Airports
My journey began on last, last Thursday, May 29 in New York City. When I arrived in the city in Penn Station the day before, I found myself surrounded by thousands of fast-moving New Yorkers and for the first time I realized I would be in a very similar (slightly overwhelming) situation in Madrid within 48 hours, but the people would not be speaking my native language. [And I was right… more on that in the Madrid section.] After grasping that, I made my way to my aunt's apartment to get some rest before my journey the next day. Thursday morning, I bought a digital camera (my first one ever) and finished my last repacking job before heading to the West Side YMCA to catch my 2.30 shuttle for my 7 PM flight. I waited for an airport shuttle for a good hour and a half before riding it around for another hour and a half in crazy NYC traffic to get to JFK for my flight to Barcelona.
It was a new experience for me because a) I've never been on a transatlantic flight, and b) the instructions on my flight were in both Spanish and English, and my seatmate/rowmate spoke his native Spanish in a very deep and raspy voice, and c) being given breakfast to eat at 2 AM was quite different as well. Of course, with the six-hour difference, 2 AM Eastern Standard Time was 8 AM in Spain. I landed fine in the sunshine at the Barcelona airport, wandered around a bit and napped in strange positions a couple times before catching my next flight to Madrid. I slept that entire flight, though I worried that if I slept too soundly, I would fly all the way to Havana, which was my plane's final destination. However, I woke up and arrived in Madrid a little sleepy, but alive and well, baggage claimed and all.
Homestay
When I first landed, it was still sunny outside, but when I finally built up the confidence to go get a taxi from the airport to my host family's house, it was raining outside. (Since I've been here it has rained off and on a lot more frequently than what is normal Madrid summer weather.) I got to my host family's home mid-afternoon and right away, my host mother, Concha (short for Concepción), offered me food about four times. Of course, I accepted, and it was exponentially better than airplane and airport food.
Concha showed me the house and introduced me to a girl living in the house, Michelle, whose semester with ISA (the program with which I'm studying abroad) had just finished, and she showed me more things around the house and the city. Later in the day, I met other girls who were being hosted in the house, Ali who had been here for four months, and her sister, Andrea, who had come to visit for a few weeks, as well as Concha's two daughters, Conchi (short for Conchita which is short for Concepción as well) and Cristina (Cris). I didn't meet Concha's husband, Santi (short for Santiago), until a few days later because he doesn't live in the house. In fact, neither does Concha. The daughters are the only full time residents of the house, and there are three other small rooms which have two beds in them a piece. At our peak, when people were in traveling limbo, we had 9 girls living in the house, but now it's just me, my roommate Rachael, two other girls being hosted, Esther and Cat, and Cris and Conchi.
Concha, my señora, is an amazing cook, and since I'm a vegetarian, she always offers me more food because she feels bad that I can't eat the meat she prepares. She doesn't mind making meat-free recipes because she's hosted other vegetarians in the past, and I'm surprisingly less of a picky eater than some of the omnivores she's hosted, including some of my current housemates. I probably have the biggest appetite of the group, and with the food/eating-driven culture in Spain, Concha loves having me in the house. Though I like the food, it’s pretty bread and egg heavy, so I’ve welcomed the occasional big salad in place of a bocadillo for lunch. Something I hadn’t anticipated being surprised by was the fact that I don’t have to do laundry. I knew it was included in the Homestay contract, but the thing is, it’s been a long time since I didn’t have to do my own laundry… try seven years, más o menos. In short, life in a homestay is great. I would wager a bet that food and laundry would be my main expenses if I were to be renting a flat or living in a residencia, but since those are taken care of, I can worry about other things like helado (ice cream) and post-travel plans. And dinner table conversation with my host sisters and the other girls is always entertaining, learning new words and conversing in Spanish.
Madrid (a.k.a. MAD CITY)
My first day here, I was shown the Metro and a few key sights/meeting places in the city. Since that day I’ve been to a number of places in the city, including:
- Sol (or rather, La Plaza de la Puerta del Sol): You know the saying “all roads lead to Rome”? Well, that’s pretty much the case with this plaza; in Madrid, “all roads lead to Sol,” more or less. It is almost always packed with people, making it obvious that Madrid has a population of over three million inhabitants.
- Gran Vía, a major shopping avenue, with restaurants as well, is somewhat similar to Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and very crowed.
- La Plaza Mayor, described by one of my guidebooks as “one image that [is] unmistakably Madrid,” and honestly, I don’t know how to describe it better.
- a coffee shop in the quaint and chic gay district called Chueca
- some bars, including one called HAMLET, in the barrios of Huertas and La Latina
- El Parque de Buen Retiro, the huge park that has several features including a rose garden and a pond/lake where you can rent rowboats (which I did with Emily, my friend and teammate from WWC who is backpacking through Europe)
- El Templo de Debod, a temple given to Spain from Egypt in the 1960s as a thank-you to the Spanish archeologists, brought to Spain piece by piece
- La Plaza de España, where there's a big statue of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza and some stores and such
- El Corte Inglés, the huge department store that sponsors equipos de futbol (soccer teams) and other endeavors
- El Rastro, the outdoor flea market in La Latina on Sunday mornings
- El Museo del Prado, where I saw the works of El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya; I’ve been twice
- and a walking tour with ISA of some main buildings in Madrid, like El Teatro Real (the Royal Theater) which houses the national opera, and El Palacio Real (the Royal Palace), which was built in an attempt to emulate Versailles.
There's so much to see and do here, it's incredible. The street performers are quite talented and creative. I've seen a string quintet playing just down the street from a mime in a bright orange unitard. There are several stationary figures as well. There are some other characters I see pretty often like the windblown man, whose jacket and tie have wires in them and his umbrella is turned inside out. Other characters include a cowboy dressed all in black, a Terminator-type robot, a fisherman dressed and painted all in black, a man and his guitar completely covered in mud, and many, many more.
The graffiti here is, well, everywhere. Surprisingly though, I find some of it very interesting and thought-provoking, like the map of the world that had been spray painted over on the U.S. with the four letter word: IRAK. Other graffiti I've seen is very different, like the piece I saw only a few blocks away, which said MAD CITY. Of course, MAD stands for Madrid, but I think it also meant "mad" as in crazy or awesome, which are words I wouldn't mind using to describe this city I'm living in.
I have several more things on my to-do/to-see list, and I am gradually crossing them off. It's a great city that's pretty easy to navigate despite the lack of rectangular blocks that I’m used to in the states. The Metro is reliable the majority of the time, and I think it's well-kept, like most of the city. Unlike many big cities, you see the effort el ayuntamiento (the city hall) is putting in to keep the city clean with workers in flourescent suits patrolling the streets and metro at all hours pushing their trash carts to keep up with the three million + inhabitants and tourists.
School
The university where I am taking classes is a private one called Universidad de Antonio de Nebrija, or just Nebrija for short. My first day of school, I took the placement exam, during which I nearly fell asleep because I had to get up at 6:45 AM to get ready and eat before taking the Metro for about 30-45 minutes to get to school. I placed into the middle of the intermediate level classes (there are five intermediate level classes), which has worked out fine because I wanted to brush up on my Spanish, not drown in my ignorance of the language in a level much too high for me. However, that means that I’m not taking the Twentieth Century Spanish Theater course I had hoped to be able to take. Instead, I’m taking Conversación y Cultura (Conversation and Culture) and Lengua Española (Spanish Language, basically, a grammar class), and my profesoras for classes are very helpful and friendly. We get to call them by their first names, so it’s pretty informal and friendly, much like Wilson. My teachers’ names are Ester and María José, and they’re great. My first week was a bit difficult because I was still getting over my jetlag and was not taking advantage of the siesta, so staying awake was a challenge, but last week I was much more awake and engaged in class. Last Monday, I had one of my midterms, which I felt pretty good about, and I had another the next day, which I wasn’t too worried about. I did pretty well on both of them, so I was pleased. It is definitely an “intensive month” — we have three classes a day, starting at 8:30 AM and ending at 1:00 PM, so getting up at 6:45 AM is still part of the whole routine, as it was my first day. Consequently, I’ve picked up the habit of drinking a small “café con leche” before my first class each morning. The time has flown by, but I’ve been learning a great deal.
Toledo
My first weekend after the first week of classes, I went on the ISA excursion to Toledo. We went on a walking tour of Toletum(Latin name)/Tule/Tula(Arabic name)/Toledo(Spanish name), which somehow seemed to be uphill in every direction. We saw the main cathedral, the old synagogue (which only has one star of David remaining in the entire building), and an old mosque that is currently being excavated. The overlap of the three religions in the city makes a lasting impression as to when they were living in harmony and when Catholicism sort of went into power-trip mode. The shops that sold souvenirs had not only a lot of “religions in harmony” items, but also Don Quijote paraphernalia because the city is in the state of Castilla-La Mancha, and Don Quijote is: The Man of La Mancha. We stayed in the new part of the city, meaning we were outside the city walls, but we had a nice hotel with a big pool and fun neighbors: a high-school-aged soccer team from Brasil. It was certainly a cross-cultural experience trying to interpret their Portuguese, but we communicated relatively well and talked about futbol, school, and dance. They showed us a very strange dance to a song one of them had on their phone. Apparently it’s really popular in the clubs in Brasil, but it just looked really funny to the rest of us, even after they showed us how to do it. It was a long, but informational and fun day.
The other part of the excursion that weekend was to El Escorial. Originally built as a monastery, church, and school (with an amazing library), this building has served as the King’s residence as well as his resting place. The tombs of all of the Kings and Queens (with the exception of two or three, I think) since Felipe II (in the 16th century) along with numerous members of the royal families are in the most elaborately decorated part of the entire building: the basement. There are rooms off to the side of the main Regents’ tomb-room in which the more recently dead royalty are waiting. “Waiting for what?” our guide asked us, reading some of our minds, “to rot,” she said, “They are waiting to rot.” Apparently they have to be in the waiting room from somewhere between 35-50 years before their bones are placed in the royal casket room. When the three who are dead and rotting (quite pleasant, right?) right now take their places in the room, it will be full, so when Rey Juan Carlos and Reina Sofía pass away, they’ll have to be placed somewhere else. I’ve never been somewhere with so much history before. It’s really surprising.
Of course, then there’s Franco. Since he was not a king and not of the royal family, he could not be buried in El Escorial, so he chose to have his own elaborate burial place and basilica built for him by political prisoners from the Spanish Civil War. This memorial is called La Valle de los Caídos, or The Valley of the Fallen. There’s a tiny part of the memorial dedicated to those who died in the Spanish Civil War, but the main feature of this dark cave of a basilica is Franco’s grave. It’s pretty creepy, but outside, there’s a beautiful overlook of the Valley/City below.
Granada/Málaga
In order to get to Granada and have time to really see what it had to offer us, we had to skip classes this past Friday to ride a bus for five hours to Granada. That afternoon/evening, we went to the most famous attraction in Granada: La Alhmabra. This palace in the south of Spain was the last stronghold of the Muslim rulers of Spain that had held power for over seven centuries. The architecture there is beautiful and the gardens are amazing. If I could live in a house made entirely of fountains from the Alhambra and Granada, I would, but I’m afraid I’d get too pruny. One of the sections of the palace, called la Plaza de las Leones, where the king’s twelve concubines lived with their children, was being renovated at the time, which was too bad, but the postcards I bought certainly gave a good sense of what it looked like originally.
The next day, we took a short bus ride to the Mediterranean coast to the city of Málaga where we spent our afternoon at the beach. It’s beautiful there, and the water is so clear, but since it’s constantly moving, you often miss sharp pointy things known as “herizos de mar,” or in English, sea urchins. I currently still have some of their spikes in my hand. Quite an effective defense mechanism, I must say. Anyway, that didn’t deter me from swimming, just trying to climb onto some bigger rocks farther out in the water. I guess I also really wanted to emulate the sea creatures there because when I left, I was a lobster. I’m currently recovering from it with oodles of aloe and post-solar lotion, but it was really fun nevertheless.
When we got back to Granada, we took a bit of a walking tour/jaunt up to a little cave/bar/place to watch a flamenco show. Amazing. The room was about half the size of the off-Broadway theatre in which I saw STOMP (meaning it was about 12 feet wide), and it was probably just as loud, and I was sitting in the very front row. They didn’t use castanets, but their hands and feet and legs to make the sounds and music. Each session (we saw two), there was a singer, a guitarist and four dancers. I’ll post a video from the show along with pictures. It’s too difficult to describe besides saying that it was amazing. After that was over, we were free for the rest of the evening, so some friends and I went searching for some dinner in a primarily Arabic barrio. While some of our friends went into a fancier and more expensive Arabic restaurant, my roommate Rachael, our friend Dale, and I decided to go cheap, and we found a Schuarma and Falafel place run by a father and son from Saudi Arabia. The son was fair skinned with freckles and short red hair, something new for sure… I’ve never seen a red headed Saudi before, and his brother, who had just moved to Granada only a couple weeks before, walked in as we were ordering, and he looked almost exactly the same, except with slightly darker hair, but still fair skinned and freckled. As we ate our food, we talked to them in both English and Spanish because one of the brothers had studied in England at Cambridge for a couple years but knew very little Spanish whereas the other brother knew Spanish and Saudi, but very little English. It was a delicious and interesting experience. After leaving there, we found the best heladería in Spain, in my personal opinion. (It was so good, in fact, that I got another before we left the next day.)
The next morning, we went to the cathedral where Ferdinand and Isabel are entombed. It was surprising less regal than I imagined, but there was an exhibit that had several artifacts from their rule, including the queen’s crown and chest of jewels that she gave to Cristóbal Colón to fund his journey on which he “discovered” the “new world.” Neat stuff. My favorite part about their tombs is the fact that their lying-down statues are very similar, but Isabel’s head is heavier on the pillow because she had more intelligence than her partner Ferdinand. A nice touch by the sculptor, I must say. After departing the cathedral, we took a little walk/hike up to an overlook of the city where you can see the majority of Granada, the Sierra Nevadas, and the Alhambra all at once. It’s unbelievable, and only nine of the forty or so people went with us to the top. They missed out, for sure. After some free time in the street markets on the side streets near the cathedral, we made our way back to our hotel and got on the bus to head back to the MAD CITY.
And that’s what I’ve been up to these past couple weeks (and a few days). If you’ve been to Spain and have suggestions, or if you haven’t but have heard about somewhere I should check out, let me know. I have about a week and a half or so after my program is done that is completely open for some adventures, and I would love suggestions. Hope all is well and you are happy and healthy.
Much love to you all,
Lauren
aka Lolo, lo-funk, etc.
