Something Spain

Whoo man, have we been off our blogging game this week! Not to worry, you didn't miss too much, just another week of class, more or less. One update: Esperanza has started buying butter! So that's been a fun edition to an already-opulent breakfast.

"Constant Rain of Ideas"/Shower of Lightbulbs

Other than that... Tutoring, class...Ah, we started our Cultural Passport activities at last. In retrospect, we should have started waaayyy earlier, but we'll just have to do our best. The activity we went to this week was a free movie screening of this old-ish Italian movie called La Lozana Andaluz. "La Lozana" is a Spanish girl who moves to Rome, falls in love with a cute boy, and then they, with the help of his aunt, set up a whorehouse together and live together in prosperity. Very heartwarming.

Tomorrow, we go to the Reina Sofia and the Valle de los Caidos--Franco's tomb for WWII casualties. Gotta say, I am a little uncomfortable with the level of esteem some people still seem to hold for Franco. Like, why are we going to see one of his monuments? Hopefully we'll find out tomorrow.

Today's pic is from the window of a place near where we do tutoring. We haven't been able to figure out what the actual business is, but the window display always has some kind of artsy sculpture made out of bathroom appliances. Go figure.

We swam with the Middlebury girls Tuesday and today and aced our Latinamerican Lit midterm. All in all, a good week thus far. Also, Zayn and the boys released their latest music video last Friday, and tickets for their 2015 tour went on sale this week! Woohoo!

Through the Spain

Hey kids!! Here we are, fresh from Barcelona with TALES TO TELL. First of all, though, I must admit a serious transgression. In my pre-trip excitement, I forgot to put Zayn in my bag. Luckily, we got to Barcelona and who should we see but Zayn, accompanied by all of the boys?? They were able to pose for a quick pic, but mostly wanted to do their own thing for the weekend.

There was a bit of a mix-up at the train station Friday morning (i.e. I missed my train), but I got on a slightly later one and met up with Riva in beautiful Barcelona only a couple hours later than originally planned. From the train station, we headed to our digs for the weekend in an area called Porto Olimpic. In fact, we weren't so much in the port area as we were in the port. And we weren't so much in the port as we were on a boat.

Yes, friends, we rented a small wooden houseboat for the weekend through AirBnB. It was actually pretty nice, considering there was no bathroom/shower/kitchen (we used the port public restrooms--hygiene, needless to say, was at an all-time low for the weekend) and we couldn't really stand up without hitting our heads. But it had a nice sunny deck and a surprisingly spacious bed down below. And it was a pretty cute boat, all weathered wood and little portholes to let in sunlight and ocean breezes. So we actually had quite an enjoyable stay.

Just a few boys on a boat!

After dropping our stuff at the boat on Friday afternoon, we spent a few hours lounging on the beach and wandering around the port area before heading back to the boat for a couple of drinks in preparation for our night out at the Barcelona beach clubs. Probably the fewer details the better on that night, suffice to say we ended up back on the boat around 6AM and slept til about 2PM the next day.

With what was left of Saturday, we had lunch at a port restaurant on their terrace overlooking the water before spending a few more hours on the beach. That evening, determined not to have wasted the whole day, we headed out to explore the Gothic Quarter and La Rambla, which was PACKED with people spilling out of their homes and all the surrounding bars, where they'd been watching the Madrid-Barcelona soccer game. Barcelona lost pretty dramatically, so there was a certain lack of enthusiasm in the air last night. But Riva and I had fun checking out the little market booths and street performers anyway.

This morning, rising at the crack of 9, we struck out for the Sagrada Familia and Park Guell, the two main places in Barcelona to check out Gaudi's stuff. Our tickets to the Sagrada Familia--the cathedral designed by Guadi--weren't until 1:15, so we did the Park first and got THE views of Barcelona since it turns out the park is set up on the very top of the city. That was a fun walk up. But yeah, that's where all the mosaic tile stuff is that always shows up if you google "Gaudi Barcelona," so it was quite an experience.

The cathedral is RIDICULOUS, like very beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, but you kind of feel dizzy after awhile. He went a little overboard with the rainbow stained glass, possibly. It is amazing, but you kind of get the feeling he didn't know when to stop. Again, Zayn didn't come along, but I'll be putting some pics up on my Facebook if you want a better picture of what it looks like.

Back in Madrid now, and we will be SLEEEEEPING tonight. Also, fun fact, the Spain version of daylight savings time was last night. Who knew?

Little Spain Dress

Snap from Toledo found on Belen's Blog!

Well, for once, the blog title actually aligns with something we did today, and that was buying a little dress. Not sure how Spanish it is since it came from H&M, but it was at least an H&M in Madrid. The first clothes we've bought in Spain since that one pair of pants in Granada about two months ago.

Apologies for the gap between blogs. We meant to write yesterday but ended up going out to a friend's birthday instead, and there wasn't time for both homework and a blogpost beforehand. The night was fun, though; we met up with Riva at Puerta del Sol and headed over to meet a few of Vassar kids for the shindig (Kate's birthday). It was 1-euro shot night again, but we pretty much abstained, having learned our lesson from last time. We stuck around til about 2:30, cabbed home, and arrived right on time for our 9AM class this morning.

Moving backwards a bit, yesterday afternoon we had our second "Clase de Interculturalidad" with Ramiro, but this time we were joined by Amy Suelzer, the program director at Wash U who's here for the week visiting. The class itself was way less painful than last time--for one thing, it was only one hour instead of two--and was followed by the WU-funded beverage of our choice at the cafe down the street.

The Majesty of Madrid!

After that, Riva and I headed to Circulo de Bellas Artes, a high-rise museum/gallery with a rooftop bar in the city center. The building itself is gorgeous, and the view is AMAZING. We sat on a big daybed with a light-up end table for our drinks and watched the sun setting over the city.

Today we swam 5600 meters with the Middlebury girls today, then had Ramiro class in the afternoon, where we talked about the Spanish Civil War and the surrealist movement. We'd watched Bunuel's L'Age d'Or for homework, which I really liked, so it was a good time.

Now we're home waiting on dinner and getting organized for Bacelona tomorrow! 

Spain Now

Oof! A whole weekend off! We had a FABULOUS FABULOUS time in Toulouse! So fabulous we had no time to blog! But not to worry, we still managed some snapshots.

Our flight wasn't til 9:15, but we haven't practiced flying out of Madrid yet, so we left early to make sure we had plenty of time. It takes an hour to get to the airport, and we figured for international flights we'd  need between 90 minutes and 2 hours, AND we wanted to shower beforehand, so we set the alarm for 5:30. But then we were so excited we woke up at 4:45. So it's a good thing we were able to run on adrenaline for the next 23 hours.

Arrival in Toulouse!

We met Schuyler in the city center of Toulouse for lunch at a nice Italian terraza restaurant and enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL sunny weather, which we were SO ready after the last week in Madrid. She had to go back to class after lunch, so we had a nice stroll through the little shops around the main plaza, lots of cheap makeup, used records, and bookstore cafes. Plus we checked out this gorgeous Cathedral, lots of gilding and painted cherubs.

Once Schuyler was out of class, we strolled around a bit more before heading back to her apartment to settle in, shower, and give profuse thanks to her host parents for letting me stay with them. The apartment was amazing, full of expensive Picasso prints and antique furniture and balcony views of the canal outside.

That night we had dinner at this great little Japanese place and I cannot tell you how beautiful it was to eat something that hadn't been fried in olive oil and purged of all flavor. I guess raw fish is pretty much the exact opposite of Spanish cuisine, where everything is cooked/steamed/fried/baked to death.

So festive!

After dinner, we headed out to a pirate-themed rum bar near the main plaza for a couple of mojitos--made with strawberry-flavored rum--and then to a place called the Blind Tiger for Cosmos (tres tres fancy) and finally to an English pub to meet one of the girls on Schuyler's program for some Strongbow to close down the night. The taxi system isn't much in Toulouse, so we walked all the way back, and my feet were killing me, but I gotta say the view of the river at night was pretty stellar.

The next day, after sleeping til about 11, we had a LOVELY breakfast with toast and REAL BUTTER. My first butter in two months!! A very big deal indeed. A pleasant morning of more strolling, more shopping, then a lunch of savory crepes--mine had roquefort, emmental, and mushrooms--in a painfully hip cafe playing nothing but David Bowie. It was great.

 We were joined by another girl from Schuyler's program, then started walking back towards the center of town. I insisted we stopped for croissants, since we were after all in France and it simply is Done, stopped to pick up a couple of bottles of rose wine  for the evening's festivities, then headed back to the apartment for a lovely afternoon on the sunny balcony sipping grapefruit juice and being nuzzled by the family cat.

Check out that Baroque!

Suddenly the sun had set, and we headed out to meet the two girls from Schuyler's program plus a French guy who studied abroad at their school last year. We had dinner at a fairly fancy Italian place where Schuyler and I had some very nice Cotes du Rhone and pesto tagliatelle. And the French guy didn't finish his honey-and-goat cheese pizza, so we took care of that, too.

That night, we grabbed the rose and headed down to the banks of the Garonde (the river) to meet the crew from dinner, plus two more of Schuyler's friends, one from Morocco and one from Germany. It sounds weird, I know, but the place was packed. That seems to be how it is done in Toulouse, and we had a real blast.

The next morning, another fabulous breakfast, a stroll through the local botanical gardens, then back to the apartment to pack up and head to the airport with plenty of time to look back on our fabulous weekend. We even got back to Madrid in time for dinner. All in all, a killer weekend, and we can't wait to do more travelling!

Happily Spain

Hola hola! Yesterday was business as usual until the afternoon, when we had a quick meeting with Ramiro and a Spanish doctor about the Ebola thing. It was interesting, but the basic gist was just that we're fine and there's nothing to worry about.

Barfy cute but great food

After the meeting, we went with Riva to a cutesy little bakery-cafe place called "La Cocina de mi Vecino" (My Neighbor's Kitchen). Cronuts, Oreo cheesecake, chocolate croissants, specialty coffee drinks, and, of course, empanadas. Ok, Spain.

But the cafe was very cute, all lavender walls and honey pots and sugar bowls shaped like cupcakes. We hung out for awhile pretending to study, but mostly just looking up various hostels around Europe, thinking about where we want to travel. We have a week off after the end of classes in December, so we're thinking maybe Paris, maybe Italy. We'll see, we'll see.

This morning was our Latinamerican lit midterm, so we'll see how that went. Then we were off to the pool, where we got to swim with the Middlebury girls again. This time we got to do the whole workout, and it was GREAT. We had to skip about 250 meters because those girls are fastfastfast and we didn't want to get in the way, but we still ended up swimming about 5300 meters in 90 minutes. More Sharks than Stroke, but it felt so good, I really miss swimming with a team. I'm even considering the 5:30 workouts once we're home.

Then we had Ramiro class, and then home to pack for TOULOUSE! We've got a pretty early flight tomorrow, but we wanted to make the most of our time, since we'll be there less than 72 hours. But we are PUMPED! Updates to come, we may not be super consistent with blogging while there, but we'll be back Sunday night, so you shouldn't miss much.

Strong Spain

Metro Marathon!

A pretty standard start to the week. As usual, we didn't get enough sleep Sunday night, and we're still a bit tired, but we get to sleep in tomorrow, so we'll soon be rested.

But Mary, you ask, today is Tuesday, didn't you sleep last night?? Well, perhaps we would have, but a 7PM post-tutoring Pumpkin Spice Latte probably didn't do us any favors. We knew it was a mistake, but it was rainy and cold and we had fresh tutoring money burning a hole in our pocket, and there's a Starbucks smack between the girls' apartment and our metro stop, so there you have it.


Rewinding a bit to earlier in the day. We hit the gym between Lit Theory and Lengua, so after class we were able to head back to Salamanca for a mini-siesta before tutoring. Tutoring itself was pretty simple, just helping with homework and learning what various verb tenses are called in English. I use 'em pretty well, but who knew it was called the "present continuous?"

#StylesinSTL?

We walked home from Starbucks, a little over half an hour, and about 10 minutes of that was underground navigating the hallways of our metro station, which is apparently massive. I had Google mapped our route to the station without realizing it's FUCKING HUGE and took so long to get from one end to the other.

Today was Latinamerican Lit, Lit Theory, pool, then Photoshop class. Which apparently I am not actually registered for. So we'll be having words with Ramiro. We did learn some fun things about copying and pasting, as shown.

Tutoring from 7-8:30, home by 9, dinner, and re-lax-a-tion. Tomorrow, we sleep!

Don't Forget Where You Spain

Good thing we brought an umbrella!

Well, another action-packed weekend on the Western front. Yesterday, we slept til noon, considered going to Getafe to workout, and ultimately went to see Gone Girl instead. It was pretty good, especially if you have a strong stomach. No spoilers, though, as I don't know which of my millions of blog-followers have or have not read the book/seen the movie.


When we got out of the movie, there was some kind of weird protest going on outside the theater, I think against the prevalence of non-Spanish companies in Madrid. Good luck getting rid of Coca-Cola, though.

Esperanza and Gustavo went out for dinner and drinks, so we had the apartment to ourselves for the evening. Which we celebrated with wine and Gilmore Girls. Wild and crazy stuff.

So many books to choose from!

Today we slept in til 11 (crack o' dawn), had an excellent Sunday morning breakfast (apparently cream cheese--which they just call Philadelphia--and strawberry jam is big here as a toast topping) and headed to a cafe to attempt some homework. We went back to J&J Coffee and Books, the place Riva and I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. It was established by a couple of Americans, and they just sell tons of used books, all in English, and they make a pretty good cup of coffee. I mean, it's still an Americano instead of actual coffee, but they let you decide how much milk you want instead of just filling a giant mug with steamed milk and adding a shot of espresso.

Anyway, we made a valiant effort at homework, but eventually just settled down with a worn copy of Bridget Jones's Diary, and before we knew it it was dinner time. Octavio Paz will have to wait.

Spain and I

Okay, so we have a confession: Zayn overslept and missed today's excursion to the Prado and the Palacio Real (Royal Palace). But while Senor Malik was dozing, I had a blast.

Someone had too much caffeine!!

A quick recap, since we missed yesterday: class, gym, pool, finished reading Gone Girl, then Ramiro Class. We've moved onto the Baroque, thank god. I'll take frivolous gilding over gloomy martyrs any day.

After class, a few of us wandered down the street to Starbucks for a very unexpected FIRST PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE OF THE SEASON WHAAAT??? Zayn was so excited he could barely sit still for the photo, so we apologize for the pool quality of the pic. I had actually never had a whole PSL to myself before, so a bit of a milestone, I guess. Definitely didn't think it would happen in Spain. But the weather's been cool and gray and a little rainy, so a sweet, spicy, creamy latte was exactly what we needed.

Home for dinner, then out to Malasanya with the WUSTL crew (minus Hannah and Miguel) plus two Johns Hopkins kids. We started at this beach-themed bar called Ojala (Spanish for "God willing," god knows why) and sat on low cushions in a basement full of sand with pitchers of sangria. Rainbow Christmas lights, fun music but not too loud, a very enjoyable evening. We went to another little bar after that, less remarkable, then towards Sol for some late-night pizza and a cab home.

Zayn missed out!

Today, as I said, we had our Ramiro excursion. Today's Prado visit focused on Goya, from his humble beginnings as royal painter to Carlos III (for whom our university is named) to his later deafness and cynicism wherein he lived alone and made nightmarish paintings of zombie peasants and Greek gods munching on the bones of their offspring. Pretty cool stuff actually.

Post-Prado, we had some lunch at an UvePan (cute bakery/cafe chain) before meeting Ramiro and Belen at the Palacio. Kind of a mini-Versailles. Very cool stuff, porcelain ceilings, velvet walls, portraits of ugly royals, lots to look at. We really had a blast.

Home for a little workout, a little painting, dinner, Skype with Liz, blog, and to bed! Whew!

Midnight Spain

Well, it may not quite be midnight, but we're getting close, so we'll try to keep this quick. Yesterday was more or less the same as Monday, class, pool, gym, English lessons, this time for the younger girl. More vocab, less conversation. Better practice for me, though, since it was pretty much all in Spanish.

Different angle of the same cafe...

But between gym and lessons, we went to this Photoshop workshop we signed up for, which meets every Tuesday and, as it happens, conflicts with our English classes that day. So we're going to chat with Ramiro and have a think about whether or not we really want to do it. It's Intro to Photoshop, but there's probably still valuable stuff to learn. So I guess we'll see if we can reschedule the lessons, and if not, we'll have to have a think. It's good money, but ~learning~ may be a better idea.

Anyway, today we got to sleep in a little, then off to take out Language exam. I think it went ok, we'll see. Then pool, where we swam a little with the Middlebury girls again with a real workout and everything, then we headed back to the Acuarela Cafe--the weird little Viennese place--this time with Riva, where we sorted out the deets for our trip to BARCELONA in a couple weeks.

Home for dinner and homework, and soon to bed.

Di(spain)ana

Spain on top of their pastry game

Yikes, we almost missed two days in a row! You didn't miss much yesterday, we just spent the day writing our Cosmopolis essay, then Skyped with the parentals. We even washed our hair afterwards! Scintillating action!!!


Today we had Lit Theory and Language, followed by a stint at the gym, but we didn't end up having time for a swim because we had to head back into Madrid for our first session as English Language tutors!

We'll be doing it twice a week, 1.5 hours each, for 15 Euro an hour, which is really a pretty good racket. The girl we had today is 13 and pretty advanced, so her mom just wants us to do conversation stuff. She asked us what kind of music we were into, and we were just kind of like, um, One Direction, what? And she responded with, Oh I'm pretty into Eric Clapton right now. What?

Store-brand beer why

Tomorrow we'll head back to give lessons to her little sister, who I suspect won't be quite so conversational, so god knows what we'll do with her. I have zero qualifications other than being born in America, and Zayn didn't even go to high school (right?).

The time commitment is kind of a pain, honestly, but the money is going to be a huge help. We don't need a lot of pocket money in Madrid, but it'll be nice not to have to worry about it when we travel and want to shop/get souvenirs/sleep somewhere without bed bugs. We might get to go to Florence, after all.

Anywho, it's 11:30 here now, and we barely slept last night thanks to our charming new habit of sleeping til noon on Sundays and not getting any activity besides typing and applying lipgloss.


And a big congrats to Zayn and the boys for completing the Where We Are tour!!!!

Story of Spain Life

Well, as predicted, not a whole lot of activity around here today. We ended up staying up til about 3AM Skyping, first with Rachel and then with the suite. We sure do miss those dolls.

So, naturally, we slept in til about 1:30 in the afternoon and rolled down to a cafe down the street for breakfast. We could've eaten at home, of course, but the host fam was sitting down to lunch as we left, so we just kind of slunk out rather than admit we'd only just dragged ourselves out of bed. There's something a little embarrassing about spooning out instant coffee as everyone else is getting ready for siesta.

Having "breakfast"

So we settled in at a little cafe with Cosmopolis (and everything else on the Kindle) for "breakfast" at about 3PM. We had a sausage-stuffed croissant and a Greek salad (Zayn's watching his figure) and hung out til a couple came in with a screamy baby.

We wandered around for a bit, just having a nice walk, looking into a few shops, procrastinating, naturally. Eventually, we settled back in at Starbucks. I know, I know, but it's the only place close to the apartment with free Wi-Fi and outlets, and we just were not in the mood to tackle the metro and try to navigate all those cute little winding cobblestones searching for a study spot.

Anyway, we finished our reading and headed back home just in time for our 10PM dinner. Tomorrow, we write our essay. Thrillsville.

Best Spain Ever

HOLA!! So this morning we met Ramiro and the rest of the group at El Prado, you know the one. It was just a quick intro session to talk about the movement of Spanish art from the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation (read: Jesus propaganda). But it was pretty cool, checking out the Titians and Velazquez and Goya and El Greco and stuff. And we finally saw Las Meninas in the flesh!

Mingling with the masses at the Prado!

After the Prado, we headed to El Escorial, which was built by the Spanish monarchs around the sixteenth century, again around the time of the Counter-Reformation, which basically means everything was a big show about the Catholic Church being proud of how humble they were. Which means it's all really plain and full of gloomy art and tiny beds.

The palace itself is really small, but the library is bigger and the church is massive, apparently symbolic of the monarchs' priorities. Of course, after that phase passed, the Baroque fans came in and covered everything with gold and cherubs and generally tried to liven the place up, which makes for an interesting mix.

Riva, Alexandra, and Hannah are all out of town for the weekend, as are the Vassar kids, so we're just chillin at home for now having a little Skype date with Rachel and re-watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Tomorrow we have GOT to finish Cosmopolis because our essay's due Monday, but maybe we'll go somewhere fun to read.

Ta-ta now, kiddos.

I Spain

Hey kiddos! Blog posts may be a little less regular (i.e. every other day) now that we're settling into more of a schedule in order to avoid multiple pictures of my daily commute, fascinating as those bus seats are.

All we did last night was write our essay for Ramiro's class, so you didn't miss anything there. This morning was 9AM business as usual. Thanks to our night in, we avoided a repeat of last week's absence, even though we had an invite and it was NOT EASY to turn down.

Cafe con leche (mostly leche)

Post-class, we hit up the gym with a couple of Vassar kids, then to the pool where we met a couple of girls from the Middlebury swim team who let us join in on their workout. I had forgotten what a difference it makes to have an actual workout with strokes and intervals and people to keep up with, and it was AWESOME, I felt so fit. Plus it made me realize how lazy I've been getting... So hopefully we run into them again.

We got out of the pool a little early so we'd have time to do our reading for Ramiro's class, but upon further inspection, we realized it was a book we read sophomore year in Spanish Golden Age Literature, so we really just needed a quick skim to help us answer the necessary homework questions. We just sat in one of the campus cafes and banged it out before heading back to Madrid for class.

That class was actually pretty enjoyable today since we actually talked LITERATURE instead of straight history. I know that's some people's bag, but alas, not mine. After class, we checked out a little cafe in Chueca that was more or less decorated like a Victorian living room, but with more gilding and lavender walls. Chueca is, after all, Madrid's gay neighborhood. We actually got a good chunk of work done, though, in preparation for the essay we have to write this weekend.

Going out's probably an option tonight but man I am tired, so Zayn's gonna have to party without me.

Hasta whatever, babes.