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.