about Madrid and Toledo

Brief summary: Thursday night 11 pm, get on bus in Barcelona (with Matt, a fellow frisbee player, aslo exchange student in another program).
Friday 6:45 am, get off bus in Madrid.
7:00 am, get on bus in Madrid.
8:00 am, get off bus in Toledo.
8:00 am-2:30 pm, go to cafe for breakfast, walk around Toledo, take pictures, enter free museums, see lots of cool buildings, look at swords in sword shops, eat lunch in a bar.
2:30-4:00 pm bus to Madrid.
4:00-6:30 pm walk around Madrid, see national palace, Cathedral, etc.
6:30-8:30 meet up with friend (Andrew Murto, for Goshenites) who is studying in Madrid and go to bars for supper
8:30 pm, find transportation and direction to sports complex
11:00 pm meet people and go to bed
Saturday
get up, eat breakfast, walk around, find grocery store and buy lunch, hang out with the rest of the team and get ready to play.
Play 2 games, win both! Go Piexets!!! (new name of team) We brag that we are the only undefeated team in spain and mabye the world...
Supper and party with all teams in the tourney
SUnday
Get up, eat a bit of breakfast, play 3 games in a row. win the first, lose the second two. tired. lost some players to injuries and didn´t have subs. boo. stretch and lay around nearly dead for a while. watch the finals of the tourney. we tied for 5th out of 9 teams. much better than i was expecting. (And largely due to the AMAZING japanese guy we picked up from the other Barça team.) Showered and went to bars with 3 other team members who were going home in bus. 11 pm, get on bus. 7 am, arrive in Barcelona. slept for an hour, got up and went to class. ughh.
Tired and sore, but it was a good time. =) I guess that wasn´t a very brief summary...
p.s. pictures are not uploading..I´ll try again later.

some randomies

Yesterday I saw 2 guys hauling a full size mattress through the gates into the metro. I´ve been keeping a mental list of interesting things I see in the metro (thus far easily beaten by chickens and such in the latin-american buses) but none were really too note-worthy before, just dogs, baby strollers, bikes and little european shopping carts...

I picked up a little cold this weekend in Madrid. I´m drinking tea out of my Nalgene and hoping to set the cold down again quite soon in some inconspicuous place where I will not be tempted to pick it up again...

The rainy October weather seems to about done. This makes sense, I guess, as it is the last day of October. Now its generally sunny, or parcially cloudy, and chilly-ish. Fall weather, one could say.

One of Spain´s (or Catalunya´s, I guess I don´t know how far the tradition extends...) traditions near All-Saints day is to sell roasted chestnuts and sweet potatoes on the street. They look really yummy and I think I shall have to try them this weekend.

another fun weekend in BCN

This weekend some friends and I went dancing at a latin club. (yay!) We met lots of people from all over South America (and el Caribe) and stayed out until way too late in the morning. And we all wore high heels, which was really silly. I knew this desde el principio, but wore some short heels with straps anyway. We all had blisters and/or sore feet. And walked back to the one girl´s house barefoot. Which is really unacceptable in Barcelona. oops. Then I went to bed and woke myself up three hours later to go to frisbee practice. (yay!) During which my feet continued to hurt. Silly me. ANd I was tired. My fault, clearly.
After practice we all went out to a bar (restaurant) and had some sandwhiches and salads. It was a fun time to just chat with people. We proceeded then to go buy uniforms! yippee! And next week (after the tourney in Madrid this weekend!) we hope to get logos printed on them. I´m a little bit excited.
After this full afternoon I was thoroughly exhausted and went home, ate and went to bed for many hours.
Sunday I did some homework and in the evening some friends and I went to a movie. We decided that while we were here we wanted to see a SPanish movie. So we did. Its called ¨Las Trece Rosas.¨ About the war/Franco and women who resisted and were killed in a firing squad because of it. Awful. Awful. But an excellent movie. (We all cried quite a lot...) So it was a good movie to see in Spain, because it had so much history in it. It was also fun because I understood it! Nice to be at a level where I can watch movies in Spanish and understand. =)
So, there´s my weekend. After this weekend I shall have more stories to tell. I leave tomorrow night at 11 by bus to get to Madrid... ugh.
Enjoy fall, if it is indeed fall where you are!
p.s. more pictures added to previous blog entry.

cosas variadas

** Last week friends and I went to Park Güell and La Padrera (park and house designed by Gaudí) They are really neat.
** This weekend I took a road-trip with my host-family (Ana; her daughter, Mar; her son, Moises and his dog, Pluja). We went to visit Ana´s sister, who lives in Navarra (the state...northern Spain, about 4 hours from Barcelona) in their parents old house. Highlights of the trip include: being in the country! I really like Barcelona, but it was amaaazing to be in the campo again. We drove up one night into the mountains. It was cold, but beautiful. I guess like my old cowboy friend Hal says, ¨You can take the girl out of the country, but you can´t take the country out of the girl...¨ cliché, I know... And I went out with Mar, Moises and some of their friends ( as kids they spent their summers there). Lovely time. Also, Ana and her sister went out and bought a bunch of roasted red chilis! que heaven for me! So they canned and froze them. We eat them with pork. Its fantastic.
** Second frisbee practise today, since I have classes on Monday nights and can´t go. I´m excited.
** Classes are still going well, some more interesting than others. My drawing class if fun, and I like being in a class with Spanish students. The professor speaks in Catalan, though, which is a bit unfortunate. I usually understand, and if not, I ask people. We have 2 breaks during each class (since its 3 hours long) and everyone goes outside to smoke. I think I am less bothered by cigarette smoke than I used to be. This bothers me. Means I´ve been around too much. hmph.

**more pictures later? I´m having trouble attaching them and I need to go to class. Adeu!

a few social issues

So, I keep seeing all these ads here for vacation trips to various islands. All expenses included in big packages (flight, hotel, meals, etc.) In particular, Dominican Republic. This of course catches my eye, as I spent 3 months there last summer. It makes me sad. Because I learned that most of the hotel resorts are foreign-owned. Mostly European. So this means: A European, lets just say a Spaniard books a vacation package to the D.R. The money to the travel agent goes to a Spaniard. The airline is Spanish, money goes there. A Spaniard also owns the hotel, so that money also goes to a Spaniard. The Hotel has two big restaurants in it, also Spanish-owned. Probably cousins of the hotel owner. While there, guests can take a day-long boat trip out to...see the whales, say. This business is Spanish-owned as well. (This is all hypothetical, but I learned that it really works this way.) So, the economy of Spain is helped, and the Spaniard gets a nice, comfortable vacation. Effing cheap, I might add, because all the hotel workers, and restaurant workers, and boat workers are Dominican. Or Haitian. And they get paid dirt cheap wages. But its a job. And for them, the wages aren´t too bad. And they might be able to learn English or Italian or something while working there, because of all the foreigners. And then they can get moved up, or get a better job somewhere else. And what does the economy of the DR get? Not much. Def. not as much as if the resorts were all owned by Dominicans and the money went into the economy, rather then never touching it and staying in Europe. But of course, any Dominican rich enough to invest in something like that would have to be part of one of the top 10 families in the DR who already own something like 90% of the businesses and land in the country anyway.... And then there are the enviromental problems: I´m sure I don´t know all of them, but the resorts are taking away precious beaches and destroying the habitats of the few special species still left on the island. And they´re using a ton of water. And energy, because heaven-forbid the guests of the hotel not have hot water for showers, even though all the campesinos take bucket showers or bath in rivers and the city people don´t have hot water and the electricity only works from time to time because people tap the wires and it causes outages/ the company tries to compensate for lost energy by simply shutting it off.... And then there are the sewage systems, which probably get dumped into the ocean and cause more problems, but, hey, the Dominican government isn´t going to bust the resorts because, well, its money and tourism...(even though, see above...)
So, it makes me sad. But from the perspective here, not knowing or choosing not to know about those things... its a really great deal. Why not go?

Besides that, I feel that I have been pretty far removed from my social/political/religious/economical/everything world of thought this summer. Meaning, in Nicaragua, doing what I was doing and talking to the people to whom I talked, I had nearly constant stimulation in these areas. I had to think about them. And I liked it. It was hard, sometimes, but I like those questions. Here, I´ve had very few. Its quite easy in this setting for me to relax and just have a good time. To forget about the world´s problems. To forget about the injustices. To think it is normal for people to be able to travel and study. These are not truths. And while I think its okay not to constantly be thinking about the injustices and the problems (breaks are good. and necessary.) I want to be sure that I don´t get too caught up in my fun/easy/priveledged world. I want to have a balance. This opportunity is giving me a good view on the other end of the spectrum (ok, maybe not the end...other side of what I know...my personal middle-ground= what I know/am used to/my lifestyle of growing up??) That probably doesn´t make sense. Just know that I am experiencing new and good things, and enjoying life. Curious about where these new things will take me. Excited.

FRISBILLERS!!!!

This is the name of my new ultimate frisbee team. Thats right, I joined a team. And by that I mean that I went and played on the beach with some people last week and went to a meeting at someones house two nights ago and we decided to form a team. There´s another team already formed in Barcelona (Patatas Bravas) but they apparently don´t have enough space for all the people who want to play. I´m so excited. We are planning practise days and looking for a field we can rent. We´re looking at which tourneys we can go to (YIPPEE--a fantastic way to travel around spain!!!) and what uniforms to buy/what the logo should look like. Also, there´s a possibilitiy of a name change, if someone comes up with a better one. But, for now, we´re the Frisbillers. Saturday I´m going to go play on a beach a little further down from Barcelona with the Patatas Bravas folks (pick-up day, open) and some of my team. Jijijiji. I´m excited.
On other exciting news, some other BCA friends and bought tickets to Rome in November. 60 euros round trip. I´m excited. Though we don´t have enough time to see all we want to... ;) Hard life, I know.

classes and cuisine

Classes:
Mondays are really full. All four classes. Literature del siglo de oro (golden century), History of Spain, European Union and finally, from 6-9 at night, Drawing. For the art class I have to go to a different campus (by metro), I´m headed there soon. I shall now expand a bit on the classes. The Lit class is going to be fun. Gonna read some Cervantes and other classic stuff. The prof is really interesting. She knows a lot, too. History of Spain has thus far been somewhat unremarkable, but I´m excited to learn it. European Union I have only had twice, but I love it. The prof is a bit intimidating, and I´m going to have to work hard, but I´m going to learn a lot. The drawing class is a regular university class (the others are taught by reg. professors, but only offered to the BCA students. a little bit lame. not much, just a little). The professor sometimes breaks into Catalan and I can follow her, but not understand well. I don´t know if the whole term is figure drawing, but last week was and we drew a naked model for 3 hours. (Not something Goshen does....) I think it will be neat, and hopefully I will make some friends.

Cuisine:
Breakfast: Cafe con leche. y azucar (of course). I usually dip some little galletas in my cafe... they taste a bit like animal crackers, but are big and flat and round. and yummy. bread (white baguette) with margarine and jam. a new and wonderful addition: cheese! The past week we have had those cute little triangles of cream-cheese-ish stuff all wrapped in tinfoil. yummy. I sometimes eat a peach or an apple at breakfast too. And Ana got a box of Muesli with dried fruit from her daughter or something? So sometimes I eat cereal, too. I am content with breakfasts.
Lunch: If I am gone during the day (have classes at the university) I get a bocadillo (sandwhich on baguette bread) and a piece of fruit. The bocadillo generally has jamon del pais in it, which is a cured (not cooked) ham that looks a little like raw bacon. Its pretty good, but I get happy on the days when my bocadillo contains jamon dulce, your reg. sandwich meat and a slice of cheese. I like cheese. If I am home for lunch (2-3 in the afternoon) we have various dishes. sometimes a pasta dish. sometimes fried fish. sometimes a plate of cooked peas. sometimes lentils. I like nearly everything. (Somehow after my childhood years of incredible picky-ness with food I have become rather open to most food set before me. cool, huh, mom?) We usually have a little bit of salad (iceberg lettuce) with vinegar and olive oil. Sometimes I get a cut up tomato with chunks of garlic on it. Quite tasty. But I wouldn´t want to go out for a couple hours after all the garlic... =) Dessert is a piece of fruit. Again, usually apple or peach, but sometimes melon or grapes or a banana.
Supper: supper happens any time between 8-9:30 at night. Sometimes later. But usually its 8:30. Supper always has more than one course. Similiar to lunch options. Last night was a light supper and the main dish was a tortilla. Don´t think ¨tortilla¨ of latin america. This is basically an omellette and has nothing to do with flour or corn. The ¨tortillas francesas¨ are just egg, and the ¨tortillas españolas¨or de patatas have chunks of potato in them. quite tasty. The night before we had lentils and fried anchovies. (yup, ate those, too.) There is currenly a jar of snails on the counter and I wonder if they are for the grandkids to play with, or if I shall soon get a meal of them. Either way, its kind of fun. =)
Other random notes: If I go out to a bar to eat with friends (not very common, becuase when I can eat for free, why pay?) its easy to find food from all over. The most common thing in Spain, though, is a tapas bar. Tapas are little appetizers or entrees that one generally eats with a cup of wine or bottle of beer. They are things like meatballs, patatas bravas (fried potatoes with tomato), fish, etc.
Panadarias are all around and today on my search of a public library (found, but closed) I took advantagea and bought a yummy pastry. They smell so good when you walk by... I think I might start stopping more often (surprised? didn´t think so...) and spending my change on breads instead of at cafes... we shall see. its easier to sit and chat with friends at a cafe...