The Ravenclaw Common Room

January 19, 2013:

I was pretty sure I'd posted something since New Year's, but clearly I was wrong. Things, unsurprisingly, got busy. Starting New Year's Eve I worked 11 straight days at Potter, then my roommate Anna arrived and there was Ikea shopping to be done and then Ikea furniture to be built and more trips to Kmart and decorating and being excited and still going to work all the time.

Things are really coming along here! Our kitchen is furnished with a nifty expandable table that Anna and I constructed all on our own and real wooden (not plastic) chairs. The living room has become a little separate area with a loveseat we got for free from a friend of Anna's, and a blue and bronze (Ravenclaw) rug, and a coffee table and TV stand. Gifts from my mom arrived, some pots and pans and a toaster, so our kitchen is starting to be functional. Soon after its arrival the couch was draped in Anna's blanket that portray's Sirius's flight on Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban. I found blue curtains to match the rug, so the living room/kitchen is well decked out in blue and bronze, with a Ravenclaw banner between the windows.

My room now has a bed, dresser, and desk, constructed by myself and my friend Joe, whose screwdriver has saved all of our Ikea purchases from being half-finished piles of particleboard and screws. Having furniture is pretty exciting after over 2 weeks of just me and an air mattress. I'm actually pretty impressed with how well we pulled things together in such a short span of time. I will say, we did have the Ravenclaw banner and the Prisoner of Azkaban blanket before we had a kitchen garbage can, so we all know where our priorities lie. Anna and I have never pretended to be anything else though, and that is why we are perfect roommates. Well, that and we're both super neat.

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Well that never got posted either. January was a month full of moving, shopping (for the apartment), furniture building, and work.

February was full of work. And a visit from my mom! In her short time here she got to visit two of my workplaces - the Harry Potter exhibition and Fuerza Bruta, making her the only member of my family so far who has seen the show. We also spent a day doing the Broadway thing, catching performances of The Other Place starring Laurie Metcalf (of Roseanne and Steppenwolf) and The Heiress, with several famous people including David Strathairn, Jessica Chastain, and Dan Stevens, plus my favorite, Judith Ivey. Both productions were really well done and not things I would have sought out on my own, so go Mom. (Admittedly, we did try for rush tickets to Once and took a stab at lotto for Book of Mormon but it's what we actually saw that counts, right?) We also spent a day in New Jersey with family during the "big snowstorm" (read: regular snowstorm) that hit that first weekend in February, but Mom made it home okay after a couple canceled flights the same day. (I went back into the city to work.)

Also in February: the Phelps twins (who play the Weasley twins) came to Discovery. I didn't meet them; I was miserable for four days. The end.

Aside from Potter and Fuerza, I'm still teaching Sunday school, a constant joy, chalenge, and learning experience as I navigate working with a boisterous group of 6-10 kids ages 3 and 4. They are always a surprise, and perhaps sometimes I expect too much of them or am ambitions in our activities, but it's always worth a shot. I think people underestimate how astute and intelligent young kids really are, just because their vocabulary isn't as developed yet.

And, beyond Sunday school, I get to continue with another passion, stage combat. Twice a week I assist with the classes at NYU, where my teacher and fight master is training kids this semester in unarmed combat as well as rapier and dagger. I learn a lot just from watching the students learn, and even more when I get up to help them adjust mistakes. They ask questions that make me think more and watch better, and become more aware of those same things in myself so that I'm getting better all the time, even if I don't so much as throw a punch in class. Soon I'll also get to take a single sword class, testing in my fourth weapon with the Society of American Fight Directors in May. (I might recertify in RnD just to try and recommend, because I'm a stubborn perfectionist and I love RnD.)

Life is pretty good right now. Busy, the way I like it. There is a little bit of a gaping hole looming in late April, after the Potter exhibit closes and my almost-full-time job disappears completely, leaving me with "only" three part-time jobs, but I know something will come up. I'm pursuing some possible lighting gigs at the moment, working on a play (still, God, help me), and maybe, you know, I'll just take a couple weeks to relax a little before finding something for the summer. Who knows. What should be, will be.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the phenomenon/machine/enterprise/commercial entity/community/business thing that is Harry Potter a lot since I've been working at the exhibit, and I have tons of thoughts about it all now that I'm involved from this new perspective, but that is a post for another day. Perhaps Friday, when I actually have a day off, before I head to free nights at MoMa (which I haven't visited in nearly 3 years) and then Fuerza. (So when I say a day off, I mean the day time. Not, like, the whole day.)

Nox.

Perhaps Hallows is the Theme of this Post

There is no theme to this post. A few random thoughts before bed:

My roommates are watching some Justin Bieber documentary type thing, which made me realize another thing I like about 80s rock concerts: I am the closest thing there is to a screaming 13-year-old girl. Thank God.

Tonight is Halloween in New York City. So was last night, and so will be tomorrow. Monday and Tuesday might be sort of calm, and then it will actually, according to the calendar, be Halloween on Wednesday. NYC will always start celebrating Halloween on Friday, even if it's in the middle of the week. Nay, especially if it's in the middle of the week.

And as it gets closer and closer to the 31st, it gets harder and harder to tell who is or is not in costume.

And I'm working pretty much all day, all six of those days. Maybe if it's allowed at Fuerza, I'll bring back my Ziggy Stardust facepaint from two years ago for the show.

Whenever someone holds the exit gate open for me at a subway station, or allows me to pass in front of them to exit a train or my building, it is always a surprise to me. But I like that, because then I don't take it for granted.

I now work in Times Square in addition to changing trains there on my way to or from Fuerza, so I spend a lot of time in the Times Square subway station. Tonight there was a full band of five or six people performing "Twist and Shout" with a crowd of about 50 people watching them, and there was so much joy in the subway station. It was awesome.

Today I got to spend an hour or two organizing wands at the Harry Potter exhibition. There were three display cases and about ten different wands, and I got to decide which ones went where, making both aesthetic (based on box color) and dramaturgical (based on Hogwarts house or series importance) choices about placement. I hope I can show you pictures at some point, because it was way too much fun setting up the store today.

One of my fellow ushers told me tonight about a place in Chinatown where she got a massage today. $30/45 minutes, $40/1 hour. I think both in celebration of and because of this new job, I might try to go tomorrow in between rehearsal and Fuerza before my lower back craps out completely at 22.

Speaking Of...

In conjunction with last night's post, these are my activities for the day:

1. Watch last night's Daily Show and Colbert Report while drinking coffee. (unrelated)
2. Read about the new Rolling Stones single being released tomorrow.
3. Read a list of the Top 10 KISS songs of the 1970s (slow news day, apparently).
4. Discover there was a movie made in 1999 called Detroit Rock City about a KISS cover band: find movie online, prepare to watch said movie.
5. But first, apply to work at Harry Potter: the Exhibition when it returns to NYC November 1st. I may never have been so qualified for a job in my life. And by that I mean I hope my Harry Potter knowledge and enthusiasm makes up for my severe lack of retail experience.
6. Watch Detroit Rock City.
7. Read The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling, because I'm way behind since I won't take it out of the house. I don't want anything to happen to it.
8. Go to work at Fuerza.
9. Buy groceries at Trader Joe's
10. Come home, read some more, go to bed.

AWESOME DAY. This is what my days should always be like.

Nostalgia?

This post probably isn't going where you think it's going.

I was chatting with a friend of mine today and he called the rock shows that I go to "nostalgia concerts." (It should be mentioned he was born in 1976.) So I thought about that label, because clearly for me, going to an 80s rock concert is not motivated by nostalgia, since I was never alive in the 80s, unless you're using the conservative definition of "life." Which I'm not. But I get the idea that for people who are somewhere between 15 and 25 years older than me, that may be exactly what such an event is. There are definitely guys in their late 30s, early 40s (or older) at these shows who want to relive their teens and 20s, and they bring their kids who are now like eight or twelve, and the whole family paints their faces with KISS make-up. Or they bring their girlfriends and get really drunk but pay very little attention to the music, and occasionally stare at me, because my presence is inexplicable to them. This is understandable since the demographic at these shows is usually 35-50 (and 5-12), and also heavily male-leaning, but there was a guy a row in front of me in Hartford who turned around every half hour or so not in a lecherous way, but with a look of confusion and/or amusement on his face. Out of the tens of thousands of people at the concert, I saw less than a dozen who were within ten years of my age by the look of it.

So maybe for those people it is about wanting to relive "the good old days" (although I've heard they weren't so good). But for me, this is about going to hear the music I like and see the bands I like now. I'm trying to think of bands/artists formed in the last 10-15 years I'd pay money to see live (which is a much more specific thing than "contemporary artists I vaguely like).

I've been thinking for a couple minutes now and the only thing that came to mind was maybe Maroon 5, maybe, and I guess technically I did sort of see them live at Ravinia last summer, but we couldn't actually see them. And that was before "Moves Like Jagger" came out, so really it doesn't count.

Maybe Pink, since she's still around, I imagine it'd be interesting, although I don't really know her music anymore.

Anyway you get where I'm going with this. I'd rather see Elton John, Led Zeppelin (please get back together (they won't)), Bruce Springsteen (I know, I know, I missed it), the Rolling Stones (God I hope they do that show they have rumored to be planning in Brooklyn), et cetera.

The point, really, I think, is that I don't believe the bands are doing this out of nostalgia for earlier decades. I can't imagine Mötley wants to go back to the 80's. They probably couldn't survive them a second time. This is still about making new music. KISS's new album, Monster, came out last week. While the review I read said the songs probably won't make it past the tour supporting the album, I think the single is as good as any of their stuff from the 70s, and they've got to keep making new music.

I keep thinking about what it must be like to still be constantly performing songs written thirty or more years ago. In some interview I read, Nikki Sixx mentioned that when they brought Vince Neil in to sing for the first time, he sang "Live Wire," and they knew that he was it. And he said they've played that song at every single gig ever since. That's 31 years of playing that song (give or take some years in the 90s when they were all fighting or in rehab). I've tried really hard, but it's rather difficult at age 22 to imagine what it's like to keep performing something for a longer time than I've been alive. But maybe I've in some ways talked myself out of my own point because they're playing those songs from thirty years ago because that's what the fans want to hear. KISS was extremely prolific for a decade so their catalogue is extensive and I don't know it as well, but I know Mötley has nine studio albums, and I know they only play material at their shows off of the (five) releases from the 80s and their most recent album from 2008. There are three albums (1994's Mötley Crüe, 1997's Generation Swine, and 2000's New Tattoo) that are completely ignored. Their eponymous album was never that popular because it's the one that doesn't feature Vince Neil on vocals, and Generation Swine is just not very good, but the only explanation for New Tattoo being overlooked is that it lands in the middle ground between the classics and their newest material. I think Saints of Los Angeles (2008) is as good as 1989's Dr. Feelgood, but it will be interesting to see when their new album comes out in 2013 if they will continue to tour with material from Saints.

This analysis is a much longer breakdown of a pretty brief topic of conversation, but that evolved into a discussion of Harry Potter and the generational need for something that teaches us that it won't be easy but if we fight for what we believe in, things will be okay. For my friend, as representative of gen X, that was Star Wars. Clearly for 90s babies (I abhor the label "millennials") it was Harry Potter. And now I wonder if I will be the equivalent of those middle-aged guys at Crüe concerts, reliving my childhood at conventions or comic con (I probably won't go to comic con). And I wonder if there will be those two or three random kids who are 20 years younger than me, and if I'll be totally baffled by their presence.

As I've said before (though maybe not on this blog), Harry Potter will never be for another generation what it was for mine, because they won't have to wait. I was ten when Goblet of Fire came out, but thirteen by the time Order of the Phoenix was released (since JK Rowling went off and got married and had a baby, like that was more important, in those three years). Yeah try telling a ten-year-old now that they have to wait three years to read the next book in a series. No way. Not now that it exists. There will be no waiting, no speculation, no midnight release parties, no early-days-of-the-internet community bonding. The anticipation, the theorizing, the community built up around those things, cannot be recreated, and that makes me feel awfully lucky to have been a part of it. There's a really wonderful book called Harry, A History I read a few summers ago that catalogues this experience and I guess for kids to read that will kind of be what they get to understand, the way I read band autobiographies to vicariously live through the pages into the 80s.

I can watch youtube videos of concerts, and read books by Nikki Sixx and Gene Simmons and get some idea of the 80s, but I can't live it. So it's not nostalgia. Audiences now aren't like they were in the 80s, tickets are expensive and the people with the most money (or the fanciest friends!) sit in the front instead of the people who care the most fighting to the front like in the days of general admission. (At the Rock and Roll hall of fame I saw a ticket for a KISS show in 1975 that cost $6 for general admission at the door.) So what this "scene" was in the 80s and was for that audience in the 80s isn't what it is for me in the 21st century. Just like Harry Potter won't be for kids now (because it's been fifteen years almost already) what it was for me in 1998. But that doesn't mean that either thing is any less amazing, or won't continue to serve a purpose.

Maybe this is a weird parallel to draw. It's probably one no one else would put together, but it makes perfect sense to me. Cultural phenomenons evolve. Their place in society changes. And that's kind of weird, and realizing I'm getting to the point where things that are quintessential to my childhood are becoming something people would call "nostalgic" is kind of freaky, but it's okay. I said my childhood ended when the last movie came out ("It all ends 7.15.11") and I was only sort of but not really joking. So I guess now I like Harry Potter as an adult?

We end with Harry Potter, so maybe this did go where you were thinking. Whatever I'm gonna live with Anna and if we get an apartment like the ones I've been looking at it will have a fireplace that probably doesn't work that we will turn into a Harry Potter puppet castle. And I will play the metal version of the theme song all the time. So, just, you know, know what to expect when you come over.

Gypsyhood

Here's the facts. Since I moved into my first dorm on Third Avenue in late August of 2008, I've moved a total of twelve times. Twelve times in four years. Five of those times were in the last year, thanks to that time when I moved to Spain for a bit.

Post-grad as I've mentioned, I've become a bit of - okay quite - a gypsy. I haven't lived in the same place for more than four months since late mid-2011. After four months in Madrid, I was home for a month, then in an NYU dorm for four months, then in Europe for two weeks, then in New Jersey for a week, then in a sublet on Roosevelt Island for six weeks, then home for six weeks, then couch surfing in Brooklyn for two weeks, and now I'm living in Harlem for three months.

WHY?

It's a valid question. I've had older friends tell me that everyone goes through a kind of gypsy period after graduation. I responded to one friend, yeah but I'm doing it more than everybody else. But I tend to think I do most things I do with a more-ness compared to most people. In any case, the people I know that have moved frequently after graduation still aren't moving this often. Theirs is more a case of, "Brooklyn is too far, I want to move back to Manhattan," or "Manhattan is too expensive, screw this I'm moving to Brooklyn." My year of living out of suitcases has not been that. Actually I've found it kind of interesting to live in different parts of the city, particularly Roosevelt Island since I know a total of three people who've lived there (and I've now lived with two of them).

I didn't lease an apartment after graduation because in February of this year I went to visit my cosmic twin (really, we're the same person) in Philadelphia where he now lives with his boyfriend. I found out while I was there that they were planning to move to NYC and was offered the other bedroom in this hypothetical apartment. I'd always hoped my friend would move back to the city and we'd live together, so I was thrilled. As the spring wore on, the hypothetical moving date kept floating further away. So over the summer, I subletted and then spent some time at home, hoping the boys would figure things out. In the meantime I ended up subletting this place in Harlem where I am now. I just didn't want to buy furniture and sign a lease just to have to ultimately move that furniture and either find a subletter myself of have to wait to move into the apartment with my friends.

So I took on a gypsy life, drifting from neighborhood to neighborhood, sublet to sublet, suitcases in hand on trains and busses all over the city. As I well-documented, I spent my time at home ruthlessly getting rid of anything I could to make ultimately hauling my possessions across country easier. I don't know what size my future apartment will be, but my stuff ought to fit. I believe it would fit into this bedroom I'm in now, and it's not that big.

All this is to say I had an impromptu lunch with my friend today who happened to be in the city for an audition, and he told me he's going to be performing a cruise for essentially the next year. What that means for me, as I was already coming to discern, is that I'm not going to be living with him anytime in the near future. The new roommate search is on.

My first thought was my friend Anna who is currently studying abroad in Madrid just as I did last year. Frequently when kids come back from abroad studies they move into apartments instead of back into NYU housing. (This is much cheaper for essentially anyone who isn't me, who had her housing paid for by a scholarship.) As it turns out, Anna is in the market for a roommate herself as her housing plans seem to have fallen through too, so it looks like I've already hopefully solved half the battle. Anna is quite possibly the only person I've ever met who I would dare to say is as big of a Harry Potter fan as I am. She's two years younger than me and a Playwrights student, and we started talking on facebook the summer before she came to NYU because we both had Potter pictures in honor of the coming film (Half-Blood Prince at the time). I remember in one of our first conversations we analysed the latest production stills that had just been released in the nerdiest possible detail. I know I have friends that would have done that with me when we were twelve, but I don't know about at age twenty.

This is far in the future, as we won't live together until January, and we just started talking about this within the last 24 hours, but I'm excited. It's going to be the best. Have no delusions about what you will walk into if you visit our apartment. Let me give you only this picture: In our "about me" sections on facebook (or "acerca de mí" because our facebooks are in Spanish), I have "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Anna has "Nitwit. Blubber. Oddment. Tweak."

Friendships have been built on far less.

As Anna and I were talking, I said "I guess I've been a gypsy for no reason," but then amended it to add "Or at least not the reason I thought," which is really the truth. I can see now, on what is probably (hopefully?) the tail-end of my gypsydom (I'm not sure there's a noun for it) that even though I thought I was wandering New York for the sake of my friends, I have of course been wandering New York (and the world, really) for the sake of myself. This blog started because I went to Madrid, and I went to Madrid because I was determined to broaden my experience of the world and gain greater perspective about humanity. That happened. But it continued when I came back to New York and kept living out of suitcases for another year. As I've said before, I've learned a lot about who I am, what I need and don't need, what I value, what I can let go of, who cares about me, what matters. Who are you without all your stuff? You're still you. You really are. I really am.

So, you know, it seemed crazy, it still kind of seems crazy, that I've had no real permanent address for ages, that I've had to have mail sent to Illinois constantly even though I've spent cumulatively about a year there in the last three, but it's okay. I don't think I would trade it to have had an apartment back in May. Yes, I am absolutely excited to buy a bed and have a room I get to decorate myself (which will still include Harry Potter posters, of course) and having keys I get to keep and being able to give people an address that I'm going to still be at in more than three months time. One day, I will actually change my residency to New York, but apparently that will only be after I've already lived there for five years.

All I'm really saying is I still believe everything happens for a reason, even if it isn't always the reason we expect. That's life.

Morning Musings (An Organizational Rant)

It's been so hot I've had a hard time sleeping lately. I woke up around 5 am this morning and saw golden light on my walls coming from the window, and I looked out and saw this. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see 5 am.

 

Look at it reflecting off the river!

So anyway, living in this unairconiditioned box, in combination with essentially living for an additional seven weeks out of the suitcase I packed for two weeks, has got me thinking a lot about things I need and things I don't. Apparently I can get by without air conditioning. I guess I can also get by without solid nights of sleep (at least so far). Yes, I've been wearing the same six shirts for the last month and a half. And yes, the only three pairs of pants I've had to wear basically since I left for Spain in August really do need replacing now; they get worn out a lot faster when you have less options. And not a day has gone by that I have not rued sending my other pair of shorts home, thinking, "I don't need two pairs of shorts for two weeks in Europe." My God I need to buy another pair of shorts. But apparently I don't need a lot of the clothes I know I've got sitting in drawers at home. And I don't know what all that stuff in my desk is that I haven't really seen since last summer, but I hope that when I get home I will remember I got by without it for a year and probably don't need it anymore.

I'm sure some of this attitude comes from my mom, the home organizer. And some of it comes from being a type-A neat freak (thanks for that, too, Mom), but I've still always had a lot of stuff. It's just been well-organized stuff. And now I don't want so much of it. Some things have been a little complicated since I ended up with an unexpected six weeks in New York, but mostly things are a lot simpler with only a carry on's worth of belongings. Now, don't get too excited Mom, I think part of why I'm so comfortable in this room I'm living in is because it has two bookcases packed to the gills with books, and though I go through my collection once or twice a year and always find a couple things to toss, we all know I have a harder time parting with books than with anything else.

Do you know how weird it is to be reading library copies of Harry Potter books? This may be a first.

I really am trying to think of what all the stuff in my very full room is. I have fifteen years of dance costumes in my closet, most of which I'm going to get rid of. I'm trying to sell my American Girl dolls that I have held onto for ten years even though I only ever wanted one (which I bought myself) so that I could do its hair. I finally decided to try to sell my flute that I played in junior high and then only a handful of times in the seven years since. Before I started college I condensed all my grade school crap into a single cardboard box.

There is a nagging feeling growing inside me that a lot of the random things cluttering my room are bits of my collection of Harry Potter memorabilia, which I can say from 800 miles away I won't part with. I mean, my eighteen Harry Potter books alone (not counting Tales of Beedle the Bard or Quidditch Through the Ages/Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them) take up plenty of space. And space, if you didn't know, is something of a scorching commodity in New York. It's a hotter than this weather we've been having, and that's saying something.

So, we've established Potter is important. My photos and scrapbooks are important. Minimal clothing is important. The books stay. But eventually I've got to haul all this stuff across half the country, so most of the rest of it has got to go. (I can already feel this whole thing coming back to haunt me in a few weeks when I get home.)

Join me, friends! You know you've got a drawer where you throw the junk you don't know what to do with and plan to go through "at some point." Which is never. Believe it or not, I have one of those drawers. I do. And the only thing I can promise you is in it is some Harry Potter calendars from 2002. (I'm not kidding.) Don't think of it as summer cleaning, think of it as lightening up your life! Even in Europe I got tired of lugging the suitcase around. I think I wore all but two things that I had packed, and yet I still didn't want to be dragging around as much stuff as I had. So I definitely want to get rid of the excess in my life before I have to pack it into the back of an SUV and probably inevitably haul it up a narrow staircase while my mom reminds me this is the fourth time she's helped me move into a New York apartment.

And I promise you don't need all those school papers you're keeping. Just stop it. It's taking up so much space, and it's utterly useless. I gave my brother my calculus notes years ago and threw the rest away, with the exception of things I wrote. And don't keep those readings you never read that you think you will later because you want to be well-read and intellectual. Maybe that was just something I did but we'll pretend it's not. You haven't read them yet. You're not going to. And if it was given to you to read in a class, I would bet you could find it in a book or maybe even on the internet if you're suddenly possessed with the urge to read The Prince or something.

I care about skylines and pink heavens at five am and having a comfortable bed and being surrounded by books. And I care way more about my family and friends than anything. And, okay, I take an unreasonable amount of pride in the absurdity of my collection of utterly useless Harry Potter things. But part of what studying abroad did, and graduating did, and living on my own with all this free time has done, is help me figure out who I am, at least for now, and I am not all that stuff. Because I've been me for the last ten months without it. Out with the old. In with (less) new.

And the best thing about that sky? It takes up all the space in the world, but no space at all in my room. :)

Stepford Island

So then what happened?

Did I tell you that the day after I got to London my friend introduced me to a friend of hers who was looking for a subletter? Did I even mention that when I was packing during graduation week I had to sort my things into stuff staying in NYC, stuff going home, stuff going to Europe, and stuff going to New Jersey? Yeah, that's right. Try sorting your belongings into four locations while graduating from college and trying to host your family and preparing for two weeks of travel.

Aaaanyway. So I skyped with this girl from Kerry's apartment and it seemed like a good deal - the place was in Astoria, with other theatre people, and since she was leaving all her stuff, she was only going to charge me half of her rent, making the place really cheap, and the timing was right. Great!

We got back from Paris, left JFK, and began the ridiculous public transit trek (requiring two trains and a bus, not including the airtrain from the airport to the subway) and finally got to my new home for the next six weeks. We were looking forward to putting our stuff down, maybe showering, taking a nap. I was looking forward to not having to pack and unpack every few days for the next six weeks.

Suitcases hauled upstairs, unlocked the door, got inside. The place was filthy. I tried to be positive about it, but after sitting in the living room (on the trunk that they used as a coffee table, because I wouldn't sit on the couch), I decided I couldn't live there. I didn't want to be paying money to basically sit on a loft bed for six weeks. So Mom called my aunt in New Jersey, and we ran away via one more subway train and a NJ transit train.

Let's take a look at this picture: Lindsay has no driver's license, no debit card, no credit card, and no address to which to have new ones sent. Lindsay had already called to have a new debit card sent to the Astoria apartment, which she now has to cancel, since she doesn't think the roommates she abandoned are likely to want to send it to her, and she wouldn't know where to have it sent anyway. Yes, life feels like crap.

Mom changed her flight (for free, yay southwest!) so that she could stay and help me figure things out for a few days. I decided to try one more sublet option I remembered at the last minute and decided if that didn't work, I was giving up and going home to Chicago until further notice.

The sublet was on Roosevelt Island. Don't worry, no one knows where that is, I didn't either - it's a teeny island between Manhattan in the 60s and Queens, only two miles long and less than a quarter of a mile wide. The Queensboro Bridge goes right over it. I found this place thanks to a friend placing an ad in the Playwrights digest - our weekly-ish e-newsletter with announcements of performances, auditions, sublets, etc. She said "price negotiable," and I wrote her with the upper end of my budget, sure it was too low, since her place sounded so nice, but she said the people who had offered her more money were strangers, so I was in luck.

I was anxious to go look at it that day (Wednesday), but the timing didn't work. Turns out I couldn't really go until Saturday. So I spent the next couple days trying to relax in suburban New Jersey, hoping I'd be able to start putting things back in order over the weekend. I even got to see my nine-year-old cousin's third grade play about New Jersey. It was awesome. Friday night I was scheduled to work in the city, so I took the train in and then spent the night with friends in Brooklyn, since I didn't get off until 12:30.

Saturday morning I made my way to Roosevelt Island, which has a stop on the F train. (You learn something new every day). The apartment was great and the best part, to me, was the view of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings from the living room window. It was a definite yes. We made plans for me to stay the next night, Sunday, with her leaving Monday, and then I left, the happiest I'd been in days.

In the afternoon I met up with my favorite NYU professor, Bob, who I sometimes have coffee with, and we had a celebratory brunch at Le Pain Quotidien, with mimosas, since we were feeling exuberant, I guess. We spent some time catching up on graduation and everything going on in his life - we can always talk for hours - and then went our separate ways as Bob was meeting guests later and had to get ready.

I then walked uptown to meet back up with my aunt, uncle, two cousins, and two of their friends. My other cousin was celebrating his twelfth birthday (even though his birthday is the day before mine) with an overnight in the city. My aunt has had an apartment in the Gramercy area for a long time, a place I have been fortunate enough to stay at on several NYC trips before moving here, and they were all staying in the city for the night.

We went to the spy exhibit at the discovery center in Times Square - God bless my aunt and uncle for chaperoning three twelve year olds and a nine year old in New York City - via subway. The adults thought the exhibit was really interesting, with lots of McCarthy-era technology, but it required far more reading than the boys were really interested in, so we moved through pretty quickly. With so much time to spare we went to Toys R Us and the boys rode the ferris wheel. I didn't even know there was a ferris wheel in Toys R Us, I'd never been in there. And I don't need to go again.

After Toys R Us we headed back down to Union Square - they to go to Max Brenner's for dinner, I to go to work just a few blocks away. After work I went back to the apartment, conveniently close, and then on Sunday morning we all went out for breakfast at Big Daddy's, one of their favorite places.

My plan then was to head out to Roosevelt Island (my suitcase having been brought in the car with everyone and stored in the apartment), but we realized the bag of all the toiletries I'd bought at a Target in NJ - much cheaper than anywhere in the city, of course - had been left back home. So we left my suitcase with the doorman and I rode with everyone back to New Jersey.

Then the rainstorm came. There was huge thunder and lightning, and I decided I didn't want to travel and lug my suitcase all over New York in that weather. So I contacted my friend, told her I'd meet her the next day to pick up the keys, and spent one more night - Tony night! - in New Jersey.

Late Monday morning I finally took one last train into the city. I met up with Ryann, my subletter, at Playwrights to get the keys, walked up to the apartment to pick up my suitcase, and then took two trains to get to my new home. Exhausted but happy, I unpacked, which took about five minutes, as I only had one suitcase, and then enjoyed staying in one place for a while.

The apartment is amazing, with a big kitchen and big living room. I have my own room, which I think is bigger than my bedroom at home, with a half bath attached. From my window I can see bits of Manhattan and Queens, as well as an outdoor theatre directly below me. There's a Shakespeare play going on there this month, and someone I know happens to be in it.

Roosevelt Island is weird though. It's like a small suburb in the middle of New York City. It has a tiny branch of the public library - the size of a one room school house and carrying exactly ZERO Harry Potter books. There is one school and one high school. There is a post office. There is a police station. There is a grocery store. There are I think two churches. There is a bus that goes around the island that costs 25 cents. There is a starbucks and a duane reade. There are two hospitals, a park, a baseball field, a basketball court, a youth center. There are a few restaurants, a thrift shop, things like that. Most of the people who live here are either young families or older people, because of the hospitals - lots of people in wheelchairs. So really. It's like a suburb but condensed into less than one square mile, so it's apartment buildings instead of houses. The apartments are nice but the buildings and the hallways are all very industrial. It's weird. It's beautiful, there's lots of trees and lots of water, but I think it's too quiet. I'm enjoying it for now, like a six week vacation, but I guess it's okay that I can't really afford to live here.

Still... I'll miss this view.

El Fin del Año

2011 brought a lot of new experiences. I could not have known last January 90% of the things that were going to happen in my life in the coming months. I have learned so much, and still need time to process. I wouldn't trade these experiences for anything.

To those of you reading this who still have the chance: STUDY ABROAD. DO IT. There is no reasonable reason not to. GO.

To move to breathe to fly to float

To gain all while you give

To roam the roads of lands remote

To travel is to live.

-Hans Christian Andersen

Full disclosure: I got that quote from an Amazing Race challenge.

Happy 2012. Feliz año nuevo.

A Punto de Salir

So it's about 3 am, and my flight from Madrid leaves in about 5 hours. I'm leaving my apartment in a couple hours. It's that weird period of time where you sit in a place knowing you're about to leave it, trying to drink in everything with your senses to paint a full memory.

Tonight I just hung out with Isa and Yasmín, later also with Nidhi and Leigha, and briefly several other NYU-ers came over before they headed out to party up their last night in Madrid. I was happy to chill out here with my friends, watching youtube videos, reading stupid tweets, and just passing the time together, laughing, taking funny pictures, and so on. Madrid is a beautiful city and I will miss it, but more important to me than the place is the people I've gotten to know here. I can't think about it too much right now because every time I think about leaving my Spanish family indefinitely I want to cry. (I cried far more than I'd like to admit throughout Wednesday, both in anticipation of and after leaving their house.)

Most likely I will need a little time at home before I can fully appreciate all that I have learned here, putting it in perspective with my return to America. Still I am so grateful for every experience I have had here, good, bad, frustrating, painful, incredible... I think it still hasn't fully hit me that I just lived in Europe for almost four months and have started to create bonds around the world. I have seen ancient artifacts, not just behind glass but in the streets where they first existed. I have become nearly-fluent in a second language, an invaluable skill. I have made some incredible friends and together we have done some amazing things.

Yeah it's definitely too soon to try to analyze all this. I feel the experiences of the whole semester still simmering in my blood, just barely starting to settle. Really, school just ended yesterday. I had two exams and a final presentation just yesterday. The end of the semester here is so compressed because of the Spanish holiday schedule.

I am unspeakably thankful for so many things, experiences, people, perspective. The reminder that the whole world is a place in which to learn. Classrooms are so often confining, but the world has everything, in a much more hands-on manner. I have been so, so, so lucky. I can't wait to get home and see my family and my dog and sleep in my bed and speak English and use American money. At the same time particularly over the last few days the thought of leaving has gotten harder. I was way more ready to go home in October than I am now. I wish Chicago and New York and Europe were not so far apart. Seriously, who is getting started on making apparition happen? Because I know for sure now that if I could have one special superpower, that would be it - the ability to instantly transport myself between places, like my home that is New York (hogar), my home that is my family (tierra), and my new home in España (casa).

To those of you reading this that I have met on these travels, thank you so much for the fun times we have shared, whether at NYU, in Madrid, or elsewhere in Europe. I cannot yet know exactly all that I have learned from all these experiences, but I know that you were a part of it.

The world is a remarkable place if we open our eyes. I know this part, the leaving part, would be hard if I stayed a month or a year, and I know I'm ready to go home. And I know I will come back. There's not much else I can say right now, as I'm feeling pretty emotional and simultaneously exhausted but attempting to not fall asleep before going to the airport. This is not the end of this blog at all, but quite likely the last post from Spain. So I leave you with this:

"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes."

Henry David Thoreau

Madrid, te echaré de menos. Besos y abrazos.

Mi Pelo Tan Largo

Other thing I miss about America: short edgy hair. Look at how long it is now!

One week to haircut. One week.

(Combined with a pink shirt, this is about as girly as I'm gonna get...)

Things I Miss About America

Just had my penultimate English lesson with my Spanish family and need to remind myself why I want to go home, because I'm really going to miss them. Thus I give you:

THINGS I MISS ABOUT AMERICA (Besides, obviously, my family)
Dryers
Dishwashers
English
A cellphone with a qwerty keyboard
Cuddling with my dog
Bagels. With cream cheese, egg and cheese, whatever.
David's breakfast cart on the corner where I buy said bagels.
Mom's pancakes and french toast
Mom's chili
Watching Modern Family with my dad
Playing video games with my brother
My big, comfy bed
Communicating with my best friend in sounds rather than words
Ridiculous late night antics with Joe/Harrison/Vince/Amy/Hollis/Grace in Laf
Bizarre existential/artistic/theological/philosophical (that was hard to spell) discussions with theatre kids
Everything about Playwrights Horizons Theatre School
The Brooklyn Bridge
The Fire Cat Gang etc.
American Christmas music
NoHo at Chrismas
My books
$1 slice pizza from 2 Bros/any pizza in New York
Falafel
The Art Institute of Chicago
Theatre in English, especially downtown NYC theatre and Playwrights shows
MAKING THEATRE MAKING THEATRE MAKING THEATRE (acting, lighting, and maybe even directing a little bit)
The Chicago skyline
UU churches, especially First UU Brooklyn and my kids that I teach
Fuerza Bruta!!!
Coffee dates with Bob
Navigating without thinking about it
Stores like Target (who would have guessed?)
Prices being in dollars

Okay so I can't wait to get home and see my family and my dog and sleep in my bed and eat food and have real breakfast and understand all the words people say and not have to convert prices in my head. And I can't wait to finally get back to New York and Playwrights and see my friends and make theatre and never sleep and sometimes cry and sometimes be really happy and in any case know I'm doing what I love.

5 days, America. 5 days.

Madrileño Life

Look, I have pictures of my Spanish family!

This is Nacho. He's 10. I had to fight him to get him to take pictures.

Then he didn't want to stop.

Because he wanted a picture like this.

This is Nacho and I with Iciar. She's 14.

This is Iciar, Nacho, and I with Lola. She's a dog.

Nacho, Marta (16) and I.

We smile!

And this is Jaime. He's 5 and super adorable.

I'm so lucky to get to hang out with them. They're super cool and the whole family is so nice to me. Although the boys are sometimes mean to me, as little brothers are to sisters... Last week Nacho and I were playing hangman and he managed to call me stupid in Spanish and English. And Jaime seems to like to draw on my arm or shoot nerf darts at me. But generally they're pretty nice. I'm gonna miss them so much!

I'm Still Here

I haven't forgotten about this. Things have just been crazy busy with so much travel, Thanksgiving, and trying to accomplish all my homework, four papers, and an audition for 4th year company at my studio next semester. In the meantime, enjoy this video:

Besos!

We're Just Ordinary People

I forgot I took a few pictures while Brian was here that I can now happily share with y'all. Be prepared to laugh.

This is a place where I sometimes did homework when it was still warm and pretty outside. It's like five minutes from my apartment. That's the Church of San Jerónimo, I think.

View of the Prado Museum from my happy seat.

The view outside my bedroom window when I get up at 7:30 in the morning in October.

Brian likes food!

Muerte por chocolate. Mmm...

EL Cantante de Jazz de España

Cafe Central!

Brian with a Dalí churro mustache.

Brian with a churro... frown? Other mustache? Not sure.

View of the Cathedral past the palace from Parque del Oeste

Madrid afueras (suburbs)

Outside the Mexican place where we had dinner before the movie.

This one is better.

Teatro Español!

Favorite building in Madrid, in the same plaza as the theatre, which is so beautifully lit at night...

Life Between the Weekends

Okay so I'll write probably three essays about Berlin soon, but in the meantime I thought I should catch up on oh, the last month of my life. When last I wrote of something that wasn't my travels, other than Fuerza Bruta, Brian was still here. And that was the first week of October. So let's see how fast I can tell you all about my life considering I'm obsessed with details.

Okay. Flashback to Wednesday, October 5th. I had class in the early afternoon, but I met up with Brian after for lunch again at Los Rotos. We tried a couple new dishes but of course ordered muerte por chocolate once again. Still perfectly delicious. Back to the apartment for a short nap/rest, then off to the theatre! We went to see a play called Venticinco Años Menos un Día, a play about an English play called The Tea is Ready. It was about the final performance of the play (one day before the 25th anniversary of its opening, hence the title). Because it was about an English play, a lot of it was actually in English, and there were some theatre jokes. I enjoyed it a lot. And we had great seats, for pretty cheap, in a beautiful theatre. And yet another theatre within ten minutes of my apartment! I had actually walked past it before and didn't even know...

After the show we stopped for drinks and snacks at 100 montaditos (the mini-sandwich place) for Wednesday's euromania - where everything on the menu is a euro. I had my usual tinto de verano, Brian had a classic Spanish beer (Mahou), and we both sampled various sandwiches before heading home. In general quite a successful day, I'd say.

Thursday, Brian's last day here. I had class all day so Brian did a bunch of sightseeing on his own and then met me at the Prado, where I have class every Thursday. My class gets over around 5:30 and the Prado is free beginning at 6, so we found each other and did some wandering through the galleries before heading to El Tigre for those famous giant mojitos and some true Spanish tapas, which Brian still hadn't gotten to try. We stopped for ice cream just up the street from me on the way and then headed home for the night a little early to sit around and chat before we both prepared for an early morning trip to the airport. Brian was flying back to China (via a night in Moscow?!) and I to Mallorca, having just booked my flight that morning and my hostel that night thanks to much toil on my mom's part to get my debit card unlocked. (They know I'm abroad, but apparently the card automatically locks if you try to use it for foreign airfare... Secure, but a pain in the ass.)

So up an at 'em, long before the sun, which rose while we were on the bus to the airport, and then you know the whole Mallorca story. :) It was such a bummer to say goodbye to Brian. I was really glad to have the weekend trip to distract me from being by myself once again.

So. Skip ahead to post-Mallorca... Just a typical week at school, I think, trying to get everything done and get some sleep and take in Madrid and whatnot. Hardly left the apartment over the weekend though, actually. Went grocery shopping, which is always an adventure - the closest chain supermarket (where prices are much cheaper) is a 15 minute walk away, so I can't go often. But that means carrying two weeks worth of groceries almost a mile home, which is a whole body workout, since I buy vegetables and that's where I get my less-than-a-euro-1.5-litres of tinto de verano. :) Also did laundry, lots of homework, yoga, cleaning. Productive weekend! AND I got to see Alejandro on Saturday, which was nice because it's hard to only talk via facebook - so much typing - or via skype, because I have a hard enough time understanding Spanish without internet connections causing more trouble.

The following week midterms began. I've never really had serious midterms like this before. I mean, I've had a few in some of my theatre studies classes, but we mostly just write essays about things we've read, maybe define a few theatre terms, no big deal. But I have four academic classes and four midterms this semester. Crazy. The first was my Lorca midterm, which was really easy, as all we had to do was write two essays about the two Lorca plays we'd read up to that point. And as we'd spent multiple weeks on each, there was plenty to write. (In my regular theatre classes, we usually read a couple plays a week and compare them in discussion and it feels like we never have enough time to talk about everything, but such is the pace of Tisch.) I got an A, but I think everyone did, because my teacher thinks grades are stupid.

My other midterms were all the following week, once one of them got moved, so I had three midterms to look forward to post-Paris. Remember in my Paris post how I talked about doing lots of studying for my midterms? Oh, no? Exactly. So Tuesday rolls around, and I have two midterms. For my Spain Today class I had to give an oral presentation of 15 minutes (in Spanish) with two other members of the class, again based on Spanish news articles. I haven't gotten the grade back yet for it, but I felt like it went pretty well. Then Tuesday afternoon I had the midterm for my art history class. This I did some cramming for both Monday night and Tuesday during the lunch break. Fortunately thanks to two years of art recognition tests in high school (hi, Rado), I have some practice studying for this kind of test. I felt like it went pretty well, though I wasn't totally sure... We got them back today though, and I am happy to report that I got an A-, which was a little better than I expected considering my last-minute studying. Though I guess PHTS has made me really good at doing things last minute. SECOND YEAR...

Thursday brought the Spanish grammar midterm, which I kinda refused to study for, as I thought I would just get more confused trying to compare tenses and endings and prepositions and things. My friend Isabella (my closest friend here in Madrid for sure) came over to study though, and I studied a bit by trying to answer her questions. I got that test back yesterday (really not much longer than the quizzes we have every other week, anyway), and I got a happy 88.5, which I'm pretty proud of considering we're trying to learn grammar of a foreign language in that foreign language, which is ridiculously hard.

Thursday evening after Prado Isabella and I went to a cute little cafe around the corner from my house to do some of our homework before we both traveled for the weekend (she to Paris, I to Berlin), and successfully got all our homework done for one of our classes. We read an entire four-page interview in Spanish and only found 25 words we didn't understand, so really we could understand the whole article without using a dictionary. We were quite proud of ourselves.

Thursday night I finally got my abono, which is this card you need to apply for in order to get a monthly travel pass for the bus/metro. I submitted mine on September 21st, meaning it should have been ready while Brian was visiting, but it wasn't. And a week later it still wasn't. And a week later, it still wasn't. It took nearly five weeks, and now I'm only using it for November, but at least I have it for this month. It means I can travel as much as I want on the metro, which is already nice, in just the two days I've been using it. It also means I don't have to pay an extra fare to go to the airport on the bus or train, which is important for all the traveling I'm doing. Woo!

So. The final development of October is a wonderful one - halfway through the month, I got a job! I'm "teaching English" to a family of four kids. I put that in quotes because the oldest two, both girls, Marta, 16 and Iciar, 14, studied in London for a semester last fall, so their English is just fine. The ten-year-old, Nacho, has English in school and speaks quite well. Sometimes I have to repeat what I say, or he'll ask me how to say something in English (a constant test of my Spanish vocabulary, which is good for me), but he's great. He reminds me a lot of my cousin Josh who is the same age and looks quite like him, in addition to being similar in personality. The youngest, Jaime, is 5, and is hilarious. I mostly speak to him in Spanish, and it is certainly a test of my abilities to try to understand him, as he speaks very fast and like a five-year-old. Think about how little kids talk in English, and then try to understand that in a foreign language. Yeah. But he's a lot of fun, and his favorite phrase is "I'm fine thank you" which he says all as one word. He knows the English names of lots of animals and can count at least to 15. We played Simon says last week - his idea, not mine - and he seems to know body parts pretty well too. (Put your hands on your head, point to your nose, raise your right arm, etc.) The boys are both always fighting for my attention. I spend 15 minutes with Jaime, then 45 minutes with each Nacho, Iciar, and Marta. Jaime and I just play games, or I end up chasing him for some reason, Nacho always has something to show me that he made (he's really good at this lego engineering set he has), and I just chat about school and life and whatnot with Iciar and Marta. During which time Nacho always has to come by for some reason. And when I'm with Nacho, Jaime never wants to go away. That's always the time he must also be in the same room doing his homework (he's practicing writing letters of the alphabet).

They also have two dogs, Klaus and Lola. Lola is some kind of terrier, little enough to sit in my lap, which she does pretty constantly. It's quite a crazy house, but I love the family. And every time I come back from a trip, they ask me how it was, or tell me to have a good weekend before I go. Yesterday I mentioned that I ate lots of chocolate in Berlin, and I guess because now they know I like chocolate, my glass of water (because I'm always offered something to drink) was accompanied by three different pieces of chocolate. They spoil me, really. AND I'm getting paid to hang out with their kids and speak English. I'm so lucky. I can't believe it. The dad (also named Alejandro) does something with computers, and they're very well off - and four kids is a lot for a Spanish family - but I still feel a little guilty getting paid to basically just hang out. Not gonna complain though. :)

So. That's my life now! Berlin post soon to come, as well as Paris pictures, of course. The editing process has commenced. ¡Besos desde España!

Gender Woes

For some reason, yesterday had a theme: women's inferiority to men:

1. Lorca class: Discussion about Yerma, in which the title character wants nothing but to have a son and has failed in her three years of marriage to produce a child. Therefore, you know, her life is over. Commence class discussion in which my teacher champions the play's idea that the point of being born is to reproduce, and as only women can have children, the purpose of women is to have children. I could only respectfully argue against this for so long before I was reduced to glaring at the floor and sighing in exasperation.
2. Spanish Culture class: Finishing up our unit on domestic violence, we got to spend half an hour about men beating up women. (On an unrelated but equally depressing note, we spent the first 40 minutes of class arguing with our teacher about how important grades are to get a job, which she firmly does not believe is true. It was an incredibly stressful discussion, which was an awesome lead-in to giving a presentation in Spanish without notes, which I had previously not been worried about at all.)
3. Art History class: The article we had to read for class was about depiction of sexual violence and how that was a metaphor in the 17th century for leaders' military conquests, but it was better to depict men conquering women than men conquering other men. Then we looked at a lot of paintings with "rape" in the title. (And we're not talking about, for instance, The Rape of the Lock, about cutting someone's hair.)
4. La Piel Que Habito: This is the new Pedro Almodóvar film, which I had very much been looking forward to seeing, and last night Brian and I went with a friend of mine, because there was a discount available to us so we could get in for 3.50 euros instead of 7 or something. It was a very well done movie, a strong and unusual drama that I actually followed and I was never bored, however, following the theme of the day it involved two rape scenes. Good times! Also the main woman tried to kill herself at one point?

Brian's off exploring this morning while I was doing some homework I got assigned yesterday. This afternoon we're doing lunch at Los Rotos again and then going to the Museo de la Biblioteca Nacional. Tonight we're seeing a play (at yet another theatre less than 15 minutes from my house), and then going to Cien Montaditos for one euro everything. (Brian has taken quite a liking to tinto de verano.)

¡Ciao!

Spanglish

Alejandro wanted me to tell you that he can say Yankees properly now. Also that he is helping me with my Spanish and that he is a good person. I suppose these things are true.

But really talking with a Spaniard has seriously improved at least my writing skills (we always chat on facebook), now I just have to learn to speak. Haha. Ironic, I know. The problem though is that Spanish grammar is actually hard. The hard thing about English is pronunciation (Yankees!), the hard thing about Spanish is grammar, which is a lot more... fundamental to speaking.

I have to give a presentation in one of my classes on Tuesday, in Spanish. It only has to be 3-4 minutes long though, which is nothing compared to the 20 minute presentations I've done in English, so I'm not too worried. I just need to mejorar (improve) my Spanish a bit. And Alejandro says he will help. And now he will know that you all know that he said he would help, so he has to help. (Alejandro, could you read that sentence?)

Not doing anything on this Thursday night. Nidhi and Emily went to Cádiz for the weekend so I have the apartment to myself. (I'm not really a beach person, so I opted out.) I'm trying to get as much work done as possible before Brian arrives on Sunday. Oh. Right. BRIAN ARRIVES ON SUNDAY! He's teaching for a year in China and coming here on his week off so there's gonna be some serious UU action up in Madrid next week. Which means this weekend has to be productive - tonight I'm doing my laundry (which takes forever, due to a 1.5 hour wash cycle followed by air drying), tomorrow I'm going grocery shopping, and all weekend I'm doing as much homework as possible to leave me free time during the week. Wooo.

Heads up - I have skype free calls to phones anywhere in the world for a month (thanks, Mom!) so you might get a call from a weird unknown number or something. It might be me! If you want me to call you, send me your phone number, because I don't have any of my phone contacts here. I already tried to call my grandma in Florida who doesn't have a computer, but I got sent to voicemail. So. There's that.

Anyway, back to "Una Ley Integral" y más tarea. ¡Hasta luego!

English Perspective

Just a short one today, as I have a lot of homework to get through before four classes tomorrow. This post was inspired by today's purchase of a can of Pringles, which seems to be, for some reason, the only potato chips sold at the grocery store by my school. (Sidenote, somehow in Spain, sour cream and onion Pringles taste like America.)

Before I came to Spain I thought that English pervaded the globe and that due to Western imperialism and English-speaker laziness, essentially everyone in the world spoke some degree of English. Upon arriving in Spain, I immediately found out this is not true. My land lady, who rents this apartment to NYU students every semester doesn't speak any English (although she seems to like the word "flight"). And I soon came to learn she wasn't an oddity. Well, she is, but not because she doesn't speak English. (Ruth is a cool lady in her 60s who loves to chat and wants to make sure everything is okay and also likes to wear leopard print. But I digress.)

Products here often have labels in several languages. We got a carton of rice milk a while ago (after a bad experience with some regular milk) and it had a description of the product on the back and side in at least a dozen languages, but not one of them was English. This I do find odd. And I thought about this today because the Pringles container, God bless it, does have English on it. I don't know how the kids here who don't speak any Spanish are getting by though, because in so many cases there is no English to help you out. However, I think just as everything is coming to be in Spanish in addition to English in the States, some things here are in both Spanish and English. All the signs next to artworks at the Prado are in both languages, though often maltranslated. I wonder if things translated into Spanish in America are so grammatically incorrect.

Anyway, that is my minor musing for today. My Spanish is getting so much better due to daily use and with some help from my friend Alejandro. We talk on facebook and I told him to correct me whenever my grammar or a word is wrong, so I'm learning all the time! Now if I could just speak as well as I write... (Not to mention the minor problem that my English skills diminishing as my Spanish ones improve.)

To Portugal?

Not too much to report at the moment, actually. Just letting people know I'm alive and busy keeping up with homework and drinking tinto de verano and writing in parks.

Leaving in approximately 7 hours for a weekend trip to Extremadura (a region of Western Spain) and Portugal (but only a little bit just over the border, and only for a few hours). We're staying in a town called Caseres. Apparently in a 4 star hotel, because this is NYU and that is what they use our tuition money for. Check it out HERE. We're going to see Roman ruins and some museums. I don't know much more than that because no one talks about this trip, they all talk about the other one. Half of our group is going to Córdoba and Granada. My Lorca teacher spent a good 15 minutes today telling us about all the great things about Granada. So good thing I'm not going there. (I'm un poquito bitter about it, but it's a long story and not an important one.)

Anyway, It's about 1 am and I need to be up at 6:30, so I suppose I should go to sleep. Next update will be post-Portugal, the fourth country I will have visited in my life. ¡Buenas noches!

Stocking Up on Weekends

Well, I guess I had a life for the last couple days, because I didn't post once, let alone twice a day! I need to blog about my first week in Spain at some point including the day trip we took to Segovia, but I think tonight I'll just write about this week and then maybe tomorrow backtrack to August.

When last we met, I was in a terrible mood due to the Spanish class situation. I'm still stuck in my original Spanish class (we're moving on to - wait for it - more review of things I learned in Spanish 1 next week), which is unfortunate, and I was in a bad mood Wednesday too, but that has now passed. Despite an impossible number of little things going wrong on Wednesday, the world has stopped wreaking havoc on my life and now things are pretty nice.

Tuesday night, our couch surfers arrived, later than expected, but well. Nate and Aliska (that's not a typo) were a married couple in their mid-twenties from Salt Lake City, and my roommate and I spent a nice couple of hours chatting with them before we finally went out for dinner (around 11:30). We took them to Cien Montaditos, named for the 100 little sandwiches that comprise 95% of the menu, which range in price from one to two euros each. They also offer glasses of beer for a euro and tinto de verano (red wine and sprite, my new favorite thing) for two euros. Cien montaditos is a favorite among the NYU crowd. Or at least those of us whose parents aren't lawyers or medical doctors (sorry Dad). We spent about an hour and a half or so sitting outside, chatting, drinking, and trying new sandwiches - I got crema de queso y salmún (cream cheese and salmon, wonderfully similar to a bagel with lox) and tortilla de patata con salsa brava. Tortillas de patata are really common here - the one I had on my sandwich wasn't good, but the one I had the next day was, so more on that later. Our couch surfers were kind enough to pay for our (extremely cheap) dinner, and then we walked a little further to show them the Royal Palace and the Royal Cathedral (which are across from each other). By now it was about 1:30 in the morning, but even at night the buildings are really majestic. Here's a couple pictures I took in the late evening our first week here:

That's the Cathedral and the Royal Plaza

Side of the Royal Palace

Front of the Royal Palace

(The flag on the left is the Spanish flag. On the right is a flagpole for the king's flag, which is only flown when he's there. Which he never is, because there's like five palaces.) 

Cathedral (which apparently isn't allowed to be as pretty as the palace; they had to "simplify it")

Top of the cathedral over the wall of the palace at dusk

So then we went home, and we all went to bed around two, and I got up at 7 am (in the dark, with the moon outside my window) to make sure Nate and Aliska got up on time to head to the airport. Wednesday-day passed in a haze of mishaps, misery, and misfortune, but in the evening, I went to my Spanish cooking workshop!

Every member of the program had to choose one of three cultural activities (it's was a tiny bit like Amazing Race, but without the stress): food, wine, or dance. I chose food, and I'm glad I did because we pretty much got a whole free meal, everything smelled delicious, and I learned how to make some new things. We cooked paella (of course), tortillas de patatas, and made the filling for croquetas de jamón. Then we got to eat the paella and the tortillas as well as some already cooked croquetas (the filling has to refrigerate and set so it can be cut into pieces to be fried) as well as gazpacho, sangria, and a tart that as far as I could tell was made mostly of almonds, vanilla, and powdered sugar and was incredibly delicious. So you probably know what paella is, but I had never heard of tortillas de patata before - it's an incredibly simple and popular dish of potatoes and onions fried in olive oil and then cooked with eggs and salt to create something that looks like an omelet but isn't. It's surprisingly tasty, considering the simplicity. Makes sense that it's a staple of the Spanish diet.

It was a good thing I had the food class that evening because later I went to what was called a "welcome cocktail-dinner" for all the member organizations of APUNE, the Asociación de Programas de Universidades Norteamericanas en España, which includes about thirty universities. It was hosted at Gabana, an apparently famous dance club, and was neither a dinner nor were there cocktails. There was tons of free wine and beer (and soft drinks) and a few appetizers that were impossible to grab because crowds of people were swarming the waiters. I had a good time and met a couple of guys who go to Marquette University in Milwaukee of all places, but it wasn't what I was expecting at all. Though now I can say I've been to Gabana, which I guess means something to some people. The lighting was interesting.

Yesterday I had class all day. I actually went to school early (before my 9:30 class), got a croissant and a cafe con leche from the café up the street, and sat at a table on our school's patio (a nice big open area that connects the two townhouses that make up NYU in Madrid). I had about half an hour to just relax, enjoy my coffee, and get a little homework done before class. I think I might do that more often.

Classes were pretty good: I am in LOVE with Federico García Lorca, I argue a lot in class and talk probably too much because I'm the only theatre major in a class of 14 people who haven't studied theatre. I told my teacher after class to tell me to shut up if I'm talking to much, and she said she was grateful that there was someone who didn't act like a high schooler when talking about love and death and sex and passion (which is all Lorca writes about). We've had four classes, and she said I was a "joy to have in class." So that's nice. :) My Spanish culture class that's taught in Spanish is definitely getting me to talk in Spanish more, which is great. I'll be giving a presentation in a little over a week, in Spanish, but it only has to be 3-4 minutes, which is nothing compared to the 20 minutes I frequently had to present about things last year. Playwrights kids have no problems with presentations. My Spanish class is still really boring. I finished our quiz 20 minutes before class was over, which used to happen to me all the time in school, but now that I'm in college, it means I get to leave early! I took the bus home and got to spend a little time eating lunch before walking the five minutes to the Prado Museum for my art history class. This week we got to see Caravaggio's El Descansamiento/The Deposition, an extremely famous painting that usually lives at the Vatican and is leaving the Prado on Sunday. I also went on my own to see Velázquez's The Crucifixion of Christ, which I think usually lives at the Prado but is also leaving Sunday for some reason.

 

The Deposition                                  The Crucifixion of Christ

It was really nice to get lost in the Prado by myself for a while after the class was over. Eventually I wandered home and spent the rest of the night relaxing with my roommate, as we were both exhausted after two nights of going out.

AND I FOUND SPANISH THEATRE! I was in fact going to see something tonight, but I'm still tired (especially after being productive all day) so I'm chilling home again tonight and going to the theatre tomorrow. There's a theatre less than ten minutes from here that shows new work, often many things at the same time just on different nights, and it seems like - for you theatre people - it might be the La Mama of Madrid. I hope so! Tickets are cheap, and tomorrow I'm going to see something that got extended through this weekend that seems to be a political satire. So I'll be lost the whole time because it will be in Spanish AND be about Spanish politics. I'm excited. I've also found some Spanish productions of works by Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Durang, Pinter, and Moliére, so I'll probably check some of those out as well as all this new avant garde stuff I've found. Next week I think I'm going to see something in a theatre that produces its works in an abandoned church. I have no idea what the show is about but it looks pretty. If I get bored I can just watch the lights like I always do. Plus, it's in an ABANDONED CHURCH.

I think that's about all for now. Hopefully another post tomorrow about previous activities. Now I'm going to eat dinner and then enjoy an evening of A Very Potter Musical as a reward for being so productive today: two loads of laundry, swept the apartment, did dishes, made egg salad, went grocery shopping, got a better phone plan, withdrew money to start saving cash for next month's rent. (This is probably just because I can't deal with not having class on Fridays. Friday still has to be a productive day. I'm used to having no weekend, so three days is just way too much. It's like I'm getting all the weekends of my college career in one semester. Oh my God, I'm like Dobby when Dumbledore offers him a huge salary and tons of time off.)

Face it, I'm a loud and proud Ravenclaw.