March 14

3-14

Hello again.

I haven’t written in several days, so I’ll just catch you up on what’s happened before I tell you about my trip to Avila today! This week was crazy. Lots of busyness and anxiety. Katie and I had a presentation in cine on Thursday about Spanish patriotic film. We were given our groups the week before last, and last week we met for about 2 minutes after class to see who everyone was. Last Thursday, one of the guys got everyone’s email and was going to send us all one so we could figure out what we were going to focus on and research. Mind, this is a week before the presentation. He didn’t send the email until Monday morning. That gave us three days in which not only to research and put it together, but to find a time to talk and figure out what the heck we were presenting on! I was getting so anxious! On Tuesday we finally met and picked our topics and assigned specific themes to everyone. After that it was easy, and the presentation on Thursday went fine, but I was so stressed out leading up to it! I hate group presentations! Especially when it’s with a bunch of people you don’t know, who live on opposite sides of Madrid and its surrounding areas, and people are always traveling on the weekends. It’s just not a good idea! And meanwhile, Jen was carping about the group presentation we have with her that’s not for another 3 weeks! She kept badgering us to think about topics of what we want to present on, because the professor left it hugely open ended, but Katie and I were super stressed about this cine presentation and we couldn’t think about the one that wasn’t for another several weeks!! It was very aggravating.

On Friday, Katie and I went to the Parque del Oeste, which is a park in Madrid. The main attraction there is the Templo de Debod, a 2200 year old Egyptian temple that was a gift from Egypt to Madrid at some point in history. It consists of two freestanding stone square arch and a multi-chambered temple, all in the middle of a pool of water. It was really cool. There were shallow carvings of hieroglyphics and those cool Egyptian drawings on the walls of the inside of the temple. They had some pieces of the original temple that had fallen off that had more carvings, and a diagram of what it had originally looked like. It had another arch in the front, and each arch had a huge wall coming off from each side. It’s hard to explain. I’ll put pictures up soon. I felt like Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Debod?), and I half expected a giant boulder to come rolling down at me or poisoned darts to come flying out of the walls at any minute! It was a really cool place.

After the temple, we walked around the rest of the park for a while. It was really beautiful; there’s so much green, and there were trees blossoming all pink and white! And it’s March! I love being out of Wisconsin and missing all the cold!! It’s been hot the last few days. This morning I discovered that my chest got burned yesterday! I had joked to Katie that I would get burned, but I didn’t really expect it to happen! Stupid fair skin. . . . After the park, I had to go home in time for lunch (can’t be late for that!), and then I had a few hours free before choir, so, having been inspired, I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. In Spanish. It was quite amusing. Then last night I had choir rehearsal, which seemed extraordinarily long, since I was so tired. I got home around 11:15 and went straight to bed. After reading for a bit, of course. J

This morning, Katie, Jen, and I went to Avila, which is a city about an hour and 45 minutes away from Madrid. We were going to take the 8:45 train, because Jen wanted to go early enough in the day that we could see things before they closed for siesta. So I woke up at 7:00 and dragged myself out of bed and to the train station. I texted them to let them know I was there, and Katie texted back, saying that her alarm didn’t go off and she was still at her house. There wasn’t another train until 2, so we decided to catch a bus. Of course, the bus station is on the other side of Madrid. It was a little before 9, and the next bus left at 9:30. Jen and I got there on time, but Katie had farther to go on the Metro, so she didn’t get there until about 5 minutes before, by which time they had stopped selling tickets for the 9:30 bus. So we bought tickets for 11:00 and found a Corte Ingles to kill an hour and a half in. We ended up not getting into Avila until quarter to 1, and siesta started at 1:30. The main thing we wanted to see that closed was the Convent of Santa Teresa (Saint Theresa of Avila). We had the hardest time finding it, and it was after 1:30 by the time we finally did, but we still wanted to know where it was so that we could come back at 4 when it opened again. Stupid siesta. So we went and found somewhere to eat. We ate at a Telepizza, which is like a Pizza Hut. It’s really good, which is good to know because there’s one right across the street from me. I thought it was just delivery pizza, but it’s not. Also, they had the Simpsons on in Spanish on TV. It was awesome! It was the Cape Feare episode, where Sideshow Bob is trying to kill Bart so the Simpsons move to a houseboat via the witness relocation program. It’s one of my favorite episodes (I love Sideshow Bob!), and it’s been so long since I’ve watched the Simpsons! After that episode another one came on; the one where Homer goes back to college. That’s got one of my favorite quotes in it: “You must find the jade monkey before the next full moon. . . Sir, we found the jade monkey. It was in your glove compartment.” Haha! I love Mr. Burns. “Excellent. It’s all falling into place.” Hehehe!! I know: I’m a nerd. I embrace it.

Avila has a wall all the way around it, preserved from ancient times. It’s the best preserved walled city in Spain. The walls are called las marallas. After we ate, we went up and walked along them. There are four sections where you can go up, and we went on two of them. The stairs to get up there are scary; they’re steep and uneven and there’s just a thin railing to hang onto. But once you’re up there, there’s a spectacular view of the city, the countryside, and, of course, the mountains. It was really cool. They were all crenulated, and we were imagining being besieged and what it would be like to shoot arrows down from the walls and have to dodge flying rocks hurled up by catapults. Leave it to Katie and me to start imagining that! We were going to go into the cathedral, but it was like 4 euro and Katie and Jen didn’t want to pay that much to get in, so we just saw a little bit of it through the divider before the ticket booth. I would have liked to go in, but that’s ok. All these cathedrals are much the same anyway.

By that time it was almost 4, so we started heading back to the Convent of Santa Teresa. Katie especially wanted to see it because St. Teresa is her confirmation saint. It was a beautiful little church, and there was an old woman who must have worked there who told us a little about various things. Not being Catholic, I didn’t know much about St. Teresa, but it was still very pretty. There was a little room off the church where the relic is kept; they have her ring finger, preserved and displayed. It’s fairly disgusting: half decomposed, but with two gold rings on it. I asked Katie and Jen, the Catholics, how churches got relics, but they didn’t know. I’m imaging people swooping down on saints as soon as they die, cutting off their fingers and pulling out their teeth to distribute to various churches. I’m sure I’ve just horribly offended every Catholic in the world. Oh well. J There was also a museum at the church, but it was also more expensive than we were willing to do. We meandered back toward the bus stations. We stopped in the Plaza Mayor to buy yemas de Santa Teresa, which are a kind of candy made from egg yokes and sugar that are characteristic of Avila. That put off Katie and Jen a bit, but Rosaura had said that I should try them, so I got a small box. They’re actually pretty good. They have about the same consistency as very soft cookie dough, and they don’t taste at all like egg yokes.

We caught the 6:00 bus back to Madrid and arrived back around quarter to 8. It’s 9:00 now, and I’m just sitting writing this, waiting for supper. There’s not much more to tell. Tomorrow Katie and I are going back to the Prado museum to see everything we didn’t see last time. It’s free Sundays from 5-8, so we’re going to do it then. Yay for free entry!

I can’t believe it’s halfway through March already. This month is flying by!

Bethany