Wait... I Have Weekends Now?

So three of my classes started this week, and so far everything seems like it’s going to be great. I think everything seems even more of a slight joke when comparing everything to the classes I had last year, but I don’t want to speak too soon yet seeing how my hardest classes will probably be the two I’m taking in the university, although both of those are only once a week for two hours, so again, it’s not something I’m overly concerned with. I’m already fully aware I’m going to be at a little bit of a disadvantage my first week or two, but again, fully aware means expecting and expecting means I’m not going to be like, OH SHIT. Furthermore, my weekends start every Thursday at 2PM. Seeing how I don’t normally even have a one day weekend during the school year, my level of concern for any workload I get this semester is about a 2 out of 10, and it’s only that high because there’s a chance a project or something could conflict with something else, and that’s no fun. But anyway, I’m going to have major issues next semester when my three day weekends and lack of any commitments during them just suddenly disappear. But, I’m not really trying to even think about that right now.

I finally got my phone unlocked the other day, and well by that I mean after an hour and a half in the Vodafone I was finally able to get a new SIM card. What had started out as something that should have been real simple turned into a complete headache, and the fact that the girl in the store was speaking a mile a minute made things slightly more complicated. It got even more fun when I had to call some number on Vodafone from another Vodafone to get some magical 4 digit number that would allow them to do, well I’m not sure what exactly. I just love how they assumed I would have another cell phone in my pocket that I could whip and call this number, and why the hell couldn’t they just do it themselves, it’s what you’re getting freaking paid for. Also, you think computerized messages suck in English? Try deciphering what you’re supposed to be doing when it’s in another language and you can hardly hear what they’re saying because the phone service itself is less than sub-par. Luckily, I had two friends with me – one with a Vodafone-serviced cell phone, and the other one who is actually a native Spanish speaker. At this point, she took over for me, because clearly she could get way more out of it than I could. So after talking on the phone, running into the store, talking on the phone again, running back into the store again, having the service rep on the phone wanting to talk to the client in the store, and finally getting him to break out this magical number that would allow my phone to be reinstated, the computer in the place freezes, we’ve got 5 minutes to get to class, and we have to come back at 5 when the place reopens. Luckily when we did return later that day, I was in and out in 5 minutes with a new SIM card and a new life lesson: do not try and guess an 8 digit number several times on your cell phone, there is just no way in hell you’re going to stumble upon the right answer.

Got my MCAT scores back this week. A little bit of a letdown but still pretty decent so we’ll see where I land in the future.

Also, was talking with my host mom earlier and showering her some pictures of the family and whatnot. She agreed with me that Christina could pass for a College kid and looks way too much older for her own good (I think her heart almost stopped when I told her she’s only 16). She also thinks that both of my parents look very young, so there ya go mom hahah. Also, Fran and Marie, she said the same about you two, in fact she was very surprised to hear that the 8 children I just showed her pictures of are your children. So yeah, apparently it’s official now that we have a muy guapisima familia. Go us.

Thursday night was a lot of fun – finally got to celebrate the end of the MCAT phase of my life. Although I was extremely hungry by 3 in the morning and everything that sold food was closed.

Friday a few of us went to this giant mall equivalent to a department store of some type, called El Cortes Ingles. This would be the only one in the city because basically every store here is specific to what you’re looking for, and seeing how I needed a new pair of sneakers, new socks, a hair buzzer so I could give myself a haircut, and I wanted to pick up a book, naturally this would be the most efficient place to go. So yeah, found a buzzer for 20 euro, so I can save on haircuts. Of course, I almost paid 50 euro for it since I paid with a 50 and walked away completely forgetting about my change. Luckily the clerk found me a couple minutes later otherwise I would have been out 30 euro. I also bought the 5^th Harry Potter book in Spanish, which of course is also the largest of the series and so we’ll see how long it takes me to get through it. Later that night a bunch of us went out. A couple of us ended up having to walk my housemate back because he ended up having just a little bit too much to drink and would definitely not have made it back alive without assistance. After we got him back we went and finally found the food place that’s open decently late, so I could finally get my 3AM French fries and cheeseburger I had desperately wanted the night before, and so obviously I was an extremely happy person at that point.

Saturday night a few of us went to a bar to watch the Madrid game and then went out to this Mexican restaurant afterwards. Then we headed to another bar to watch some of the Barcelona game, and then headed out from there. I spent a decent part of today trying to figure out flight and hotel plans for a trip to Paris at the end of October, and then started reading some of that Harry Potter book. To answer my question of how long it’s probably going to take me to get through this – probably a while, as ten pages took me a little while to get through seeing how there were new words every couple sentences. But oh well, gotta learn somehow right?

Murphy's Law

(Brief note: the first part of this post is the post before this one, although one does not necesarily need to be read to understand the other.)

Of course, I spoke too soon, and while that may have been the best story of the day, the best story of the weekend probably comes about when I was trying get home. I write this part as I sit here, 8 am in the morning, waiting in the Charmatin station in Madrid to take an 8:46 am train back to Salamanca which will arrive around 11:22, and my first class today starts at 10:40. I probably should have seen this coming yesterday when I got into the airport at Frankfurt (a little over an hour before my airplane was supposed to take off) and couldn’t find where the hell the Spanair check-in was. After looking up and realizing I was actually in Plaza C and had to be in Plaza A, things came together a little better but at this point I had spent a little bit of time walking around aimlessly trying to figure out the set up of Frankfurt airport (which is big, so shut up). After going through security, having the metal detector go off, and having my other bag quickly searched because I forgot I had an empty water bottle in there, I finally got to my terminal about ten minutes before check-in. The really fun part starts when I check my IPod during the flight and realize that we are not going to land in time, and the 45 minutes I had to get catch my bus after landing started to dwindle down, minute, by minute, by painstaking minute. We finally landed at 8:50, and I only had a vague idea where the bus station was, so this was going to be interesting. Until, that is, I realized we landed outside the airport and as we left the plane we were boarded onto a shuttle bus type of thing and then we were taken to the terminal – ipso facto, another 8 minutes of my life taken from me. So at this point when I got into Terminal 2, I had 2 minutes to find the bus station… in terminal 1. Madrid’s airport is extremely large also. And no, this isn’t some tale of how I miraculously made it to the bus station last minute and hopped through the door James-Bond style and everything was butterflies and rainbows. I finally arrived after rushing there about 10 minutes after 9 and well, there was no bus there. In fact, there wasn’t even a window or kiosk there to try and exchange my ticket for the next one. I know this because then I proceeded to walk around for a half an hour trying to find someone/something, and came up completely empty. So much for my 23,45 euro ticket, which is now completely useless. Moral of the story at this point? Stick with transportation that’s easily flexible. Of course, not even this may always work out, as you will see as my night continued to unfold in a manner consistent with Murphy’s Law. So, OK, at this point it’s 930 and I figure I’ll take the train home, but I have to leave now to catch the last train back to Salamanca. So, I take the metro to the Charmatin station, it’s about 10, and the next and final train to Salamanca doesn’t leave until 1038. Awesome, I’m home clear, right? Nope. I go up to by my ticket, and the lady tells me there aren’t any more tickets for the train back. The next train leaves the next morning around 830. And just like that, I became a 5 year old little boy who just went to buy ice-cream and found out the shop closed three seconds prior to my arrival, and I wasn’t getting any. So of course, at this point I’m completely screwed. I think if you recall from my previous post, I don’t even have a working cell phone to call anybody to tell them that I can’t get back. So, what else is there to do but start to wander and think about WTF I’m going to do. Luckily, there’s a hotel right next to the station. Of course, I knew that meant it was probably going to be a little on the expensive side but a) I do not know the area and have no internet therefore I don’t know anything close around here and b) I do NOT want anything to cause me to be late tomorrow morning. So, I head in and see how much it is for the night. 75 euro. Of course it is, why wouldn’t it be? So I reluctantly hand over my credit card, and what happens? It get’s rejected. For some unknown reason, it just won’t go through (thank you Murphy). At this point I had stammered on a word and the lady started talking to me in English I guess thinking that I wasn’t competent enough in Spanish to talk to her, but the problem with that was, Spanish people tend to word things weird in English, so I would have been able to understand her better in her own language. So after she says something about which I only vaguely caught, I begin to walk away, and she calls me back with a little bit of an attitude and asks if I have money to pay for the room. Money as in cash, which I had no idea you could even do in a hotel, but maybe she felt sorry for me or something, who knows. Actually, she probably knew there were other cheaper hotels right by, so I kind of wish she just let me go and I would have saved some money. But anyway, I paid, I had a room, bueno. At this point, I’m out of the money for my bus ticket, I’m out the 75 euro for the hotel room, and the next day I’d be out another 20 euro to get home. So, there goes one of the trips about Europe I was inevitably going to take in the future sometime. We still have one problem left though – no one knows I’m still here, and I desperately need to tell someone. I can’t even get into my phone to check my contacts because it has COMPLETELY locked me out of it. So, now I really need internet. And of course the hotel doesn’t provide it for free, the cheap bastards. So now I have to pay for an hour of internet. But, of course, my credit card doesn’t work. So, in a last ditch effort I use another card, which I wasn’t sure was going to work or not because I had never called to tell them I was going to be out of the country. But, thank God, it worked. So I hopped right onto Facebook to try and get into contact with my housemate, and let a couple of people know what was going on – aka, anyone in my group here that was online. So, I left a post on my housemate’s wall, another two people were trying to contact him for me, and another friend is going to let the professor know today that I’m going to be extremely late. If I’m lucky I can still catch the last hour, so we’ll see. After getting mildly settled I proceeded to go find food because I hadn’t eaten anything in the past 12 hours, and that never turns out well, and was definitely contributing to the fact that I was pretty out of it at this point. So, I got food. And as a way to get back at the overpricing bastards I took a decent long hot shower afterwards, which I can’t do when I’m home, so it was the first shower longer than 5 minutes I’ve had since I’ve been to Spain. So at least I’ve had one win in all of this. I also won’t lie and tell you that I was half tempted to take some of the towels just on principle.

So yeah, that’s been my eventful weekend as I turned into a prime example of Murphy’s Law. I almost had a mild heart-attack this morning when I went to buy my ticket and the machine took credit card but wasn’t doing anything and then froze. But it ended u giving it back to me, but was still frozen, so I moved to the machine next to it and tried to just pay with cash, and had another mild heart attack when that machine took my money and did the same thing as the other machine, finally spitting out my 20 euro bill five minutes later. At that point I just went to the ticket booth and bought one. But hey, at least I’m still alive, right? Moral of the story – never buy transportation that isn’t flexible, and never assume your transportation is going to be on time. Most people would say that I should have planned better; however, the fact that I had everything planned to a T (that expression looks really weird written out) was actually the reason why everything ended up the way it did, so I really just should  just swung it per usual. I say this as I sit here assuming this train will be on time and I’m still going to make it to class with an hour left. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll be early, since I’m pretty sure the universe owes me some time and money back. But I’ll have to look into that later.

Well, apparently an hour was a little ambitious. I made it to my first class with 20 minutes left. But hey, I made it, and the professor was really cool with everything. Awesome.

On a final, brighter note – while in Germany, I obviously knew absolutely no German and thus couldn’t really communicate well. A lot of people spoke English in the main section of the town but I’m so used to almost no one speaking English in Salamanca I kind of reverted to same means of communication – hand motions, confused looks, and pointing. This brought me to the realization of how much Spanish I actually do know since everything I couldn’t do in Germany I knew I could do in Spain, and so I left there with a mild confidence boost when it comes to speaking in Spanish. Bueno.

I feel this following quote by Annie Besant (no I have no idea who she is either) rightfully sums up my adventure this weekend, and all the wins and losses that went along with it:

“Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.”

How Many Americans Does It Take To Catch A Train?

I'm splitting this post into two since it's pretty long and the second part is relatively distinct from the first. Enjoy.

So after safely arriving to Heidelberg and meeting up with Hal we went back to the place that she’s staying at, which was ironically enough a German frat house. The guys that are currently there were pretty nice and welcoming, and all knew a bit of English which made things a bit easier seeing how I know absolutely no German and can only pick up what people are probably saying when there are enough context clues around.

Thursday night I was pretty tired from traveling all day so we really didn’t do anything. On Friday after Hal got back from class we grabbed lunch and then ventured up to the castle that’s in Heidelberg and spent some time wandering around and such. Later that night we went out to dinner with another friend of hers at this very German place (a German place in Germany, go figure.) It was delicious. Also had my first real German beer, which again was delicious. I had absolutely no idea what any of the beers were though on the menu, so props to the waitress for pointing out her favorite one to me when I asked her for her opinion as to which one I should go for, she has good taste. Later that night we spent a little bit of time at the party going on in the basement for one of the guy’s birthdays, and then a few of us headed out and walked around town a bit.

Saturday we spent the afternoon at the biggest wine festival in the world, and one of the oldest. It was basically along the same lines as Oktoberfest, only with wine, not exactly as touristy (although there were plenty of English-speakers there), and definitely more room to breathe compared to Oktoberfest. It was a lot like a carnival only with a bunch of tents lined up serving a bunch of different types of wine, and the food was without a doubt 1000x better than any carnival you’ve been to. So to recap: great food, great wine, great company – it was ‘effin awesome. Once again I think America needs to take a couple of pointers from other countries. Of course, if they did that in the US, everyone would be a sloppy mess so maybe it’s better that we keep this festival in Germany.

I think the best story of the day comes from when we were trying to get home. We were slightly winging the train system, although we had a general idea of where to go (well, by “we” I mean them, I had no idea, the other guys did). But anyway, as the three of us are sitting there in the train in some in depth conversation, we completely missed where we were supposed to get off at. So, at the station or two after, we begin to realize this as the train is in the station. So, after thinking about it for a minute or two, we decide that that current stop we’re out is one we should get off of. So, we get off, casually walk over to the time table to figure out where/when the next train comes in to get us back to Heidelberg – well, the next train is on track 4, and leaves…. Now. So we look up and see the train sitting there on the other side of the tracks, and well what else do you do in a time like this other than book it to the stairs, run underground to the other side of the track, back up the stairs, and desperately start pushing the button to open the train door. Exactly. Only problem was, we were two seconds too late – the door wouldn’t open, and the train started to pull away. Bueno. But it’s ok, because well the next train should be there in another 15-20 minutes. So, after a minute or two, me and this other guy head to the bathroom, and when we come back, Hal is sitting down on the bench and there’s a train on the track. Not thinking anything of it, we both sit down as well. So here we are, the three of us, sitting on the bench, looking at the train in front of us. A few more minutes go by and the train pulls away. Another minute goes by and Hal looks at her watch and says that our train should have come in by now. In fact, it should have been in like, a minute or so ago. At this point, all three of us come to the conclusion that the train we were just staring at for five minutes should have been the train that we were getting on. Whoops. So, after hysterically laughing at our complete and utter stupidity, we wait another 15-20 minutes for a train to take us home, and make sure that we actually board it this time. But hey, makes for a good story right?

So, if you answered "3" to the question asked in the title of this post, you'd be right. However, no promises that it'd be the initial train you were hoping to catch.

Vamos a Heidelberg!

And whoops, this is a little longer than previously anticipated. But there are a few little stories so enjoy nonetheless.

Well, as I sit here in the Madrid airport as the lady next to me decides to lay across three of the 20 seats available for everyone waiting at this gate (I know, what a ***** right? – See mom, I edited that out just for you), I figure, hey, I’m not boarding for another two-ish hours, why don’t I sit here and write about the lovely adventures over the past couple of days.

Well in reality, there probably isn’t too much to go over. Today is Thursday which means it’s the last day for all of the casetas to be out around the streets, which is somewhat depressing since they’ve been up for almost as long as we’ve been here now so it’ll be interesting to see what the streets are like when there aren’t huge parties going on every night of the week (that’s right America, an entire week of fiestas and siestas, I’m highly suggesting you step your game up). But anyway, the past couple of nights we all went out to get our last fill in on tapas and pinchos and such, and since yesterday we didn’t have class we obviously took full advantage of the night prior. Last night was a little more chill since a lot of people left for either Barcelona or to go on this Camino de Santiago, and well I had to be up at 630 to get ready and catch a train, so I didn’t stay out as late (you know, like 1:30 – 2:00…)

Speaking of waking up to catch a train, getting everything I needed for this excursion to Germany was quite a hassle. It should not take one all day to book cheap flights and find appropriate transportation to and from said airports. However, all the flights were either so early in the morning that I wouldn’t be able to get a train here in time. Side note, the overhead speaker just came on in the airport, and it’s the voice of some high-end British guy. I’m currently exercising my self control by not bursting into hysterical laughter. I also realize that most of you will probably think I’m nuts, but trust me, if you heard what I heard just not you’d be with me. Anyway, back to the impossible flight scheduling. So yeah, all day, WTF. Flights were either too early, or I wouldn’t be getting to Heidelberg until like 3am in the morning. To my luck though, I had found the perfect flight at one point. To my misfortune immediately following said luck, I wasn’t able to pay for said tickets with my credit card. It had to be a cash deposit to a specific account. At this point I thought it was just kind of sick cruel joke. However later on I decided I would call the airline website and try and see if I could pay another way. I even asked for someone who spoke English, figuring it’d probably be more efficient and they’d be able to understand me better. No. Not at all. Completely and totally false. I should have just stayed on the phone with the lady who spoke Spanish, because at least she’d be able to understand me even if I had to talk around some things. Quick recap of the conversation: “What’s the problem sir?” “Is there any other way I can pay for the ticket?” “Do you want me to cancel the ticket?” “No, not if there’s another way I can pay for the ticket.” “I don’t understand your question; you want me to cancel the ticket?” “NOT IF THERE’S ANOTHER WAY I CAN PAY FOR THE TICKET.”  “There is nothing I can do, you want ticket canceled.” “You know what, yes. Cancel it. Just cancel the damn ticket.”  Shortly later I found a little more expensive of a ticket but it had a decent time frame so before I postponed buying one any later subsequently increasing all the ticket prices, I decided to go with that one. The only slight complication was I couldn’t take the bus right to Madrid because it wasn’t leaving early enough, so I got to take the train instead, and maneuver myself around Madrid’s metro system. Which I did quite successfully, minus a little wondering trying to figure out where to get into the metro system from the main train station that I came in on from Salamanca.

The other night there was some techno-ish concert in the Plaza Mayor. There were a lot of lights and some weird mechanical things dancing around all lit up on the stage.  A few of us found this quite ironic – a giant technical show inside a plaza that was built like a century ago. Talk about juxtaposition.

Oh goody, the lady that passed out a seat over from me just started snoring.

Oh yeah, the ice cream here is delicious. They have shops on almost every corner. The one place has donut flavored ice cream and it taste, well, just like a donut. (Do we really live in a world where people are surprised when things taste like what they’re advertised as tasting like?)

My host mom is adorable. She yelled at my housemate last night – “eat with [your] hands, we’re all family here!” – when he was trying to cut through something without having much luck.  She also has a knack for just telling it how it is. My favorite line thus far is probably, “Aye! How unattractive is this anchorman!? An anchorman more good-looking, por favor!” (Which is in regards to the anchorman on the local news station.) She also made me a couple sandwiches and packed a couple apples to take with me on my journey today.

One final note about Snorlax over here (well, she’s awake now; someone must have played the pok-e-flute. I also wonder how many people are actually going to get that reference), she just hushed someone else’s little kids who were playing around. Seriously, don’t discipline someone else’s kids, especially when their parents are sitting right there. Have the decency to at least be polite about it and ask the parents if they could settle their kids down. And really, if you don’t ‘effin like it, go get another seat somewhere else, preferably far away from me. Their kids. They play. They make noise. They’re stuck in the airport for a couple of hours. How about I tie you to that bench right there and we’ll see if you don’t start making noises after not being able to move for a half an hour or so.

Vale, enough airport rantings to pass the time. I do have another hour or so wait when I get to Heidelberg so I should save some for there as well.

The plane ride was pretty short seeing how I passed out for most of it. The train rides from the airport in total were about 35-40 min. The problem arose when I got into Heidelberg’s station and had not remembered to write down my friend’s phone number, and thus could not call her. Whoops. But! All I had to do was get onto facebook and find the number. Well, that would have been easier if there was free WIFI somewhere. So I decided to wait 20 minutes since she said she’d be getting back around 7 and would meet me at the station. 30 minutes go by. Ok, well at this point all I’m thinking is she could walk in at any minute and if I’m not here she’d assume I went to the house (which, the address for which I had also forgotten to written down). So at this point, I remember I have a Facebook app thing on my phone, and well this is kind of important so I’ll just have to deal with paying for it. However, as I open my phone I see that it must have turned off and on, because it was asking for the pin number. A number which I have only used once when I initially turned the phone on, and so a number which I had obviously forgotten. I had three tries, and I blew it each time, and my phone locked me out. Oh, but don’t worry, I remembered the pin three seconds afterwards though. So now my phone is asking for an 8 digit number to allow me to reset my pin, and well I don’t even have the slightest clue. But, luckily, as I’m looking around desperately for internet somewhere, I see two things – a vague sign for an internet café and pay phones over in another corner. BAM, right? Wrong. After finally being able to log onto facebook, leaving Hal a message saying I’m in the station, and finding her phone number after searching for it for ten minutes, I come to discover the T-Mobile pay phones are complete crap and won’t make a call, even after trying everything I could think of for ten minutes. So, we’re back to square one, and I go reclaim my seat on the bench. Now, unbeknownst to me at the time, Hal was stuck in traffic and thus was going to be a bit late. After texting me and getting no response, she tried to call me, which, had obviously failed as she tried several more times after that. So, in retrospect, it was a good thing I decided to just sit there on the bench and wait. I hadn’t been there for too long (about a 1 – 1.5 hours, which since I’d been traveling all day didn’t seem like that much), and it was only like 8-830. My next plan of action was going to be creating one of those Google numbers, and then finally just beg some random person to borrow their phone, and pray that they knew English. But, as I sat there, staring at the floor and munching away at one of the sandwiches my Señora made for me, I heard someone right above me say my name, and there was Hal. Moderate crisis averted.

Here’s a nice little quote I think fits the final tale in this latest post:

“If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.” — Mario Andretti

Carne, Carne, y Más Carne!

First off, do not get used to me posting something this frequently. I’m sure once classes start up I’ll have both less things to write about and will write less frequently. But who knows, that’s what I would assume using my knowledge of what a semester is usually like for me based off of a ridiculously overcrowded plate back home. But seeing how I am both not home (and even on the same continent) and am neither taking any science classes, and therefore have no labs, nor do I have any organized sport commitments… wait, why did I bother buying a flight ticket home again?

Speaking of less academic commitments, on Friday we had yet another charla (talk). This time it was about “Student Life in España.” Probably the biggest change for me here would be the fact that all of the like 7 libraries in this city close around 9. For anyone that knows my habits back home, if I ever left the library at 9 it was either because I was a) going to another building to do work for a change of scenery or b) going to a meeting. Does this bother me? Hell no. It means now I have something forcing me to spend more time enjoying myself here, as I inevitably put too much work into something that really doesn’t require that much effort. Also, a lot of people tend to do work in the surrounding cafes as well, which is pretty cool, especially since I have a mild addiction to coffee. A lot of my classes also start a lot later which is a bit different for me since mine always tend to start at 8 or 9 in the morning, so this is yet another win.

Friday we had a fútbol game, which was a lot of fun. Some friends of Manuel, one of our student orientation leaders, had come to join in as well. Although, seeing how I have not run for two weeks (leave me alone, we’ve had a lot going on and we do a lot of walking and hiking so it’s not like I’ve just been sitting around) I was really feeling it later that night and the next day. Still feeling it now a bit actually. But anyway, I found out where the track is in the city too, which is great. Makes me feel a bit more at home and settled. We all went out for a little bit later on Friday night. From this, let me throw you a few words of advice: do not casually drink an entire bottle of Lambrusca (it’s like a sparkling wine/champagne type thing, and before you go, OMG you drank a whole bottle, it’s got about as much alcohol as beer and ends up being cheaper than buying the equivalent couple beers that its worth). While it is only 4 euro and seems worth it, it did not sit well in my stomach. Although maybe it was just bad mixing with the ice cream I ate not too long beforehand. But anyway, it wasn’t the sick kind of feeling, it was the, I can’t stop burping type of feeling. Whatever the hell was going on in my stomach was creating a never-ending source of CO₂, making it almost impossible to fall asleep because I could only lie on my back. At first I didn’t know why I was feeling weird until I sat up straight and burped pretty loudly. Unfortunately I had to do this a couple more times because I guess it all built up as I was lying down, and I was finally able to fall asleep by like 4-430, only to have to wake up at 8. So much for coming home early to get to bed early and get a good night’s sleep.  Lesson learned.

Yesterday we went to Toro and Zamora. Toro is a small little town famous for its wine, and so we had obviously gone for a tour of its winery, which ended in a brief wine tasting. I found this interesting seeing how it was about 11 am and up to that point I had only had coffee and a muffin for breakfast. But anyway, after Toro we went to the nearby city of Zamora, which is also rooted in a lot of history. Apparently it’s also the first city to have used wifi. Haven’t checked the source on that yet though so if anyone’s bored, look that up and get back to me with the result. As usual, you can see a bunch of pictures of the city on Facebook, and so I’ll leave all the explanations of what it looked like to the photos. However, my small attention span strikes again, and so some things I can’t really explain to you seeing how I really wasn’t paying too much attention to the guided tour. Whoops.
After Zamora we went to this really small nearby town for a traditional meal of a crapload of grilled and bbq meat. I think there was salad somewhere in there, but seriously, MEAT! So much meat. And it was delicious, so delicious. Accompanied by wine and bread, of course. It wouldn’t be a traditional huge lunch without them. We were in this little underground restaurant, it was pretty cool. For dessert, we had those Magnum ice cream bars, which we all thought was kind of funny and random, but they’re really good so hey no complaints. And then following those, the waiter brought out these three bottles of unmarked liquid, and several shot glasses. Two of them had alcohol in them and one of them did not, but we really could only tell that one of them definitely did, which was the yellow one. There was a really bright green one, which tasted like liquid jolly ranchers, and a bright red one, which also tasted really good. Of course, as Fran has pointed out though, it could have very well been anti-freeze and we would’ve had absolutely no idea. Luckily though, if it was, I happen to know that a way to save yourself from anti-freeze poisoning is to drink a lot of alcohol, and we had plenty of wine. So, crisis averted. ;)

When returned pretty early, around 5-530. Obviously the first thing I did when I got home was take a nap, seeing how I had finally stopped burping every ten minutes around 12 earlier that day. And then we went out for a little bit to enjoy some more of the casetas and general fiesta that is still going on in the city.

Here’s a video of one of the concerts going on in the Plaza Mayor. There’s a 360 view of the Plaza in there so you can get an idea of what the place fully looks like. Enjoy.

Seeing how today is the 10^th anniversary of September 11^th, I’m going to end with a simple quote that I think has a lot of meaning when you think about it:
“When it rains, most birds head for shelter; the Eagle is the only bird that, in order to avoid the rain, starts flying above the cloud.”God Bless America.

Ferias y Fiestas

Bueno. Cell phone has been bought along with the other few amenities that I didn’t pack to save on room. And today marks the official one week date since we all arrived here last Thursday. Although, as most of us agree, it seems like we’ve been here for way longer than that. Not that that’s a bad thing of course.

Our intensive language class started on Tuesday, so between that and all the orientation stuff that we still have going on we’ve had a couple long days. We had a quick academic advising session the other day and of course everything would conflict for me, although that’s probably slightly my fault coming here with the need to actually take a couple specific classes. Although, seeing how I’ve come to master handling these types of situations, I’ve managed to not only find classes that I needed and am interested in, but have managed to make it so my school week will be from Monday at 1040 to Thursday at 2. Helloooo 3 and a half day weekends. This will be completely and utterly different from my basically lack of weekends last year, so bueno, I’m making up for lost time. (This is all assuming I don’t go to officially register and everything is filled. Which would totally be my luck. SO let’s keep our fingers crossed here.) Also, two of my classes will only meet once a week, for two hours. Hopefully I’m not speaking too soon when I say, WIN.

Tuesday night we had a Salsa dance class and Wednesday night we had a Flamenco dance class. Salsa in my opinion is the more fun of the two. Flamenco was a little more structured and a little more repetitive. Also, less hip movement. And well frankly I can’t keep up the allusion that I know what I’m doing when I dance if I can’t shake it up a little bit. These hips don’t lie baby. I also feel that I have plenty of knowledge to speak on this matter since both classes were an hour each, which clearly makes me an expert in both fields of dance.

This past week, there have been these “casetas” being put up all over town (they’re like mini outside booth versions of the bars and places to eat here), in the plazas and major areas and such. Each caseta has its own special “Pincho de Feria” which is basically its own individual small snack, with either a cup of beer or wine, for 1.80 euro (which is pretty cheap). The food is absolutely delicious, and the casetas are all over the place. The entire city is basically one big party, starting yesterday and continuing on for the next like week. America needs to step it’s game up on how it starts the new school year, because frankly paying for books, moving crap into your room, preseason for fall sports, and whatever little other tedious, pointless activities the school makes you do in the week or two leading up to school fail to compare to streets lined with people, parades, music, food, drink, lights, concerts, fireworks… well, you get the picture. Today is a city-wide holiday so we don’t have class, and so we were all able to fully enjoy the festivities last night.

I can more or less understand a lot of what’s going on now, minus maybe a word or phrase I’m not familiar with. It’s just the speaking part I have to work on a bit, which is a bit more difficult being more of a naturally quiet person. Once all the classes start up though it’ll probably get a lot better thought so we’ll see.

Here's a clip of some of the fireworks from last night.

And here's another video that I accidently took when trying to take a picture and didn't realize my camera was switched to video at first. The music in the streets has to be turned off at midnight so you can hear some people asking where the music went, but you can also get a pretty good idea of how crowded some of the plazas get. Enjoy.

                                   

“The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

Bienvenidos! (Part 2)

“It should be pretty easy to get to, if we really need to look at the map we can.” “Well, usually the best way to learn where you’re at is to get completely lost anyway.” “Agreed.”
Famous last words spoken by both my housemate and myself as we went out to venture about the city to look for the Plaza Mayor and la Plaza de los Bandos, which was where we were meeting at 8 the next morning and our host mom suggested we go see where it is. It took us about an hour and a half to get somewhere that should have only taken us maybe 15 minutes, and then another hour and a half to get back home.  The map was completely useless. They do not use a grid system here; their street signs are a) not on every street, b) almost hidden from sight, so you basically need to know where to look (which, as it was our first few hours here, we obviously did not know where to look), and c) there are 20000 roundabouts, turning one street to the right, another one to the left, and magically creating three or four more out of thin air. Needless to say, we were eating our own words, as we walked back and forth, left and right, around, and around, and around…. And around…  But anyway, we eventually made it back, to the delight of our host mom who wasn’t sure if we were dead or not. And well, I can safely back up the statement I made earlier that night, seeing how I did, in fact, get to know the city pretty well in only the first couple days. Bueno.

The following day (Friday) was a bunch of orientation stuff. It was a BLAST. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Basically reminding us not to be overly obnoxious and display that we’re all American. Damn, there goes my plan to run around scream “ ‘MERICA!” wearing the American flag as a cape. Of course, I found this awfully contradictory when later that exact day we had a scavenger hunt, as so we ran about the streets of the city with cameras taking pictures, yelling at each other in English, and asking people questions about where to find things in the city. Whoops, there goes that lesson. Later that night, we all went out.  To say the least, it was a successful first night out in Spain for all of us. The next morning we got up pretty late and later on watched a movie (it’s called “The Way,” it’s about the Camino de Santiago and stars Martin Sheen, it was pretty good if you’re looking for something to watch) and then we went on a city tour. Unfortunately, I don’t do walking tours so well, seeing how my attention span is about equivalent to that of a squirrel. So I caught bits and pieces of what the guide was saying but other than that I was too preoccupied with anything shiny that flew by or caught the sun. And then that night we had pizza at a bar for dinner and there was a local authentic Spanish band from the University that had played a few things for us.

Today we took a trip to Segovia. A lot sites and stuff, as you’ll see by the pictures on facebook. We had our cena at El Rancho de la Aldegüela, and as with everything else here, it was delicious, and we ate, ate, and ate, and right through the pain, we ate some more.  This brings me to another side note. My host mom is wonderful; in fact, all of our host families are awesome. And the one main phrase you’ll find in common with all of them… “Quieres más!?”  (You want more!?), and of course, 9 times out of ten, you really don’t have a choice, because they will pile that food onto your plate. Luckily though, the Spanish have everything figured out, and you can go take a siesta just as the food coma is striking down with a vengeance, and then go walk it off later (everyone walks here, it’s really common to walk at least 20-30 min to your destination, and this city is big but small at the same time so it’s really nice).

My ability to understand everything is coming underway, and my host mom’s accent is not as much as a challenge to listen through as it was a couple days ago. I keep forgetting that I’ve only been here for a couple of days though, so this is looking pretty good. Tomorrow I have to go figure out how to buy a prepaid cell phone, so this should be interesting to see if I can get through it without any trouble.

In honor of the unintended adventure around the entire city of Salamanca, I’m going to end with a quote from Albert Einstein:

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

Buenas noches!

Bienvenidos! (Pt. 1)

Seeing how I have to go do some more orientation things, I'll post what I have as of now and finish the rest of the past two days when I return later tonight, in order to keep both Fran entertained and delay my mother's inevitable heart-attack.

Ok so with the combination of orientation things and jet-lag, it’s taken me a few days to actually get to writing this. Mainly because I’ve been using the siesta time these past few days to, well, siesta.  So why don’t we recap the past couple of days:

Waiting in the airport was a blast. I don’t think I’ve ever made it through everything as quickly as I did, which I guess is a good thing since the last time I was in an airport we were scrambling to get through customs and to our plane and some of us barely just made it. But anyway, getting there that early inevitably meant I was going to be starving way before I ever even got onto the plane. And seeing how everything in the airport is marked up 500%, I wasn’t too thrilled about this. So of course in order to keep my mind off the possibility of cracking before I get on the plane to go and get food, what else is there for people bored out of their mind in sitting in a large communal area to do other than people watch? Of course as I’m sitting there though, someone decides to apparently buy wings (or something that smelt like them) and sat down in the terminal. Way to go jerk, if you’re going to bring something that can diffuse throughout the air as easily as hot wings and remind some of us (me) that we’re (I) am hungry, I sure do hope you have brought enough for everyone. Aside from the load of foreigners running about the airport looking like their heads are chopped off, here’s a brief list of the more prominent characters that I had the pleasure of watching walk about the airport: Overweight policeman riding on a segway (but is he riding the segway because he’s clearly overweight and wouldn’t be able to make in down a complete terminal without going into cardiac arrest, or has his love for this two-wheeled futuristic magical scooter device ultimately cut out any and all exercise this man has ever done, this accelerating the deceleration of his metabolism?);  little kid with a lightsaber running by (it was one of those glass neon ones – and seriously, those things can cause some serious damage if broken properly, you’re telling me I can’t bring on more than 3 oz of toothpaste onto the plane, but you can get through with THAT? Come on now people.); and then there was the man who walked by blatantly sticking his chest out, and I’m not saying a small little chest puff, but more like if this guy had his chest out any farther, he’d be bent over backwards with his head between his legs. By now I’m sure you’re wondering, “Wait!? What about the hunger situation!?” Well now, with about an hour before the plane ride, I inevitably cracked, and went off to venture to find something to eat. As such, I think I spent about three weeks worth of traveling money on a collection of things worth about $10. Woohoo.

The flight itself could have been worse, could have been better. I swear the seats get smaller every time I fly somewhere. When we finally landed in Madrid we got to wait around for 2 ½ hours for the IES people to get there. This was after of course I exchanged $45 American dollars for about 27 Euro. Screw you economy. The bus ride from Madrid to Salamanca was about 2.5 hours, 2 of which I pretty much passed out for.  Whoops.

Upon arriving in Salamanca we met our host families. So let me quickly set up this scene: I haven’t spoken or listened to any Spanish in three months, we’ve been traveling for what seemed like forever and a 6 hour jump ahead in time makes for extreme jet-lag, and I’m pretty sure my body was screaming “WTF” at the fact that technically it was like 4 in the morning back home but the sun was up and shining ever so brightly which led for a bit of a headache. Needless to say, I was not in the best of conditions for fully understanding anything that was really going on. But anyway, me and my housemate met our Señora and headed home. So aside from the things just mentioned, what probably made it even more difficult to process what was going on was the thick Castilian accent that my host mom has, which I am nowhere used to. This translates to me catching maybe every third of fourth word she was saying and trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.  After some repeating and talking with my housemate, we realized that she was actually letting us pick whichever room we wanted to stay in. She had three, two with one bed and one with two. The two beds in the one room were slightly bigger than the other singles so after attempting to lie down on the one bed in the single room and just barely fitting, I decided to go with the room with the two beds. We had our Cena (which in Spain is the biggest meal of the day, usually eaten around 2:00) after dropping our things off in the room and then both proceeded to take a much needed nap.

tbc.