so i'm about ready to come home...

Wow, so it's been quite a while since I've written on here, hasn't it.  Sorry about that, all.  Turns out this semester has been more stressful than I had foreseen due to the fact that we're doing about 5 months worth of work in 3.  finals start tomorrow and I'm going a little bit loco because my art and architecture prof is completely loco and is gonna give us a test with 51 works with 4 blanks each to fill in from memory.  Plus essays.  After another essay test over hemingway.  Anyway, lots has happened since I last updated.  I've been to a few more cities since then.  The parentals came to visit and we had a fabulous time after the first couple of days of craziness.  My purse was stolen in madrid with my entire life in it, but that's all taken care of now as best I can, and after we spent some hours on the phone and in the police station talking to people who "spoke english" we did the museum route: the prado (classic art), the reina sofia (modern art), the palacio real, the parque retiro, and some delicious gelato.  Monday we spent the day in toledo visiting the cathedral, eating pizza, and shopping.  Then we came to segovia and saw all the processions of holy week, which were really an experience in themselves.  The klan-like hoods were really kinda freaky to see coming up the street in droves, but here it's really a super religious and spiritual thing to do penance wearing those costumes and marching in the processions.  We had a fabulous hotel room right on the plaza mayor with a balcony overlooking the cathedral and right next to school and my favorite café.  We all came to my senora's house for coffee and I got to act as translator.  It was a really different experience being the only person in the room who knew everything that was going on.  We had a great visit and Friday night we took carmen out to dinner at this awesome restaurant and my parents tried the cochinillo (roast suckling pig), and I had duck.  Carmen knows the owner of that restaurant, so we ordered dessert too (chocolate truffles with cream, apple sauce cheesecake/mousse, mango mousse, brownie and walnuts, raspberry gelato, and fried milk rolled in cinnamon) and carmen's friend brought out a bottle of dessert wine that was the most delicious thing ever.  Also we went to la granja, a small town near segovia that has a bourbonic palace and gardens and a glass factory.  Supposedly we went on the day that they were sposed to turn on the fountains, but there was snow on the ground.  We had a bit of crappy weather, but for the most part it was not bad.  And then I put them back on a bus to madrid 2 weeks ago and had to go back to school.  I'm trying to savor the last few days I have with carmen cuz I'm gonna miss her so much when I go.  She's been like a real mom to me while I've been here.  My sisters too have been awesome.  Laura's coming this weekend from madrid and the 3 of us are gonna go out together one last time.  School has been hellish writing essays and trying to memorize the entire history of spanish art and architecture and vomit it back up on a test, but that's over now.  This past weekend I went to Valencia with Stephanie and Pat and had a great time.  Friday we went to the beach and it was sunny and warm and beautiful!  Our hostel was pretty cool too - we thought there would be more guys with us so we booked a 6 person room, but we ended up with 2 italian roommates and a german guy.  Saturday we went to the awesomest aquarium in the world.  It's huge and we went to see the dolphin show which totally kicks indy's butt.  There were those water tunnels where it's like you're completely surrounded by the sea with fish and sharks and manta rays.  There were penguins and a couple of beluga whales and sea turtles.  Saturday night we met some guys in the hostel that go to notre dame and are studying in toledo.  Small world.  So pat and I went out with them Saturday night and had a lot of fun.  Meeting random people in hostels has been one of the really cool things about traveling.  Finding new people and just talking to them about where they're coming from and where they're headed is really neat. 

I had 2 finals this morning - for honors philosophy and art & architecture.  So I got to write an essay about symbolic castration of characters in hemingway and vomit up facts about paintings, authors, style, and century.  So I'm a bit fried, but I've only got the last part of an essay left and to study for literature of the 20th century.  So, I come home in 5 days and am really excited to go.  I'm definitely gonna miss the people I've met here like carmen and my sisters, and some of the food, but I'm super excited about some puerta's when I get home!! :)

some musings

Some musings over spain.  I've reached the point of homesickness when I'm glad that the end is in sight.  I think I'll be glad to come back to the states, which is a new feeling for me.  There's just something about the people here that makes me not want to live here for anything.  And the people here even feel it.  I had a super crazy night last night bar/club hopping.  It was fun, but some of the girls in our group got a little too happy.  Leslie and I found a few bar/club that was really cool and then met up with the rest of the group to dance some more.  I had pat walk me home at about 5:30 cuz I didn't wanna stay at yellow. (another club that I don’t like.)  then this morning I got up and went to meet tamika and two of her students at a café.  And I got to help them with their english a little bit and they helped us with our spanish.  It was awesome.  Monica and alicia are their names, and we're meeting again next Friday.  The hardest thing for both of us are prepositions.  And it's hard to explain why we use something one way when for us it just is.  But it was really cool and I'm excited for next week.  We talked for almost 3 hours, but the time flew by.  Then tamika and I went and had a tapa of some kind of french toast like thing and some cola-cao.  (the best hot chocolate of my life and we don't have it in the states.  Boo on you)  then I went home and slept for about 1/2 an hour, watched Yo Soy Bea with Carmen, went out and walked to the aqueduct and journaled for a while.  Now I'm at home watching the spanish version of "deal or no deal"  it's much more fun I think.

I've been musing over my life.  These past couple weeks have been kinda weird.  I'm tired of the people in general, which is a shame cuz I love carmen and the individual people that I meet, but the general atmosphere here makes me want to leave.  I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life.  Philosophically, I could take over the world.  If I really wanted to, I could take over people's minds and rule the world.  World domination at last!!  That's been on my birthday list since I was 6.  realistically, I've gone back and forth with the idea of teaching for many years now.  I told myself that I didn't want to deal with all the other shit that came along with the teaching profession, but whenever I'm in class I'm thinking about how I would teach that class.  Or whenever I learn something new, I'm thinking about how I would teach it to someone else, and activities for classes and games and different ways of explaining things.  One of my best friends on this trip, pat figured out quickly that I'm smart and has globbled onto me as the question answerer, especially when it comes to grammar.  And it's been really interesting and helpful for me too to have to explain it to someone else.  And writing poetry for a living…uhhh….yeah…about that…translating texts or interpreting would also be good, but I also feel like I would get bored kinda fast. 

But I always come back to the politics of the school system and how much it sucks.  University professor I think would be easier, but that requires at least 4 more years of school that I would have to pay for some way, and I'm not sure I'll be entirely up for 4 more intense years of study study study after the first 16.  well, minus 4th grade, I didn't learn jack that year.  I don't feel like I'm learning much here either except some more life lessons in general.  I already know the grammar, so that class is worthless.  Fun sometimes, but I don't actually have to put forth effort.  The art history is interesting, but the architecture doesn't interest me.  It just frustrates me that piles of rocks have names.  The philosophy is also interesting, but the class and the way it's taught frustrate me.  The european style of teaching - know everything and we're going to test you over the stupid details, not the general concepts to see if you understood what you read makes me angry if I leave one letter out of how to spell someone's name.  I really enjoy 20th century literature.  Which is good cuz it's my night class and if I didn't like it I don't know how I would get myself out of the house again.

Somehow, I'm converting into a morning person.  I've been up at 7:30 every morning to shower and get ready and do more homework or just read before going to class.  It's nice that way to then be done at 1:00 and be able to just relax for the rest of the day.  We've had some beautiful days this week and I've bee just sitting around in the sun.  Almost everybody's gone this weekend traveling, but I'm staying here.  Laura's coming to visit tonight!!!  I'm so excited!  I miss her now that she's not living with us.  So hopefully we'll go out tonight for a little while, but I gotta sleep sometime. 

Anyway, I think my birthday might have hit me harder than I realized.  I've lived 2 decades and I feel like I'm at a crossroads now, but I'm not sure about anything.  It would be really great if I could not feel like I'm walking on eggshells all over this country.  I can't wait to go home and be able to go somewhere in public and just be relaxed.  I feel like I always have to be on show whenever I go out here. 

Bueno, 13 days until the parentals get here!  I'll try to figure out my life in the time in between now and then.  Haha, we'll see how that goes.  Un beso a todos!

I'm not a teenager anymore!!

So I'm not a teenager anymore - I turned 20 on Saturday!!  It was pretty exciting.  Friday night leslie, stephanie and I went on the overnight bus to granada and spent the whole day walking around the alhambra, which was the one thing I definitely wanted to see while I'm here.  It was about 75 degrees and sunny the whole day.  I got a text message from my sister laura, and my senora carmen called me to wish me a feliz cumpleanos.  From there we hopped another bus back to madrid for the night and then Sunday we spent about 5 minutes at the rastro (a huge open air market in madrid), but you could hardly move there were so many people.  So a few of us went and found some gelato (chocolate and blueberry, my favorite).  Then we hopped on the metro and went to a bull fight.  I wasn't sure if I was gonna like it, but I wanted to go to one since it's such a cultural thing.  And it was awesome.  The bulls were so beautiful and ginormous.  And the matadors were so young!  All the tradition and the art that goes into it is really neat.  I slept very little but had a great time.

I'm getting a little tired of the people here and the general attitude of the old people.  It's like nobody over 50 has any need for foreigners and think it's their right to be rude to us and push us out of the way in the street and give us dirty looks.  It's just generally unpleasant.  Anyway, I'm sludging through essays and midterms.  I get to recount the philosophical movements of the 19th and 20th centuries on Thursday. 

I'm super excited for Friday cuz I get to meet some students of a professor friend to help them with their english and then we can talk in spanish too.  I've been busy planning the visit of the parentals and will be glad to get away for a while without homework.  Well, sorry I haven't been upkeeping the blogging, but I've been going about 100 miles per hour without a siesta.  Pictures coming soon :) 

long weekend

Well, I've been traveling.  Last Thursday night I caught the bus to madrid with leslie, pat, hassan, and jordan and we went on the overnight bus to san sebastian (up north on the coast).  We got there after a 5 1/2 hour bus ride while it was still dark and everything was closed.  So we wandered around in the dark for a few hours and found the beach.  I won't say we exactly watched the sun rise on the beach, but we did see the sky gradually lighten on the beach.  We had breakfast in a little café once things actually opened and the city woke up.  Then we played on the playground by the beach for about an hour until an actual kid showed up and the old people were giving us really dirty looks.  It was so much fun though.  We had a really good group to travel with and even though it was a loooong ass trip, nobody complained or anything.  After we'd spent some time walking up and down the beach we went back to the bus station and caught a bus to bilbao.  I thought I was gonna have trouble sleeping on buses, but 5 minutes in and I was out.  Once we got to bilbao, the guys found a comic book store and had to stop.  It was kinda cool - they had calvin and hobbes in spanish.  So we shopped around a little bit and looked for a place to eat lunch.  We saw a delivery guy go by on a pizza hut scooter, so that became our mission.  We never found it.  We asked a couple of people if they knew where pizza hut was, but they were like, "oh, dumb americans, I'll just send them to burger king so they can eat their american fodder.  So we walked around some more, found an expensive italian restaurant with pizza, and ended up eating at burger king.  After a delicious and not quite so nutritious lunch of chicken fries and a diet coke, we went to the guggenheim museum.  Only the first floor of stuff was open, but it was still interesting.  There were these huge steel structures that you could walk around and through - this guy supposedly playing with space and the way we move through it.  We watched a video of an interview with the artist.  What a stuck up a-hole.  He's the most egotistical man ever - but it was funny. 

So then we walked around the city for a while and then at 8:00 went back to the museum to see the fire fountains.  They were a little pointless, but cool.  Then we walked back to the bus station to buy tickets back to madrid at 1:30 in the morning.  We had about 3 hours until it left, so we put our bags in a locker and went to the movies.  We saw "in pursuit of happiness" "en busca de la felicidad"  slept on the bus on the way back.  We made it back to segovia at 10:00 after about 36 hours of traveling.  So worth it though.  That was about all I needed to see of basque country. 

Classes are still on my nerves.  Midterms are right now and so are all the essays in the world.

I'm headed to granada this weekend with leslie and stephanie to see the alhambra for my b-day.  Then we're going to madrid for the night, going to the rastro Sunday morning (big outdoor market) and to a bull fight Sunday afternoon.  Good times good times.

BARCELONA!!!

k, so a week ago tomorrow morning, amanda, leslie and I got on a bus at 7:30 a.m. and went to madrid, where we caught the metro to the airport where we got on a plane and went to barcelona. 

I was so proud of us that we figured out where we were going - airports always scared me cuz they're so big and it seems like it should be really easy to go the wrong direction and wind up on the other end of where you're sposed to go, but it turns out there's really only one direction you can go in most of the time.  There's just a lot of space to walk in to get there.  So we got there, checked into the hostel and got up to our room.  And we already had a roommate!  Hahaha, we never actually interacted with him cuz he got back around 3 or 4 in the morning and we were already asleep, and then we left before he was awake every morning, but just by looking at his stuff, he was a strange person.  He had 5 pairs of shoes, and about 6 skateboard boards under his bed.  The hostel was nice - pretty clean and there was a comunal kitchen, so I got to cook for us.

After we had dumped our stuff, we went to see the sagrada familia - gaudi's huge monstrosity of a cathedral that's been under construction for 100 years, and won't be done till 2025.  it's hideous.  It's sposed to be hideous, and it's famous for being so hideous, but you get there and you're like, oh my god this is so ugly.  So we shopped around the crap tents for a few minutes before walking around in search of a grocery store.  Ducked into a little fruit stand where I bought a delicious yellow plum, and it started pouring down rain.  We were a good 10 minutes away from the nearest metro stop.  Finally we gave up and ran for it and stopped in a supermarket 1/2 way inbetween to buy bread, peanut butter and jelly, breakfast muffins (which are called "magdalenas" which translates literally as "fairy cake") and some fantas to pack in our lunches.  We made it back to the hostel and spent the rest of the night eating peanut butter toast and planning out everything we wanted to see. we met a few cool people that were already staying in the hostel - luis (from portugal) was studying tourism, and another guy from brasil was there working for something.  so we exchanged tips on cool places to go and what wasn't worth it.  there were a lot of people there that were going out partying all night, so as soon as they left, around midnight or so, the hostel got pretty quiet which was nice cuz we were able to relax and go to sleep before all the drunkies got back.  we decided that since we were in such a big city that none of us knew and we wanted to visit museums and stuff like that, we spent days out walking around, eating sandwiches we bought from rude people, and playing in the park.

parque guell, designed by gaudi, was my favorite thing we did.  there aren't necessarily playgrounds, even though there are a couple, but there's just really cool places to play in and pose for stupid pictures (as you will see soon).  it goes up a mountain-like incline and you can see the whole entire city from up top.

we went the history museum where there's this underground roman city that's some kind of archeological site.  it was pretty cool - i know nothing about archaeology, so i can't really tell that much about what it actually was, but it was old rocks arranged in a house-like form. 

and we ate gelato.  ooooooooooo gelato.......mandarin orange, yogurt, chocolate, and raspberry....amazing. 

the rambla was kinda cool - the big main street strech where all the street vendors set up shop, and mime central.  tourisy, but cool. 

sunday afternoon we went to the beach.  and i put my feet in the mediterranean sea.  pretty awesome.  pretty cold.  wore my new shoes and rubbed my left heel raw, but we stopped to buy bandaids.

overall, it was an incredible trip.  perfect amount of time, fairly easy travelling (except for the asshole in the airport), and lots of sun.

we got back to the airport and sat around for a while until we could get back to madrid, sat around the bus station for about 1/2 an hour and got back to segovia in the rain around 8:00.  there was a parade for the start of carnavales, and leslie and i were gonna go, but we didn't make it out till later.  so we went to the calle de los bares (bar street) and had a lemon beer with some tapas of some strange kind of potato/ham/fried thing inside a mussle shell.  then we went to el ojo.  the atmosphere is so much more relaxed there.  i love it. 

there's no way i'm going out tongiht cuz we have another excursion tomorrow to salamanca and avila and we're leaving at 8:00 a.m., so i'm going to bed early and setting 3 alarms.  i bought a cell phone yesterday so i can keep in touch with people better and it has 4 separate alarms i can set and a snooze function.  i'm pretty excited.

sooooooooooo - pictures soon, but now it's time for homework - midterms are coming up soon and i've got essays to write too.  hasta luego!  besos!!