And a Casual Aqueduct

Hello! This week was not the most eventful, but pretty good all around. Let's sum up the most interesting parts.

I went to the Reina Sofia again and saw the Dali exhibit. It was really cool, but I would not like to be in his mind. Seems like something was a bit off towards the end...
We went to some vintage stores, they were all conveniently on one street. But they were unfortunately expensive for used clothing stores. And the beginning of the week was very cold. Like, a whole 70 degrees. We had to wear sweaters. Wednesday I finally started running again (10K here I come!) and I only got looked at funny by every other person. Maybe it's my hot pink shorts? This week we also went to the Madrid Conservatory and went to a free guitar concert! It was quite nice, I don't hear much guitar music in the States other than middle school talent shows and John Mayer impressions. Friday, we went to a cafe/bar and hung out for a bit, our version of "going out". It was good fun though. We had to get home early to wake up early, because today we went to Segovia!

I woke up this morning, checked the temperature in Segovia, saw it was only going to be a high of 79 and declared it cold enough to wear pants. I later regretted it a bit since it turns out 79 and super bright sunny is in fact hot. I even got a tiny sun burn. Oh, the misjudgment. Segovia is a beautiful little city with lots of history--Roman, Celtic, Arabic, Jewish, and of course Christian. The cathedral there is really nice and it's such a charming place with the typical picturesque tiny roads, old buildings, and a giant aqueduct. It reminded me of why I love Europe so much. I don't like history class, but I love learning about the history when I'm right there with it. As in, see, this cathedral was built for whatshisface, because of whatsitwar and it's based off of thisherelegend. (Despite the fact that I can't remember names or dates, I really do like learning about it.)

Looking out over the town in Segovia

If you look very closely at that picture, you can see the top of the mountain range on the right hand side kind of looks like a woman in a tomb. There's a legend about it that I didn't 100% follow since it was recounted to us in Spanish, but it was pretty cool anyways. The Wikipedia page in Spanish is more informative if you happen to read Spanish.

Detailed outline of La Mujer Muerta
(I have excellent editing skills)

Cathedral of Segovia 

Drawing on the top of the tower of the Alcazar de Segovia
Nemo was there. 

Finally for some interesting life observations:
I look pretty different from Spanish people. No one would ever look at me and be like, "Oh! What a Spanish person!" Even without me opening my mouth and butchering Spanish, I just can't pass. So I like to pretend I'm French instead when I'm walking down the streets and people give me funny looks. Don't look at me like that, I'm French.

I'm still kind of confused what I'm supposed to do with four weeks. When I think about this compared to France I'm not even sure what's going on. I've been here for two tiny weeks and I'm already halfway done. And I only have two tiny weeks left!! What am I supposed to do?!

Finally, I feel like I'm finally making some small steps in Spanish. I can conjugate in the past tense when talking just a tiny bit faster. Just a tiny bit. And sometimes I can tell small stories in class and my teacher will only stare at me like I'm speaking an alien language for half of it! If I'm understood 50% of the time, I'd consider that an improvement. But they tried teaching us about the imperfect past subjunctive (or something) on Friday and most of us stared at the teacher like they were explaining why the sky is green. Needless to say, I am thankful the weekend is here.

¡Disfruten mis amigos!

Late Night Sun

Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were ridiculously hot. As in around 95 degrees (seriously, it was that hot, check the weather channel if you don't believe me, you skeptics).

Thursday there was a seminar after school about phrases in Spanish (the equivalents of things like, "an eye for an eye", "there's more than one way to skin a cat", "I have other fish to fry", etc.). It was pretty interesting, but the guy who was leading it talked super fast and I didn't catch a decent portion of it. I learned a lot of simple words, like animal names! Who knew my education was lacking such basic things. After that, we found snacks and went and sat near the Palacio de Cristal in Retiro.

Friday we went on a mission to find the gluten free bakery near school, Celicioso! (Such a clever title, people after my own heart, clearly.) After getting a wee tiny bit lost, we found it! I got a chocolate extravaganza cupcake and an apple cinnamon one. They were quite good, but shh, I prefer Gluuteny. I don't suppose Gluuteny ships to Spain, do you? After acquiring some pastries, we went back to the park (see a routine?).

We also went out Friday night! Which was a lot of fun. The first bar we went to, El Tigre, is a fairly well known bar in Madrid. It's said that the dirtier the floor of a bar is, the better the bar is. Patrons throw their napkins on the floor as a kind of respect. (I don't get it.) And El Tigre did indeed have napkins all over the floor. But 0.75 liters of sangria was 6 euro and you got a huge plate of tapas with that, so it was pretty cool. We hung out for a bit after that, but soon went home because we were still tired.

Saturday, we went to a municipal pool because the heat was just too much. It took 40 minutes to get there and there was a wait for 40 minutes in line, but I think it was worth it. The pool, located in Caso de Campo, was surrounded by a bunch of trees and nature-y things, unlike a lot of public pools I've been too that are surrounded by concrete buildings. There was a lot of grassy area to lounge on and the cold pool water to go jump in to cool off. We spent most of the day there applying and reapplying sunscreen, because the sun in Madrid is not fooling around. At 6pm here, it looks like it should be about 3pm, the sun is so high in the sky. It's no wonder Madrid is up late, the sun doesn't go down until around 9 or 10 at night.

Sunday, we went to El Rastro, the biggest open air market around. It was big and crazy and full of people and lots of random things. But it was very very hot and so we didn't spend too long there. After going home to eat and nap, we went back out to Museo del Prado. We critiqued some art there like professional art critics who knew what we were talking about. Mm, the brush strokes, what depth to that paiting, mm yes.

And now on to another week of classes, but luckily a much cooler week!

Mid-Week Update & Super Heat

Monday

I got placed in classes! I got put in "book 4" which means nothing to either you or me. Unfortunately, my class chunk this week is from 12:30-3:45, chops my day in half and means I have to eat lunch at school. Which makes it hard to prepare lunches. Turns out eating gluten free, dairy free, and vegetarian in Spain is much harder than I thought. It's going to be a hungry 20-some days full of Spanish tortillas.

I've also suddenly lost the ability to communicate with my host mother. Yesterday I could, today I can't. Spanish, you can't explain that.

Tuesday

We got to sleep in! So that's nice. Classes were still kind of boring today, nothing new. But we finally got our metro cards, so we can ride the metro with wild and free abandon! Then went to the grocery store to get snacks, because Europe doesn't snack nearly as much as we do in the US generally. Or maybe it's just me. I love snacks. Then we had dinner with our host mom, the American boys, one of the boy's girlfriend, and her roommate. So it was a big dinner of paella (which I couldn't eat but it looked so good) with lots of talking. It bugs me that I can't understand everything though and it really tires me out trying to understand. Then my roommate and I went to meet the other two girls from CMU to get gelato. We couldn't find any, but we ate dessert pastries and sat and talked anyways.

Wednesday

More classes, still boring. I think my reading and comprehension level is above some of my classmates' but my speaking level is definitely below. The discrepancy between my levels makes it hard for me to feel like I'm being challenged, but I also feel like an idiot every time I open my mouth.

But after classes we went and hung out in Retiro (the big park near our school) and ate gelato (or in my case sorbet) then walked to the Reina Sofia for our trip with the school. It's a nice museum that used to be a hospital actually. It has more modern art than the Prado, so today we got to see two Picassos and two Miros. We saw the Guernica which was really cool to see in person. I'm not a huge Picasso fan, but the Guernica does have a lot of feeling in it. War, man, it's no good. Especially bombing unsuspecting cities.
Unfortunately, the metro ride home was an hour long and I did it by myself. I was quite hot and tired and bored. The high today was 91, I guess I got the heat I wanted! I wore a maxi dress today and it was just too much fabric. And too much sweat. Too bad this weekend is supposed to be up near 100...

¡Bienvenido!

Hooray, I made it to Spain with my luggage and my sanity intact! But just barely.

My flight got in an hour early. Now, I am a person who likes to be on time, on the side of early, but an hour early? That's almost not useful. But, by the time we drove the plane into its docking station (my least favorite part, it feels so stupid when the plane is driving around like a giant winged car), walked in the mysterious Madrid airport, passed the passport people, and got my bags, I only had to wait for about five minutes for a guy to show up with my name on a piece of paper. 

Quick side note about entering Spain, the easiest county I've EVER entered. And don't take that lightly, I've entered several countries. England being the hardest.
Why am I on vacation, you surly Brit? I don't know, because it's vacation?!
Anyways, this security guy and I exchanged no words, he opened my passport, flipped some pages, stamped it and sent me on my way. I don't even know if he looked at my face. And there was no little, "Did you bring any evil fruits into our country?" form to fill out either.

I got to my host family's house and was reminded of my Spanish skills (meager). Plus, real Spanish is so much harder to understand. What you thought would be pronounced as three or four separate words, suddenly becomes one smush of a sound. There's a lot of "perdón"s happening here on my end.  

But going off of two hours of sleep and only popcorn and peanut butter for dinner didn't help my brain. (That's the part where my sanity started to come undone.) My host mother is a lovely woman and it's a cute little apartment. My window opens out on the courtyard though, so I get to hear everything that goes on. And that, friends, is why you bring earplugs. 

I have a roommate and two other housemates. The housemates are two Americans who have been here for a few weeks. I've yet to meet them though, they're currently in Paris. My roommate hasn't arrived either, so it's just me for now! 

Anyway, the thrilling details of my day. Took a nap as soon as possible to restore some brain power and in doing so broke all the adjust-to-your-time-zone rules. But two hours was certainly not going to be enough, I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed as it was. After a nice nap, I unpacked and hung about, ate lunch, had a siesta (!!), went on a walk around the neighborhood with my host mom (found that there is a lovely park around), and got the internet! And quickly downloaded a Spanish-English and English-Spanish dictionary on my Kindle and tablet. 

I'm definitely excited to get going tomorrow, because I only have 27 full days in Spain left (WHAT) and so many things to do! I must profiter, or as we shall now say-- disfrutar. Which is hilarious. Gotta take that fruit. 

On the ever weather related note, hopefully this week will be getting warmer. I was told summer in Madrid was sizzling hot. But it's barely 70, we're wearing pants and sweaters. However, there's a heat wave coming in and Thursday will be 93! What logic there is in weather patterns. 

Sorry for all the words today, I just have so many thoughts and feelings today! 

¡Disfruten, mis amigos!

Turns Out, I'm Going to Spain

Just a little over a year ago, I came home from France and decided I wanted to hang out at home for a while. Turns out, a year is "a while". Some time during last semester I realized that I had no internship, no job, and looking ahead I saw me sitting at home all summer. So, the day before the study abroad scholarship deadline, I decided to go to Spain. This past year in school I took Spanish because during last year's J-Term I realized I could kind of read and understand Spanish, so heck, why not take it. And then we had a presentation in Spanish class by someone from the study abroad program and I decided to go for it.
So tomorrow afternoon I will board a plane and be on my way to Spain.

Catharine, do you know Spanish now?

Nope.

Like I said, I took a year of Spanish, so these four weeks are going to be a crash course in Spain Spanish (what even is vosotros?), Spanish accents, the speed of real speech, and not accidentally using French. I've been trying to tell myself that I have to go easier on myself with regards to my language abilities. I was about, oh, a thousand times more advanced in French than I am in Spanish. I should expect to make a lot more mistakes and make a fool of myself many more times. (Good blogging material though, am I right?)

I'll be staying with a host family again with another girl from CMU. I'm going to be studying at Estudio Sampere in the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid (I think?) I've been told I'll have class for about 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. While I'm there I'll also be doing some casual research on my topic for my Senior Honors Thesis (blog to come!). The topic of that, to put it simply, is food and identity in France and Spain.

I'm strangely nervous, considering I've gone abroad before and for a much longer period of time. But this time, I have very little idea what I'm doing. I'll have to rely on my small knowledge of Spanish and general knowledge of romance languages. Along with my charm and stunning people skills. (Obviously.) My suitcase is finally packed (and I somehow feel like I've packed too much for four weeks) and the final night has finally come. Now I'm off to lay in bed anxiously trying to figure out how to say things in Spanish.

No puedo manger gluten? No puedo comer gluten? Je ne peux pas? No sé, c'est la vie.