Rhythm

My weeks here have now blended into a discernible rhythm. Not everything is so new, and there now is a norm that I can refer back to among the adventures I have here. The Monday through Thursday period is about as mundane as it gets here. My four days of classes are seldom broken up with adventures. Classes still continue to be interesting, but the subject matter is getting more usual for me; I'm not so easily excited about ever Spanish fact I acquire. I sometimes wander around the area around the school after or between my classes, but this usually only amounts to me buying some "fruto secos" which is a phrase that, to the best of my current knowledge, refers to dried fruits, nuts and candy. I'm still clarifying that though. Fruto secos literally means dried fruit, but the people I talk to seem to refer to nuts and candy also as fruto secos. Hrmm. Anyways, as far as I'm concerned it's a food group I can get used to.

Fridays tend to be filled with excursions. If I‚’m not going on a school trip or having a class visit to a museum, I‚’m adventuring with my friends. Mostly the first two, which is great because I get guided visits to all these fascinating places, and the guide, is usually my charismatic funny Spanish teacher, ƒÂ�ngel, who makes everything seem interesting and fun. He tells the most hysterical anecdotes and has a whole series of Spanish(*) mannerisms that are most amusing. (*He tells us they are Spanish hand gestures and the like, but I have yet to see any other Spaniards use them, and I also have him for Spanish class where instead of translating a word using English he acts it out very exaggeratedly so I tend to think they are mostly ƒÂ�nglelisms)

Saturdays are usually spent in similar fashion as Friday, either the return trip from an excursion or a minor excursion in Madrid or Majadahonda something. Majadahonda has a little market on Saturday mornings that is nice. Lovely fruit. Sometimes I go out on a Thursday Friday or Saturday night, usuallyally only one of the three and usually I come back early by Spanish standards, which is to say 1 or 2. I do like to go out at night because it is very much part of the culture, and usually, for me at least, it involves going out and just talking. I‚’m as likely to drink coffee in a bar at 11 at night as I am to have a glass of wine and then just sit back and converse, if I‚’m with Ana, as I am often am, we converse in Spanish and end up making friends with the waiters.

Despite the fun of an adventure and the fabulous picture taking that happens in the earlier part of my weekend, Sundays here are near and dear to my heart. If I go to Madrid it is to go the outdoor market and to walk around. I keep promising to visit museums on Sundays since many of them are free, but I have yet to make it to one. I love the el rastro, the outdoor market. It seems most everything is sold there. There is a plethora of new things such as books, bags, clothes, souvenirs, shoes, DVDs, tools, and everything. Then there is also a section (my favorite) that is old things. There are antique stores who set up outdoor tables and sell their things, and there are piles of old clothes being sold for very cheap. These stalls are set up next to each other and when I was there two ovendorsenders were competing with their prices for used purses. Further on in the used section there are what appear to be only individual household type sales (tag sales), they sell fewer things and of a more unusual assortment.

Last Sunday I explored several of Madrid's many parks. One of the one's I was in was so large and full of plush trees that I nearly forgot
I was in the middle of a bustling city. I felt both deep refreshing solitude and intrinsically connected to the people simply by sharing the same simple pleasure of a walk outside. The sun was shining, everything was green, it was quiet and yet full of life and I had no particular place to be. I just wandered around drinking in nature and relaxing. So nice.

I also love Sundays, el Rastro and the parks for the people, "la gente". Sundays are a day when all the stores are closed and everyone just goes outside. People go for walks with their family, lover, children, dog, alone, whatever. So many people are outside on Sundays, with no apparent place to go, simply being a fuerra (outside) is both the goal and the means of a pleasant afternoon.

PS. Sorry for the gaposis (Harrington-Woodardism) in the posts. What with the past two weeks being midterms, the malfunctioning of picture uploading on blogger and disappearance of my wireless internet in my room, it hasn't happened. but the good news is I'm stored up on stories so I should be posting again soon, knock on wood.

Faces to Names

In the spirit of keeping the promises, some pictures and descriptions of the people I've met here.

The lovely, outgoing, charismatic Deborah. I made fast friends with Deborah, it's hard not to, she loves people. This is her first semester in college, she's doing the two year program here and then she will be studying for two years in Boston (so when she comes to Boston I can show her around, not that she'll need it.) She's from Puerto Rico, but has been in Madrid since new years, and thus is a step or two ahead of the rest of us in her knowledge of the city. Truth is, it's probably less her early arrival and more her ease and self assuredness that navigates us around the city so effortlessly. She does not seem to be either as young as 18 or as new to college as a freshman. She's also my stylist, as if I need one.

Here I am with Sonia, a friend of Deborah's from when they were young, Sonia lives and studies in Madrid now. Sonia is witty and wonderful. The first time I met her I had lunch at her house with her grandparents and the cat meowing constantly for scraps of meat. Oh and she's a vegetarian. Her grandmother seemed to think it was incredible that two vegetarians existed. She helps me understand Spanish, and teaches me "real" Spanish, that fluent speakers actually use in addition to the words in a textbook.












She understands English very well, having studied it for 12 years, but she, like me and Spanish, is timid speaking it. I help her with her pronunciation. We have many funny miscommunications, but we always figure it out, eventually.

Rutu, below, is from Lowell Mass and goes to Suffolk in Boston. Actually, she's from India, she lived there until she was 12. She's fabulous. She out does my easy going nature, so when I hang out with her we always end up doing what I want to do even when I try my hardest to make her decide what we should do, somehow I always manage to show an inkling of what I would like to do and then that's it, she becomes set on it. She's also vegetarian and we've gone out to Indian food restaurants and vegetarian restaurants together. We've also gone shopping together enough that I might admit to her being a shopping buddy if that didn't sound too Beverly hills for me. She's very patient with me as I struggle to compromise a new found love of (I'm embarrassed to admit) shoes and shopping with my still same values (not wanting to buy leather, the guilt of consumerism, and the dislike of buying expensive/new things). There are not many people who would put up with my shopping-induced prolonged indecisiveness, and yet she does. Amazing. She's also invited me to an Indian Wedding, in India in 2008 and I really would love to go!!!













Also pictured Above with Rutu, Ana is the girl with me below. We got to know each other this past weekend during the trip to Toledo. I knew we were on the same wavelength when we were walking around Belmonte, a small castle town at 10 or 11 at night. The other girls we were with, all from the US, were worried about the "sketchiness" of every situacion, approaching each empty, road, old man and dog with paranoia. The trip to the small bowling ally/bar was in their ever repeated opinions, "so scary". Ana and I however, are of the opinion that although caution is required, it is important to get the most you can out of experiences and not prejudge them (and especially the people) before they have even had a chance to finish happening. Most importantly of all, we both firmly believe in meeting people from Spain, in order to better out experience in Spain. She is outgoing, adventuresome and full of life, which gives mean excellent adventure companion.

Best of all, she refuses to speak very much English, so when I am with her I speak a lot of Spanish, and it has been very good for me to practice with someone as understanding as herself. I make a ton of mistakes, but as a student of Spanish herself (for 5 years) rather than a fluent native speaker, she is very understanding of mistakes. (for that matter, so are most people I have met, but I am very embarrassed.) When I am with her I focus more on what I do know how to say and practice explaining ideas using the words I do know and gestures, as my Spanish teacher encourages, rather than being frustrated that I don't know the word that conveys the idea more concisely. It's been very good for me and has helped me build confidence in the understanding I do know, let alone all the words and verb conjugation she teaches me just in daily conversation. I really can't describe how good it has been for me. Maria Emilia noticed the difference right away, I came back from the weekend jabbering excitedly in Spanish, where previously my only Spanish sentences had been timid and calculated, or half in Spanish and half English. I can tell already that Ana and I will be doing many things together while we're here, and we plan on getting together in Boston next year to practice speaking Spanish together.

Speaking of Maria Emilia, I don't have any pictures of her yet. I'm working on it, but it is taking some persuasion, she doesn't like having her picture taken.

gobs of photos!!!

****DISCLAIMER**** I have yet to take any pictures of Madrid. During our school orientation they cautioned so strongly against looking like a tourist, and the risks that come with it that I have been to nervous to take out my camera yet. I am determined that with time and familiarity I will.

So the first place I visited was a town/city called Avila. It is this medieval fortress with this huge wall around it, inside is a town where people still live, with shops and cars and everything, and then also the city that has grown up outside the wall is also called Avila.
This first picture I didn't take (I got here if anyone cares) This is exactly what the wall did look like as we walked up the path to it. But here too I was fighting the tourist stigma, and as I watched a cluster of students all taking pictures of the exact same angle at the same time, I decided to let this one go. I offer it here as a reference point. It might not look like there is a city outside of the wall, but there is, on this side of the wall it was a little bit down the hill.
So then inside, over here on the right, we see that the (early) gothic cathedral that is literally built into the wall, which brings me to the reason for having a fortresses town on the top of the hill. Well during medieval times in the Iberian Peninsula, rather than having an extensive feudal system that you see in other European countries, it was a period called the reconquest. During that period, the christians spent 600 years reconquering the peninsula from the moors (Muslims) that had moved in from northern Africa. As they gained land further and further south they set up castles (and cathedrals) that served as refuge points when the moors tried to reconquer the land they had just held. So needless to say church and state were intrinsically connected, literally as the cathedral in Avila is physically part of the fortress wall. I love the satellite dishes on the roofs.

On the left over here we have a part of the cathedral wall. As I was told, the pinkish parts are the original wall and on the bottom left where it is grey is the current work that is being done to "maintain" it. To my extremely untrained eye the placement of what looks like cement blocks over the beauty of the stone seems clumsy and unfaithful to the nature of the building. But I really don't know what I am talking about so I'm going to stick to saying that I really like the way the stone looks around the windows. (Mom-perhaps Spain is the place to come to get terracotta marble tiles!)

Here you can see a little better the work they have done/ are doing.






On the other side of the wall, no one seems to care that this roof has fallen in.


View from the top of the city beyond the wall. --->

Sadly, Avila is the only real sightseeing I have done. It seems that everyone in my classes have been going to Paris and Morocco on their weekends, and I'm just not there yet, that added to my fear of taking pictures in the city means I have only Avila and Majarahonda, the suburb 20 kilometers outside of Madrid where I live, is all I have to offer you visually.



This billboard reads:
"Welcome to majadahonda, where you live"
Majadahonda is a nice bigish suburb. There are a ton of schools on my street and every morning all the little kids are everywhere. Everyone walks to school together, either parents walk their kids, or older kids walk younger kids or middle aged kids walk together, everyone is usually holding hands, it's adorable. There is also the little local shops that make me smile. There is this little office supply shop right on my street, and the man who runs it knows me by now, and he is so nice. He praises me the more Spanish I use and teases me when I resort to English (of which he knows some) because how do you describe paper clip?

There is also an Estanco, (literally meaning a tobacco shop, but here they are everywhere and where everyone goes to get metro tickets and stamps) where I have been so many time and been so frustrated trying to navigate my way through buying a metro pass (which involves getting a specific ID thing,) and there is one woman there who has been so patient and so kind to me every one of the many times that I went there confused and inarticulate. She and I were both relieved when at last I was able to pick up my pass.

My room, as I have mentioned before, is lovely. In order for you to fully appreciate my lovely little haven . . .




So yeah. I love it. It is so nice and peaceful, and as my roommate decided she wanted to be in the center of Madrid and not in Majadahonda, I now have it all to my self.

So that is pretty much my life. Or at least some of it. I will post some pictures of the people I have met here soon, but the above work of art has taken me a lot longer than I thought it would, and now it's time for class!!! All that info about the moors and the christians isn't coming from nowhere!!

More pictures to come!!

Phew.