100 Anecdotitos

Last time I wrote, I was in the middle of a very busy three days of orientation. We had hours of presentation and information sessions, learned a few useful things, and sat through a lot of useless crap (as with any orientation, I think). Some of the most important things you ever learn are not taught but just picked up, like that Cien Montaditos has free wifi and cheap food, and it's just down the street from our wifi-less hotel. That's where I am now, hanging out until I go to spend a couple of days with a kind auxiliary while I continue my apartment search. I have found a pretty decent place in Tetúan, to the north of the city, a very residential area. It's a quiet piso (apartment) with two Spanish women: one who worked in the states for a bit, so knows some English, and one from Barcelona, who I haven't yet met. I will probably take this apartment, but I want to see another one in the area before I commit to it, just in case. Tetúan is about 30 minutes commute from my school and 30 minutes commute from the center of the city, too. 

Not much has happened since I last wrote, since we've been working on searching for places to live. Everyone has been really stressed out, but at least we are all in the same boat together (being happy but jealous when yet another comrade finds a great place to live).  Only a few of us are left in the homeless side of the boat, but the good thing about all our new friends is that everyone who does have a place has been saying "come stay with me while you look! No problem!" Hannah, my new Buffy-fan friend, has an apartment in Moncloa, Tamara, my hotel roommate, has one in Salamanca, and Steve the guitar-player is trying to decide between Tetúan and another apartment. School doesn't start until October 1st, though, so we have time!

Yesterday was the day of El Rastro (the Sunday market in Latina). People say you can take the metro to Latina and just follow the flow of people to find the market, and it's true. There were SO MANY PEOPLE. There were booths with all sorts of things, shoes, clothes, decor, art; an entire street were just for paintings. It was really cool! That is the place where the most pick-pocketing happens, though, because of the crowds and what-not, so I had my stuff around my neck and tucked into my shirt. It was a really classy look ;)

Last night, Steve got to play at an open mic bar in the area of our hotel, and a bunch of us went to watch. It was pretty legit (a stage with real stage lights!) and Steve is a really good singer, and there were so many great performers. Once we left at 10:30pm, we decided we needed dinner. A new friend Andrew and I got Chinese fast food (that was the name of the restaurant, too: Chinese Fast Food) and omg was it SO good. I guess Chinese food is a big thing here and it is delicious! I got arroz con trés deliciósas, (rice with three delcious-es? delicacies? no sé, but it definitely was delicious!) 

Okay, so now the day is Tuesday (I wrote all of that yesterday). Good news! I have officially decided on my apartment! I went with a piso in Tetúan, the one with the Spanish women. I went and saw the other flat, and though it was bigger, it was not with Spanish speakers and it was about 50€ more expensive. I was going to do everything official this evening (pay the fianza, (deposit), sign the contract, etc), but THEN. Bad news! I went to the ATM to get the money out and it ate my American card and I can't get it back until tomorrow morning when the bank reopens. (Don't worry, no one else can get money off of it either: I talked to the bank, with the help of a passerby who speaks better Spanish than I do). It's been a day of ups and downs to be sure. I wanted to have pictures to post of my new room and roommates, but I guess that will have to wait! 

Ta Luego! 

Aqui en Madrid...

I'm going to try to update my blog once a week, and at the moment Tuesdays seem like a good time to do that, though I am pretty busy today. (I'm cheating, and sitting in orientation right now, while we're talking about culture shock). 

Since I wrote last, I have done and seen a lot. On thursday, I went with Jesús on his walking tour of the center of Madrid. We saw the Plaza Mayor, which has been rebuilt three times after three different fires;

the statue in the center of Philip III which, because of a hole that used to be open in the horses mouth, was at one point full of dead animals that had gone inside to next and could not get out; we went into the oldest restaurant in the world, (Guinness World Records certified), the speciality of which is 13 week old pigs that go into the original firewood oven and can fit 14 pigs at a time; 

 we learned about the crest of Madrid, with the bear representing the government, the madroño tree representing the church; 

 we saw the ruins of the first wall around Madrid, built to keep out the Moors (rather unsuccessfully);

 

but I think my favorite part of the tour was the cathedral. The Almudena Cathedral took a long-ass time to build because they kept running out of money and just stopping in the middle. It literally changes style three times because of how long it took in between each stage. The stones even change color. 

By the time they finished, it was the 80's. The 1980's. The reason that this was my favorite part is because of the ceiling. I need to get a better picture, but this is how it looked in the whole building. So 80s, right? There are triangles of dark and light green, representing the palm leaves the people of Jerusalem greeted Jesus with, and each diamond in between is a specific pattern. No pattern is repeated, and it represented the diversity of the human race. So beautiful! 

We also saw the other Philip statue (a different Philip), and this is the first statue in the world that was a horse on only two legs. Philip wanted it to look like a painting of him, with the horse rearing up. The sculptor asked Galileo to calculate how much bronze he needed to fill the bottom half with and, because there was too much bronze needed, he ended up making the horse's ass much larger than normal. 

Finally, we ended seeing the 0km mark: the dot on the ground where every highway in Madrid takes its measurements, literally by the centimeter. 

So the walking tour was really cool. That took up most of Thursday, and Thursday night is a blank to me right now. Maybe I'll edit this later but if you're reading this, I obviously forgot. 

Friday (Friday, gonna get down on Friday) was loco. I didn't do much during the day, but by 10pm we went out to meet a friend of Daniele's for dinner and beer. Then we went to meet more people at another restaurant for more drinks. We stopped by a bar for drinks and then went to a karaoke bar. 

If you recall, I am a big fan of karaoke. I went every Tuesday for a couple years while in college to sit and have beer and sing songs. It was very organized you went in order, and there was plenty of room to sit and watch... if you don't already know this, every building in Spain is small. This karaoke bar, the ceilings nearly touched my head, and I am NOT tall, the room with the karaoke was tiny and the sound filled the building, all the Spaniards were singing at the top of their lungs, whether or not they had the microphone. we tried to sing Piano Man in Spanish and the Spaniards just took over. It was amazing to me how they knew every song that came on (I imagine most were regulars), and they all just stood around the computer, drinks in hand, dancing and singing. By the time we left there, it was about 3:30am, but the night was far from over. 

We walked to a club called El Templo del Gato (Temple of the Cat), which played some seriously old American pop music, but it was still pretty fun. (Side note, native Madrileños are called gatos. There are a lot of legends about why, but the main one is that during the Moorish invasion, some soldiers or people were climbing the walls and the Arabs saw and said they looked like cats). We left el Templo when it close, at 4:30am and walked to La Plaza de la Puerta del Sol (The plaza of the door of the sun), and Jesús, having his ukelele with him, joined the big music circle that had formed around a fountain, and we listened to music and drank beers (sold by Indian men on the streets) as the street cleaners worked around us and the police cars kept watch. This was the first time I noticed that there are no stars in Madrid. I knew that would be the case, but I forgot about how strange it is to me... Kirksville has a lot of stars. 

By the time we made it home, it was about 6am, and (11pm in Missouri, so it still felt pretty normal to me), and there were still tons of people out on the streets, because one way people party here is stay out until 6am, when the Metro reopens, so they can just take that back home. There are also night buses, but Madrid really is the city that never sleeps. 

Saturday was very relaxed; Daniele and I went grocery shopping because they were having friends over to finish Game of Thrones that evening and she wanted to cook for them. That was basically all we did that day, and we went to bed by 2am. Sunday, I finally had a hotel available, so when I was ready, I left and got a taxi (with Jesús' help) and got to the hotel. My hotel roommate for these first three days is Tamara, a woman from Atlanta. 

Orientation has been pretty insane. Sunday night we went to a restaurant that was cocktail style, bringing around little bits of food for us to eat, and allowing us to socialize and walk around and drink together. I met few friends that night; Steven, a fellow fan of Joss Whedon, Candice, a journalist who also watches the Newsroom, Hannah, Tyler, Amy, and so on. After dinner, at about 11pm, we went back and Tamara and I watched King Kong in Spanish (which is practically not even necessary since most of the movie doesn't involve a lot of talking) while we got ready to sleep. Monday we had orientation and it was exhausting. For some reason I couldn't get to sleep the night before and I was exhausted, but I learned a lot, anyway. I took a nap during Siesta and then we went on a walking tour with a Spanish tour guide who spoke in Spanish and took us through Chueca (the gay neighborhood) to our restaurant. I felt pretty good about the tour because I understood basically everything, although she was speaking pretty slowly for our sake. Each meal (besides breakfast at the hotel) there have been problems for vegetarians. The place we ate dinner did not know there were going to be vegetarians (and also a lot of Spaniards don't really understand what vegetarianism is) so when they brought out the main course, the vegetarians got plates of canned white asparagus. Not exactly appetizing (or... eatable). I'm just thankful that wasn't a problem for me, but it was definitely a topic of conversation that night. 

And now today, we are doing some more orientation and eating some more places (hopefully with vegetables!) and hanging out, meeting more people. By Wednesday, we will get to another hotel for our temporary accommodations for five days (until the 23rd) and will have time to look for places to live. I want to live in Nuevos Ministerios, right next to the train station so I can get to my school in decent amount of time while still being in Madrid, so I'm going to start looking seriously tomorrow. I've been looking online, but I'm planning on walking around the neighborhood and looking for "En Aquiler" on the windows and lampposts. 

Some surprising things I've learned so far: 

1. Smoking is banned in buildings, and smoking is pretty much as common here as in the US (i.e., not very). 

2. Banks close at 2pm (the beginning of siesta) but instead of opening later like most stores, after siesta, they remain closed. 

3. The sidewalks and streets are at the same level, most of the time the only indication between the two are metal poles that keep cars off the sidewalks. And basically every road only goes one way. 

4. There are a lot of laws in Spain that are "laws" in theory but are not enforced. Like drinking in the streets or anything to do with weed/pot. 

5. Because people in the service industry don't get (or expect) tips, service here can be pretty crappy. If you're an ass, the waiters will treat you as such. 

Until next time, adiós! 

A Land of Cobblestone Streets

I'm currently sitting in my new friend Daniele's apartment listening to her boyfriend play Chris Isaak (mom would love this) on his ukelele and trying not to nod off due to my less than 5 hours of sleep. The journey here was certainly interesting! I flew out of Kansas City at 10am on the 10th of September and less than 20 hours later (I'm too tired to calculate how long it all took) I arrived in Madrid on the 11th of September at 10am. 

The plane ride from KC to Chicago was pretty uneventful. I had to go to a different terminal once in Chicago, though, and in the meantime I forgot to empty my water bottle. Thankfully the security guys let me just take the bottle out and empty it, put it on the belt and walk back in again, without going through the ridiculously long line with my stuff again. I had a really long layover between that time, though, and not much to do. I was tired already, and there was not much to do. 

On the plane to Dublin, I managed to sleep enough to not hate myself, but I also spilled coffee all over the place and had to change clothes mid flight (so thankful that I brought a change of clothes with me!). Oh, and that water bottle that caused some drama earlier? I left it on the plane. Yup.

Dublin to Madrid, I had the row to myself and I lay down and slept or at least tried to. I never felt like I was actually asleep but the flight went pretty quickly so maybe? 

I got to Madrid and went to baggage claim and couldn't find the right baggage claim, then I found it, then my baggage wasn't there, then I waited in the wrong "lost baggage" area for ten minutes, then I discovered that my baggage it still in Dublin and will be until at least tomorrow. So. Again, I am thankful I packed extra clothes and essential items in my carry on. 

I left the airport and realized that it was RAINING! This was unexpected. I went to a booth to see how much it would be to take a taxi and yeah that was a little much for me so to the metro I went! Got to Daniele's apartment, in the rain, and now I'm sitting here typing this and I just discovered that Daniele knows Foxy Shazam and her friend made some of their musicals. We're going to get food soon, and then ???

Tomorrow, I'm going on a walking tour of Madrid (courtesy of Daniele's boyfriend Jesus who does that for his job! Perfecto!) And after that we'll see!