April 29

4-29
Ok, so I’ve been slacking on the blog front again. Sorry. I’ve been busy, and when I do have free time I never think of writing a blog. But here I am now, so all is well.
Let’s see. Where did I leave off? I think I last talked about my concert two weekends ago. Well it’s been a busy time since then. I had a Lengua test last Wednesday, which was quite easy and only took about 40 minutes rather than the hour and a half we had allotted. In Cine on Thursday we watched a movie called “Semen, una historia de amor,” which translates to “Semen, a Love Story.” I looked at it on the syllabus and was like oh great, what kind of racy Spanish movie are we watching now? But it was a romantic comedy and it was actually pretty good. It’s about a guy who works at an artificial insemination clinic and falls in love with this girl that’s come in. He accidentally breaks the vial of sperm that’s supposed to be hers, so he replaces it with is own. It’s a completely unrealistic plot with absolutely no depth to it, but it’s funny.
Friday morning I went to the Fabrica de Tapices Reales, which is the Royal Tapestry Factory. They make tapestries and those huge ornate rugs in palaces and hotels and stuff, and they give tours. When I got there, there was a tour of American study abroad students that had just started, so I joined in with them. It was really cool seeing the huge apparatus that they set up with strings going up and down, kind of like a loom, and then they weave the crossways string by hand, changing colors according to the picture, so that it eventually comes out right. It looked super complicated. I would never have the patience for that! There were probably 50 spools of different color string hanging off the back of one that we saw that was halfway done. It was crazy. I wouldn´t know where to put what color to make it look right!
That night I had my last choir rehearsal. We don’t have classes this coming Friday, and the week after that is the weekend right before finals, so I decided I would just end it now. It was kind of sad, but on the other hand I’ll be glad not to have to travel an hour every Friday and sing for 4 hours straight. We started some new music; musical settings of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, a very famous Spanish poet. It’s very Spanish sounding music. Kind of reminded me of some of the stuff we’ve done in Collegium. Nuria (the director) let me keep all the music, both the new stuff and the Handel pieces, so now I can add those to my collection. I’m going to have to buy another suitcase to fit everything to bring home!
Saturday all the AYA people took the Ave train (the high speed bullet train) to Cordoba and Sevilla. It only took 2½ hours to get to Cordoba, as opposed to the 5+ hours it would take on a normal train! It was weird, cuz it didn’t seem like we were going any faster than we would have if we were on the highway. But the Aves go upwards of 150mph, so we were really flying!
We were only in Cordoba long enough to see the Mesquita, which is the mosque. It’s an incredible huge building with tons of pillars and arches, all in white with some red stripes on the arches. Instead of being destroyed when the Arabs were kicked out, like most of the mosques, it was taken over by the Christians, who built a big altar in the middle, still preserving the amazing Moorish architecture. It’s very interesting to see the contrast between the Arabic style, which is all white and simple, but with very ornate carvings, and the Christian style, which is opulent, dripping in gold and velvet. All in one building. It was beautiful.
We took a regular train on to Sevilla, and that took nearly as long as the Ave had! Sevilla is where Patricia had done her study abroad, so she knew the city well. It’s a beautiful city! Probably one of my favorites. We just sort of hung around the rest of that day. We went to a park, and the river, and walked around the city a bit. We went to the Plaza de España, which is outside this huge building where each province in Spain has a little alcove with a painting and a map of the province and some really pretty mosaicky tiles. There’s also a big fountain. It was sweet. That night the temperature dropped quite a bit. We went to three different places to get tapas for supper, and two of them only had outside seating. Jen shared her shawl with me and we sat there huddled together, shivering. Stupid coldness. It’s almost May, people!
The next morning it was raining, of course. Hrmmm. We went to the Alcázar, which is the palace fortress thingy. It was built by a Christian king, but in the Moorish style, so it had some architecture similar to the Mesquita and the Alhambra in Granada. There was a huge garden out back where we spent most of our time. There was a hedge maze. Yes, a real hedge maze. With bushes over your head and really narrow passages where you could go in and get lost. It was awesome. We didn’t go in very far cuz we didn’t want to wander around for hours, and the bushes were all wet from the rain, so we got relatively soaked as we traversed it, but it was fun nonetheless.
After the Alcázar we went and got something hot to drink, because we were all cold and wet. We did some touristy shopping before lunch, and then we ate at an Italian restaurant, of all things. It was really good, but not very Spanish . . . . By then it had stopped raining and the streets were actually almost dry already. We went to the Cathedral of Sevilla, which is the home of the world’s tallest altarpiece: over 60 feet tall! All covered in gold with little statues of the stages of Jesus’s life, culminating in the crucifixion at the top where you can barely see it. The coolest thing about the cathedral, though, was that you can climb the bell tower. There are no stairs, because they had wanted to be able to get up there with horses, so there are just ramps along each of the sides of the square tower. 34 ramps to the top. Once you get up there, there’s an amazing view of the city and all that, but also you’re right under the bells. They’re probably five feet above your head. I felt like Quasimodo or something! Just as I was getting up there one of them rang and scared the crap out of me! It was so loud! The tower pretty much made my day. It was so cool! We did some more shopping, more wandering around, and then took the Ave back to Madrid and got home before 10.
I had another exam on Monday, this one for Literature. It wasn’t too bad, although I’m not sure if I gave enough information for the last question about poetry. But I don’t care. I’m mainly just going to focus on passing the classes and not worry about grades, since they don’t count anyway. Of course I still want to do well, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
Today after school I went to this concert of Iberoamerican guitarists. There were two men, one from Chile and one from Argentina, who played music representative of their countries. It was in a little room at the public library, and there were about 25 people there. It was very cool. The first man was good, but the second guy was amazing. He played with so much emotion; it was spellbinding. I’ve never seen anyone hold a guitar the way he did either; he rested it on the chair between his legs and held it so that the neck was at a 45 degree angle to the floor. It was strange. But it doesn’t matter. He was great. I love classical guitar. Brent, you need to learn so you can serenade me!
I’ve been spending a lot of time planning our Europe trip. Big surprise there, I know. It’s slowly coming together. I think we may end being somewhat spontaneous, but hey, it’ll be an adventure. I probably need a little more spontaneity in my life anyway. As long as I can keep from chewing my fingernails off worrying about every little detail. I did get permission from Rosaura to leave my suitcases here for that month, which is a big relief. I could have left them at Patricia’s house, but she lives an hour outside of Madrid and my flight gets in at night and leaves in the morning, so it would have been a hassle to get out to Mejorada del Campo to collect my things. It’s much more convenient this way.
I’m just planning on doing some Madrid things this weekend, and writing another paper. Only one more week of school before exams!! I can’t believe it’s almost over! But there’s a definite sense of ‘it needs to be summer’ in the air. I’m getting more anxious to come home. I keep dreaming about going home. I can’t wait until Brent and Danny come and we start traveling. At least there’ll be something new and exciting every day then. I know that’ll fly by and then before I’m ready it’ll be time to go back to the states.
I’ve been thinking lately about things that I miss being here in Spain. Other than family and friends. I just realized the other day that I haven’t watched The Office since I got here. There’s a whole season going by without me knowing what’s going on! I haven’t seen Scrubs either. I saw the Simpsons once. I miss my shows. I also miss just plain beef. They don’t really eat beef here. There’s tons of ham, and a lot of chicken, but not very much beef. I had a hamburger at the cafeteria today and it didn’t look like beef. It looked like a turkey burger or something, I don’t know. It tasted ok, just not like what a hamburger should be. What I really want is steak on the grill. Or hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Basically I’ve just been craving grilled meat. Also, much as it may pain me to say it, I miss the American school system. This Spanish system is messed up. In nearly all of my classes we hadn’t had any graded homework until the last week or so. That sounds great, but then you have no idea how you’re doing in the class, and no opportunity to improve your grade. The final exam counts for at least 50% of the final grade in a lot of cases. It’s nerve-wracking! And there’s no structure. Almost all of the paper I’ve been assigned have been on any topic I choose, which is way too open ended! It actually makes it harder, cuz we don’t know what the professor expects of it! I also miss feeling like I’m learning something in my classes. I’m trying to think of something that might be useful on an exam from Cine, and I can barely think of anything! All we do is watch movies and then comment on them a bit. I don’t know if I’ve really learned anything about Spanish cinema. Hrmmmm. One last thing I miss is being able to call up anyone I want to talk to whenever I need to. Not only is it ungodly expensive to call the States ($1 a minute!), I have to worry about a 7 hour time difference. That means, in order to avoid the work or school schedules of both of us, we have to talk really early in the morning for them or really late at night for me. It’s so inconvenient! Stupid time difference.
Ok, enough venting.
Well, I think that pretty much brings us up to date. I’ll try to be a little more on top of the blogs, but I can’t promise anything. I’ll do my best. Actually, to be honest, I’ve done a lot better on the whole than I ever thought I would. I’ve tried to keep a diary before and have never gotten past 2 or 3 entries. I guess it’s different when I know other people are reading this and bugging me for more news J
Love to all,
Bethany