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.

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.

Things I Miss About America

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

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

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

5 days, America. 5 days.

Gender Woes

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

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

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

¡Ciao!

Spanglish

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

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

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

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

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

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

English Perspective

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

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

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

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

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!

Nope.

Got an e-mail from the director of NYU in Madrid (a woman who has never met me and knows nothing about my Spanish skills other than the results of that test I took at 1 am in April). Despite the okay from both Spanish teachers and the academic coordinator, she said no. So. Slow, boring four-day-a-week Spanish class it is.

As a person who has always been fortunate enough to excel academically, I've never had a problem with being judged based on my test scores, because they were always really good. It's quite the rude awakening to really see just how much one stupid number can affect a course of action. It's really frustrating. It feels like people are telling me I'm not smart enough for something. And I'm not asking for advanced classes, just a faster-paced, further along intermediate one. I kept up with everyone today just fine, but the administration is getting so hung up on this one statistic from almost six months ago that I don't feel is a fair reflection of my skills.

I guess I should go figure out what my homework is for tomorrow since I wasn't in class today.

The couch surfers were supposed to be here an hour ago and they still haven't called me. Hopefully I'll be in a better mood by the time they actually show up. They're a 26-year-old married couple from Salt Lake City (aaahhh, English speakers) and they're only going to be here about 12 hours, at this point, as they're leaving by 7 or 8 in the morning to head to the airport. Maybe they will be happy to just drink wine with me and get some ice cream from up the street.

Mini-Success Update!

So I had to argue a lot (in Spanish) to make it happen, but I'm switching into the other Spanish class. Both teachers were worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up with the pace of the work now that they're done reviewing, but I wasn't lost today and with class only two days a week, I have no excuse to not do all my work and understand everything. So I'm not worried. ¡Yaaay! Let's hope getting into that class was the hardest thing I have to do this semester...

My Spanish Isn't Its Best at 1 a.m.

So today I talked to my Spanish teacher and then went to talk to the academic coordinator about changing my Spanish class. I'm currently in Intermediate Intensive Spanish, with eight other students, and after a week of reviewing conjugation in the present tense and how to use articles, I finally decided I really wanted out. When I spoke with my teacher she did say my level was above the rest of the class and that I should talk to Isabel (the academic lady) and see what she said.

Isabel said my placement test grade wasn't high enough, why did I wait so long, she hadn't heard anything from my teacher, I hadn't taken Spanish in a long time. I said I took my placement test at 1 am (true), I wanted to see if the class would get harder (it didn't), I had just talked to my teacher today (I did), and when I took Spanish I got a 3 on the AP test and it just hasn't fit into my schedule in college (all true). She seemed really skeptical - probably because she doesn't understand that I actually literally couldn't take my Spanish test any time other than 1 am because of my Tisch schedule. There was no other time in my days when I could sit down somewhere quiet for an uninterrupted hour of test taking. So I took my placement test at 1 in the morning, sometime in April when I was probably in the middle of three shows and had probably been up since 7 am. Sounds ideal, right?

Tomorrow I'm going to the other Spanish class and we'll see how it goes. If I get the okay from the professor, I can switch classes. If not, I'll be stuck in the one I'm currently in. And I can do that work, just fine, I got an A on my first quiz and an A on my first composition, I just feel like I should take advantage of the opportunity to improve my Spanish in Spain. And I feel like they should let me. I'm not asking to be put in advanced anything (though I think I could handle it), I'm just trying to skip all the review that it looks like I'll be spending half the semester doing at the moment. So wish me luck!

In other news... No, there really is no other news. I'm just waiting to see how this goes, because if I switch into the other class, my schedule will be even more ridiculous. Normally when I say that I mean I have no free time. But ridiculous here means I would have no classes on Mondays or Wednesdays either, leaving me with class only on Tuesdays and Thursdays - 13 class hours a week total. (Because my intensive class meets four days a week, which is what makes it intensive, I guess, but which seems to mean we can move at a glacial pace.) Once I have my schedule fully figured out, then I can book my flights to all the places I want to travel. I'm going to visit a friend in Paris and a friend in Berlin, and I want to travel to Venice, Lisbon, Morocco, and all over Spain. Plus London. But my mom and I are hoping to go to London together when she comes to visit (as well as Barcelona), and I'll probably go again in early December when we have a long weekend and I can also - get this - go see Mötley Crüe in Birmingham. Sooo... I know what I'm doing the first week in December. Flights really are cheap if you book them well in advance. I found a roundtrip flight to Paris today for the end of October for less that 100 euros, which is less than $150. It's often a challenge to book a trip to NYC for that.

Well, time for a siesta before grocery shopping and dinner, and then a little apartment cleaning before the couch surfers arrive for tomorrow night!

Stepping Out into the Night

Welcome, friends, to my blog dedicated to my three and a half months in Madrid. I have just embarked upon a wild journey that is sure to take me to unforseen places and teach me unexpected things. Already I have been here two weeks and learned much, so let me bring you up to speed...

Chicago to Madrid...
I flew out of O'Hare on the evening of August 27th on a direct flight to Barcelona. The flight was about 8 hours, landing me in Spain around 10am local time (but 3 am in my brain). I then had a short layover followed by a short hour and twenty minute long flight to Madrid. No trouble with my bags, and once the shuttle finally arrived to take me to my apartment, I arrived at my new home around 4 in the afternoon, and my landlady, Ruth, promptly appeared out of nowhere to help me carry my suitcases up the five - count them five - flights of stairs to my beautiful new apartment.

The Apartment...
I share this apartment with one other girl who is also an NYU student. Nidhi is an anthropology pre-med major in her junior year and is from outside of Rochester, New York. So far we've gotten along fairly well, cooperatively cleaning our entire apartment last weekend after being thoroughly disgusted at hour dirty the floors seemed to be. Upon my arrival Ruth told me (through much perseverance, due to her non-existant English and my mediocre Spanish) that there was a problem with the tap in the kitchen, which had no hot water and she hoped to get it fixed the next day. It was, but then there was a leak, which we got fixed a few days later. NOW, everything is lovely. Nidhi and I each have our own bedrooms: mine is only slightly larger than my full-sized bed but has a large closet, a small window that gets lots of western sun, and a skylight (though it's frosted, so I can't actually see the sky); Nidhi's room is slightly smaller with a twin bed and an armoire, but several large windows. Our bedrooms are both painted yellow, as are two of the four walls in our humongous living room, which has tons of natural light due to a wall of windows, a five-piece sectional couch (three pieces are currently making the couch and two are separate as chairs) situated around a coffee table, a dining table with two chairs, a sideboard with cabinets, a TV, and several shelves (one of which includes a small library of books left by previous student renters). We also have a kitchen-dining room with a table and three chairs, a refrigerator-freezer, a microwave, an oven and stove, and a washing machine. Dryers are incredibly rare in Spain, and everyone hangs their clothes out to dry on lines or on racks.
Our place is really well located, in a barrio called Huertas, which is close to The Prado Museum (art up through the 19th century) and the Reina Sofia Museum (contemporary art), as well as Retiro Park just beyond (a 10-15 minute walk), and in the other direction is Puerta del Sol, pretty much the center of the center of the city, just ten minutes away. We're also only a 5-10 minute walk from two metro stops and a bus stop, so getting around is really simple. Huertas is full of bars, clubs, and restaurants, which makes it a little pricey buy very trendy. I can always hear music out my window at night, which is great.

Daily Life...
Breakfast happens mostly at home, cereal and milk or bread with butter and jelly, and I've even made eggs a few times. One thing I already miss about America - teflon. Our pans are not non-stick, and that makes washing them after eggs a huge pain. If I don't have time to eat before we leave, I grab a croissant from the pastelería across the street or from Café Segre just down the street from school. Pastries here are generally pretty cheap and really delicious.
I can take the metro but usually take the bus to and from school - Madrid's public transportation system is incredibly simple. It's pretty hard to get lost on the metro, and the busses are really quick and on time. I've been packing a lunch to bring to school each day, because most restaurants (at least in my neighborhood and around school) are pretty expensive. While the menu del día is a pretty good deal for the amount of food you get, I'm trying not to spend the equivalent of $11 on lunch every day. Instead I probably bought about $11 worth of groceries for lunch for the week. The tough part to get used to is that Spaniards don't eat lunch until  2 at the earliest. I have class every day until 2:30 (Monday and Wednesday start at 12:30, and Tuesday and Thursday start at 9:30) and by then I'm very ready for lunch.
Generally my roommate and I cook dinner at home - frequently some kind of pasta, though we plan about once a week to have burritos of beans cooked with onions and garlic and fresh guacamole with fresh lime juice. Once we figured out where to go grocery shopping, cooking got really easy. There's a cheap grocery store right by school and a chain called Dia everywhere that's great. Supermarkets here are much smaller than in America though. Then there's the alimentación right under our apartment - which is a food shop that has fruits/vegetables and dry goods. The guy who owns it just opened the place and knows we live just upstairs, as we're there almost every day to buy a tomato or paper towels or something. Dinner doesn't happen in Madrid until about 9 (when it starts getting dark), but since lunch is later, that's not so much trouble. There have been nights Nidhi and I have eaten at 10 or 11, but generally our cooking has been a success.
After dinner, if I don't have class at 9:30 the next morning (or, once in a while, even if I do) we'll often go out for a drink or to a place with music. Even on weeknights here places stay open until at least 1 or 2 in the morning, and my street doesn't really quiet down until around 4. Lots of cervecerias have pretty cheap beer - often beer and water cost about the same here, and soda is sometimes more expensive. I've become quite a fan of Sangria and also had a lot of wine - not too much beer yet, personally.

School?
So I have classes, sometimes. Currently I'm in an intensive Spanish class that meets four days a week, but I might be switching up a level because I was bored every day last week. On a better note, my class about Federico García Lorca's theatre and poetry is wonderful; my teacher is quite a firecracker, which is exactly what we need at 9:30 in the morning. I'm also taking a class in Spanish about contemporary Spanish culture which I hope will broaden my perspectives about the world and make me more aware of my life in Madrid, and I'm taking a class called Masterpieces of the Prado which is an art history course covering the 15th century to the 19th century and involves weekly visits to the Prado. I generally like my classes though having this much academic work and having to sit and listen to teachers talk so much during the day is a really strange experience compared to having studio three days a week and doing a lot of things that often involve making strange sounds or rolling around on the floor. Our school's campus is two townhouses that are back to back, connected by a lovely patio where students hang out and eat lunch or chat between classes. So far it's only sort of rained for part of one day in the two weeks I've been here, and the high has always been in the high 80s or low 90s, so it's hot - but not humid!

Nightlife!
Whatever New Yorkers say, Madrid is truly the city that never sleeps. It's incredibly common to stay out here until 4 in the morning or later - the subway closes sometime between 12:30 and 2:30 in the morning depending on the day of the week, so frequently if people are out until 4, they'll just stay out until the metro reopens at 6 am. This is why people take siestas in the middle of the day. I am a big fan of the siesta. Since I've been here I've got out to some random bars (mojitos are my favorite here), searched for both a jazz club and a flamenco club that turned out to be non-existent, and sat around in parks with friends sharing bottles of wine. It's very common here to spend hours sitting in a park with friends, and though I don't think it's technically legal, everyone drinks in the streets and parks at night. Last night we did manage to find a real jazz club which is actually just up the street from me. It's called Café Central and I went last night with a bunch of friends to hear a live jazz quartet. There was a fee to get in, but somehow we ended up with coupons for a free drink after the show, so it was actually a really good deal - for about $17 I got a live show and a mojito. Haha. Definitely want to go back there, as they have different acts every week or so, and the people who work there seem really nice. Actually Madrileños in general are really nice, helpful, chatty people, though they often speak little to no English.

I think that's about it for now. Soon to come: pictures of my apartment, sights in Madrid, and Segovia - as well as all about the day trip to Segovia which involved a cathedral and a castle!

¡Hasta luego!