¡Regreso a Madrid! (Days 6, 7, and 8)

Saturday morning we flew very early from Gatwick to Madrid, arriving at our hostel around 12:30. I was disappointed to find at the airport that the airport express bus has gone up in price from 2 to 5 euros. I guess it couldn't stay an outrageously good deal forever. But it got us to Cibeles quickly and then we walked to our hostel, just a few blocks up the street from my apartment building on Huertas.

We couldn't check into our room for another hour, so we walked up and down the street in search of ice cream as it was very warm and we were a bit hungry. My favorite place had closed and the other one I knew of wasn't open at the time, so we walked down to the alimentación under my apartment. The man who runs the place was there and he recognized me, even with my short hair and was so happy to see me! It was a wonderful surprise and he asked about my roommate and if I was studying again or just on vacation. We got ice cream and sat on a bench out in the street to eat it in a shady breeze.

After we finished we walked back up to the hostel and checked in to our four bed room. We had two roommates, girls who spoke something that sounded similar to German but wasn't. It didn't sound aggressive enough and they didn't speak English, and I've never met a German who didn't speak English.

We took a nap while we had the room to ourselves and then walked back down the street to eat lunch (around 4:30, which is late even in Spain) at Los Rotos, the place Brian and I went to twice during his visit. The food was good as always (Mom got to try croquetas) and we had sangria.

Following lunch or whatever you call eating at that time, we dragged ourselves to the Reina Sofia, the contemporary art museum not too far from where we were staying and managed to look around for an hour before trudging back to the hostel and falling asleep. While there we saw some Dali and Miro and of course Picasso's Guernica, one of the most famous works of Spanish art.

The next morning our not-German roommates left. We had breakfast in the hostel, which was just coffee, juice, and toast or cornflakes, and then went to see Alice in Wonderland the Musical (in Spanish) at a theatre about a ten minute walk from Huertas. We picked that of course because then we knew at least my mom could follow the story even though she wouldn't understand all the words. I did my best to explain the songs to her and the plot points that were different. It also turned out to be specifically made for kids, so the acting was all very physical and pretty easy to understand. It turned out to be a good choice and a fun time for only 15 euros each.

After the show we got lunch at a Mexican restaurant I really like called la Mordida and shared nachos with fresh guacamole and some kind of meat and tortilla dish with a yummy sauce. Plenty of food for the two of us, with a very polite waitress who didn't mind my Spanish. It was nice to remember that in Madrid people are very willing to let you try. The girl at the front desk when we checked in talked to me in Spanish at first and then asked if English was better when she saw my US passport, but I told her I needed to practice and kept up with her Spanish explanation of all the hostel policies.

We walked from the restaurant to go see some of the sights in Madrid - Plaza Mayor, el Mercado de San Miguel where we got gelato, a brief tour of the cathedral, the palace (from the outside), Opera, and Sol all on our way back to the hostel. Then it was time for a rest for a while before joining a group of other hostel residents for a flamenco show.

This show turned out to be something created by some of the people who work with the hostels and was a very budget-beginners guide to flamenco. It was in a cave (a brick room under a building, in this case), and there was a singer, a dancer, and a guitarist. I want totally impressed having seen flamenco before, but it seemed enjoyable to those who didn't have any flamenco experience and we got a free (small) cup of sangria, so it was an interesting experience.

We waked partway back with the guy who had led us to the show from our hostel and hen when I found a familiar street we left the group and headed to San Gines, the most famous place for chocolate con churros in Spain. Good dinner, around 11, followed by bed.

Monday we took things slow, spending the morning repacking our suitcases as we were now halfway through our trip. Around 2 we met my friend Alejandro for lunch at a tapas place in plaza Santa Ana, near the hostel and next door to Cien Montaditos, the old favorite. Tapas were just alright but it was fun to try some new things and Alejandro got to practice his English. We got ice cream up the street from the hostel and enjoyed it in the street before saying goodbye and going to take a nap.

That evening we took advantage of the Prado being free at 6 and spent an hour or so seeing all the famous works I could remember anything about. I did my best to give my mom an informed tour of all the greatest hits including Goya, El Greco, Velazquez, and Rubens.

Then came my favorite part of our time in Madrid: dinner with my Spanish family! We met them outside Parque del Retiro and had cold drinks outside under the trees first (Nacho and Jaine mostly played futbol while the grown ups talked) and then we went to a seafood restaurant for dinner around 10. Since we drove in their car, mom got to see lots of different parts of the city. It was really great to see everyone again, we spoke in a mix of English and Spanish to try to accommodate everyone, and hopefully they'll all be coming to New York soon. I'm really glad my mom finally got to meet them, my favorite part of Spain. Perhaps the best part of the evening was when I got to give Jaime the double decker London bus full of chocolates I had brought as a gift for the family. I mentioned that I had a present at the beginning of dinner and Jaime didn't forget. He got so excited when I finally said it was time since he had started to think I didn't really have a present, and was very happy to find candy inside. I told him he had to share but who knows if he will.

When we finished dinner the family drove us back down to Huertas and we said our goodbyes. Even Jaime who was practically asleep in the backseat got out to give me a hug and kiss goodbye. It was such a joyous occasion, I'm incredibly grateful.

And so we headed to bed one last time in Madrid, off to Barcelona the next morning.

Thanksgiving in Spain

So I may be back in America, but I haven't given up on finishing my chronicle of my time in Spain, or my time based in Spain when I did a lot of traveling elsewhere. After Rome and before my next trip (Tanger, Morocco) we had four days of classes, including the day before and the day of Thanksgiving. (Thanks to all the Spanish holidays we got off, we couldn't take more time off for American holidays.)

El Día de la acción de gracia turned out to be a huge affair. My roommate and I had decided to have some friends over, since we had a nice-sized apartment and a good kitchen for cooking. I invited a few people, my roommate invited a few people.

And soon half of NYU in Madrid was coming to my apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.

As the days passed by I watched the "attending" count on the facebook event continue to rise. In the end somewhere between 35 and 40 people came over on that Thursday night. Everyone brought food and drink, though, and we ended up having enough of everything for everybody.

Thursday came, with a full day of classes. My roommate and I returned home with a couple of friends in tow who were planning to cook in our kitchen since they lived in homestays and couldn't cook at home. I embarked on  making mashed potatoes without an electric mixer, which I had never done before. But with some help from a friend, I got four kilos of potatoes chopped up nice and small, which meant once I cooked them well, they were easy to mash with a fork. Sour cream was impossible to find, but I added lots of butter, cream cheese, garlic, and salt, and can happily report that the potatoes were a huge hit with no leftovers.

While in the midst of my cooking frenzy, combined with that of Nidhi's guacamole-making and Gus's chickpea salad invention (it was a very diverse Thanksgiving dinner) the turkey crew arrived. No seriously. Our friend Johnny ordered a ten-kilo (about 22 pound) turkey, but didn't have an oven to cook it in. So during the day he and our friend Jeho marinated it in spices and juices and then Johnny and his roommate Neil brought it over to our house around 6:30.

The turkey was almost as big as our oven, but it fit. And then we cooked it for the next 4 1/2 hours. A team of Gus, Patrick, and myself continued to watch over the turkey, turning it and adding more marinade every hour. Somehow, even in Spain, with an oven in celsius, and none of us having cooked a turkey before, we managed to make a delicious turkey that Patrick and Isa carved and everyone enjoyed. We had some random appetizers in the living room which I barely saw as I was so busy in the kitchen, welcoming people, managing coats and whatever food/drinks our guests brought, and making sure we weren't being too loud for our neighbors. It turned out if we could just keep people in the living room with the door shut, it was actually pretty quiet in the hallway outside our door. That was a bit of a struggle in itself, but we didn't get in trouble, so I'd call it a success.

The turkey crew plus Yasmin: Yasmin, Patrick, me, Gus, and Johnny

We managed to have enough food for everyone with plenty of turkey, potatoes, various salads, mac and cheese, stuffing, and dessert - pumpkin pie and apple cobbler with ice cream - for everyone. There was even enough wine and Emily made some rum-spiked hot apple cider that was a big delicious hit.

A good food table, partway through dinner.

Remember Matt from Rome? He came, too, even though the only people he knew were me and Emily. From what I can tell he had a good time and chatted with lots of the NYU crowd, and even stayed until the bitter end helping me and Emily clean up.

Look at how cute we are!

At some point Nidhi and Grace returned from an expedition with a few Spanish friends, so we even had some Spaniards at our dinner.

Heroes of the evening:
Gus for helping with the turkey and being amusing.
Isa for being my sanity and carving the turkey with Patrick and yelling at people when I got frustrated yelling at people.
Emily for doing dishes and helping clean up.
Matt just because it was super cool that he came.
Patrick because he took command of the turkey and answered the door phone when I couldn't and yelled at people to go in the other room when they got tired of listening to me.

All in all, despite my apprehensions at hosting a dinner for an undetermined but certainly large number of people, we had an amazing night. I hardly sat down, but the food was good and it was nice that it was an event that everybody pitched in to create. Nidhi and I may have been left with a lot of dishes and a bit of cleaning up to do, but people actually did a pretty good job not leaving cups or plates around, and we were paid in a week's worth of leftovers. (Emily spent the night and the three of us had Thanksgiving dinner for breakfast around noon.)

 Here we are:

And that's actually not quite everybody. But a successful bunch! So many reasons to be thankful.

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...)

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!

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!

¡Fuerza Bruta!

I will finish posting about Mallorca someday, I promise. Maybe tonight actually, because I have no homework. And I want to get it done before I go to Paris this weekend. But. More importantly.

I WENT TO FUERZA BRUTA TONIGHT AND I AM SO HAPPY!!! How to explain.

So there's that. I work at Fuerza Bruta in New York. It's a show that was created by an Argentinian company ("fuerza bruta" means brute force/strength) and it's been running in Union Square for years. I've been working there since last October, along with about half a dozen other Playwrights kids and some other cool people, including some Argentinian crew members. (Like my friend Gonzo who now likes every comment I make in Spanish on facebook.) I've lost count of how many times I've seen the show at this point, and I'm not tired of it yet. I'm really lucky to have such a fun job. Oh - to clarify - I'm not a performer in the show. I'm just a lowly usher who shoves people out of the way of moving set pieces, moves set pieces, pulls ropes and curtains, and folds hundreds of cardboard boxes.

Tonight was only the second time I've actually seen the show from a spectator standpoint - and the first time I had just been hired to work, so I was still watching it with a critical eye. It was so weird to be there without anything to do, and without all my usual PHTS (or pseudo-PHTS) coworkers. This was also the first time I came home without a mohawk full of confetti - my hair's too long! Tonight I went with my friend Yasmín and got to be one of those people all us ushers are always judging (at least a little). It was a little disorienting because I noticed every little thing that was different, but the familiar music fell right back into my body and I now know that I still remember exactly what my track (at least the first one I learned) does throughout the whole show. On top of it all, the first performer you see in the show, called Corridor, the guy running on the treadmill, was an actor from our New York cast, so I felt even more at home.

It was a party, I danced, I felt like I had escaped to New York for an hour. I was and still am so happy. Yasmín had never been before and had a really great time. I told her she's got to come in NYC, where it's (in my opinion) even better. And now I'm home, changed into dry clothes, out of my wet, confetti-covered ones. So worth the money I spent on it - the only time I've paid to see it. And if I divide tonight's ticket price over all the times I've "seen" it, it's still less than a dollar each time, and normally I get paid to be there.

I am one lucky lady. (Oh, AND I need to post about my amazing new English "teaching" job.) I am so grateful for all the blessings in my life.

That Eternal Question

We briefly interrupt the Mallorca saga (which I have to finish before I go to Paris this weekend) to bring more in the ongoing debate.

I don't mean what happens after you die.

I mean what is or is not theatre.

Friday night I had no plans and my roommate is gone for the weekend so I decided to go see a show. I picked one and headed to the theatre, but by the time I got there it was sold out. I was momentarily bummed, because I had taken the subway and walked a ways (and was wearing heels, so, there's that). But the ticket guy had asked me if I was specifically asking about Vereantes, which made it sound like there was something else showing that night.

There was. I still don't really know the name of it, but I read about it in their season booklet that they had on the counter. It said something about a piano and a machine, and didn't particularly sound like theatre, more like an avant garde concert, but I figured as long as I was there I would go, because I would never get another opportunity to see whatever the hell this was going to be.

I really didn't need the opportunity. There was a piano, and someone played it, quite well, and there was also a strange machine made of a lot of mundane objects that sometimes banged and whistled and tooted and had an organ in it? to the rhythm and in tune with the piano, and other time it was completely dissonant. And sometimes there was just a lot of banging. And every once in a while the other three people who seemed more like sound techs than actors (literally plugging in amps and stuff during the show) would play an accordian or an electric guitar or a keyboard. And every once in a while all four of them would yell in some language that wasn't English or Spanish. I couldn't even trace an arc through the music, and trust me, I was desperately trying to find something to cling to as a thread I could follow.

For the first ten minutes, it was kind of funny. I thought, great, I'm finally at one of those weird European theatre productions that my design teacher always used to talk about, and I have no idea what's going on and that's okay. And then for about the next 45 minutes, I was just really annoyed I had spent money on watching people make noise.

I hate to bring up Peter Brook, because he generally annoys the crap out of me, but dammit he has a point. (For non-theatre people: Peter Brook is a really pretentious British (redundant?) guy who is a really important theatrical theorist. We had to read his book, The Empty Space, the summer before we started at Playwrights, and I hated it.) Anything can be theatre. Theatre is, simply put, a live interaction between an audience and an event, even if that event is just observing an object. It doesn't even have to be framed on a stage, though this was. I would probably put something involving the word "crafted" in my definition, but that could be argued. I'm not sure anymore what the difference is between theatre and any other kind of performance. If you go to the symphony, the musicians aren't playing for you to watch them; they're playing for you to hear the music from their instruments. But you can still watch the faces, the looks of concentration, and in that way it's still theatre.

Side note, I was all excited to go see something at "Teatro de la Abadia" which is in an abandoned church, and the space was kind of cool, but they didn't use the architecture of the space at all and I therefore spent the entire time thinking about how much better PHTS kids would use the space. And then I was grateful for my education, even if I was being subjected to an hour of noise that I paid for.

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!

UU Rave!

Guys guys guys, Brian's here! After crazy travel delays and nearly 48 hours that sound like an episode or two of the Amazing Race, he has arrived, in the flesh. I picked him up last night from the airport after a little adventure of my own...

So before the program started, NYU sent us numerous packets of information including which airlines fly into which terminals at Madrid-Barajas airport. Brian's flight confirmation that he sent me didn't list a terminal, so I looked it up on my info from August, because I'm OCD and keep that stuff, even though I'm here now and don't need to be told how to arrive. It said that Aeroflot (which I can't say without giggling a little) flew into terminal 4. So, off I go on my merry way of three metro trains, including riding the 8 from one end to the other, to terminal 4 of the airport (which is two metro stops past T1-T2-T3).

At this point it is 10:30 and Brian's plane should have landed 5 minutes ago. However. I consult the arrivals boards and see no Aeroflot (giggle) flights listed anywhere. After 20 minutes of searching, I find an information desk upstairs at departures and ask (in horrific Spanish, as it's now almost 11pm and I'm really confused) where Aeroflot is. Terminal 1! Wooo!

So I get on a free shuttle bus and one almost-15-minute bus ride later arrive somewhere in departures of terminal 1. 5 minutes later I figure out how to get down to arrivals to see that Brian's flight is arriving at 11:30, an hour later than scheduled, but now all of 15 minutes away.

Of course by the time Brian and I actually reunite (after he calls me via the Spanish cell phone of someone he met on the plane), it is 11:51, and the 11:50 airport express bus has just left, and the next one doesn't leave until something like 3 am. So we walk through half the airport back to the metro and take our three trains home. We had a nice time catching up though and actually ended up talking for another couple hours until past 3 am at home.

Today we had quite the Spanish day - I had class in the afternoon (Brian got up a little after 11, just before I left), during which time Brian explored Retiro park. Upon my return we went to lunch just down the street at a great place called Los Rotos where we tried two different dishes and then had muerte por chocolate - death by chocolate - cake for dessert. So delicious.

We then hauled ourselves back up my stairs and spent the afternoon planning the rest of our week and watching a ridiculous show on telemundo called Aurora. From what I gathered everyone was related and also in love with someone who loved someone else.

Tonight we went to live jazz at Cafe Central just up the street, where I had been once before. We heard "el cantante de jazz de España," the jazz singer of Spain, but he sang 95% of his songs in English and I deduced by about halfway through the night that they all spoke perfect English and sounded American. All their songs also started with 1,2,3,4 not uno, dos, tres, cuatro. He was really charismatic and a great showman though, and Brian and I both thoroughly enjoyed the evening. My favorite part was when he for some reason sang "I Am What I Am," which, as far as I know, is only a song from La Cage Aux Folles, which, for those of you who don't know, is based on the same play as the movie The Birdcage (starring Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Hank Azaria). So here I am sitting in a cafe in Madrid and a pseudo-Spaniard is singing a Broadway song normally sung by a man in drag about being okay with being a drag queen and everyone else should be okay with it too. I had a great time.

After the jazz show we went to San Gines for the most famous chocolate con churros in Madrid and happened to meet two people from... Chicago. Seriously. Park Ridge and Forest Park. (Between Brian being from Oak Park/River Forest and me being from Park Forest... I think we got all the major words of Chicago suburb names covered.) We had a nice chat with them, found out about a great place to get mojitos (which happens to be... under my building), and recommended a few places to them for the rest of their visit, which is through Thursday. What a crazy coincidence. TINY world. Travel safe, Augie and Diane!

So, it's now almost 1:30 and I have to leave for class in about 7 hours so I should sleep. Updates on the rest of this week (and my enjoyable weekend) soon, but we have some packed days coming up! ¡Arrrrrriba! (That's really just an irrelevant Spanish exclamation.)

¡Teatro Extraño!

This post is 90% theatre review, 10% about me.

Okay so tonight I went and saw legit "weird" theatre. As in no narrative, very little text, mix of circus/magic show/acrobatics/dance. I was hoooome. The show was called Crece, and based on what I read has had three previous permutations. It was great. The best way I can describe it, which will mostly only make sense to the PHTS kids reading this, is that it was like a Witness Relocation show if they used a dozen teenagers instead of Will Petre and Laura. So much form and content action. You Can Get An Idea Here.

So for the rest of you, I'll try my best to put almost no words into words. The themes that I saw were about bodies in space, the fluidity of motion and human relationships. (Colleen - it wasn't really about gender!) There was some trapeze, a little tight rope, a lot of impressive jumping and flips and Cirque du Soleil type acrobatics.

I was never bored, but I did get pulled out of the performance a lot by the audience clapping, so I spent a lot of time thinking about design elements and everything I was seeing and hearing in front of me. The lighting was trying to be interesting, there were some cool instruments used, including some free-standing strip lights, fluorescents, and a huge hanging flood light, but I felt like there were a lot of missed opportunities and most of the lighting was really simple and not ideal to show off what the performers were doing. I think I also only noticed about two moments when it made me feel something, and generally lights always make me feel something. I spent a lot of time focusing on the sound because it was really aggressive, loud and ominous and strong and angry. Sometimes it felt like the sound was embodying the strength of the performers, but it felt too heavy for the space, especially because all the performers were so young and joyous. I didn't think about costumes a lot, because it all seemed to be mundane clothing from their closets, but I liked that it didn't detract from what they were physically doing.

The theatre is in the round, with maybe 10-20% of the circle cut out to make a bigger backdrop so that there is sort of a "front" of the circle. And it's also only a 15-minute walk from my house! AND I got my ticket for half-price because NYU gave us this "Madrid Cultura y Arte" card that gets us discounts at lots of things. In fact their newsletter is how I found out about this show and why I decided to go tonight. I got seated next to a family with three little kids who were really cute and fun to listen to. Sometimes they laughed for no reason, and at one point I heard the little boy ask his grandma who was sitting next to me if she was scared. My row was fun people.

This theatre will be housing Fuerza Bruta soon. I think I might go, because it will feel like home, and I also want to see how it will be different here. I don't think they can get rid of the seats in the theatre, so it could be a very strange experience if we're sitting through the whole show. (I work at Fuerza Bruta in New York so I've seen the show countless times.) This is Fuerza: (Brute Force/Strength). You can get a pretty good idea of the show just by watching the intro before you enter the sight. The show was originally created by a company from Argentina, so I actually work with a number of native Spanish speakers in NYC. I'm looking forward to being able to talk to them in Spanish when I get back, though of course they all speak English just fine.

More theater news soon to come, I'm sure. Before I left tonight I took every postcard on the table to find out what else is going on (plus it's free wall decoration). Even in Spanish I feel so at home in the theatre but I miss having my hands in the process. I want to be doing something. When I go to Berlin (Halloween weekend!) I'm staying with a PHTS friend who lives there who said she would house me though she'll be in the middle of rehearsals. I told her I'd like to come one day, because I am going through severe rehearsal withdrawal. Usually it's all day, all the time, and now I haven't had a show to work on since mid-May. Maybe I'll write a play and do a whole production in my head. I'm already directing in my head every Lorca play we read in class...

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.)

Viva La Vida Nocturna

I WENT TO THE THEATRE! Last night I saw a play called Pacto de Estado - "State Pact." This was at the little theatre close to my house - less than ten minutes away, really, and there were probably about 50 people there. It's definitely a place I'll be visiting a lot; they have some other stuff playing now that I'd like to see as well.

I read the play synopsis before I went, which I mostly but not-entirely understood, and was still lost for a lot of the show. I know it had something to do with two candidates I think running against each other for president and also secretly in love with each other, though that part of the story line disappeared halfway through. Then for some reason there was a Monsignor (I think) or some kind of clerical character who seemed to be serving as their psychiatrist. They kept flipping into moments of absurdism, which I only knew were happening because of lighting shifts and sound cues, but I didn't understand why a single one of them happened. And then in the middle there was a puppet show for ten minutes that I think was a talk show involving French terrorists. I've got nothing on that part. Then there was a part where the audience got to ask questions - I had nothing to say because I know nothing about even fake Spanish politics - and then we voted. That didn't matter though because the voting got rigged so that the socialist candidate would win. (The other party is the popular party - that's true in modern Spain. But I don't know anything about what either party stands for.) So then the play was basically over, the three actors came out and bowed like five times (don't ask me why), and I went home.

Mostly I can appreciate that it would have been really funny if I truly understood what was going on. It was an interesting style of acting, almost caricatures or cartoon-like acting. I can't comment much on the directing, because mostly I got combinations of vocal tone with lighting or sound shifts, but I was never bored. So that's good. I think in the near future I'd like to see a Spanish adaptation of a play I know, so I can follow the story line and see differences in interpretation. OH! But I did find out after the show that this play was a "liberal translation" of a Checkhov play. Which helps explain a little bit why it was confusing - Checkhov plays are dense, and it's about politics, but then they changed the country, which changes a lot.

So anyway, after the play I came home to find my roommate with a friend of ours - I hadn't seen them all day because they went on a hike. Like on a mountain. (I might have gone but it required two hours of trains each way and they left at like 6:30 am. I am definitely not that dedicated to hiking.) So we decided to go out for the night to a place called El Tigre, which is a bar that gives you plates of free tapas when you order a drink (and therefore is always EXTREMELY crowded). And the drinks are huge, so it's a good thing there's food to go with them:

That's what size the mojitos are.

Tapas! Croquetas, patatas con salsa brava, and chicken and ham-stuffed-mushrooms on bread.

Me with my friends Emily, Nidhi, and Mojito.

While at the bar (which is full of college students studying abroad and other foreigners, in addition to a few locals), we met some guys (one of whom took that last picture for us) and spent most of the night chatting with them, trying to improve our Spanish and help them with their English. They all had great Spanish names like Juan Antonio, and Miguel, and we all introduced ourselves with the European kiss on each cheek, which everyone does here but which takes some getting used to. I spent most of my time talking to a guy named Alejandro (seriously), who is an engineer though I never figured out exactly what he does. We actually spent a fair amount of time talking about American sports, once I figured out he was asking me if I was a Yankees fan. (It sounded more like he was saying Yonkers.) He likes American basketball and can probably name more teams than I can. He and his friends are all from I think essentially the suburbs of Madrid, so it was really a fluke that we met.

Since we were spending time with true Spaniards, we ended up staying out really late, and went to another bar, but that meant we didn't get really drunk (because it was so spread out - I promise!) and we got to practice our Spanish a lot. Particularly I think our pronunciation got better, even if our grammar is still pretty bad. It's also a little hard to learn Spanish while drinking a mojito as big as your head. (At this time, I would just like to take a moment to remind everyone that I am 21. Also the drinking age in Spain is 18. So. PERFECTLY LEGAL. SO LEGAL.)

Eventually we said goodnight and took a cab home. I am definitely a fan of El Tigre - the drinks and the food are delicious, and it's probably the best deal in Madrid, or in a close second to Cien Montaditos. Today is a lazy Sunday in which I plan not to leave the house but instead enjoy our big beautiful living room and get my art history reading done. (Guys, my homework is not due until Tuesday. I dunno what to do.)

If I'm good and get my reading done, maybe I can finally write that Segovia post. I still have to edit the photos, but at least they're already on my computer. I hear it's practically winter in the states - stay warm! (It's still in the 80s and low 90s here. It's a little ridiculous.)

¡Hasta luego!

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.

I Love the 80s

Ok so you know I love 80s music. As in I'm pretty sure I didn't listen to anything other than Mötley Crüe all summer. (Yeah, I can do umlauts now too. Keyboard exploring!) Aaanyway, my first day here, I found this:

It's TWO BLOCKS from my apartment. TWO. It probably takes me more time to get downstairs from my apartment than it takes to walk from my front door to this place. But I haven't been yet. Hopefully Nidhi (my roommate) and I are going on Tuesday night, when we're hosting two couch surfers from Salt Lake City for the night. They said in their profile that they like 80s music, so hopefully we'll have a good time.

There actually seems to be an obsession here (I'm not sure if here means Madrid, Spain, or Europe) with American music, particularly 80s rock/classic rock in general/punk. Today at El Rastro I saw several booths selling nothing but band t-shirts, most of which sported logos of groups like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Green Day, Iron Maiden, etc. I find it really weird, kind of funny, and extremely comforting. It's nice to have something familiar around in all the Spanish. There's a "rock club" just a block from this 80s bar, and in another neighborhood I found a classic rock bar. So I'll have to check out those places as well. But first, Héroe and then flamenco! My friends and I attempted to go to a flamenco place on Thursday night (because we don't have class on Fridays, what I don't have class on Fridays?) but it didn't exist. So instead we did a lot of wandering around a barrio called La Latina which was pretty cool. BUT. We need to find flamenco.

I love the 80s. El fin.

Mi Casa Es Su Casa

Here's where I'm living, and you're welcome to come visit!

I'm incredibly lucky to be living in a barrio called Huertas, which is located about ten minutes (walking distance) from Puerta del Sol, which is the center of the city. I'm also only about ten minutes away from the Museo del Prado, the major art museum of Madrid, and fifteen minutes from both Parque del Retiro (Madrid's Central Park) and the Reina Sofia, the museum of contemporary art which I visited in my first week here.

My street is full of little bars, restaurants, clubs, and a few stores. There's the pastelería I mentioned across the street, and an ice cream place I really like just up a few blocks. Since Spaniards stay out so late, my street is alive far into the night and the early hours of the morning. There's always music playing outside my window in the evening, which I love.

So. Now for the tour!

Aquí está my bedroom. The walls are really yellow. The bed's actually pretty comfortable and takes up most of the room. Just to the left of this picture is my closet, which has almost nothing in it because I brought very little with me. I literally have six things on hangars. Haha.

This is el baño. We have a little window! Not much else to say.

This is the view of the kitchen from the front door. On the left is the table and three chairs, behind it is where we keep our dry goods (mostly pasta and a big jar of peanut butter that my roommate brought from America). The door next to it leads to our living room. To the right is the poster of NYC we found in the apartment, and then the microwave, oven/stove, cabinets, etc.

The rest of the kitchen. Sink, big window (where we can sometimes see our neighbor across the air shaft who is a middle-aged fat man who often doesn't wear a shirt), washing machine, and refrigerator/freezer. The open door is my roommate's room, the closed one is our front door. Many locks.

View of the living room from the door - a table with two chairs, a wall of windows, stylish lamps, a three-piece sectional sofa with two more pieces as individual chairs, and a square coffee table.

The living room from the other end - more yellow walls, a mirror, a sideboard on which we put candles, a wall with several shelves including some books former tenants have left here.

So that's about it for now. I'm currently in my comfy bed in my yellow room, and I think I'm going to take a nap before going out for sangria later and doing some homework. Tired due to a trip to El Rastro today, which is the big flea market they have every Sunday in La Latina. I got a new purse and a cute dress, all for a total of 20 euros! (See Mom, I spent some money.) Before I leave Spain I will definitely have bought a leather jacket. Saw one today for 30 euros, but I'm going to wait for now since our weather has been in the 90s every day and shows no signs of cooling off any time soon. ¡Hasta luego! 

(I've also gotten really good at typing in Spanish - note my inverted exclamation point. I can do inverted question marks, accents, and tildes too!)