San Isidro 2010 + Last weekend with USAC

This weekend was the "official" end of USAC. While some people still linger, many have left for other adventures or to return to the states. It was not as much of a tear fest as we all predicted. I think it's easier when people trickle out instead of all rushing out at once. Yet, it's been sad nonetheless. Luckily, it was the annual San Isidro celebration this weekend in Madrid! Lots of festivities to keep us busy and eternally remember our time here. Here are some pictures of this weekend along with some people I won't forget!

The madrileños were staring...who says you have to grow up?

USAC office girls: Gabriela and Susan. They did so much for us all!
Gran Via stage...celebrating 100 years!Fireworks show...amazing!Finale...beautiful among the old buildingsWe hadn't gone in months but it was our bar for the first two months. Last time at El Tigre!El Oso y El Madroño...the symbol of Madrid

Jessica and I are heading to London tomorrow...hopefully. The volcano is being naughty again so we're waiting to see what happens. Fingers crossed. We're staying with Jessica's parents' friends. Perfect! London is supposedly expensive enough as it is. I'll stop talking about London though because this volcano is making me nervous!

La Semana Última con USAC

My birthday weekend was so much fun! I would say about 3/4 of our program came and we all had a great time all the way up until the metro opened at 6am! It was a great way to see everyone off because some peope are leaving right after finals on Friday. Some are leaving Saturday, and the majority will be gone by Sunday, either back to the USA or to some other destination in Europe. I'm one of the few returning after my week in London. Then maybe to the North of Spain? I haven't quite decided yet. One trip at a time for now. Hopefully everything goes well though because the stupid volcán is acting up again, and now British Airways is going on intermitten strikes from the 18th until the first week of June. Grrrrrreat.

Foster's Hollywood dinner with everyone, blowing out my cake!

Finalmente!

But for now I've just been studying for finals (I only have two) and finishing up papers and what not. It's so surreal that it is coming to a close and in a couple of days I will have very few people to call when I am here. I loved that our program has people from all over the country, yet it makes it that much harder to stay in touch! Tomorrow we are getting "yearbooks" made by the USAC staff and some students that recount the past semester. I'm excited to see it! We're also giving our Spanish teacher, Sara, a picture frame signed by all of us with a picture of our class taken a couple weeks ago. Tomorrow is our last day of Spanish class. The best Spanish class I've ever had by far! It's going to be sad...

But for now I'm just focusing on my time left :) Love you all!

Carnaval!

I am back from Carnaval in Cádiz! It was a lot of fun. Basically, Carnaval is a week long celebration involving costumes and performances in celebration of lent arriving. We went with Forocio tours because they provided transportation, breakfast and a hotel. However, if I had to do it over again I wouldn't go with a tour. The reasons: 1) I could have actually spent less money if we had planned it sooner, but by the time we decided all the hotels/hostals were booked. 2) we barely spoke Spanish except at night when we were out. It was annoying. 3) our hotel was a 40 minutes drive away from the festivities! 4) I didn't even get to see the parades during the day!

It was still pretty cheap, but I really wanted to see the parades during the day. The problem was our hotel was 40 minutes away and the bus they provided didn't leave until 9:30pm. So we would had to take the train which was inconvenient. That aside, it was still a fun experience.

On Saturday we woke up really late from being out the night before. Friday night was calm because Carnaval doesn't officially start until Saturday but there was still people dressed in costumes. We were right by the beach, so even though it was cold we all went to the beach and hung out. Shae and I spotted a store with some soccer balls for sale so we ran over and bought one. We had a little pick-up game on the beach. It felt so good to play!!!!

Shae and I messing around playing soccer

Then, that night we got all dressed up in our costumes. Shae, Jess, and I were flappers. We were driven to the center and let out to roam the streets with the rest of Cádiz. It was basically a big street party with a food, drinks, and a stage with performers. The entire town was packed. It looked like Halloween.

Some of the group in costume on the ride to Cádiz

Speaking with Southern Spaniards is very difficult because their accent is different than Madrileños. As our teacher says, they swallow their words. Therefore, they annunciate less. I was still able to get by, but it was nice to come back to Madrid and be able to understand a lot more! And being back in my room was nice.

On the metro ride back from where the charter bus dropped us off, these three Americans got pickpocketed on the bus. All of a sudden, a man yelled "POLICIA," but it didn't looked like anything was going on. Then, I saw a woman hitting the same man until the doors opened and she ran off. The man and the two women he was with yelled to stop her and that she stole their money. It was then I realized the man had been pickpocketed.

Rule #1 of Europe: NEVER keep anything of value in your pockets or purses/bags without a zipper.

I felt bad for them, but I can't believe they would be careless enough to do that. It freaked me out a bit. Thankfully my stop wasn't too far away so I was home soon after.

Palacio Real, Toledo, and USAC Day Trip

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile! I've been busy busy busy.

Let's see. Carmen bought me peanut butter! They don't eat it here in Spain, but one of the girls she used to have loved it so she brought it home to see if I liked it. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY yum yum yum yum. I've had peanut butter toast the past two mornings! Some other things the Spanish need to be introduced to: salad dressing, butter for your bread, and casual wear.

Our class always gets a kick out of telling our teacher, Sara, about American things (like bumping fists, slang, etc). The other week we explained to her how Spanish people don't wear sweats or gym clothes. She thought they did. So we had to explain to her the art of college fashion. Sunglasses, hoodie with school name, gym shorts/sweats, and running shoes. She laughed when we told her pijamas were acceptable school wear. Therefore whenever I go to the gym here, I can't wear my workout clothes like I do at school, I have to CHANGE into them and out of them. Sigh.

We had our first midterm last Friday. Leave it to me to sleep through my alarm and show up an hour late. Thank God I'm a fast test taker. I eneded up getting a 91 too! Luckily my teacher is nice and understood.

We also discovered the art of picnicing! For 5euro each we get a feast! No more going out for lunch. Every Tues, Thurs, and Friday we have picnics in Retiro. It's looooovely. Mon and Wed we eat at the school restaurant for cheap. Yay for cheap meals!

Sandwiches, chips, popcorn, strawberries, pastries, huge waters, and coke for 15 euro

Strawberries: yummmmmm

Last weekend, I went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace). It's gorgeous and I love the area around it (Plaza de España). We couldn't take pictures inside but these are the ones I got of outside:

Outside at sunset
The church in the distance
Outside square
Through the gates

Royal church

Also last weekend, on Sunday, I went to Toledo with two of my friends. It's about a 3o minutes train ride there. Once again, leave it to us to miss the first train (who knew there was a security check point for a short train!) and we had to buy another ticket there. Luckily it's not too expensive to cause tears. Toledo is the old capital of Madrid. It was so old, with tiny winding streets and a beautiful cathedral with intricate detail. We also ate really great food!

Castles everywhere!
Catedral Primada Santa María de Toledo: one of the coolest I've seen!
Military academy...we couldn't go in
A moat! LOWER THE BRIDGE!

Walking to Toledo

Last night I went to "Chicago: El Musical!" So cool! Jess and I knew the plot line because we've seen the movie, but Shae didn't and was still able to basically know what was going on. I wasn't able to understand word-for-word, but I would recognize words and get the jist of what they were saying. It was really cool. 'All That Jazz' is 'Al Son De Jazz,' in case anyone was wondering.

Then today, USAC had one of their free day trips to El Escorial and Valle de los Caidos. They are about an hour away. Almost everyone went and it was a lot of fun. We have a good group of people. El Escorial is the palace of King Felipe when he passed on his reign as king. It was pretty cool, nothing amazing, but a lot of royalty is buried there in these intricate tombs. Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) is the burial grounds of the soldier casualties of the civil war and Franco himself. A lot of Spaniards won't go there because Franco is burried there. Unfortunately it is closed for restoration for the next couple months, but the outside is amazing. The building is built into the mountain side and there is a huge cross jutting above it all.

Getting ready: Our other friend has us in the air. It's awesome
The Group
View from the Valley
Walking up
Valle de los Caidos
View from the bus

El Escorial in the distance. We couldn't take pics inside and I liked the town

This weekend, we're trying new clubs/bars, buying our costumes for Carnaval in Cádiz next weekend, and going to El Rastro for some more cool shopping. Oh and we have our final on Wednesday. :(

Ok.... THE END.

First Day and already moved in!

I made it to Madrid in one piece and with all my luggage! It's so pretty, but sooooo cold, especially today.

Yesterday, (our first day) we were bused to our hotel (which was four stars!) where we met our USAC advisers and got introduced to everyone. Our USAC advisers are really nice and easy to talk to. Dinner at the hotel started with a yummy soup with some cut up ham in it for starters and then these hash brown type things (delicioso) and steak! I actually ate some of the steak which was an improvement for me. Then we got crepes with ice cream for dessert. It was yummers! I roomed with two girls, one named Michaela and one named Katie. I really like everyone in my program so far! It's been fun getting to know everyone. It's pretty evenly split between East Coast and West Coast people. We went out to a tapas bar to celebrate one of the student's birthdays. It was only 10:30 so no one was there, but we wanted it to be a relaxed night anyways because we had to get up at 7:30 today for all the orientations we had.

Which brings me to today! We got the basics on school and living situations, but more will come about school and life in Madrid tomorrow. But we did learn dos besas (the proper way to greet people, aka kiss on each cheek). Then we hung out, explored, bought cell phones and exchanged numbers, etc.


La Plaza Santa Ana with some of the girls. Look, snow!

Eventually 5 pm came around, which meant time for Carmen (homestay) to pick me up! She is very nice and we can communicate fairly well despite her not speaking English. Luckily I can pull out words and get the jist of it! I was already understanding Spanish better as the day went on! Now I just need to speak it without fumbling my pronunciation. I live in a great area near the Retiro Park. Everyone lives pretty close to each other. Just a metro stop here or there. One girl, who is year-round and I have yet to meet, lives around the corner from me. She's from Japan apparently. My room is very tiny, but has a huge armoire and a big shelf to put everything on!





I just had dinner (8:30) because Carmen knew that I had been up all day and I'm still not used to dinner being later. I had chicken with green bell peppers in this really yummy sauce and broth soup and bread to start. I ate most of the meal, but my appetite isn't huge because of the adjustments to everything. She sat with me while I ate dinner and we talked about random things. Her niece is named Alejandra, so she calls me Alejandra instead of Alex like everyone else does. I told her about my Spanish background and she was wondering why no one spoke Spanish haha.

But now I'm going to bed soon because I'm tired and we have to get up and meet at the school's metro stop by 9. I think some people are going out, but my SIM card takes 24 hours to activate so they can't call me anyways. Totally fine, considering I wasn't going to go out anyways! So that was my first two days!

Te amo!