Nothing really exciting happened today, so I'll take this as another chance to talk about something that's really different between Spain and the States: food.
First, breakfast. In the States, it's a big deal. Americans love brunch. We love coffee and waffles and bacon and eggs and IHOP and orange juice and the whole production of breakfast in bed and all that fun awesome stuff. In Spain, breakfast (el desayuno) is exactly that -- break "des" fast "ayunas". A cup of coffee if you're lucky like I am, and a couple mini muffin things, and that's it. Maybe an apple to eat on the way to school or work, but even that is rare. So that´s thing number one.
Next up, lunch. LUNCH IS A BIG DEAL IN SPAIN. It's the biggest meal of the day, honestly. Both size-wise and importance-wise. Usually businesses close around 2:00 so everyone can go home for comida y siesta. Oh yeah, that's another thing you don´t learn in Spanish 1 back in high school -- "almuerzo" is like an afternoon snack, and "comida" is the real deal. With my class schedule I don't have enough time to go back and eat during the afternoon, so my madre packs me a bocadillo (like a sub, but usually just with meat and cheese or tortilla de patata like I had today) to take to school with me and eat there. But anyway, everyone goes home and chows down on a huge lunch and then rests and digests for a little bit and then businesses open back up around 5 or so and close at 8 or 9. Which brings us to...
La cena, or "dinner". Since la comida is so much later in the day than traditional lunchtime in the states, it sort of pushes everything else back a little bit too. And, as I have heard Rachel explain to people probably sixteen times, people around the world generally eat dinner when the sun goes down, and the sun here literally does not go down until 10 PM. Which is awesome. SO, with la comida y siesta and businesses staying open until 9 and the sun not going down until 10, la cena is generally around 9 or so. Before 8 PM, absolutely unheard of. In my casa we usually eat between 8:30 and 9:30, but I've sat down to dinner at 10:15 and it's totally normal.
So with everything pushed back so far and people not even done eating until 10 PM, what does that all mean when it comes to going out at night? It means that we don't even leave until midnight. Which, for Rachel and me, is completely normal cause that's how we roll in Charlottesville anyway. However, all of the establishments here have completely adapted to this whole schedule thing that we have going on, and so, as I have mentioned before, nothing really gets going until 2 or 3 AM. Cool, right?
One last thing though -- since nothing gets crazy before 2 AM and you don´t even get home until after 6 AM, you´d think maybe people sleep in or something to make up for it. Nope, you just get right back up at 8 AM even if you've only had two hours of sleep, and you chug your coffee and eat your mini muffins and grab your bocadillo and continue on your way.
Hasta luego!
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Chicken or egg?
I'm going to attempt to articulate something that has been on my mind for a while while being in Spain, and it probably is just going to be a massive brain fart so I apologize in advance. Adding to this that my English has been steadily worsening, I'm honestly expecting this to not be understandable but we'll see where it goes.
Behind the scenes info for anyone not familiar with money or euro notes or whatever (if you already know then totally skip this). As of right this second when I just googled it, 1 USD is equal to .75 EUR; so 1 EUR is equal to 1.33 USD. In addition to the difference in value, there are few key other distinctions that make each currency unique. You can get USD in coin denominations of .01, .05, .10, .25, .50 (rare), and 1 (but everyone hates dollar coins); bill denominations of 1, 2 (rare again), 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100. Euro coins come in .01, .02, .05, .10, .20, .50, 1, and 2; bills come in 5, 10, 20, 50, and then 100, 200, and 500 for larger denominations (I personally have never seen with my eyes a note larger than 50).
Euro coins by themselves are a really awesome thing, compared to coins in the States. If I'm rummaging through my backpack in the library in Charlottesville and come across three quarters, I'll probably throw them in my parking meter fund and forget about it. What am I supposed to get for 75 cents? Half a bagel at Greenberry's? An almost-refill of coffee? An hour of parking behind Clark is about as good as it gets. Accounting for the exchange rate, however, if I open up my wallet here and see a euro coin, which is value-wise exactly equivalent to those quarters, it is AWESOME. That's two cups of coffee, or three loaves of bread, or 2 liters of water, or a shot or beer at El Castillo. That little coin is worth so much more than its monetary equivalent in the States.
With that said, the question that I have is kind of a mess and not really easy to articulate. First, why are things so much "cheaper" here than they are in the US? Even without accounting for exchange, the idea of buying anything for a dollar back home is absolutely laughable, unless it's Survivor Hour at Bilt in which case go for it. A single euro can take you so much further (farther? I never remember which one) than a dollar can. Something I think seems kind of related is the whole tax thing in the States -- when you see the ticket price for a cup of coffee, you mentally add in that extra little bit of tax and adjust accordingly. Yeah no, if your coffee is a euro twenty (the price of a café americano at Café de Las Luces, my favorite place ever), it's a euro twenty. So you hand over a dollar coin and a twenty cent coin and it's cool and you go on your way and come back tomorrow and it's the same song and dance all over again.
So. I am obviously not an econ major but I think all of this is probably economy based. Why is a cup of coffee here a euro twenty and like three or four dollars in the States? (Keep in mind Spain does kind of suck economically right now and I'm totally aware of that). AND, and and and, I believe this is my main question, does the cheapness of things lead to greater need and/or use of the 1 and 2 euro coins, or does the presence of the 1 and 2 euro coins lead to lower prices due to the convenience of carrying around lots of value in a tiny chunk of metal? This is like the whole chicken and egg thing only the question of the gallinas can be easily answered. Aaaaand we have a title for this blog post.
Does any of this even make sense? Once I get back to Charlottesville I know I'm going to take a look at all of these and laugh at how absurd my English sounds, because I already know that I'm using Spanish grammatical constructions in place of English ones but I can't help it.
Also, we watched Planta Cuarta in Medical Spanish and I was SO EXCITED to get to see it again. We watched it in my Spanish film class last fall (any Spanish majors or even just normal UVA people reading this TAKE THAT CLASS if you can because it's honestly one of the best classes I've ever taken and that's saying a lot) so I got to skip the whole "what's going on what is this plot why are they bald wow their accents are thick" and notice a lot more things that I didn't see the first time around. Also I'm supposed to come up with a cubist painting/drawing/creation for art class tomorrow which I completely haven't started but I'm pretty sure I could sneeze on a piece of paper and talk about how I deconstructed reality and put it back together in a way that looked like a still life and Enrique would totally buy it. Tempting.
Hasta luego!
Behind the scenes info for anyone not familiar with money or euro notes or whatever (if you already know then totally skip this). As of right this second when I just googled it, 1 USD is equal to .75 EUR; so 1 EUR is equal to 1.33 USD. In addition to the difference in value, there are few key other distinctions that make each currency unique. You can get USD in coin denominations of .01, .05, .10, .25, .50 (rare), and 1 (but everyone hates dollar coins); bill denominations of 1, 2 (rare again), 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100. Euro coins come in .01, .02, .05, .10, .20, .50, 1, and 2; bills come in 5, 10, 20, 50, and then 100, 200, and 500 for larger denominations (I personally have never seen with my eyes a note larger than 50).
Euro coins by themselves are a really awesome thing, compared to coins in the States. If I'm rummaging through my backpack in the library in Charlottesville and come across three quarters, I'll probably throw them in my parking meter fund and forget about it. What am I supposed to get for 75 cents? Half a bagel at Greenberry's? An almost-refill of coffee? An hour of parking behind Clark is about as good as it gets. Accounting for the exchange rate, however, if I open up my wallet here and see a euro coin, which is value-wise exactly equivalent to those quarters, it is AWESOME. That's two cups of coffee, or three loaves of bread, or 2 liters of water, or a shot or beer at El Castillo. That little coin is worth so much more than its monetary equivalent in the States.
With that said, the question that I have is kind of a mess and not really easy to articulate. First, why are things so much "cheaper" here than they are in the US? Even without accounting for exchange, the idea of buying anything for a dollar back home is absolutely laughable, unless it's Survivor Hour at Bilt in which case go for it. A single euro can take you so much further (farther? I never remember which one) than a dollar can. Something I think seems kind of related is the whole tax thing in the States -- when you see the ticket price for a cup of coffee, you mentally add in that extra little bit of tax and adjust accordingly. Yeah no, if your coffee is a euro twenty (the price of a café americano at Café de Las Luces, my favorite place ever), it's a euro twenty. So you hand over a dollar coin and a twenty cent coin and it's cool and you go on your way and come back tomorrow and it's the same song and dance all over again.
So. I am obviously not an econ major but I think all of this is probably economy based. Why is a cup of coffee here a euro twenty and like three or four dollars in the States? (Keep in mind Spain does kind of suck economically right now and I'm totally aware of that). AND, and and and, I believe this is my main question, does the cheapness of things lead to greater need and/or use of the 1 and 2 euro coins, or does the presence of the 1 and 2 euro coins lead to lower prices due to the convenience of carrying around lots of value in a tiny chunk of metal? This is like the whole chicken and egg thing only the question of the gallinas can be easily answered. Aaaaand we have a title for this blog post.
Does any of this even make sense? Once I get back to Charlottesville I know I'm going to take a look at all of these and laugh at how absurd my English sounds, because I already know that I'm using Spanish grammatical constructions in place of English ones but I can't help it.
Also, we watched Planta Cuarta in Medical Spanish and I was SO EXCITED to get to see it again. We watched it in my Spanish film class last fall (any Spanish majors or even just normal UVA people reading this TAKE THAT CLASS if you can because it's honestly one of the best classes I've ever taken and that's saying a lot) so I got to skip the whole "what's going on what is this plot why are they bald wow their accents are thick" and notice a lot more things that I didn't see the first time around. Also I'm supposed to come up with a cubist painting/drawing/creation for art class tomorrow which I completely haven't started but I'm pretty sure I could sneeze on a piece of paper and talk about how I deconstructed reality and put it back together in a way that looked like a still life and Enrique would totally buy it. Tempting.
Hasta luego!
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Getting lost in Spain: Madrid edition
Every time I think I've had the best day ever, another absolutely amazing day pops up to prove me wrong. This weekend in Madrid was no exception.
Friday night after dinner we (Me, Rach, TeJota, Luke, and Will) went to a discoteca called Kapital. I'm going to do my best to describe it, but words honestly don't do it justice. The place was absolutely crazy. It's a seven floor club with a different style of music for each floor -- the bottom floor was your typical electro/dance/EDM stuff, there was a floor with all hip hop, a floor with Latin music, a karaoke floor that we apparently missed, and a bunch more that I honestly can't remember. We rolled up around 1:30, I think, and proceeded to absolutely lose our minds on the first floor, after running around to check out all of the other floors. At some point everyone started cheering and I turned around to see the main stage and a dude with an ELECTRIC VIOLIN was standing up there, and he started playing CANON IN D and this entire seething crowd of bodies just went completely crazy. I don't remember exactly when it happened but Rach and I realized at the exact same time that he had ended that song and started DON'T YOU WORRY CHILD -- no one around us really realized what song it was, but we were standing there screaming the words and everyone eventually caught on and proceeded to lose it once again and you could feel everyone getting hype for the beat to drop and RIGHT as it did, the coolest part of Kapital happened -- they have a system that blasts freezing cold air and fog and some sort of smelly stuff into the center of the dance floor to both cool everyone off and make it smell less like sweat and dancing and help everyone go insane. I know that entire last part was word vomit, but it was honestly incredible.
So yeah, Kapital, and electric violin guy, and the air fog thing, all of those things combined to form an incredible night. I think we ended up leaving at 5:30 -- Luke and Rach had both disappeared so it was just TeJota and Will and I at that point I believe. Our wake up call Saturday morning was at 8 AM, which was really great considering I went to sleep at 6:15 or so. I may or may not have skipped breakfast in favor of sleeping until 9:15, and eventually mustered the willpower and strength to throw some clothes on and make it downstairs by 9:30 to catch the bus over to the Prado.
Going to the Prado made me so completely stoked that I chose to take Modern Spanish Art, and also made me appreciate just how awesome my art professor really is. He's been asking us if we mind if he teaches us about Spanish painters that aren't technically "modern" -- namely Velázquez and Goya -- and I'm so happy he did, because I got to see all of the paintings we've talked about in class, and since my professor cares more about the stories behind the paintings rather than memorizing medium, artist, and date, I had a much greater appreciation for everything that I was seeing that I think I would have otherwise. I almost lost my mind when we finally got to the gallery that had Goya's pinturas negras in it -- in the last years of his life, Goya was living alone in this old house, he was deaf, he was depressed, he had lived through a war, all of his friends were dead, and so he painted these images on the walls of his house that are somewhat disturbing and somewhat enthralling and one hundred percent portray all of the parts of humanity that no one ever wants to talk about. They're incredible. But anyway, the Prado was sick and I'm really happy I got to go. We also chose to do the guided tour in Spanish, which was another excellent decision because the lady giving the tour was the same one that we had for the Palacio Real on Friday, only when she speaks Spanish she's much more animated and interested in what's going on. At least that's how it seemed to me.
After the Prado, we had a bus tour of the city, which really gave me a feel for the sheer size of it. I guess it is the capital of Spain, but I honestly had no idea what it was going to be like considering before this trip the only place in Spain I had been to was Barcelona. We got to see most of the major landmarks in the city, including the bullfighting arena which was gorgeous. The bus dropped us off at Plaza Mayor, which is in an awesome location and is close to a ton of shops and restaurants and cool things. At this point the crew consisted of me, TeJota, Luke, and Will, and the four of us wandered around and ate stuff and saw stuff and got rained on and ate more stuff and went to this AWESOME market called El Mercado de San Miguel, where we ate anchovies in oil and vinegar (side note: my English is such a struggle right now and it took me six tries to spell vinegar right), and then we found a pastry shop and got some cream filled pastry things and I think you get the picture. Eventually we decided to try to head home, got completely turned around, turned ourselves back around, and got back to the hotel for a siesta at around 5 PM. The original plan was to sleep for an hour, rally, and then go check out more stuff, but that was a complete failure and everyone woke up at 8 PM.
After a lot of effort trying to make a decision for where to go out, we all realized we should probably eat dinner, and wandered around for a bit trying to find a place before finally settling down at a restaurant pretty close to our hotel. Our waiter was this dude, probably in his late 30's or so, that was super nice and very funny AND GUESS WHAT he lived in Charlottesville for 3 years not too long ago and we got to talk to him about that for a while. The world truly is a small place. Oh yeah, and Will and I decided that since our anchovy adventure had turned out so well before (we had picked something on the menu that we didn't understand and hoped for the best), we would do the same thing for dinner. The food came out and looked suspiciously organ-like, but the sauce it was in was spicy and delicious and we had enough bread, so we ate it first and asked our waiter what it was once we had finished -- yeah, it was pig stomach. Possibly also intestines, the waiter just kind of patted his stomach and laughed. I guess this will be my story for "weirdest thing I've ever eaten" unless something weirder comes along!
Dinner ended and we spent a little bit of time with our good friend Don Simón and decided to try to go to an ice bar, which apparently was a bar literally made out of ice. TeJota decided to sleep instead of come out with us, so at this point it was me, Rach, Luke, and Will. We hopped in a taxi with a really cool taxi driver and got dropped off at the ice bar, but it was 15 euro to get in and the place seemed kind of dead, so we did a quick 180 and went to check out the area of town that we had ended up in (I think it was called Las Letras?). We asked for suggestions from some really excited dudes in a cafe, and proceeded to completely ignore their advice and instead go to this completely crowded kind of crappy bar whose only saving grace was the bowl of pork rinds sitting on the bartop that we completely crushed while waiting for drinks. Unfortunately, the struggle became more and more real and we ended up back at the hotel before 2 AM, which may be some sort of lame record.
That brings us all the way to today. The wake up call this morning was at 9 AM, which was heaven compared to yesterday. Also, I got 7 hours of sleep as compared to 2 the night before, so I was loving it. I also got the chance to eat breakfast in the hotel, which for me consisted of a ton of pineapple, some bread, and far too little coffee. I also had the pleasure of hearing all about the shenanigans that the guys got into after we all got back last night, but some things are blog-worthy and others aren't, so I'm gonna leave that one up to y'all's imagination.
On the itinerary for today was Reina Sofía, the modern art museum named after the current Queen of Spain. There was a huge exhibit for Dalí, but you had to pay to get in and we were cool with just seeing the stuff that we had free passes for, so we just stayed in the main part of the museum. There was a lot of Picasso in the museum, along with a lot of really, REALLY strange pieces of art that I am obviously not cultured enough to understand, let alone appreciate. It was still cool though; we got to see Guernica, which is arguably Picasso's most important painting -- he painted it after a town in the Basque Country (northern Spain) by the same name was bombed during the Spanish Civil War. It's absolutely enormous, and honestly a very impressive and moving piece. Maybe I am cultured enough to understand modern art, who knows.
I think I would have appreciated Reina Sofía a little more if we had done it before the Prado, but it was definitely worth the trip. Afterwards, we had free time until 4:00, so Rach Will and I walked around Madrid for a while, and got lunch at Café Gijón, which is this place where the "intellectuals" -- writers, journalists, artists, scholars -- of the Generation of '36 used to gather and do intellectual things. We had gazpacho, which was delicious, and eventually finished up and wandered back to where we were supposed to meet the bus. It's four hours from Madrid to Valencia, and the first two hours consisted of some serious nappage. We made a quick stop at what may be the coolest rest are ever, and then hopped back on the bus and watched Deja Vu, this movie with Denzel Washington in it. It was actually kind of funny now that I think about it, but we watched Disturbia on the way to Madrid and while everyone enjoyed it, it was nothing compared to today. The entire bus was completely invested in the movie, complete with ooohs and aaahs and swearing and cheering and the whole deal. I don't know if that was the reason I enjoyed it so much or what, but it was an awesome bus ride. We got dropped off at the Plaza del Ajuntamiento, which is basically the center of old town, and Rach and I hopped on a bus and headed back to our respective homes.
All in all, this weekend was solid in every sense of the word. I had an awesome time looking at museums and going to touristy places and wandering around the city (actually, today might be the first day that I didn't get lost at ALL while walking around). With that, the weather in Madrid is kind of lame, and by lame I mean cold, and by cold I mean 65 degrees. We got back to Valencia and it was sunny and gorgeous and warm and it made me so happy that this is where we live. I'm definitely not excited about the presentation I have to give in Medical Spanish on Tuesday, but I guess I'll get around to it tomorrow at some point. Only four days of class this week, and then on Friday we're going to Barcelona for Sónar, a huge annual music and arts festival where we're seeing a concert that runs from 10 PM - 7 AM and features artists such as SKRILLEX AND DIPLO AND MAJOR LAZER AND BAAUER and if you can't tell I'm really stoked. So yep. That was my weekend.
Hasta luego!
Friday night after dinner we (Me, Rach, TeJota, Luke, and Will) went to a discoteca called Kapital. I'm going to do my best to describe it, but words honestly don't do it justice. The place was absolutely crazy. It's a seven floor club with a different style of music for each floor -- the bottom floor was your typical electro/dance/EDM stuff, there was a floor with all hip hop, a floor with Latin music, a karaoke floor that we apparently missed, and a bunch more that I honestly can't remember. We rolled up around 1:30, I think, and proceeded to absolutely lose our minds on the first floor, after running around to check out all of the other floors. At some point everyone started cheering and I turned around to see the main stage and a dude with an ELECTRIC VIOLIN was standing up there, and he started playing CANON IN D and this entire seething crowd of bodies just went completely crazy. I don't remember exactly when it happened but Rach and I realized at the exact same time that he had ended that song and started DON'T YOU WORRY CHILD -- no one around us really realized what song it was, but we were standing there screaming the words and everyone eventually caught on and proceeded to lose it once again and you could feel everyone getting hype for the beat to drop and RIGHT as it did, the coolest part of Kapital happened -- they have a system that blasts freezing cold air and fog and some sort of smelly stuff into the center of the dance floor to both cool everyone off and make it smell less like sweat and dancing and help everyone go insane. I know that entire last part was word vomit, but it was honestly incredible.
So yeah, Kapital, and electric violin guy, and the air fog thing, all of those things combined to form an incredible night. I think we ended up leaving at 5:30 -- Luke and Rach had both disappeared so it was just TeJota and Will and I at that point I believe. Our wake up call Saturday morning was at 8 AM, which was really great considering I went to sleep at 6:15 or so. I may or may not have skipped breakfast in favor of sleeping until 9:15, and eventually mustered the willpower and strength to throw some clothes on and make it downstairs by 9:30 to catch the bus over to the Prado.
Going to the Prado made me so completely stoked that I chose to take Modern Spanish Art, and also made me appreciate just how awesome my art professor really is. He's been asking us if we mind if he teaches us about Spanish painters that aren't technically "modern" -- namely Velázquez and Goya -- and I'm so happy he did, because I got to see all of the paintings we've talked about in class, and since my professor cares more about the stories behind the paintings rather than memorizing medium, artist, and date, I had a much greater appreciation for everything that I was seeing that I think I would have otherwise. I almost lost my mind when we finally got to the gallery that had Goya's pinturas negras in it -- in the last years of his life, Goya was living alone in this old house, he was deaf, he was depressed, he had lived through a war, all of his friends were dead, and so he painted these images on the walls of his house that are somewhat disturbing and somewhat enthralling and one hundred percent portray all of the parts of humanity that no one ever wants to talk about. They're incredible. But anyway, the Prado was sick and I'm really happy I got to go. We also chose to do the guided tour in Spanish, which was another excellent decision because the lady giving the tour was the same one that we had for the Palacio Real on Friday, only when she speaks Spanish she's much more animated and interested in what's going on. At least that's how it seemed to me.
After the Prado, we had a bus tour of the city, which really gave me a feel for the sheer size of it. I guess it is the capital of Spain, but I honestly had no idea what it was going to be like considering before this trip the only place in Spain I had been to was Barcelona. We got to see most of the major landmarks in the city, including the bullfighting arena which was gorgeous. The bus dropped us off at Plaza Mayor, which is in an awesome location and is close to a ton of shops and restaurants and cool things. At this point the crew consisted of me, TeJota, Luke, and Will, and the four of us wandered around and ate stuff and saw stuff and got rained on and ate more stuff and went to this AWESOME market called El Mercado de San Miguel, where we ate anchovies in oil and vinegar (side note: my English is such a struggle right now and it took me six tries to spell vinegar right), and then we found a pastry shop and got some cream filled pastry things and I think you get the picture. Eventually we decided to try to head home, got completely turned around, turned ourselves back around, and got back to the hotel for a siesta at around 5 PM. The original plan was to sleep for an hour, rally, and then go check out more stuff, but that was a complete failure and everyone woke up at 8 PM.
After a lot of effort trying to make a decision for where to go out, we all realized we should probably eat dinner, and wandered around for a bit trying to find a place before finally settling down at a restaurant pretty close to our hotel. Our waiter was this dude, probably in his late 30's or so, that was super nice and very funny AND GUESS WHAT he lived in Charlottesville for 3 years not too long ago and we got to talk to him about that for a while. The world truly is a small place. Oh yeah, and Will and I decided that since our anchovy adventure had turned out so well before (we had picked something on the menu that we didn't understand and hoped for the best), we would do the same thing for dinner. The food came out and looked suspiciously organ-like, but the sauce it was in was spicy and delicious and we had enough bread, so we ate it first and asked our waiter what it was once we had finished -- yeah, it was pig stomach. Possibly also intestines, the waiter just kind of patted his stomach and laughed. I guess this will be my story for "weirdest thing I've ever eaten" unless something weirder comes along!
Dinner ended and we spent a little bit of time with our good friend Don Simón and decided to try to go to an ice bar, which apparently was a bar literally made out of ice. TeJota decided to sleep instead of come out with us, so at this point it was me, Rach, Luke, and Will. We hopped in a taxi with a really cool taxi driver and got dropped off at the ice bar, but it was 15 euro to get in and the place seemed kind of dead, so we did a quick 180 and went to check out the area of town that we had ended up in (I think it was called Las Letras?). We asked for suggestions from some really excited dudes in a cafe, and proceeded to completely ignore their advice and instead go to this completely crowded kind of crappy bar whose only saving grace was the bowl of pork rinds sitting on the bartop that we completely crushed while waiting for drinks. Unfortunately, the struggle became more and more real and we ended up back at the hotel before 2 AM, which may be some sort of lame record.
That brings us all the way to today. The wake up call this morning was at 9 AM, which was heaven compared to yesterday. Also, I got 7 hours of sleep as compared to 2 the night before, so I was loving it. I also got the chance to eat breakfast in the hotel, which for me consisted of a ton of pineapple, some bread, and far too little coffee. I also had the pleasure of hearing all about the shenanigans that the guys got into after we all got back last night, but some things are blog-worthy and others aren't, so I'm gonna leave that one up to y'all's imagination.
On the itinerary for today was Reina Sofía, the modern art museum named after the current Queen of Spain. There was a huge exhibit for Dalí, but you had to pay to get in and we were cool with just seeing the stuff that we had free passes for, so we just stayed in the main part of the museum. There was a lot of Picasso in the museum, along with a lot of really, REALLY strange pieces of art that I am obviously not cultured enough to understand, let alone appreciate. It was still cool though; we got to see Guernica, which is arguably Picasso's most important painting -- he painted it after a town in the Basque Country (northern Spain) by the same name was bombed during the Spanish Civil War. It's absolutely enormous, and honestly a very impressive and moving piece. Maybe I am cultured enough to understand modern art, who knows.
I think I would have appreciated Reina Sofía a little more if we had done it before the Prado, but it was definitely worth the trip. Afterwards, we had free time until 4:00, so Rach Will and I walked around Madrid for a while, and got lunch at Café Gijón, which is this place where the "intellectuals" -- writers, journalists, artists, scholars -- of the Generation of '36 used to gather and do intellectual things. We had gazpacho, which was delicious, and eventually finished up and wandered back to where we were supposed to meet the bus. It's four hours from Madrid to Valencia, and the first two hours consisted of some serious nappage. We made a quick stop at what may be the coolest rest are ever, and then hopped back on the bus and watched Deja Vu, this movie with Denzel Washington in it. It was actually kind of funny now that I think about it, but we watched Disturbia on the way to Madrid and while everyone enjoyed it, it was nothing compared to today. The entire bus was completely invested in the movie, complete with ooohs and aaahs and swearing and cheering and the whole deal. I don't know if that was the reason I enjoyed it so much or what, but it was an awesome bus ride. We got dropped off at the Plaza del Ajuntamiento, which is basically the center of old town, and Rach and I hopped on a bus and headed back to our respective homes.
All in all, this weekend was solid in every sense of the word. I had an awesome time looking at museums and going to touristy places and wandering around the city (actually, today might be the first day that I didn't get lost at ALL while walking around). With that, the weather in Madrid is kind of lame, and by lame I mean cold, and by cold I mean 65 degrees. We got back to Valencia and it was sunny and gorgeous and warm and it made me so happy that this is where we live. I'm definitely not excited about the presentation I have to give in Medical Spanish on Tuesday, but I guess I'll get around to it tomorrow at some point. Only four days of class this week, and then on Friday we're going to Barcelona for Sónar, a huge annual music and arts festival where we're seeing a concert that runs from 10 PM - 7 AM and features artists such as SKRILLEX AND DIPLO AND MAJOR LAZER AND BAAUER and if you can't tell I'm really stoked. So yep. That was my weekend.
Hasta luego!
Friday, June 7, 2013
MADRID!
Alright, let's do this.
After a really uneventful week filled with midterms and sleeping, our weekend in Madrid has finally begun.
Last night we decided to go out to celebrate being done with midterms, and went to a really cool club called Las Animas over in the port. It's an open air club on the roof of a building, and it was actually pretty sweet. We also took advantage of El Castillo once again, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed dollar chupitos and dollar cervezas.
After a solid three and a half hours of sleep, we hopped on the bus to Madrid! It took four or so hours of driving to get there, and we stopped once to eat lunch and get coffee and pastry things. I'm pretty sure the mayoria of people just slept, and I definitely crushed a nap or two.
Once we got into down, we went straight to the Palacio Real for a guided tour. You weren't allowed to take ANY pictures, which was really frustrating because it's seriously gorgeous on the inside. Literally every single room has a completely different color scheme and design, and even the "less important" rooms are crazy ornate. The royal family doesn't live there anymore (I think our guide said that once Franco came into power the royal family stopped living there).
After the tour, we got back on the bus and went over to our hotel. Rach and I are sharing a room (hooray!) on the fifth floor, and Will Luke and TeJota are sharing a room on the floor below us.
Rachel and I took a nap immediately after we got here, and the guys went to explore around a little bit. The five of us went to this AWESOME restaurant for dinner at around 9 or so. They make everything in house, and everything we had was delicious -- a potato egg ham dish, a salmon red pepper blue cheese dish, a tortilla (that's like a potato pie sort of thing) with onions and goat cheese, and a plate of all-legs calamari. And a bottle of wine.
We swung by a little store on the way back to the hotel, and we're currently listening to music, digesting, and preparing for what should be a really fun night. We have tentative plans to go to Kapital, a seven floor discoteca that my host sister and multiple other people said is a MUST go to place. Vamos a ver.
Hasta luego!
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Keyboards
This is just going to be a quick little post before Medical Spanish.
I don't know why it never occurred to met that it would be this way, but Spanish keyboards are completely not the same as American keyboards. Duh, we speak two different languages, but still, it's really awful. Well, awful is an exaggeration, but still. The wifi here is decent sometimes, but when todo el mundo is trying to make it work on their laptops and cell phones and everything, it goes super slow and they have to reset it a lot. However, we have like 20 communal desktops that we can use if we need to, which is what I'm doing right now (I have a presentation in Medical Spanish on Tuesday and since I'm going to Madrid this weekend I figured I should maybe get some work done on it before Monday).
So yeah, keyboards. None of the symbols are in the same place, like the ' is where the - should be and the - is where the ? should be and there's a ç button right where the enter should be... there's a button for ñ and a easy access button to put á é í ó ú accents on things. And in addition to Ctrl and Alt, there is also a button called Alt Gr that you use to make a third symbol with some of the keys -- for example, the button next to the P does ` if you hit it normally, ^ if you use it with shift, and [ if you use Alt Gr.
That's all really. I'll try to write some more later today when I'm not busy with other homeworky stuff. This week was full of midterms for everyone so it wasn't very exciting, unfortunately.
Hasta luego!
I don't know why it never occurred to met that it would be this way, but Spanish keyboards are completely not the same as American keyboards. Duh, we speak two different languages, but still, it's really awful. Well, awful is an exaggeration, but still. The wifi here is decent sometimes, but when todo el mundo is trying to make it work on their laptops and cell phones and everything, it goes super slow and they have to reset it a lot. However, we have like 20 communal desktops that we can use if we need to, which is what I'm doing right now (I have a presentation in Medical Spanish on Tuesday and since I'm going to Madrid this weekend I figured I should maybe get some work done on it before Monday).
So yeah, keyboards. None of the symbols are in the same place, like the ' is where the - should be and the - is where the ? should be and there's a ç button right where the enter should be... there's a button for ñ and a easy access button to put á é í ó ú accents on things. And in addition to Ctrl and Alt, there is also a button called Alt Gr that you use to make a third symbol with some of the keys -- for example, the button next to the P does ` if you hit it normally, ^ if you use it with shift, and [ if you use Alt Gr.
That's all really. I'll try to write some more later today when I'm not busy with other homeworky stuff. This week was full of midterms for everyone so it wasn't very exciting, unfortunately.
Hasta luego!
Monday, June 3, 2013
Fotos de Peñíscola
El castillo
La playa
Sunburn for days
This weekend was seriously one of the best I've ever had, even if I'm sunburned on my back so badly that I can barely sit down and/or carry my backpack around.
Friday night a bunch of us went out for tapas, and they were as good as everyone had made them out to be. If you don't know how tapas works, it's pretty simple: there's a huge buffet-style lineup of slices of bread that have various stuff on top of them. You grab a plate and pick the ones you want. Every individual piece has one of three toothpicks in it, and each toothpick is priced differently -- I think the prices were 1.35, 1.70, and 2.00 depending on which toothpick you got. So anyways, you just pick the ones you want and hang out for as long as you want to, and at the end you just take your toothpicks up to the front and pay for what you ate. They also have sangria, so of course we were all over that. It's 10 euros for a liter, AND it's delicious, so you really can't go wrong.
After tapas on Friday, I went home and showered before meeting up with Rachel so we could go over to Will's side of town to check out the bars and clubs over there. We met up and walked up towards the train station and called Will to make sure we were going the right way (in retrospect we shouldn't have done that at all since that just ended up screwing us over), and he gave us some directions that we completely misinterpreted. So, instead of crossing in front of the train tracks and going, I don't know, four or so blocks down to meet Will and Ben and Sergi, we walked ALL THE WAY BACK DOWN our side of the train tracks, through a parking lot, the sidewalk ended, crossed a bridge that said "PELIGROSO" "ILEGAL" "NO SE USA", thought we were going to die, pretty sure we saw some drug deals, got stared at by sketchy teenagers in alleyways, and eventually found our way to the guys after a solid hour, hour and a half of wandering around Valencia. This appears to be a common theme in my life.
It all turned out fine in the end though, and we headed up to Barrio Carmen to see what kind of stuff was going on. Found a couple of fun clubs, and ended up at one that played mostly old school American music (Greased Lightening, among others that I can't remember, but seriously it was all American stuff). Those places are a time sucker though -- by the time we left there it was probably around 4 or so? We left and were going to check out somewhere else, and a promoter-type guy came up and told us about his club or whatever, so we decided we would go check it out. Now, normally these places are at the most a block or so away, but this one was a good ten, fifteen minute walk... First bad omen. We eventually got there and went downstairs and it was mad sketchy, and Sergi took one look around and said "Peligroso" (dangerous), and since he's actually from Valencia we decided that we could sit this one out and we all flew back up the stairs and out. We hung out by the bullfighting arena/train station for a little longer, and at around 5 parted ways and headed home. I'm really glad Rach and I live so close together, since it makes going home late at night way less terrifying (not that it's terrifying, but walking anywhere at 5 am is always a little frightening).
Saturday morning we left for Peñíscola at 11am. It was absolutely GORGEOUS, I'll put some pictures up later today. We spent a few hours at the beach, and then went up to the castle overlooking the city. After taking far too many pictures and spending far too much time laughing at absolutely stupid things, we went to a little café and got some sangria, paella, and agua de Valencia. I didn't actually eat any of the paella, because I had eaten my bocadillo pretty recently, but the sangria and agua were quite delicious.
After getting home from Peñíscola and surveying my lovely sunburn, Rach and I headed over to meet Kate and Erica at a place near school called El Castillo (I think...) where you can get a chupito or cerveza for 1 euro, which is crazy cheap. The bartenders kind of suck, but they don't make tips here, so there isn't that extra incentive to provide excellent service. Working in the foodservice industry, I can't decided which system I like better. In the States, you really have to make an effort to be nice to everyone, and you have the chance to make a lot more money than you would ever make here as a bartender. But you also might get a shitty table, or multiple shitty tables, or it could be a really slow Wednesday night and you only get two tables, and on those days you basically make nothing. At least here you're guaranteed some amount of money (technically we are too in the States, but let's be real that all goes to taxes).
After El Castillo the five of us (Phillip showed up eventually) grabbed a couple taxis and went down to check out the club scene down at the beach. We went to a place called High Cube for a little bit, and then wanted to go to Las Animas. Apparently if you go in before 2:30 it's free, but of course we were unable to take advantage of that little perk. We waited in line and ended up talking to these crazy British people the entire time. It was definitely amusing; we got in line right behind them and after about a minute one of them turned around and said something to the effect of "YOU'RE SPEAKING ENGLISH ARE YOU FROM AMERICA OH THIS IS GREAT". Apparently they had all been here 6 months to a year, so they also all spoke Spanish decently. We didn't end up going to Las Animas, and decided to head back to High Cube, but on the way we ran into a few people from Scotland. Well, one of them was from either Edinborough or Glasgow -- he was appalled that we didn't know the difference between the two but I never actually found out where he was from -- but the other one was from Reno, Nevada and spoke with a strange accent that was half laxbro and half Scottish bagpipe player. At some point we found Will, wandering alone out of High Cube, so we scooped him up and all sort of just walked into the club. Totally cool with not having to pay though. We ended up going home at 5 or so, once again.
Sunday was interesting, mostly because all of my electronic devices died and so our plans to go to the beach at noon completely failed due to the fact that I didn't wake up until around 2. Rach was apparently convinced that I was dead, but I actually was not. After eating lunch I hopped on the bus and headed to the beach to meet up with Rach, Kate, and Erica. We tanned and napped and chatted for a few hours, and at 6 got on a bus to the city center to go back and have tapas (seriously guys, tapas). Apparently there was this huge religious festival thing going on with candles and large fake people and turtles and wolf-dragons, so walking back through the crowds was an experience. Oh, and we got some ice cream at some point too. So yeah.
We meandered back through the city to get back home, and I think I got home around 9:15 or 9:30. I was planning on staying up and doing my homework, but I'm pretty sure I passed out at around 10... oops. However, that meant that I was able to wake up at 7:30 and head to school way early so I could finish it before class. Which brings me to where I am right now, sitting in the cafeteria, wishing I had more coffee, and trying to kill the next half hour of time that I have before I have to go to art. I'll probably end up studying for my supermegahorrible medical Spanish midterm that I have tomorrow. Or I might head down towards the Mercadona (one of the grocery store chains here) to get something to eat for lunch, because my madre was mysteriously not awake that I could tell when I left for class this morning. Vamos a ver.
Hasta luego!
Friday night a bunch of us went out for tapas, and they were as good as everyone had made them out to be. If you don't know how tapas works, it's pretty simple: there's a huge buffet-style lineup of slices of bread that have various stuff on top of them. You grab a plate and pick the ones you want. Every individual piece has one of three toothpicks in it, and each toothpick is priced differently -- I think the prices were 1.35, 1.70, and 2.00 depending on which toothpick you got. So anyways, you just pick the ones you want and hang out for as long as you want to, and at the end you just take your toothpicks up to the front and pay for what you ate. They also have sangria, so of course we were all over that. It's 10 euros for a liter, AND it's delicious, so you really can't go wrong.
After tapas on Friday, I went home and showered before meeting up with Rachel so we could go over to Will's side of town to check out the bars and clubs over there. We met up and walked up towards the train station and called Will to make sure we were going the right way (in retrospect we shouldn't have done that at all since that just ended up screwing us over), and he gave us some directions that we completely misinterpreted. So, instead of crossing in front of the train tracks and going, I don't know, four or so blocks down to meet Will and Ben and Sergi, we walked ALL THE WAY BACK DOWN our side of the train tracks, through a parking lot, the sidewalk ended, crossed a bridge that said "PELIGROSO" "ILEGAL" "NO SE USA", thought we were going to die, pretty sure we saw some drug deals, got stared at by sketchy teenagers in alleyways, and eventually found our way to the guys after a solid hour, hour and a half of wandering around Valencia. This appears to be a common theme in my life.
It all turned out fine in the end though, and we headed up to Barrio Carmen to see what kind of stuff was going on. Found a couple of fun clubs, and ended up at one that played mostly old school American music (Greased Lightening, among others that I can't remember, but seriously it was all American stuff). Those places are a time sucker though -- by the time we left there it was probably around 4 or so? We left and were going to check out somewhere else, and a promoter-type guy came up and told us about his club or whatever, so we decided we would go check it out. Now, normally these places are at the most a block or so away, but this one was a good ten, fifteen minute walk... First bad omen. We eventually got there and went downstairs and it was mad sketchy, and Sergi took one look around and said "Peligroso" (dangerous), and since he's actually from Valencia we decided that we could sit this one out and we all flew back up the stairs and out. We hung out by the bullfighting arena/train station for a little longer, and at around 5 parted ways and headed home. I'm really glad Rach and I live so close together, since it makes going home late at night way less terrifying (not that it's terrifying, but walking anywhere at 5 am is always a little frightening).
Saturday morning we left for Peñíscola at 11am. It was absolutely GORGEOUS, I'll put some pictures up later today. We spent a few hours at the beach, and then went up to the castle overlooking the city. After taking far too many pictures and spending far too much time laughing at absolutely stupid things, we went to a little café and got some sangria, paella, and agua de Valencia. I didn't actually eat any of the paella, because I had eaten my bocadillo pretty recently, but the sangria and agua were quite delicious.
After getting home from Peñíscola and surveying my lovely sunburn, Rach and I headed over to meet Kate and Erica at a place near school called El Castillo (I think...) where you can get a chupito or cerveza for 1 euro, which is crazy cheap. The bartenders kind of suck, but they don't make tips here, so there isn't that extra incentive to provide excellent service. Working in the foodservice industry, I can't decided which system I like better. In the States, you really have to make an effort to be nice to everyone, and you have the chance to make a lot more money than you would ever make here as a bartender. But you also might get a shitty table, or multiple shitty tables, or it could be a really slow Wednesday night and you only get two tables, and on those days you basically make nothing. At least here you're guaranteed some amount of money (technically we are too in the States, but let's be real that all goes to taxes).
After El Castillo the five of us (Phillip showed up eventually) grabbed a couple taxis and went down to check out the club scene down at the beach. We went to a place called High Cube for a little bit, and then wanted to go to Las Animas. Apparently if you go in before 2:30 it's free, but of course we were unable to take advantage of that little perk. We waited in line and ended up talking to these crazy British people the entire time. It was definitely amusing; we got in line right behind them and after about a minute one of them turned around and said something to the effect of "YOU'RE SPEAKING ENGLISH ARE YOU FROM AMERICA OH THIS IS GREAT". Apparently they had all been here 6 months to a year, so they also all spoke Spanish decently. We didn't end up going to Las Animas, and decided to head back to High Cube, but on the way we ran into a few people from Scotland. Well, one of them was from either Edinborough or Glasgow -- he was appalled that we didn't know the difference between the two but I never actually found out where he was from -- but the other one was from Reno, Nevada and spoke with a strange accent that was half laxbro and half Scottish bagpipe player. At some point we found Will, wandering alone out of High Cube, so we scooped him up and all sort of just walked into the club. Totally cool with not having to pay though. We ended up going home at 5 or so, once again.
Sunday was interesting, mostly because all of my electronic devices died and so our plans to go to the beach at noon completely failed due to the fact that I didn't wake up until around 2. Rach was apparently convinced that I was dead, but I actually was not. After eating lunch I hopped on the bus and headed to the beach to meet up with Rach, Kate, and Erica. We tanned and napped and chatted for a few hours, and at 6 got on a bus to the city center to go back and have tapas (seriously guys, tapas). Apparently there was this huge religious festival thing going on with candles and large fake people and turtles and wolf-dragons, so walking back through the crowds was an experience. Oh, and we got some ice cream at some point too. So yeah.
We meandered back through the city to get back home, and I think I got home around 9:15 or 9:30. I was planning on staying up and doing my homework, but I'm pretty sure I passed out at around 10... oops. However, that meant that I was able to wake up at 7:30 and head to school way early so I could finish it before class. Which brings me to where I am right now, sitting in the cafeteria, wishing I had more coffee, and trying to kill the next half hour of time that I have before I have to go to art. I'll probably end up studying for my supermegahorrible medical Spanish midterm that I have tomorrow. Or I might head down towards the Mercadona (one of the grocery store chains here) to get something to eat for lunch, because my madre was mysteriously not awake that I could tell when I left for class this morning. Vamos a ver.
Hasta luego!
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