My History With Hedwig

This is a letter to Michael Mayer, the director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway. Hopefully it will be in his hands on Tuesday, opening night.

April 20, 2014

Dear Mr. Mayer,

My name is Lindsay Hope Simon. If you don't have time to read my novel below (though I hope you do), the moral of the story is HEDWIG is the most important show that's ever come into my life, which happened a decade ago, and thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my soul for putting it on Broadway like this. I have never in my life looked forward to something more than I looked forward to this production of HEDWIG, and it fulfilled my every wish, hope, and expectation.

This story begins on August 7, 2004. And I beg you to stay with me, because where it ultimately leads is to sitting in row H of the Belasco Theatre on April 19, 2014.

2004: I see RENT for the first time, and my subsequent obsession with my first Broadway experience leads me to HEDWIG (because of JCM's nod to it in the film). I spend most of high school very confused about gender because of my love of Angel and Hedwig and my newfound desire to be a drag queen, which I tell no one about. That's something I've never quite resolved. ANYWAY.

2005: Falling in love with HEDWIG leads me to write a paper about Plato's Symposium as a sophomore in high school. My teachers aren't expecting that.

2007: Theatre, my love of RENT in particular, and my affinity for New York cause me to apply early decision to NYU. I never consider anywhere else, and get accepted and placed in Playwrights, at my own request.

Fall 2008: I arrive in New York just before the closing of RENT, in time to see it for a ninth and tenth time in its last week. Incoming Tisch kids are each given a ticket to Spring Awakening. I see it with a friend who knows someone in the cast; I end up backstage at a Broadway show within a week of living in New York. Around Halloween I go to a not-quite-authorized one-night performance of HEDWIG at the Highline Ballroom.

Spring 2010: Second semester of second year I direct a piece of HEDWIG for my directing class (the scene including Origin of Love). I desperately want to do the whole thing, but I still haven't managed it. Spring of 2010 is when rumors first start flying that JCM is bringing HEDWIG to Broadway. (I've been waiting for this production for four years.)

April 2010: I meet you at a moderated discussion with Bob Vorlicky at Tisch. CAP girls ask about Spring Awakening, PHTS kids ask obnoxious but intelligent questions about collaboration. I ask you after about working with Michael Krass. You diplomatically don't say much.

July 2010: I see American Idiot for the first time. I listen to the soundtrack nonstop for the next six months.

October 2010: I see American Idiot for the third time with a talkback when BJA is in it for the first time.

November 2010: I go to a panel that Kevin Adams is a part of. I make sure to ask him a question (because no one else is and I want him to see me) and I talk to him afterwards. We meet up once for dinner a couple weeks later and I ask a million lighting questions. I subsequently see everything he works on (having already seen Hair and Next to Normal).

January 2011: A friend and I spend 36 hours in Boston to see American Idiot twice, the eighth and ninth time I'm seeing the show.

April 2011: I write a paper for Bob's gay and lesbian theatre class (my third class with him) about Hedwig and authentic performance beyond gender and genre.

May 2012: You speak at Tisch salute. It's an incredible speech, an extremely satisfying blend of inspiring and being honest about the faults of the institution that we love and hate and the cruel mistress of a business we're trying to be a part of. I record the whole thing for Bob, by now a dear friend, who can’t make it.

June 2013: Announcement of HEDWIG coming to Broadway with NPH directed by you and lit by Kevin. I start freaking out immediately.

October 2013: I attend an early screening of Broadway Idiot. And remember my love for rock musicals and your and Kevin’s work.

February 2014: I start working for an amazing woman who is part of the production team for the tony awards and a sometimes Broadway producer. I make sure she knows I have never been so excited about a show as I am about HEDWIG.

April 2014: She has press seats to HEDWIG. She takes me.

That was about 24 hours ago. I still barely have words for my feelings about the production. The themes of this show, of love, why and how we love, that search for wholeness, have echoed through my life for the last decade since I first met HEDWIG in 2004. The idea of duality, but that somehow duality is not synonymous with binary, is one I can never escape. I have seen these themes arise in my life, in projects I've worked on, and in everything I'm inspired to create theatrically, including a magical-realism play I'm writing about Berlin in the 1970s.

I was nervous, because the combination of you plus Kevin plus Neil doing this show put my expectations higher than anything. It seemed impossible that you could live up to what I needed this show to be, based on my love of it and all three of your individual bodies of work. (I'd never seen Neil live before yesterday, since he hasn’t been on Broadway in the almost-ten years since I started seeing shows, but I've loved HIMYM from the beginning, and Dr. Horrible, and followed his LGBT advocacy.)

I left the theatre speechless in the best possible way. The show had all the heart that it should, and it takes a lot of heart for one person to fill up that big of a space. It didn't feel lost, or small, or like it was trying to be something it wasn't. I think it's delightfully updated for today. I think using the Hurt Locker and being able to throw a mention of 9/11 into the show is brilliant. 9/11 is, in many ways a contemporary parallel. "Where were you when?" I went to Berlin in 2011 and became obsessed with history that is still present. Hedwig's history is still present on her body, and she has to come to terms with that.

I read something amazing Neil said in the interview with Out magazine last month. He said that there was a moment in his mid-20s where he came to the conclusion that he would always be alone, but that it wasn't a sad realization, just a fact as far as he was concerned. And I realized I kind of feel the same way, and my love of Hedwig to an extent come out of the idea of how love is ancient and beyond our control and all we can do is love those who come into our path, whether they love us or not. We only control how we deal with not being loved. Love has to be selfless because it's bigger than the self, it's the bit of the universe in you reaching out to a bit of the universe in someone else. Hedwig understands that and eventually gets through the pain of it to a point of acceptance. Loving deeply means hurting deeply and then letting go.

About a month ago I saw a video for the show in which you called HEDWIG universal. And I think you're totally right though plenty of people (my boss included) would disagree. It brought tears to my eyes to hear you say that; it gave me faith that the show wasn't just going to be an NPH spectacle machine. Watching the show yesterday (it's taken me an entire day to find actual words to articulate myself instead of just flailing) I was reminded of everything I love about Hedwig, the combination of aggression and vulnerability, heart and strength. It's what I'm working on myself in a new piece I'm currently calling "Stardust and Iron," about what people are made of. This show is that - ancient and cosmic and strong. I managed to behave myself pretty well, I only let out one "oh yes" out loud when the back wall opened up into the wall of lights. Everything was so smart. The evolution of the set, the lights (duh), the modernization of the script for the time and location. Midnight Radio was perfect. I cried.

I've seen a lot of bad theatre lately. And ever since I started theatre school I've said there's something to be learned from bad theatre too. But I've been reaching a point of stagnation in my own work, and frustration with the bad work I've been seeing, so I cannot tell you how inspiring, energizing, refreshing, fulfilling, and rewarding it was to see this yesterday and feel like theatre can do important things and tell important stories and broadway can take risks and be loud and not fit neatly in a box.

So in the end all I can say is thank you. My story is my thank you, because I have to believe that what we all want most as artists is to touch the lives of others, and hopefully affirm a belief in something bigger than ourselves (whatever we call it). Art is bigger than us. This production didn't change my life. HEDWIG's presence has affected my life for the last decade. This incarnation wasn't going to change any of that. But it affirmed the beliefs and values I've cultivated as I've grown up, and that's something really valuable to a 24-year-old artist hoping that what she's doing matters, or will someday. So thank you. I could talk about this show forever. I'm sure Bob and I will talk after Tuesday. And I'll be back again soon.

Rage, love, glitter, and glam,
Lindsay Hope Simon

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.

---

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.

Rock You Like A Hurricane

Oh hi!


I don't know why that picture is so big.

Last we met, I was just telling you I was still alive after the hurricane. The hurricane was nothing to me, what followed in the next six weeks was the whirlwind of my life and why I've been so absent on the blog front. Let's see how succinctly I can do this.

October 29: Hurricane. MTA shut down.
October 30: MTA still shut down.
October 31: Halloween? Busses running, tried to take the bus to work, ended up walking because NYC cannot function without the subway. Worked all day. Took a cab home.

Began working 24/7 at Harry Potter, since Fuerza Bruta (at 15th street) didn't have power. As a result of working 24/7 at Harry Potter, I became the inventory/product manager. Welcome to a full time job.

So picture November: 40+ hours a week at Harry Potter, 10+ hours a week at Fuerza Bruta, 15+ hours a week stage managing a show at NYU, church (Sunday school) on Sundays, and stage combat (assisting with unarmed and learning broadsword) on Thursdays.

Still I will say this, now that it is mid-December and the show I stage managed is over and as of today stage combat is finished for the semester: real life still isn't as taxing as theatre school was.

Life is awesome. I have jobs I (mostly) love, the show went really well, the cast gave me roses. I passed my skills proficiency test in broadsword so that I'm certified in three weapons making me an actor-combatant. I going on dates! Now that less than 100% of my friends are theatre people, I'm meeting non-gay men, it's crazy. I went ice skating yesterday. :) And the biggest best news of all: ANNA AND I GOT AN APARTMENT! AND IT'S SO PRETTY, LOOK!

Exposed brick, pretty kitchen, an ELEVATOR!

Guys, Harry Potter paradise is about to be a reality. Get ready.

Tuesday I go to Florida, for a vacation, where I won't have to do homework, like a real vacation! I get to see my parents and my brother and my grandma and be in the sun and warm weather. Yay! And then I'll be in NYC for NYE for the first time ever, and sometime between Christmas and New Years, I'll move into the beautiful apartment!

I'm so happy. :) Hope you all have a lovely holiday season.

Democalypse 2012

Was politics ever about proving oneself right rather than proving someone else wrong? I have to imagine it was... I don't want to vote for someone just because s/he proved the other guy is an idiot. But what has our political system become? A lot of very expensive mudslinging.

As a reluctant member of the "millennial" generation, I can't help but think about the fundamental flaws in our economy. Never mind the Depression-era unemployment rates, the housing market collapse (have you seen the documentary Inside Job? It's infuriating.), the skyrocketing costs of education. We've all talked these things to death. My NYU education cost approximately a quarter of a million dollars. I don't know how much more I can talk about it. So now, my friends and I all have these degrees that cost about as much as a presidential campaign, but are guaranteed jobs? No. The jobs we would normally get right out of school are taken by the laid-off, who have more experience than the recently-graduated. We're expected to take unpaid internships to gain real world chops before we can hope to get a decent job. But how does one take a full-time unpaid internship and still, you know, make money?

This article has been spreading across my facebook network like wildfire, the worries and desperations of the millennial generation that seems to be guaranteed nothing but hard work, and even the hard work is only if you can find it. The jobs aren't out there, and neither is the money.

Yet there's money coming from somewhere - what about the millions of dollars spent on political campaigns? Remember the 2008 election? Remember how the race to the White House started mid-2007 with about ten candidates on each side? Well nine of those on each side raised tons of money to run a race they wouldn't even finish, let alone win. This year, Rick Santorum (don't get me started) kept running looong after it was clear he would never get the Republican nomination. It seemed to be a matter of pride - sticking it out because he said he would, continuing to accept campaign donations and run pointless ads and pay for air time to say utterly ridiculous things. And he's not the only one. All the politicians do it.

Look, I recognize that part of the democratic process is allowing anyone who meets the legal requirements for candidacy to run. Choice is good, we like to believe. And I like getting to vote. I do. Maybe this is a quintessential #firstworldproblems rant, but I think it's a huge problem: running for political office is expensive. And people with more money do have better chances. But why do we have to spend all this money on political campaigns?

Want to get elected president? Instead of having people donate money to your campaign or your super PAC, why not have people donate that same money to a fund to provide scholarships for kids to go to college? I know a lot of people who'd vote for that guy.

I know I'm oversimplifying things, but it's something that's bothered me for years. During each presidential election, a dozen or so people spend millions of dollars - each - on not getting elected. And that's true for other elections too. These politicians spend all this money not even to make themselves look good but often to make their opponents look bad, and they run these ads on television even though no one watches commercials anymore. And the secret is they could do all their mudslinging campaigns on facebook for a lot less money and people might actually see them rather than just fast forwarding the commercials on their DVR.

Okay make a jump with me. Enjoy a little music - I've been listening to this song a lot lately and it's what prompted this particular post now, of all times.

There are so many problems in our country (not to mention everywhere else) that it just seems ridiculous to me to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an argument. Oh, and don't we have unheard of amounts of debt? Good, let's just keep maxing out our political credit cards instead of fixing New Orleans or sending people to college or restoring the American auto industry.

Oh my God, this is insane.
How'd it get like this or has it always been this way?
Oh my God, I'm so ashamed.
And we try to close our eyes and make this go away.

Radio Free Europe (back again!)

So as most of you probably know, I'm back in Europe again already, lucky girl that I am. This trip comes on the heels of graduation from NYU Tisch (with honors), accompanied by visits from
My parents, brother, and grandparents, all in the city at the same time. We had a whirlwind four days of celebrations, eating in nice restaurants, and not sleeping enough, not to mention packing up and moving out of my last dorm ever, thank goodness.

Very quick recap for those who don't know: NYU graduation was Wednesday at Yankee Stadium. 5,000+ graduates, a packed stadium, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke, absolute madness getting out. We block traffic, as usual. Tisch graduation was Friday at Radio City Music Hall, a building I'd never actually entered before and with which I fell in love. Our dean, Mary Schmidt Campbell, and our honorary speakers Michael Mayer (director of American Idiot and consulting producer on Smash) both gave great speeches.

I worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night at Fuerza Bruta (remember when I saw it in Madrid in October? Always good to be home.) and spent parts of Saturday and Sunday in New Jersey visiting family. Sunday afternoon my mom and I saw Potted Potter with my aunt and cousins (ages 12 and 9) and had a great time.

Monday morning, bright and early, Mom and I headed for JFK and boarded a flight to London, from which I write now! After we got off the plane (an uneventful trip in which I watched 21 Jump Street, The Iron Lady, and parts of Jeff Who Lives at Home) we got through passport control, got our bags, and headed to the underground. Two trains later, I navigated us from the tube stop to my friend Kerry's apartment (my friend that I stayed with last time I was in London) without any trouble, and we are now happily staying with her for the next few days.

Today we went to the Tate Modern and saw a play at the Young Vic, and tomorrow we go to the HARRY POTTER STUDIO TOUR!!!

Updates on all that later. It's been a busy week.

So happy to be back!

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.

Extremadura y Portugal Part I

I return, triumphant and exhausted, from Extremadura and Portugal! Many pictures are soon to come, but as uploading and editing over 100 photos will take a lot of time (and I am, as I said, exhausted and, in addition, have homework to do) so I'm going to summarize via narrative for now.

Friday, 23.9.11
Got up around 6:45, finished up the last bits of packing one must always do the morning of the trip and not before. Made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat on the bus for whenever my stomach eventually woke up. Left with Nidhi around 7:15 for the bus stop that's just down the street from us to take us to school. Ran into three other kids from the program on the same bus. Arrived at school just before 8, sat in a cloudy haze in our patio until we got on the bus. We were supposed to leave at 8:15, but of course we left somewhere around 8:30, lacking three of the thirty people that were supposed to be coming.

After about two hours of driving through surprisingly dull countryside (well, I mostly slept so I guess I don't really know) we stopped at some random truck stop-type place and some people had coffee and croissants or something. I ate my sandwich, much to the envy of many around me because peanut butter here is hard to find and expensive. (I'm lucky because Nidhi brought a huge jar from home, though we've gone through probably 2/3 of it already.) 20-30 minutes later we got back on the bus, I went back to sleep, and two hours later we arrived in Mérida.

Mérida, Spain, is an old town with Roman ruins. I either forgot or never really knew that Rome's empire used to include the Iberian peninsula, so there are parts of Spain that look like what I suppose a lot of Italy looks like. We saw an aqueduct, an amphitheatre (for gladiator fights), and best of all and possibly the highlight of the trip for me (on Friday early afternoon), a Roman theatre from the second century. It was a pretty spiritual moment for me to be in such a place, to know that nearly 2000 years ago in the place where I stood people were performing, and it was theatre in its original intent - both entertainment and an offering to the gods. A connection of humanity and higher powers. I wished we could have spent more time there, or that I could have sat there for even a few moments alone. But we had to move on.

Lunch in Mérida was unfortunately probably the most disappointing meal I've ever eaten. I got the menu del día, which is a fixed price (in this case 10 euros, but there was really nothing cheaper) three course meal that is generally a good deal because of how much food you get. We had local wine, which was mediocre, and each of us tried a different appetizer, most of which were different kinds of vegetables that seemed to have been dumped out of a can onto our plates and mixed with ham. (Because 99.9% of food in Spain is mixed with ham.) I had mushrooms with garlic and ham. It tasted okay, but the mushrooms definitely were not from a local market or anything. My main course was pork (I think grilled?) with a little salad. The meat actually didn't taste that bad but it wasn't warm. Most of us ordered ice cream for desert, which turned out to be the best part of the meal, and it was only little yogurt-sized prepackaged Nestle ice cream. Haha. Oh well. Win some, lose some, I guess.

After lunch, those three stray people who had missed the bus showed up (they took a different bus and met us there, finally), and we got back on the bus and headed to Cáseres, where we stayed for the weekend. Our hotel was so nice. Possibly the nicest place I've stayed, though it's not really comparable to some of the suites I've been in with my family. And breakfast at the hotel Saturday and Sunday morning was great. I roomed with a girl named Vella and we got along fine and had a few nice chats and lunch together Saturday. I also watched a little Spanish TV, which was fun.

After a brief break at the hotel to get situated and rest just a little, we went on a walking tour of the old quarter of Cáceres, which is a walled city that looks like it's still in the 15th century because they've kept it that way. We saw an old church and lots of towers and of course narrow streets and there were many stairs. All of Spain is hilly, and when that is combined with tall towers and castles and things, it's quite a workout. I'm from Illinois, part of the great plains, and as far as I was concerned, we were in mountain territory. But I asked Carlos, our guide, and he said hills. So. Technical term.

Post-tour was small dinner time, because it was only about 7:30, which is too early for real Spanish dinner, and we weren't terribly hungry yet. I ate with some friends and we all had bocadillos, which are sandwiches on baguettes. I actually thought I was just getting tortilla española (the potato/onion/egg dish), but I got that on bread. Which was alright. Definitely filled me up, and I didn't eat anything else that night. Actually, I got a terrible headache and instead of going out Friday night I went to bed really early.

Saturday 24.9.11
Got up at 8 feeling great and took the best shower ever. Got a funny wakeup call from the front desk at 8:30. Went down to the amazing breakfast buffet at 9. I ate a lot of mini croissants, some cereal, yogurt, fresh melon, fresh orange juice, and COFFEE. I've had so little coffee here because a cafe con leche is pretty small and doesn't really affect me at all. At this point I just want coffee because I like it, not because I need it. (I broke my caffeine addiction this summer! YAY! We'll see how long that lasts once I'm back in NYC. I give it a week.)

Around 9:30 we started the slow process of getting everyone assembled to get on the bus to go to Portugal. We were supposed to leave at 9:45 and I think left at more like 10:15. On the way we watched Gladiator, which I had never seen and actually really enjoyed, minus the extremely gory parts. Something like two hours later we arrived in Castelo de Vide which does indeed have a big castle. We were let free for half an hour to have coffee and pastries (which I guess Portugal is known for. Apparently) and I succeeded in making up for Friday's awful lunch. I tried something called Bola de Bachegas (I think) that was a coffee-cake-mousse-chocolate-tiramisu-esque slice of deliciousness. We sat out on a little terrace and had an amazing view of a valley and some hills/mountains.

Post-coffee we toured the Jewish quarter, saw a church, and visited a castle. Everywhere we turned in the town there were amazing views. More on all that with the pictures. Lunch was paid for by NYU (for once) at a place called Do Parque, where we had traditional Portuguese food. There was a plate of (very strongly flavored) traditional Portuguese cheese, bread, chorizo (which I skipped - there are some things my almost-10-years-vegetarian self still can't handle, and bright red fatty looking slices of sausage are one of them), and olives. We had local wine, a vegetable soup that was delicious, and then a cod/onion/egg hash that mostly tasted like eggs with a salad. For desert we had a custard with caramelized sugar on top which was also really good.

We departed Castelo de Vide and headed a short distance away up a hill (mountain) to Marvâo (new fancy symbol!) and saw ANOTHER castle. More stairs. More climbing. I made up for 20 years of flat-land living in one weekend, I swear. More about that castle when I have the pictures. Eventually we left Marvâo and headed back to Cáceres for the evening.

I went to a medieval(esque) market/festival with some people (after getting severely lost and eventually successfully asking for and understanding directions), which was interesting; I didn't buy anything and we mostly wandered a lot. When I got back I went out for a small dinner and a drink with Nidhi and our friend Emily. We had the slowest service I've ever experienced (which, in Spain, is saying something, because it's always slow), but we had a nice time chatting and the food was cheap, filling, and flavorful.

After dinner we met up with a bunch of people and found a bar where we had a few shots together. (Skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to read about me drinking. Haha.) I tried absinthe for the first time. It was really gross; tasted like black licorice or jelly beans. Must somehow involve anise. Fortunately I had a (pretty weak) tequila shot after. And I actually didn't get even tipsy off of my unspecified number of shots (which were all the same liquor except for the absinthe, because I'm responsible! Yay!). They were probably all kind of watered down because they were really cheap.

We left the bar (I wasn't drunk, in case you skipped the last paragraph) and went to a discotequa (club) that the cute guy at the hotel reception desk recommended to us. It was about 1:30 when we got there (and got in for free thanks to saying Raúl sent us). Guys. NO ONE was there. We were the only people until about 2:30. Literally. But it was really fun, we took up the whole dance floor and probably looked like fools. The DJ played a lot of American dance music that even I knew some of. Any of that music that I know though is because my brother listens to it, so it made me miss him. (The only American music I hear here is top 40 stuff which I always only know because Sam likes it.) ¡Te amo, hermanito! We danced at the club until about 3:30 and then we all walked home. Just enough time for a few hours sleep before one more day of fun.

Sunday 25.9.11
Repeat of Saturday morning, then we loaded everything on the bus and started heading back towards Madrid. A short bus ride later we stopped in basically the middle of nowhere and went to a random art museum in what used to be a wool factory. More on that with the pictures too.

We got back on the bus and drove two hours to Oropesa (while watching Spanglish) and after some miraculous turns and squeezing through tiny streets in our giant bus, we stopped to quickly view yet another castle and then to eat lunch. I do have to note that I seriously felt like I was on the Knight Bus for a few minutes when we made it through one of the tiniest streets I have ever seen - there were maybe five inches between my window and the wall outside. Nothing too notable about lunch (another menu del dia - with very salty food) other than that there were a couple of really cute but probably stray kittens wandering around, one of whom spent a good 20 minutes circling our table under our chairs.

I slept on the bus back to Madrid, two more hours. They were nice and made a stop at the southern side of the center of the city in addition to the final stop at school, so I was lucky enough to get off the bus just ten or so minutes from my apartment. Which was about three and a half hours ago now... This is what I get for being detail-oriented (and also talking to a couple friends as I write this). Plus trying to talk to my friend in Spanish while also writing in English... my brain is getting a lot better at flipping between the two languages, but sometimes random words will come out in the wrong one. I guess that's a good sign, actually! Anyway, I'm exhausted, and it's about time for some dinner, or some kind of food that hopefully requires no effort.

Buenas noches, amigos. I hope you are all well and that I will hear from you soon! I miss you mucho and send love from España!

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!

Segovia!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present the long-awaited post about the trip to Segovia (September 2, 2011). We had to meet "promptly" at 9 at the school to leave for Segovia. Of course, nothing happens "promptly" here, so I was on time for waiting for fifteen minutes. And mind you, I live at least half an hour from school by public transit. (And I hadn't mastered the bus yet, and the metro takes longer.) Anyway, two hour bus ride, sitting with my friends Boris and Matt, taking in the scenery, and then we arrived at Segovia!

I'm going to do this basically through pictures - this is a very small selection of the almost-100 photos I took that day. If you're friends with me on facebook, they're all there. If not, I'll try to upload them to a share site like shutterfly in the near future. Here we go:

This is a Roman aqueduct. Yeah like from 2000 years ago. And it still functions. And on the right is a café that Hemingway really liked.

This is what pretty much all the streets in Segovia look like. And beyond it you can see the mountains. (Mountains! Not prairie! I'm confused.)

Which means there are also a lot of hills. And stairs. Like these.

This is me on top of an old Roman wall, with the Cathedral in the background, included mostly as proof that I was there.

Don't remember exactly what this was, just thought it looked cool.

Typical Segovia.

Inside the cathedral!!!

Many different types of art are displayed, because the cathedral took over 100 years to build.

Cathedral hallway, to give a sense of scale.

This is an organ. I don't know why this picture is sideways. Blogger won't let me rotate it and I'm too lazy to go fix it. Turn your heads if you're really curious. :)

You get one guess why I took this picture.

(It's because of the stained glass light reflection. Duh.)

Monastery hallway, from the 16th century.

Commence Cathedral obsession

Okay so I like to be artsy sometimes. (Okay all the time.)

To the CASTLE! I've been obsessed with castles since I started reading Harry Potter. In case you didn't know. So I've been obsessed with castles since I was eight.

Alcázar, the castle, one of two castles upon which Disney based the Cinderella Castle. No joke. Can't you see it? (I think this is also the basis for every lego castle, based on the left-hand side.)

Guys, it's like a freakin' Gryffindor shield. On the wall of a castle that is at least 500 years old.

Armour. So cool.

Gryffindor bed! (This is really all just because the colors of Spain are red and gold, like Gryffindor.)

Artsy picture of the Spanish countryside through some windows, and my friend Yasmín. (Hi I like backlight it makes things dramatic.)

Possibly graffiti that is 15 years older than me?

View of the Cathedral from the top of the Tower of Juan II - 152 steps up

One last view of the Cathedral, with a flock of Hitchcock-esque birds flying in front of it.

After a two hour bus ride there and three hours of walking around, we were let free for lunch. I ate with a couple girls from my group in the Plaza Mayor and had croquetas. I'm not quite sure how to explain croquetas. They're made of a sort of paste of flour and milk (that I thought was potatoes until my cooking class), with various fillings - most commonly jamón, like these. The paste gets cut into pieces and breaded with breadcrumbs and then fried, so they look a lot like mozzarella sticks. And they're really delicious. After lunch we all met back in front of the cathedral (where I took that last picture) and headed back to the busses. We were all pretty tired and most of us, myself included, napped all the way back to Madrid.

Gosh it's gotten late as I've been telling my story! Well goodnight, friends, and see you again soon - when I must tell you about my failed attempts at finding live music, and also my success. ¡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.