Week 1: Madrid

Hello again!  It is me, Hilary!  Alas, Rachel and I can no longer do joint blog posts as we are not living together.  But this way there will be twice as many posts, hopefully.

This was my first week in Madrid, where I will be living for the next four months.  It was a crazy and busy week, and this coming week will be even more so.

Last Monday, I flew here from Santiago and met my fam.  María and María.  They may not like me very much but I cannot understand them because I still don't speak Spanish.  Oh Well... They are quite blunt, I am not.  I am told quite often what not to do (and repeatedly because I never completely understand).  However, they are nice enough and make my dinner, so I'm sure we will get along swimmingly after I get the hang of this language.  Neither of them work, I am not sure what they do during the days as I have not stuck around to find out.  And, I've only ever seen María Jr. wearing an assortment of Snoopy Pjs.

After an awkward first night of nodding and pretending to comprehend I was able to escape on the metro to the Universidad Carlos Tercero Madrid (UC3M) my new college.  It is actually very nice, but I will always prefer Vassar.  The metro is also nice, clean, and easy to understand.  At the college, I met my new monitores: Inez, Clara, Helios, and Pepa, my Spanish student-teacher from last year.  They are super nice and love teaching us idiomatic expressions and curse words.  The following days were filled with  long presentations and boring speeches but at night los monitores took all of us out for a few nights on the town.

The first night I went with Pepa to a place that served sidra, or hard cider.  To drink it I had to pour it as high as I could into my glass which thankfully was over a barrel as much spilling ensued (n.b.this description may not make sense.  What I mean is that I reached my right arm as high as I could with the bottle in it and poured it into the glass in my left hand which was over a barrel).  The sidra was alright.
After this we hung out in a park with a lot of dogs and Asian people selling beer.

The next night I went with Clara to a chungo (sketchy) place and foolishly my comrades and I let her order.  We got oreja (ear) and some other kind of blood/intestine thing... not my fave.  But afterwards we went dancing and that was very fun!

During the day, Rachel, some other friends and I went to see a SPECTACULAR movie...film really, entitled Lope.  It was the most dramatic thing I've ever seen made even more so by the fact that I didn't actually understand it.  It was about Lope de Vega, the Spanish counterpart of Shakespeare, and included a lot of sword fights, sex, and riding horses through open fields.  Hurray!  

Also, in an unrelated but also very funny event; I accidentally ordered two sandwiches at the cafeteria (one chorizo and one cheese) but my friend Felicia out did me when she ordered 3 sammies instead of one.   

Yesterday (Saturday) Pepa threw a pool party/ bbq.  It was a great way to celebrate Labor Day (just kidding, they don't have that here).  But it was super fun.  And by barbeque, I mean a ton a grilled meat.  It seems like that is all they eat here.  At dinner tonight my host mom asked me why I didn't like veggies, and I tried to explain that I haven't even seen a vegetable since I left the states.  

Here is a pic of the post lunch siesta.

and one of the pool:

And so you see, all is well here in Madrid.  Tomorrow my classes begin.  However, I am not really sure what classes I am taking as we never chose them and as the website with the class schedules does not work.  It will be an interesting first day I'm sure.  

Hasta la Vista,

Hilary