Turkey and Greece

I'm off to Greece and Turkey tommorow with school! Be back in 10 days! And the day I get back my parents arrive!!

My Flat

I posted some pictures of my flat . I'm heading to class soon so maybe ill take some pictures of our school and then some of Cheeky later (and I'll even put myself in a few :P)

I used up the amount of photos I am allowed on my first picture site . So to see all of my new pictures from now on click here .

Pictures

Finally here are my pictures!

A local...almost

Well I've been in Madrid for two weeks now and I really feel like I'm starting to fit in and finally see the city as my temporary home instead of just a foreign unknown. The stares have mostly subsided since I bought some Euroshoes (dressy sneakers that they don't consider sneakers). It's funny because just about everyone in the group has purchased a pair of shoes from here because they couldn't take the stares any longer. No matter how european or nondescript our outfits were, we were always known as American because of our shoes. Literally, I would step on a train and within a minute just about everyone around me had looked at my feet. It was uh...Interesting.

This past week was really fun, especially since I've been feeling better. After the insistence of my Senora and mom I went to the doctor on Wednesday. He told me I had a sinus infection so he gave me an antibiotic and I'm feeling much better. I guess the one good thing that came out of my being sick is that I became good friends with the nice guy in the metro that sells tissues.

Friday was one of the best times out I've had since I've gotten to Madrid (not counting Santander because that was hard to beat). Chrissy and I went in search of a salsa club called The Tropical House in Principe Pio. We stopped at a Mexican bar first because we saw there were a lot of kids our age in there. We ended up talking with some kids from a Connetticut study abroad program (mainly Middlebury and Amherst students). They invited us to go with them to a hookah bar in another part of the city. It was the best hookah bar I've been to before because it was so authentic (well as far as I know). The ceiling was covered in low hanging middles eastern tapestries and we sat on large pillows or small benches. We ordered a fruit hookah and sangria and ended up hanging out there until it closed at 2:30. On our way to find a hip hop club one of the girls knew about, I heard a loud crash and a massive chunk of brick slid in front of my feet. I looked up and saw a guy had been hit over the head with the brick and he his friends were trying to get him away from the scene. The guy was holding his head closed and blood was everywhere. It was a crazy part of town. We finally made to the hip hop club where it turned out it was the equivalent of a club in the U.S. with a lot of American music.

Yesterday, our group went to Toledo for the day. It was absolutely amazing from a distance and adorable up close. The only complaint I had was that it was so touristy that it took away from what could have been a nice small town feel. We visited the famous el greco painting, a huge church that was the most amazing I've seen yet, and a Jewish synagogue that is now a church. The city's architecture and history is unique because it has three different groups living there. The Christians, Jews, and Muslims. You can check out my pictures because they always do a better job of showing the beauty.

When our bus returned to Madrid last night, MarieCarmen (our leader) took us for Tapas (its another name though, I'll find out the right one). We ate at this beautiful restaurant on the top floor over looking the Palacio. They were the best appetizers I've ever had in my life! I came back raving about them and my Senora said, "Tapas, tapas, all you liked were the tapas! What about Toldedo?!" That was fun too :P Also, they had huge barrels of cider that when you open the tap the cider flows about 4 feet straight out and lands in a bucket. You have to stick your glass in the flow to get a drink. I felt like I was at a 16th century kegger.

Last night I got my traditional 12 hours of sleep and woke up at 12:30 today. After a scolding from my Senora to clean up my extremely messy room and stop picking at my horrendous blemishes, I've been writing emails ever since. And now, as I've been saying forever, I'm finally going to post my pictures.

One week down!

So I just finished my first week in Madrid. It went by pretty uneventfully, I didn't do much as I was focusing on all my energy on getting better, which I almost am. Pretty much my week consisted of classes, food and sleep, the latter two being the essentials. The area around my University is beautiful and centrally located for getting anywhere in the city. Yesterday I walked about 30 minutes to Serrano street, the fashion area of Madrid, to everyone's favorite store, El Corte Ingles. Corte Ingles has everything, and is broken into different department stores in separate buildings. Clothing etc., technology, books, and a grocery store. It's like a Bloomingdales, Best Buy, Borders, and Acme all rolled into one. My sole purpose though was to buy some shoes, because my flip flops just don't seem to be cutting it in fashion conscience Madrid. I did pack a pair of dressy shoes, but I left the match at home.

I visited the Prado museum on Wednesday with my art history class, but we just did a quick intro to all of the different periods. Our professor said we'll be going back once a week for class and I think it will be amazing to have the opportunity to see the paintings first hand instead of on a slide, huge difference. I want to go on my own as well, because it is a completely different experience going by yourself and taking as much time as you want to look at each painting.

Yesterday, kids from class organized to meet up at 12 near the soccer stadium, and wrote the plan on the board so everyone could see. It worked, and about 20+ kids showed up. The only problem was that about 40% of us didn't bring ID's. I've only been to one other place in Madrid, and few places in Santander and I've never been asked for ID to enter anywhere. Well we ended up doing some sharing and pulled a few tricks and we were all able to enter to the club. Normally, I really do not like clubs, but when I go with a large group of people it is fun.

Before I came here I was warned about the Spanish guys, but I haven't had any problems with them. In fact, they are actually shy sometimes. In the club last night the guys stayed in their little huddles and the girls in theirs. I would talk to the Spanish girls, but they just do not seem to want anything to do with American girls. It's like a whole Jets and Sharks thing going on, no se. Actually, yeah, I almost got into a fight with one of the girls. Now that would be a story. I accidentally bumped her....hard....when I was dancing. I said 'lo siento' but I don't think she heard me so she called me over and gave me some sort of lecture with really really scary eyes. I was so freaked out I didn't have any clue what she was saying, so I just muttered lots of "lo sientos" "pardons". Anyways, so towards the end of the night we met a nice group of Spaniards and I ended up getting some tango lessons. I was horrible!! But in the end it didn't matter and I had a lot of fun and I was finally able to practice my Spanish with kids my age from Spain.

Well I tried to post all of my pictures yesterday, and I had them all ready, but something went wrong and it didn't work, argh. So I'm gonna try again and then I'll post the link. Hasta luego!

Funny Quotes de Espana

"My kids are going to wear burlap sacks from the day their born. They won't wear anything else until they can say, 'Daddy, I don't want to wear this burlap sack anymore, it's itchy.'"

~Ben, pointing out the how frivilous clothes are for kids


"I love little naked boys, but not in pedophilic kinda way."

~Nicole, pointing to a cute little naked boy on the beach



"This is the gay area, but it is fun for everyone else as well."

~Javier, our Professor, drawing a map of the best party places in Madrid



"Yeah you'll help me, you'll help me to DIE!"

~Paula telling us about last years group of students



"How do you say...tits? Oh, is that not correct? Sorry, I only know the dirty american slang."

~Paco, our art history Professor, pointing at the breast of an ancient statue.

Estoy en Espana!

I arrived in Spain a week ago with my friend Chrissy. We flew out of Reagan together in Washington, D.C. with a quick stop over in Coppenhagen, random. Once in Spain Marta, the niece of the program director, met us at the airport and we took a shuttle to the Hotel Paris in Madrid. After a tour of the historical part of the city and dinner out with everyone, about half of the 50 students went out to an Irish pub. Later Marta took Jessie, Diane and I to a Salsa dancing club which was awesome! I've only salsa danced once with Jerry in Washington, D.C. and I have to admit I remembered very little, but it was still fun. The next day however, I payed for my fun and I was sick the entire 7 hour bus ride to Southern Spain.

For the next week we lived in the dorms at the Universidad Internacional Menendez Pelayo in Santander Spain. Every morning we had 4 to 5 hours of Spanish class, then siesta, and from 4-6 spanish culture class. You'd think 5 hours of spanish class would be tortorous but our professor smokes so much we had a 15 min. break every 50 minutes. The best part about Santander were the people I met from other countries. UIMP offers a three week intensive spanish course for people from all over the world, and we were there for the middle week. The second night there my friends and I went to La Plaza de Canadio where I met a lot of students from UIMP, because as it turns out La Plaza is the place to be. By the end of the week I had friends from England, Ireland, France, Germany, Norway, Morroco and Greece. With so many languages being spoken, often times the only common language was spanish. So as a result, I got a lot of practice, which I greatly needed.

During the week we took trips all around southern spain, touring small historic towns, 1000 year old churches, and massive castles. Check out my link for pictures (link soon to come), they do more justice to the breathtaking scenery and pueblos than I ever could.

After a week in Santander, and many afternoons of basking on the beach (on of my favorite parts of the city), we returned to Madrid on Sunday. When we arrived at the Hotel Paris where all of our luggage was stored, there were 40 Senoras awaiting us. They were assessing us with skepticism and we were assessing them with mucho fear. I mean I have to admit, at first glance these Senoras are pretty intimidating. Laurance, my flatmate, and I were one of the first to be introduced to our senora, cheecky (I don't know how to spell it but thats how it sounds). She was appaled at our number of bags, 2 each, and couldn't get over why we would ever need so much luggage for only four months. Because of our massive amount of luggage cheecky put us in two cabs, and after telling the driver her address, sent me off alone. I tried not to panic and just enjoy the sites, but that changed when the driver stopped and told me to get out. He explained that this was number 15 like my senora said, but he didnt know where exactly I was suppose to go. So there I was with all my luggage standing on the sidewalk with no idea where I was and no senora in sight. I waited about ten minutes, contemplating the fact that I didn't know cheeckys address, her phone number, the number of our director, or have a cell phone. So I laughed. I couldn't stop laughing, and you can imagine the stares I got from the spaniards but I didn't care because if I didn't laugh hard I knew I might cry. Finally cheecky appeared around the corner and after trying for a minute or two to get her attention we finally went together to her flat.

I love love love her apartment!! It is full of antiques and character, and not mention it has a lot of space for madrid. I'm going to post pictures of our flat and cheecky soon.

I've been sick since I got here but Cheecky quickly assumed the role of surrogate mother. I'm not allowed to go out of the house without at least three layers on, even though it really is not cold out I swear! Also, she had me gargle lukewarm water and vinegar for my throat the first night I was here. Again, random. But that's Cheecky, random but hilarious.

Yesterday was our first day of classes at The College for International Studies in Madrid. I really like my professors that I've had so far. They all speak english very well and are acutally really exccited to teach us. Go figure.

Well, cheeckys amazing cook has just finished making lunch so I'm going to go eat. Hasta luego!