¡Me cago en tu puta madre!

This is possibly one of my favorite spanish expressions ever. Translated literally, it means "I shit on your whore mother!" It's along the lines of a hearty "fuck you" in English. I wish I had learned this expression much sooner so I could use it all the time. All. The. Time.

But when I'm not learning vulgar Spanish phrases I'm visiting, buying, and eating as much of Spain as I can. I am trying to make myself and my bags weigh as much as humanly possible so that I can be charged an obscene amount of money by Iberia Airlines when I return home in, holy crap, one week! The thought of packing makes me a little nauseous, so I'm going to avoid that topic for right now. But yeah. The countdown's at one week. I have now gotten past the denial part, and realize that I will in fact be in the U.S. one week from today. I'm really excited to see everybody and be back in the States, but I'm also pretty sad to be leaving Spain. It'll be interesting to say the least.

OK, something less sad- we went kayaking yesterday!! It was beautiful, we went on this really calm river that cuts through a canyon and has tons of birds (mostly big vultures, but some eagles too), and flowers growing in the cracks in the rocks, and is just breathtaking. Then, once we were all good and exhausted and hungry, we went for a typical program-style lunch with obscene amounts of food. It was so so so so good. So good. Oh god. I love food. Almost as much as I love sleep. And that's saying a lot.

I have my last final tuesday, and after that it's vacation time, although I don't think its possible to take a vacation from a vacation. But dammit I sure am gonna try.

Finals, Farewells, and... Fun times!!!

I had an exam Monday and another one Tuesday. I am SO GLAD they are over. I always forget how much finals suck until I'm right in the middle of them. So now I only have 1 class left that meets twice a week. My life is difficult. Ha.

Thursday was our cena de despedida (goodbye dinner), and it was so great. Michael, our program director, loves to take us out to nice restaurants and pay for us, which works out pretty great for me, because I like to eat good food (or, lets not lie, pretty much any food). So the whole program was there, all the students, Michael, Pepa 1 (assistant director who actually does everything), the 5 monitores, María Luisa (housing coordinator), and Mario (guide) in this phenomenal restaurant, laughing and eating and toasting and drinking and generally annoying anybody else unfortunate enough to be there that night.

After dinner we all tried to get into this mega-discoteca to celebrate Marissa's birthday (one of the girls on the VWM program). It was pretty disastrous. We talked to a promoter who said he could put us on a list to get in free and when we showed up they said that the name we gave wasn't on their list. Then some girls gave us coupons for the girls to get in free and the bouncers gave us some trouble with those. So basically what happened then was that one of the girls on the program screamed at the bouncers in both Spanish and English, the bouncer called her short and fat (in Spanish) and wouldn't let her in, Pablo told the bouncer that we understood spanish (or at least the monitores did) and not to talk like that, one of the other guys in the program got forcibly removed from the discoteca, blah blah blah blah. Basically the bouncers were huge assholes and even if they had let us in I wouldn't have wanted to go there. So after that people were tired and upset and most of them called it a night. I didn't want to end the night like that, so I went to a bar with the monitores and had a good time.

Saturday I went with Annie and Rachel to Aranjuez, a town outside of Madrid, on the Strawberry Train, this train from i dunno when, maybe the 1920s, where they serve you like 5 strawberries during the hour long ride (I was expecting way more strawberries). Oh yeah, Aranjuez is known for its strawberries and asparagus, hence the strawberry train- the asparagus train just doesn't have the same appeal. It was really pretty and a lot of fun to have a day out exploring with the girls. We continue to be really really inappropriate, and our favorite line of conversation tends to be anything involving Helen Keller, especially jokes and/or impressions. We're really great people.

Today I did nothing. I had no class. It was great!

I can't think of a good title

So it's been another fun and busy week in Madrid. Lots of fun/funny/ridiculous things have happened this week, so i don't even know where to begin. I suppose I'll take up where the last post left off.

Last saturday was a program-sponsored trip to Ávila. Program trips are usually really cool. This one was not. It was rainy and cold and we walked outside a lot. I think our program director wanted to punish us or something. It was bad. I think one of he best parts of that day was getting back to my apartment, changing into dry clothes, and crawling into my warm bed.

So needless to say, after visiting Ávila I was pretty tired. I slept in until 1 or so the next morning and spent some time catching up on american tv shows online. When I emerged from my room around 2:30, I saw that the dining room table was nicely set, but for way more than 3 people. Still in my pajamas, I went to ask Pepita if we were having company for lunch. Oh boy were we having company. 12 people. Her whole family. I ran to take a shower, but wasn't quite fast enough, and met her oldest daughter for the first time while I was still standing in my towel. I think it was a really good way to represent both myself and my country. Once I was actually dressed and not running around like a crazy person, lunch was really great. It was really cool to meet the whole family, and see them all joking and laughing and eating together. It reminded me a lot of my family :) Then after lunch I went with a few people from the program to see an exposition about the sunken treasures of Egypt. It was cool, but a little long.

Monday we didn't have school, so it was automatically a pretty good day. But on top of not having classes, I went with Rachel and Annie to see a musical, Hoy No Me Puedo Levantar. It's about these 2 guys who move to Madrid during the early 80s to form a band and make it big. It's AWESOME. We're all a little obsessed, and may have to go see it again.

Thursday was my last day of CEH classes (the ones with other Americans), so I'm now down to only one class, and I have a final monday and another tuesday. It's going to be so nice to have so much free time for my last 3 weeks. I'll only have to go out to Getafe 2 or 3 times a week now, and i can spend the rest of my time continuing to explore Madrid or revisiting things like the Reina Sofía. Oh, thursday was also San isidro, a holiday in Madrid, so there was lots of cool stuff going on that day and night, including fireworks in Retiro. It was also the birthday of one of the guys on the program, so we had to go out and celebrate all these good things.

So yeah, life's still pretty great, even with finals.

Return to Andalucía y mucha mierda

Hey friends and family (which, as I recently discovered, also includes my fantastic monitores. Good thing you're all so wonderful and I only have nice things to say about you.)

So I've been slacking off on my blog writing and photo-posting again. But per usual, I think it's for a decently good reason. It involves more traveling!

This past weekend was a 4-day weekend in Madrid, even though I had five days off, and is known here as a puente (bridge). I have no idea why it's called a bridge. But there you have it. So May 1st is May Day/International Workers' Day, May 2 is a holiday in madrid where they celebrate fighting against Napoleon's troops for their independence (they don't really highlight the fact that they lost.), May 3 and 4 were the regular weekend (you know, saturday and sunday), and May 5 was some holiday in Getafe, where my university is, so we didn't have class. It was basically the greatest thing ever.

So with all this free time I went traveling with 3 friends to Sevilla, Tarifa, and Cádiz, all of which are in Andalucía, the southern part of Spain. And by the southern part I mean the warm and sunny part. Yeah buddy. OK so bear with me while I tell you all about my adventures:

April 30: The adventure begins. After having dinner with supermonitoras Bibi & Yoly, as well as Bibi's boyfriend Fredo, Rachel, Pablo, and I made a mad dash to the bus station way the fuck across town to meet Annie to catch an overnight bus to Sevilla. We made it with just a minute or two to spare, and when we went to get on the bus the bus driver at first refused to let me on. Why, you may ask? Because I am a tremendous dumbass and had gotten plantain all over my bus ticket, rendering it both useless and smelly. (As a side note, it may have been banana. I think they use platano here to mean both plantain and banana. Though I could be wrong. It's been known to happen on occasion.) Anyway, after Pablo (monitor/way better spanish speaker than myself/also happens to be my boyfriend) talked to the bus driver, I was allowed on the bus and we were off to Sevilla!

May 1: Bus ride from hell. 6 hours with a 45 minute rest at a rest stop that smelled like shit at some ungodly hour like 2 or 3 AM. We arrived at our hostel in Sevilla around 7, and since our rooms weren't available until 12:30, we slept on couches in the lobby until about 9 or 10, when we were joined by 2 other people from our group, Isaac and Melanie, as well as Melanie's boyfriend. We went out and explored Sevilla for a couple of hours before coming back to the hostel to take a 5 hour "nap." It was a beautiful nap. Maybe as beautiful as Sevilla, which is just amazing. Man do I love sleep. Then Rachel, Annie, Pablo, and I went out for tapas at various restaurants, including one with a very angry bartender lady (bartendress?). There was also a lot of great gazpacho. We went to bed at 10:30 because we were still exhausted.

May 2: More sevilla! It was super pretty. We went on a boat ride down the river. We were supposed to pay attention to the scenery, but instead we all payed attention to these 3 cute little boys who were playing in front of me. I made friends with this little spanish boy named Sergio. If it wasn't completely illegal and a huge hassle, I'd totally take a little kid home to the states with me as a pet. Then we had a picnic in this really pretty park with jenny, a friend of a friend from vassar who's studying in Sevilla for the semester. Then we went back to the hostel to rest for a little and watch some episodes of The Office, the best television show ever, at which point I realized I had turned fairly dark/red in the hot Andalucian sun. Then we went out again for tapas. Tapas are the best.

May 3: Check out of our sweet hostel. I forgot to mention that my first experience in a hostel was actually a really positive one, it was really clean and nice and they had a bar downstairs, a rooftop pool and kitchen, and was generally fantastic. Anyways. So we checked out and caught a bus to Tarifa, one of the southernmost points in Spain. So southern, in fact, that you can see Africa (Morocco) across the water. But don't worry Mom, Dad, and Grandma- I didn't go to Morocco, as much as I really wanted to. We tried to have a picnic on the beach but Tarifa is really, really windy, giving a whole new meaning to the word "sandwich"..... ha. I'm so clever. I went for a quick 4 second swim because the water was really cold, then we went back to our pensión (i have no idea how to translate this... it was a small shitty room with a private bathroom and two sets of bunk beds). We watched more of the office, ate lunch, and napped. We did a lot of eating, napping, and the office watching during the puente. It was great. We went into the old part of Tarifa at night to get dinner and drinks afterwards. The old part is a lot prettier than the part where we were staying, which was pretty much just ugly.

May 4: Check out and walk around Tarifa for a couple hours with our suitcases because we had nowhere to leave them. Nice. Bus ride to Cádiz. Cádiz was beautiful, and had a beach you could be on for more than 5 minutes without being beaten by the sand. We went for a walk after the beach and got lost and ended up taking a solid hour-an- a-half walk. My feet hurt afterwards, but we saw a decent amount of Cádiz. We had great fresh fish for dinner, and also tried caracoles (snails). They are nothing like escargot- they look like snails you would find in your garden (or presumably in the sea, where they actually came from), with the antennae and everything. They didn't really tast like much, but now I can say that i've eaten sea snails. Awesome.

May 5: The adventure back to madrid. First we tried to buy bus tickets for an 8 hour bus ride, but there weren't any available until that night, and we had class the next day. So we went to the train station. There were no seats available on the AVE to Madrid from Cádiz. Go figure. So we had to take a train back to Sevilla to catch the AVE there. 95 euros later I was on my way back to Madrid. Yay.

So yeah. My weekend was an adventure and I loved it. It also killed all my motivation to do anything except lay on a beach and get tan and swim in the ocean. Oh well.

Before I end this horrendously long post, here are some cool things I've learned recently about the Spanish language:

1. Know how you say retirement in spanish? jubilación
2. When you wish someone luck before they act in a play, we say "Break a leg." Spaniards say "¡Mucha mierda!"- "Lots of shit!"
3. We've been learning about love and sex in my colloquial class recently. On tuesday we learned that another word for erection (besides erección) is empalme. That same day when I was looking a map of the metro, I realized Empalme was a stop on line 5. Apparently it also means union. I prefer to think there's a metro stop called Boner.

ok I think thats all. i'm in the process of uploading more pictures, since I just realized I havent done that since semana santa. there's already about 30 up there, probably only about 200 to go...

La Rioja, País Vasco, and... lots of work

So this weekend was our program trip to La Rioja and País Vasco, two regions in the north of Spain. I'm sure you're sick and tired of hearing me tell you how beautiful all these places are, but that's really just too damn bad for you. Our first day, after waiting about 4 hours for our bus to come, we headed off on our 3ish hour drive to La Rioja. I forget the name of the first town we stopped in, but we saw this monastery where the first Spanish and basque words were ever written. It was pretty cool from a historical perspective, and also...you guessed it... incredibly beautiful. The north is a lot greener and we were in the mountains where there were sheep grazing on the hills. After that we went to another town in La Rioja whose name I forget, and we walked around before having a phenomenal dinner. One of the great things about these trips is getting to know the monitores who are all so awesome. At the dinner I got to sit near monitora Bibi, who is pretty freaking awesome. After dinner I was competely exhausted, but fortunately we went back to the hotel to sleep. Hallelujah.

The next day started off with a tour of a vineyard at 11 AM & wine tasting at noon. Yes, noon. Even though it was really early to be drinking, that was probably the best glass of wine I've ever had. Oh yeah, the type of wine called "Rioja" happens to come from this region of Spain (La Rioja. Crazy, right?). So it was pretty phenomenal.

After wine tasting, we went to San Sebastián in País Vasco, this awesome town right on the oceanfront. First we had another delicious meal, and then, being the complete nutcase that I am, I made my friends go wade in the ocean with me. It's a miracle that I still have friends. But it was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to actually go swimming in the ocean (on the southern coast, where it will be warmer) in two weeks!

After San Sebastián we went to Bilbao. I went to dinner with Annie, Rachel, our guide Mario, these 2 French girls who are friends of one of the monitores, and the monitores. It was pretty fantastic. Mario, our guide, is a ridiculous human being and started smoking a joint after dinner while we were heading to a bar. The bar was a lot of fun, as things tend to be when the monitores are involved. They're all such fantastic people.

The next day we went to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, which is far and away the craziest looking building I have ever seen. I'll put up pictures soon.

So that's pretty much how my weekend went, and now I'm back in Madrid, waiting for this week to end. All my work seems to have fallen in this one week, so it's only tuesday and I'm already exhausted. But it's ok- I may be exhausted, but I'm exhausted in Spain.

I need to do my homework

So instead I'm going to post on my blog. Yeah.

The movie that I saw was really fantastic. It's called The Counterfeiters and it just won the Oscar for best foreign film. It's about the Holocaust, so it's really intense, but it's totally worth the time and money if you get the chance to see it. Also, Spanish movie theaters are different from ones in the US. They're bigger, have assigned seats (like your seat number is on your ticket), and aren't really big on concession stands/snacking during the movie. They are big on dubbing though. It's basically a carry-over from the Franco dictatorship when dubbing was used as a way of censoring foreign films. So I watched an Austrian movie dubbed in Spanish that just won an American award. It was a pretty multi-cultural experience.

We leave Friday morning for País Vasco. I wish we were going now because I just don't want to do my work. It was a beautiful, sunny, 70 degree day, which is the perfect way to kill all motivation, especially when you know that the entire next week is going to be rainy and gray and involve 3 exams and 2 writing assignments. Not that i can complain. I never have any work. It's just unfortunate that it all fell at the same time.

In other news, Spaniards don't really go around the house barefoot. I was walking around the apartment without shoes or socks and Pepita told me I was going to catch a cold. I know I'm not a doctor, nurse, or other qualified medical expert, but I'm pretty sure that's not true. She and Luis always wear shoes or slippers around the house.

I've been taking a lot of naps recently. Pepita thought I was sick or unhappy. The truth is I just love sleep so much. It's a beautiful thing. I want to import siesta to the US.

Christmas in April

And as any self-respecting Jew knows, that only can mean one thing- Chinese food and a movie.

Today Luis went out to the country house that he and Pepita have about an hour and a half outside of Madrid. He happens to hate Chinese food, so that's where Pepita and I went for lunch. I love Pepita. It's nice just getting to talk with her and learning about her family and her life. When the program told me that I'd be living with her, the letter they sent me told me that she was 60 and Luis was 67. After I arrived here, I got the feeling that the ages the program told me were wrong, I just didn't know by how much. So apparently Pepita is going to turn 70 this year and Luis is 75. This makes a lot more sense in Luis' case (missing his bottom teeth, not entirely with it) but I don't think Pepita looks like she's 70. She was very happy I was so shocked. Oh, and the chinese food itself was good too. I haven;t had any while I've been in Spain, and go figure that of all the things that could remind me of home, chinese food would be one of them.

The movie part of my mini-Christmas will be happening in a couple hours, with the key difference being that this movie will be entirely in Spanish. I've been working my way up, first watching Spanish movies with English subtitles, then Spanish movies with Spanish subtitles. Now I'm going to give it a whirl without any subtitles. I will be so happy if I just understand the basic plot details. I'll let you know how it goes.

Classes continue as usual. I started a new class this past week that's supposed to be about Spanish nationalisms, which would be a really fascinating topic. Despite the fact that Spain is one country, it has very distinct regions and languages. In a lot of the country they speak castellano, what we know as Spanish, but in Galicia they speak gallego, in Cataluña they speak Catalan, and in País Vasco (where I'll be traveling to next weekend) they speak Euskera. They also have their own cultural differences, kind of like you find between some regions in the States (like comparing the south to the northeast). It's a really fascinating topic, and the current state of affairs is just a mess, especially with ETA, the radical Basque nationalist terrorist group that wants to keep terrorizing people until Galicia becomes its own separate country. (This should not make you worry. We will be perfectly safe on our trip this coming weekend. The program would in no way jeopardize the well-being of 25 students).

So this is all the stuff I should be learning about. Unfortunately, my professor is a puttering old man who canceled the entire first week of a two-and-a-half week class. So now after finishing week one of our 1.5 week class, we're still only in the mid 1800s. And haven't really discussed nationalisms at all. On top of that, we originally all thought that we had to write a 10-15 page paper in Spanish on some aspect of Spanish nationalisms. But the other day he told us that if we've come to class every day and just want to pass the class without earning an especially high grade, we don;t have to write the paper. Normally I'd be the overachiever that I am and write something to turn in, even if it sucked. But I'm taking this course pass-fail. The grade I get will never show up anywhere, I just have to pass (which I will, since I will have gone to every class). So that just made my life a little less stressful, especially since the week after next I'll either have 2 exams and a paper or 3 exams and a paper. Fun.

I also had a really good conversation with one of the monitores the other day about terrorism (it was really uplifting). I didn't realize that the March 11 bombings in Madrid 4 years ago were also carried out by Al Qaeda, I thought it was ETA. (Though maybe the whole march 11-september 11 connection should have tipped me off...). It was really interesting to talk with a foreigner who has experienced something very similar to 9-11. I'm having a lot of trouble trying to explain the conversation, I guess overall it was sad but comforting in a way to know that we're not the only country that's experienced such a horrible catastrophe.

When I havent been tackling the world's biggest issues, I've been sleeping (I love sleep) and hanging out with my friends. We went to this great vegetarian restaurant yesterday, and even though I'm not a vegetarian, it was just phenomenal. I never knew a meal without meat could be that good. I don't plan on going veg anytime soon (or ever), but I can definitely see the appeal. We also went to this place called the Jardín Secreto (The Secret Garden) for dessert two nights ago. I think it's one of Madrid's best kept secrets (oh god so bad..... you can hate me now). I went with Rachel, Annie, Annie's housemate Stephanie who goes to BU, and Stephanie's friend Rebecca. We split a bunch of the most phenomenal desserts including orgasmo por chocolate- I don't think I need to explain what that means. Needless to say, we had a fantastic time with great food and even better company.

Also, it finally stopped raining for a day. It rained all this past week and it's supposed to start again tomorrow. Thursday or Friday though it's supposed to return to spring weather and sunshine, and I can continue trying to get skin cancer to look more Spanish. Awesome.

Lisbon, Madrid, Segovia

Apologies again for the delay since my last post, but I've been without an internet connection for the better part of the last week and a half. But now I have lots of cool things to share with you all!

Last Thursday after classes ended, I flew out to Lisbon, Portugal to spend the weekend there with one of my best friends from Vassar, Rachel Fink. While I had a cold for the entire time, we still had a blast, and Lisbon is so pretty (as, I'm realizing, most of the Iberian peninsula seems to be). I'm still working on uploading all my pictures from spring break forward, but hopefully they'll be up by the end of the weekend. The weather was beautiful and in the low 70s most of the time. We also made friends with these 4 random guys who had studied abroad together and, fortunately for us, all spoke English. So Archie the Scot, Luca the Italian, Artur the Pole, Olaf the German, Fink, and myself hung out a few times and were generally ridiculous human beings. The really cool thing about these guys was they didn't try and pull any inappropriate crap. I love Spain, but sometimes the things that Spanish men will say or do are pretty shocking, and not in a good way.

But I digress. We saw the sights in Lisbon and then on Sunday Fink & I both headed back to Madrid, where we shared a hotel room until Wednesday night. It was so great getting to show her some of Madrid and a little of my cultural experience. We had dinner with my host family one night, which was hilarious. Luis was in rare form, and Pepita kept telling him things like "Living with you is like living with a child." It made me feel right at home.

So Wednesday night after saying goodbye to Fink I got to come back to Pepita & Luis's house. I love traveling, but sometimes it's nice to just home come to your own bed and your own room. Since wednesday we've been in the middle of a mini heat wave, and the temperatures have been in the mid to high 70s. Wednesday afternoon with Fink and then Friday afternoon with Annie and Rachel, my friends from the VWM program (I seem to know a lot of Rachels) we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went to Retiro, one of Madrid's parks, where we rode the paddle boats on the pond. I even have a little color in my face now and have lost some of my usual Eastern-European winter death glow. It's pretty great. It's supposed to drop down to the 50s or low 60s and rain tomorrow though, so I may have to go out for a run today and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.

Oh, and yesterday there was a program day trip to Segovia, a town about an hour and a half outside of Madrid. It's small and pretty, and has the castle that inspired the Disney logo you see before every disney movie, so that was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I was so exhausted the night before from traveling & waking up early for classes & catching up with friends that I forgot to charge my camera. So I managed to get all of 1 picture (fortunately, it was of the disney castle) before my camera died.

I think that's most of the good stuff. I did end up booking a four-day vacation with some of my friends to Sevilla and Tarifa (read: the BEACH!) for the first weekend in May, and we have a 3 day program excursion in another 2 weeks to La Rioja and País Vasco. other than that, life here continues as usual with classes, very little homework, and exploring Madrid as much as possible.

Oh Shit, I Forgot to Mention Jesus!

Jesus is a big fucking deal during Semana Santa, as you'd probably expect since it's the week leading up to and including Easter. It became a family joke after visiting the Prado and seeing lots of religiously themed art that we were seeing a lot of the Sagrada Family (Mary and Jesus, and occasionally Joseph. But mostly Mary and Jesus).

So we saw some of the Sagrada Family in Madrid, but in Barcelona we pretty much got stalked by Jesus. He was everywhere. Especially on Good Friday. On Good Friday they have these massive processionals at night that last forever and include a series of large brightly covered floats that depict the various stages of Jesus dying (carrying the cross, on the cross, dead on Mary's lap, etc.). Also, the people who walk in front of the floats wear what can only be described as black KKK hoods and cloaks. While I'm sure that these guys had their outfits way before the KKK did, it's still a little unnerving to see these black hooded figures carrying around floats with a dead Jesus. When it wasn't creepy though, it was pretty.

Semana Santa!

So it's been a while since my last post, but I've been traveling for the past week or so with my parents and it was great. No work, family time, and fantastic food is a killer combination. We spent the first half of break in Madrid going to eat (a lot), exploring some of the art museums (the Prado is kind of overrated), seeing the royal palace and plaza mayor, and lots of other cool things. Oh yeah, and we had dinner with my host family, so it was my parents, me, my two host parents, and their son José. It was so cool to have my two families in the same room, and even though it was a little difficult with the language barrier (my parents speak no spanish and my host parents speak no english), José and I did a decently good job of translating for everybody.

After Madrid we went to Barcelona, which was so beautiful and also involved a lot of eating. Barcelona is nestled against some small mountains and looks out over the Mediterranean, so the views from Parc Güell, a park designed by Gaudí up on a big hill/small mountain, were completely breathtaking. Also, Gaudí must have been on some heavy duty drugs. In addition to various buildings and cool architectural designs in Parc Güell, we saw the cathedral of the Sagrada Familia which Gaudí also designed. It's the craziest building ever and a very modern take on a cathedral, but it's really pretty. Even though Barcelona was great, I'd still have to say that my heart belongs to Madrid.

Classes started again on Tuesday and it was really nice to see all the people from my program and catch up with everyone. And now that I've had two days of back-breaking work (ha), I'm rewarding myself by going to Lisbon after classes tomorrow/today (thursday)! I'm going to be meeting up with Fink, one of my best friends from vassar, and we'll both come back to Madrid sunday night so she can see Madrid for a few days. I'm SO excited.

Also, this is pretty unrelated to Madrid, but I know where I'm living next year for senior housing! I can't wait to live in a house with people I like where I can cook my own food and not have to share a bathroom with freshman boys who leave their shaving stubble in the sink every morning. Gross.

Also also, I'm trying to plan a trip with my friends during our 4 day weekend in May. Hopefully we'll be spending two days in Sevilla and two days in some town with a beach. I don't especially care what town it is. I just want to go to the beach.

It's a pretty rough life, huh?

Is it spring break yet?

So I took my two exams. I studied really hard and they still just blew me away. Fortunately I have a date to go shoe shopping with Annie tomorrow. If I'm gonna fuck up my grades, I'm at least gonna rock some killer footwear. Yeah.

Aside from destroying my GPA, it's been a pretty good week so far. Monday I went out to luch with Annie and one of her friends to this Asturian restaurant (Asturia is one of the regions in spain) where you can get a whole roast chicken and a bottle of cider for under 10 euros. While pretty much all the food here is phenomenal, it's almost never cheap. Last night after I finished studying I went out to this cozy little bar with Rachel and one of her friends from vassar who's visiting now, then popped over to Café Populart, which may have become my favorite jazz/blues club in madrid. Last night they had a great blues band with a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and harmonica player (harmonicist?). And the guitarist sang in English. Sometimes it's really nice to hear your own language out in public, though I honestly shouldn't complain. I've been speaking way too much English recently and not enough Spanish.

But I'm sure this will change when my parents get here on monday and I have to translate everything for them (love you guys). Semana santa (the holy week before/including easter) starts this weekend and I can't wait to show my parents around madrid before we head off to barcelona! I just hope they can adjust to the fact that Spanish dinner time is their American bedtime.

That's pretty much it for now. I may or may not be going to Sevilla this weekend, depending on if I can find a hostel and someone to travel with me. I'd love to go back to Andalucia where the weather's even warmer and explore a new town for a few days. We'll see how that works out.

Un abrazo muy fuerte (a very strong hug, or a colloquial way of ending a letter. Go colloquial class!)

So this one time I saw the president of Spain

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, current president of the government and presidential candidate in today's elections, came to speak at the UC3M on Tuesday. And it was incredible. I've never been to anything like that before. He spoke about a lot of really important topics like affordable education for all, women's right to work at the same jobs and earn the same pay as men, and working towards a society free from prejudice and xenophobia. He also promised not to send a single Spanish soldier to Iraq (good for him!). Even though I'm not a Spaniard by any stretch of the imagination, it made me proud and hopeful to hear Zapatero saying these things, whether they're just campaign promises or not. If I could vote today (who has elections on a Sunday?), I'd totally vote for him. What was also really cool was that I could understand EVERYTHING he said. It was such a great feeling.

Oh, and I forgot to mention in my last post that Pepita "outed" me Friday morning. I was eating breakfast in my usual semi-conscious morning state while she was preparing lunch. She was making a fish soup and telling me how fish is pretty typical for lent, and out of nowhere she asks me what religion I am. Once I stopped choking on my toast, I hesitantly told her I was Jewish, to which she responded, "And you eat everything?!" Clearly she's never seen the Proujansky family in action.

More recently, I spent this weekend traveling with the program to Salamanca and León, two cities northwest of Madrid. Salamanca was really pretty and old. The second oldest university in Spain is there (founded in the 1200s- it's a little older than Vassar), and it's all stone that must have taken forever to sculpt. León was cool too, we went to this modern art museum and visited a cathedral for a change, but it was beautiful and full of stained glass.

And now I'm back in my apartment, and I have two exams to study for this week. They're going to make me earn my spring break...

I love the weekend!

Weekends are great for so many reasons. There's the obvious no classes and no homework thing. But it also means I get to have lunch with Pepita and Luis. Luis is adorable and usually forgets half of the things we've talked about before. Fortunately he only forgets the really good things, so every time I tell him that I like football (soccer), he gets really excited. He also can't remember that I'm single. The last time I told him this, he said (in spanish, clearly), "Forget Spain. I'm going to America."

I also get to explore the city in my free time. Thursday night I went to see a play in Spanish, and I pretty much understood nothing, but the spectacle part was cool. Yesterday I rode the teleferico (cable-cars) with my friends Rachel and Annie and got to see some great views of Madrid and one of its parks. Then for dinner I went to this mind-blowing Peruvian and Colombian restaurant. Once our meals came, everybody was just dead silent because we were too busy eating. It was fantastic. And today I got to see the Rastro, Madrid's weekly flea market, which is MASSIVE and kind of overwhelming. Overall I got to see a lot of cool new things this weekend.

Things I forgot to mention in my last post: I've now started an exchange with this guy Anto, who my friend Tatiana did an exchange with when she was in Madrid. It's awesome. We hang out for about an hour and spend the first 30 minutes speaking Spanish and the second 30 minutes speaking English. The second half is almost as hard as the first half- it's really hard to switch from entirely english to entirely spanish so quickly. There were several times he would ask me a question in English and I responded in Spanish. I'm sure I'll get better as we talk more though.

I also started having an English conversation once a week with this 16 year old Maria, whose cousin Pepa is one of the monitores. She's really sweet and awesome and speaks pretty good English. She wants to go see a movie in English sometime, which sounds just fine with me. Also, it's really nice to have a job again.

Classes, the weather, and other things that are completely ridiculous

Classes work very differently here. For example, I spend a lot more time in class here than back at Vassar. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have 5 hours of class, though for most of April that will jump up to 7 hours of class. But on the bright side, homework here is mostly a joke. I have had no reading to do. None. And I'm used to having to read a chapter or more of a psych textbook for each class period. It's kind of great.

The weather continues to be unseasonably warm. Yesterday I walked around campus in a short -sleeved t-shirt and no jacket. I know global warming's bad but it sure does make winter a lot more tolerable.

I think the Spanish presidential race can also qualify as something that is completely ridiculous. Or not so much the race itself as much as the fact that on Tuesday, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the current Spanish president and incumbent in the race, will be visiting my university. I am going to have a chance to see the Spanish president in person. I think I'm getting more than my money's worth from this program.

And the last ridiculous thing. Yesterday was Melanie's birthday, so we all went out to celebrate. I did not get back until 5 AM and then I had class at 10. Never, never again.

I am a bad person... and it's so much fun!

Nothing makes me more upset over here than seeing large noisy crowds of drunk Americans doing everything they can to perpetuate the stereotype of the stupid drunk American.

Last night my friend Rachel and I were waiting outside the metro station for another friend of ours, and there was a group of four or five drunk American college students and 2 drunk and creepy American men in their 40s. Being the dumb Americans that they were, they thought we might have been Spanish, and decided to ask us where the nearest bars were. And being the pain in the ass that I am, I lied and told them we were Spanish and that we spoke no English. Clearly that will teach them a lesson.

But when I'm not being a horrible bitch to dumb Americans, I'm usually in class or exploring the city. I started my AL (a regular university class with real Spaniards), history of film, this week and it's awesome. The professor talks a little fast and I usually have trouble understanding what the Spanish students are saying, but I love the class. I think it's going to be really helpful and the topic is so interesting. On Thursday we watched some of the first short films ever made, including the first sci-fi film, which was completely ridiculous. The only bad thing about the class is there's an oral presentation that's worth 20% of our grade at the end of the semester. That should be... interesting.

I also went for a run yesterday with Rachel through the Parque Oeste (West Park), which is all of 2 blocks from my apartment and is really pretty. We ran for 15 minutes before we realized that the unseasonably warm 60 degree weather shouldn't be wasted on running. So we decided to sprawl out on a hillside, which lasted for about 5 seconds before I realized we had sat down in a series of anthills. A couple old men walking through the park were pretty entertained as we tried to swat all the ants off and generally freaked out. After that, we walked to a grassy ant-free hill and actually got to relax that time.

Also, for anybody who's been trying to check out my pictures and wondering why there aren't any new ones, I'm really sorry. I've been trying to avoid looking like a tourist, but I think I'm just going to suck it up today and go take pictures of everything I can.

Whoa whoa whoa!

Not only are the words different in Spanish, but most of the noises are too. Take the title of this blog for instance. When you make that noise in English, it generally means "stop!" or "damn!" or something along those lines. So when I came into the apartment last night and Luis made that noise, I assumed I had almost hit him with the door and apologized. But whoa means something very different in Spanish. When I said "lo siento" he said "no no, como un perro!" (like a dog!). So now I know that "whoa" is the sound a dog makes, and also that my Spanish family is crazy in an endearing sort of way. It makes me feel right at home.

Que más... oh, Toledo! Toledo was jam packed with tours of churches, mosques, and a synagogue! It was surprisingly emotional being in the synagogue after seeing so many churches. The synagogue itself was small but pretty, and no flash photography was allowed inside, so what few pictures I did take are nothing stellar. Toledo also has a lot of silversmiths and other people who work with metals (I feel like there's a word for this, but I'm at the point now where both my English and Spanish are horrible). Not only do they have lots of pretty jewelry that I didn't have time to shop for, but they also sell lots of swords. Our tour guide told us that the swords in the Lord of the Rings trilogy were actually made in Toledo. Pretty cool (or, in spanish, superguay!).

After we got back to Madrid on Saturday, I went out with my friends and we ended our night with churros con chocolate at a 24-hour chocolateria. It was mind blowing. There's nothing better than fried dough dipped in a cup of melted chocolate at 4 in the morning.

Classes started today, and I really like the two classes I had, español coloquial and my language class. The profesoras are so nice, and after just one day I feel like I've learned a lot. Mónica, the profesora for my language class, told us that the first 5 minutes of every class will be reserved for questions we have that are non-grammar related, like "My señora organizes and goes through my things when I'm not home. How do I ask her politely to stop?" which is pretty cool.

Also, I was talking with Pepa, one of the amazing monitores, today between classes, and I'm going to help her cousin Maria with her English conversation skills. And get paid 12.50 euros (about $18.50) per hour, which is awesome because Madrid is not a cheap city. ¡Fantástico!

And finally, if you all are still reading this, feel free to write back to me by clicking on the comments button at the bottom of each post or just sending me an email. I want to know how everybody back home/scattered across the globe is doing too!

Chuck Norris doesn't learn to speak Spanish. Spanish learns to speak Chuck Norris.

This morning (ok, afternoon) when I was cleaning up my breakfast Luis was watching a Chuck Norris movie dubbed in Spanish. It was a good note to start the day on.

I'm settling into Madrid now and it's so amazing. Today I went to the Reina Sofia, an art museum, and visited the Picasso exhibit. It was really incredible and I can't wait to go back and explore more of the museum, especially since the program will reimburse us 100% for all museum visits. I also had my first real night as a madrileña last night, leaving the house at midnight and staying out until 6 when the metro reopened (It closes from 1:30 to 6. It blows). If Spaniards know one thing, it's how to have a fantastic time.

On the academic side of things, classes start Monday, and being the gigantic nerd that I am, I'm really excited for them. Somehow I managed to place into level 2 out of 5 for my language class (1 being the lowest and 5 the highest), and I'll be in the same language class as Melanie, my roommate from Granada. We're both pumped to have made it to avanzado (level 2), because now we can take colloquial spanish, a really useful class with a fantastic professor. Aside from my language and colloquial classes (CEHs), which are with other foreign students, I'll also be taking classes with Spanish students. My full semester class (AL) is history of film, and my two half credit classes (CHs) are about social movements in Spain during the 20th century and Spanish nationalisms. Everything sounds so interesting, and aside from wanting to learn a whole lot, I'm ready to settle into a schedule and know what I'll be doing for the next 4 months.

Other random things:
1. We have a new group of monitores here in Madrid who go to the Carlos III too. They're our age and are also extremely cool.

2. Spaniards know a lot about American politics. This morning Pepita bought me a copy of The Economist with Barack Obama on the cover.

3. I love Pepita. Tonight we had a conversation about art while she was standing in her pantyhose. She doesn't like Picasso, but she likes Velazquez. I know Velazquez is famous, but have no idea what he's done. I'll have to look into this.

4. Tomorrow the program is going to visit Toledo, a town about an hour and a half away. We will be visiting a synagogue. Yes, you read that right. Toledo used to have Jews.

5. In Spain beans are called judías (Jews). I have a couple ideas why, and none of them are especially flattering.

6. Spain has a smarter way of running presidential campaigns. Campaign season is strictly regulated to run from January of February until the elections in early March. Before then, there is no campaigning allowed.

And finally, I love Madrid. Come visit me.

I Have Internet Access! (And have officially given up on lyrics as titles)

There is so much to tell you all about Madrid and my past four days, so be warned, this post is going to be really long. Maybe take a minute to stretch or pop some pills before you try and read this all.

First, my host family. I love them so so much. I'm living with a woman named Pepita, who's 60 years old, and her husband Luis, who's 67 years old. Pepita talks very, very fast, which usually results in a lot of smiling and nodding on my part. Her son José came over to visit the first day I was here and told me (in English) that sometimes she talks too fast for even him to understand and not to worry. Also, Pepita is clearly the one who wears the pants. Whenever she tells Luis something or leaves the room, Luis salutes her or says ¨¡Sí, jefa!¨ (yes, boss!). Also Luis doesn't have his front teeth, I assume as a result of his smoking. Lots of people have really bad teeth in Spain since they smoke all the time. The concept of not smoking genuinely confuses some Spaniards. Oh, and I also met their nephew when he came over to install the internet (my hero!). He came over wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt courtesy of his American girlfriend and told me how he was in Philly once and ran up the Rocky steps. It's a small world after all.

Also, Pepita is a fantastic cook and serves me obscene amounts of food. Her food has also been much healthier and tastier than what I was eating at the hotel- I haven't had anything fried or stuffedwith ham in her house. She also has an orange juicer and makes me fresh squeezed orange juice in the morning. It's like living with a Spanish speaking grandmother. Last night we watched TV and the news together for a couple hours before dinner while she made some kind of repairs to a dress. We talked about transsexuals at one point, by which I mean she talked about them and I sad nothing, because I didn't really understand what she was saying and didn't want to say something offensive.

As for the city itself, it's awesome and big, but the metro system is a huge help- it's so clean and safe and easy to navigate. I haven't gotten to do a whole ton of sight seeing yet since I'm dealing with orientation now, but we went to the Retiro, a huge beautiful park, on sunday and I´ve explored my neighborhood, Moncloa, a little. The city is still a little overwhelming, but I'm learning fast how to get around and enjoying exploring the city.

And then there's the university I'll be attending, the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, which is actually not in Madrid proper, but Getafe, one of its suburbs. It's about a 20 minute metro ride followed by a 25 minute train ride followed by a 10 minute walk. Commuting seems pretty cool now, though I doubt it will seem so new and exciting once classes actually start on Monday. The campus itself is small but pretty and modern, and we're working on placement exams and picking classes now. Again, it's a little overwhelming, but I'm sure that once orientation week is over and I can just dive into classes etc. it'll seem a little more manageable.

Finally, as I mentioned before, I do have internet now in my apartment, so anytime you want to chat, skype, etc. just let me know!

When She Goes She's Gone

It's almost 3:00 AM over here in Spain, but I wanted to get one more post up before I go to Madrid, where I won't have internet access in my house (at least not at first, though my host family is considering getting it).

Tonight was our good-bye dinner with the monitores, our professors, our tour guide, and the program director and assistant director. It was a wonderful festive meal and we all went out afterwards to a couple bars (yes... with our professors and program director!) and celebrated the past 2 and a half weeks. That's one of the truly incredible things I've learned about Spain during the past few weeks- everything is a celebration. 35 years of military dictatorship and oppression makes you value your freedoms a lot more apparently. This is also the reason why couples are so physical in public, in addition to the typical European PDA. Kissing in public was illegal until the end of the dictatorship in 1975. It's been more than 30 years and people are still making up for lost time.

It's weird to be leaving already, and it was so sad to say good-bye to the monitores. They're all such awesome people and they've made the past two and a half weeks in Granada such an amazing experience.

OK, I should go to bed now so I can form semi-coherent sentences when I meet my host family tomorrow. I'll let you all know how Madrid is going as soon as I find an internet cafe.

Besos

Jesus is Just Alright With Me

Time is disappearing here in Granada and it's been another few fantastic days. We've had a few more free afternoons recently, and Monday night we took a trip to the baños arabes (Arab baths). It was this amazing spa-like setting with a bunch of hot pools and one cold pool that you would alternate in and out of. They also served us tea, and the program covered all of this since it was a "cultural experience." I love my program.

Tuesday afternoon we visited the Granada's Cathedral and Royal Chapel, which were impressive, beautiful, and overwhelmingly Catholic. Ferdinand and Isabelle are entombed in the Royal Chapel along with one of their daughters and her husband as well as one of their grandchildren. It was a little creepy to see five caskets in this little underground room and know that there were dead bodies in there. Aside from the dead bodies, the chapel also had several depictions of the Muslims handing over the keys to Granada to the Catholic king & queen (Ferdinand & Isabelle) as well as the forced conversion of Muslims to Catholicism. It was a grandiose and important building, but left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. After that we went to the Cathedral, which was a lot less creepy and very, very big. They also had a lot of paintings of the Virgin Mary, they really seem to dig her. But I guess that's understandable, there's a lot to dig about Jewish girls.

I've also started running with another girl on the program who is also named Rachel and is from Vassar. Today we went for a 45 minute run along the Genil, this little river in front of our hotel, as well as through the city a little. I have to say, running along a riverbank with the mountains in the background, wearing a tank top and shorts in early February is pretty fucking cool.

Friday and Saturday will be busy days, as Friday we take "final exams" (which are a big joke) for our orientation classes, have a farewell dinner, and get a bunch of information about academics in Madrid. Saturday we fly back to Madrid and go our separate ways for the night to meet our host families and settle in. It should be quite the adventure.

It's been one week

Hopefully this doesn’t bore you all to tears, but before I get into the good stuff, I figure I should talk some about my classes.

I just finished my first week of orientation classes, and they’ve been going really well. And by really well, I mean we never have homework and this course is pass/fail. Every morning we have two hour-and-a-half classes, one on Spanish history from 1931 onwards and the other on Spanish lit. I really love my history professor and my lit professor is just OK. It’s funny to look back now and think that I used to want to be an English major.

OK, I think that counts as enough about my classes.

After classes we generally have some kind of tour to go on, and we’ve seen some really cool places like the Alhambra and Generalife (Hen-er-all-ee-fey, not General-life as some of us thought). Thursday we had the day off though and I took one of the best siestas of my life. We’re all so exhausted from our very full days, and free time for us very often ends in a nap.

Friday night the monitores took us to a free outdoor rock concert literally right across the street from our hotel. I think that more free outdoor rock concerts would make the world a better place. Also, this past weekend we took a two day trip to Ronda, another town in southern Spain about 2 hours from Granada. As everything seems to be here, it was breathtakingly beautiful, complete with mountains, rolling hills, blooming flowers, and olive groves. Looking out from the edge of a cliff and seeing land for miles and miles is one of the most beautiful views imaginable. It’s a shame that America is losing what natural beauty it has to shopping malls and housing developments.

If I tried to tell you a coherent story about all the other things that have been going on this past week, this post would end up being obscenely long. So instead, I’m just going to tell you all the things I’ve learned during my first week and a half in Spain.

Spaniards smoke all the time and everywhere. People are allowed to smoke inside in most places, so going to a restaurant or a bar generally leaves my hair and clothes smelling like smoke. Spaniards also really dig ham, even in their vegetables.

Also, there are very few Jews in Spain. I guess expelling us all in the 1400s left a lot of Jews looking for real estate elsewhere. I ended up telling Cristina (the monitor) that I was Jewish, and she asked me whether Jews really had a lot of money or if it was just a stereotype. Clearly this wasn’t meant to be derogatory, she just plain didn’t know. It definitely took me aback a little though. Similarly, Spaniards have very different ideas about what is racist or offensive and don’t seem to have the same concern with political correctness that Americans do. One of the monitores made a comment about people of color that would be considered very offensive in the U.S. but is pretty socially acceptable in Spain. Another student on the program and I spent a good ten minutes trying to explain race relations in the US and why comments like that aren’t socially acceptable for us. Clearly, the language barrier wasn’t very helpful with that.

Personal space isn't really as big here as it is in the States either. If you're in someone's way, they will likely touch your waist or your shoulder to move you out of the way in addition to saying the Spanish equivalent of "excuse me." Acquaintances are greeted with a kiss on each cheek at the very least, friends will walk down the street holding hands, and lovers make out all the time in public. Spain is a very sociable and physically expressive place as far as I can tell.

Also, moving to a country with a different language is hard and scary as hell sometimes. It really gives me a whole new perspective on what it must be like for immigrants who come into the U.S. and often don’t speak English. Sometimes it’s difficult just knowing that I’ll be here for four months, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to know that you’d never go home again.

Overall things are still going great here in Granada, though most people (myself included) are ready to move to Madrid so we can finally settle in. Granada is beautiful and really fun, but it’ll be nice when I’m no longer living out of a suitcase and sharing a tiny hotel room with two roommates (even though I couldn’t have asked for two nicer people to live with).

El Mundo Nuevo

I started this blog with the intention of making the title of every post a song lyric, and while this title sticks with that goal, I'm pretty sure that no one knows what song this phrase comes from. Here's why.

So last night my roommate Melanie, her friend Isaac who's also on the program, and I all went to a flamenco club in one of the older sections of Granada. We got there pretty early, so we sat down in this intimate little cellar and enjoyed an hour of fantastic conversation before the show. Then, after this crazy gypsy lady introduced them, the bailaor, cantaor, and guitarrista (flamenco dancer, flamenco singer, and guitarist) walked past us onto the stage and promptly blew me away. Everything about it was so incredible that any attempt on my part to describe it would just be a disgrace to the art of flamenco. But, one of the phrases that I was able to understand when I wasn't completely awestruck and off on my own planet was "el mundo nuevo"- the new world.

When I finally thought that I couldn't be any more moved, they made sure to prove me wrong. The bailaor walked offstage and pulled Melanie onto the stage with him. She doesn't know how to dance flamenco, but she's in 3 dance groups at Wesleyan, so she definitely held her own. When she returned and the bailaor walked offstage with her, I made sure to look away so that I wouldn't become his next victim. It didn't work at all, and I've never been so happy to have failed so miserably. I danced and clapped onstage and felt like nothing else in the world could ever possibly compare to what I was doing right then. I returned shaking to my seat, completely incoherent and dazed. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life, and I spent the rest of the night reliving everything that had happened. So if you ever get the chance, go see some flamenco.

I could tell you now about everything I did today or about my classes, but it would all just pale in comparison. Guess you'll just have to keep checking back.

And you may ask yourself, "how did I get here?"

Hi everyone!

So much is already happening in Spain that I would have to flood your inboxes constantly to tell you everything I want to via email. Hopefully this blog will work out better, even though the idea of a blog isn’t very appealing to me.

OK, so, long story short- Spain is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. Like, all of it. Every place we visit is more beautiful than the last. Upon our arrival in Granada, we walked off the back of the plane onto the tarmac and were surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountain range (the original ones, clearly). Since arriving, we’ve explored Granada some, both with our program directors and monitores (more about them later), as well as in our precious little free time. It’s an amazing old city nestled against/on the mountains, which makes for beautiful views and long hikes at times. Most of the streets are cobblestones and all the buildings are short compared to American cities. Our hotel is on a street with a little river running parallel to it and a view of the mountains. Do you want to vomit yet from how pretty this place is? K, good.

The program itself is pretty cool too. I’ve met some cool new people and am rooming with 2 other girls, both of whom are really great. One of the girls, Melanie, is from Wesleyan and, like me, has only taken through intermediate Spanish. I think we both feel better knowing that we’re in the same boat. Our director, Michael, is a really nice guy too, but our monitores are really making our trip exciting. The monitores are these 5 students who are a few years older than us who live in Granada and are basically hired by the Vassar-Wesleyan program to take us out and show us a good time, as well as talk to us in Spanish. In fact, Ramón, León, Cristina, Cesar, and Alberto showed us such a good time on Friday night that we went out for tapas around ten, hit up a couple bars, went dancing at a discoteca, and didn’t return until 6 AM, which, by the way, is a fairly normal thing for Spaniards to do, since bars & clubs pretty much stay open until the sun comes up, if not later. Despite my poor command of Spanish, I’m managing to become friends with Cristina, who is such a fun person and very patient with all my incoherent Spanish.

Spanish culture is really cool and different too, especially when it comes to meals. Breakfast is around 8 or 9, lunch is between 2 and 4 and is the largest meal of the day with 3 courses, and dinner starts around 9 or 10. Sometimes for dinner we just go out and get tapas instead of a full meal. For those who don’t know, tapas are basically small dishes kind of like appetizers that you share with a group of friends while you have a drink. When you go out for tapas, you order a round of drinks for everyone and the food comes free with your drinks. Also, many places make you pay as a group instead of individually for tapas, which says a lot about their culture. Spaniards are very sociable people, especially when it comes to meals, which is good, because they usually last at least two hours.

Today we took a bus down to the southern coast, since Granada is only an hour or so away. We got to explore a castle and this huge cave, and then we had lunch on a mountainside overlooking the Mediterranean. With all the things we’re doing and all the beautiful places we’re seeing, it’s damn near impossible not to be nauseatingly happy.

Classes start tomorrow, at which point I can start improving more quickly (I hope). When we’re all in a group together, we generally speak English unless the monitores are around. Fortunately though, I’ve learned some key phrases to get by in Spain, and I’m at least semi-coherent most of the time. And for now, I'm more than OK with that.