hope not. They have a piano!!! It's in the basement so maybe I can practice and it won't be too loud and bother them. Hope they like the little drummer boy. Maybe if Jane brought her harmonica we can form a band and learn some Spanish songs. At first in the house we were a little freaked out I think just because living in someone else's home is such a different experience! But once we got out of the house and explored Alcalá we were all hyped up again. We bought some slippers, because madre told us we had to have them around the house.. and some coffee because madre barely drinks it, and when she does, it's decaf!!! Can you believe that?? She don't know what she's missing. Well, I better go get ready to head to Madrid to watch the National Championship with all the Auburn folks! It doesn't start until 2:30 AM and we have orientation tomorrow at 9.. Sleeeeeep deprivationnnnn up in this natiooonnn we goin to da train stationnnnn

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Edelweiss, Edelweiss

Buenos días, followers! It's 7:15 and my alarm is set for 7:45 but home dog can't sleep because SHE GOIN TO SPAIN today!!1 And probably also because I'm an early riser anyways. I feel sick though.. Not like I'm gonna yak or anything but I feel like I felt before cheer competitions in high school or how someone might feel before a date haha. ¡Me duele el estomago! I think it's from all of my different feelings that I am having about what's to come! Nervous - What if our familia doesn't like us?? Anxious - I just want to get there already! Excited - Quiero saber el idioma español ENTERO para que pueda conversar con la gente de España! Quiero expolorar el mundo con mi chica JUANA ANNA! You may wonder why my title for today is Austria's national anthem that the Von Trapp family so perfectly sang in the Sound of Music. Maybe it's because I woke up with it in my head, I think I was dreaming with that song in there somewhere. Probably because we're going to have to get over to Salzburg for some kind of SOund of Music tour. Or maybe it's because just like the Von Trapps sang it for Austria right before they left the country, I should be singing some kind of patriotic song for America since we're leaving in a few hours. Shoot. I'm gonna miss America I think! U-S-A U-S-A U-S-A