the SIX DAY WEEKEND

photos of home life, since I've been hanging around here a lot lately!

House cats! (devil cat on top and angel cat Ramses on bottom), and my lovely host mom cooking something delicious! She was tearing up pieces of mushrooms that are only found in the late fall and only grown in the wild and must be cut with fingers instead of knives to preserve their flavor. The flavor was preserved, let me tell you. Yum yum. Reminded me of Grandma and Mom's chicken caccetore, but Maria claimed French origin (ratatouille).

My friends Alice and Meg chose to venture to Copenhagen, Denmark over our long weekend, but I've been hanging around Madrid and trying to make the most of my restful, SIX DAYS OFF! Friday through Wednesday- it's pretty unbelievable. Mostly I've been going out with my friend Rachel and some Spanish friends of ours, we've been out the last three nights in a row so I'm taking Sunday off. I also had dinner with my friends from choir over at their apartment which was really sweet. We watched "Friends" dubbed in Spanish- it was very odd but I could understand most of it! Dinner involved a lot of delicious ham and cheeze. I also FINALLY got together and had lots of fun with my friend Allison (who I worked with at LearningWorks and three months ago this week we were coincidentally on the same flight to Madrid!) And last night when I returned from some bar-hopping with friends (and eating of the most delicious tapas- mini chorizos wrapped in potato chips and topped with mini fried eggs YUM) at 2am, multiple people were out walking their dogs and my host mom was still awake- watching TV and knitting. Such is the vida Madrileña and I'm going to miss it. Echaré de menos España.

Esto es mi barrio!/My neighborhood! Day and night versions of my view from my window. By the way, yes those are blooming flowers you see in the street's median in a photo I took in December. Be jealous. Tomorrow's high is 60 degrees.

Sorry I've been slacking on posts lately. Homework has picked up as the semester draws to a close, a reminder that the vacation will soon end and I will return to the frozen tundra homeland where my heart resides where I will trek through snow to and fro the Macalester book store, laden with paperback purchases to happily arrange on my new dorm room shelves... oh, snow and shelves full of books in English, how I miss you. Some of my good friends at Macalester and I are collaborating on a huge, shared Google doc/list of books to read. It began as one of my many and overly-ambitious "to-do over winter break" lists, but it is morphing into a wonderful sort of lifespan to-do list.

I'm also enjoying the BEAUTIFUL and extensive Christmas displays around the city. The perks of an 80% Catholic country- tons and tons of amazing lights, Christmas music playing everywhere, Santa and elf and christmas villages popping up outside of the big Corte Íngles (think Macy's), roasting chestnuts over open fires on every street corner, Christmas-themed windows in shops, and at least ten or fifteen different designs (abstract or minimalist or traditional or big or small) of huge, lit-up Christmas trees. I do miss the real version, all sap and pine scent and needles littering our rug back home. But next year I bet I'll be missing these mechanical approximations, so I'm enjoying them while I can. The lights are kind of funny, they all shut off at like 930 or 10 to save energy so when I go out they're usually off already...Today is my host mom's día de santo, meaning today is the holiday of the Saint that is her confirmation name or her patron saint or something like that, and it's about as big of a deal as birthdays around here. Entonces, 14 people were here for the noon-time meal! I wasn't involved much in the cooking process (which started yesterday). The highlight of the meal was an AMAZING soup that was from the secret recipe of my host mom's abuela; a gazpacho with hard boiled eggs, baby shrimps, white asparagus, home-made mayo and other incredibly delicious things. The abuelas were here! (Even though that means grandmothers, that's what my host mom calls the tías/aunts too). Tía Carmen y Tía Mercedes and the actual grandmother too. They are so elegant and funny too, they told me all about how you should never leave the house without earrings. But first they made sure I was wearing earrings. Here's a photo we took after lunch!

Please note the scale model of a Spanish Armada ship in the background (I will be trying to fit it into my suitcase when I leave as a Christmas gift for one Ann Raiho, lover of all things ships). By the way, I'd love suggestions for additions to my book list! Leave a comment or shoot me an email. I'd love to hear from you guys!

Love, Nat

Choir concert broadcast!

Hey guys, quick note before I publish full entries about Paris and Marrakech- I had my first choir concert yesterday! Here's a (blurry) screen shot of the choir I've joined that's part of a Catholic university here in Madrid (I recently read in the choir charter that I'm basically supposed to be upholding Catholic values while a part of the choir, and improving my soul or something while singing. I'll look into it). We sang the music for the mass at the university's church! There is a mass broadcast on Television España every Sunday, and this week the mass we sang at was the chosen one! I was in the bottom row of the set up and there was often a candle in my face, but you can still see me!

Here's a shot of me AND the candles! That's about the most of my screen time, but here's the link if you want to see/hear us! I recommend skipping ahead to like 50 minutes because there's a good chunk of shots of our choir. And if you look closely you can see my friends making faces at the director.

CORO DE LA UNIVERSIDAD CEU (corrected link, it now works!)

also if you want to see more, we sing at:

39 minutes

48 minutes and

minute 56

(special thanks to the blog of my choir and David for pointing this out to me!)

Lots of love,

Natalie

PS: Oh and since our house has lately been graced with the presence of the cat called Munchie (pronounced moon-chee- his mom is out of town), here's a photo of the him in our living room. Especially for Hannah!

PPS: if you didn't know already, if you click on the images I upload they'll open in a larger version in your window. Enjoy!

BARCELONA

Wow it's been a while since I've written! Sorry guys! I've traveled every weekend this month, it's been exhausting and exhilarating but I'm glad to be settling back into my Madrid weekend routine for the rest of my time here (and I can't believe I only have less than 5 weeks left in my program, and less than 9 weeks left in Europe! Time is flying). I'm going to try to maintain some chronology to this blog so I'll start with Barcelona, then Paris, then Marrakech, then the in-between school stuff.

Barcelona: October 30th-November 2nd

Our last official, Hamilton-sponsored excursion took place over Halloween weekend. After meeting everyone in the airport and flying to Barcelona, we explored our hotel in the middle of the famed modernist architecture of beautiful Barcelona. From my hotel room window (if you craned your head out the window a bit, which was always open because the weather was beautiful) you could see a house built by Antonio Gaudí, his famous Sagrada Familia cathedral and the mountains looming in the distance. The only thing missing was a view of the Mediterranean! After checking in we had our usual HUGE multi-course Hamilton meal and walked it off while viewing some of the incredible Spanish Modernist architecture in our neighborhood. Multiple houses by Gaudí, all the things I could view from my window but this time up close and spectacular!
Here's a photo of me on the terrace of our hotel- mountains and Gaudí in the background.
We also went inside this church later, but it's been under construction foreverrr due to lack of funds, so there was mostly just scaffolding and some abstract stained-glass windows on the inside. After our night-time tour of the neighborhood, a bunch of us took the metro to these huge fountains where there is a colored lights and music spectacular that they put on, it was really awesome and included a queen song that went like this: BARCELLOOOOOONA! over and over. We mostly had low-key nights in Barcelona because we had a group-wide curfew of 1:30, and a lot of the clubs in Barcelona didn't even open until then soooo we didn't go out much. I did a bit of window shopping around our neighborhood, the shops were all very upscale and cool. I found out that this store called Desigual (known for its clothes with crazy patterns and color combinations) has a birthday celebration each summer where if you show up in your birthday suit to the store, you get to pick out a free outfit!

We also found an amazing restaurant that consisted of a conveyer belt of delicious asian food- sushi, miso soup, fried everything, dumplings, shrimps, desserts, udon noodles, chicken skewers, nom nom nom. It was all you can eat so basically we all went crazy. Here is a photo of me, gone crazy, with my stack of plates and the conveyor belt in the background.

After this restaurant we had enough fuel for the next couple days, in which we toured the inside of a lot of very cool Gaudí houses, celebrated Halloween by touring the Gothic architecture in the old neighborhood (I dressed up as a ballerina and no one really got it. Halloween isn't all that big here), and had a fabulous seafood dinner (and a lot of fabulous wine) at a restaurant that looked out on the Mediterranean from the beach. Oh and I can't forget to tell you about the AMAZING trip we had to the Picasso museum! This museum has 3, 500 works of art by Picasso, including a lot of his early work. It was an amazing and overwhelming representation of his evolution as an artist from master of technique and composition to a series cubist and abstract representations of the famous Velzaquez painting "Las Meninas." I was also in full costume for this tour, so I got a lot of puzzled looks from tourists while I was trucking around in my purple tutu.

The great thing about Barcelona was that we had good chunks of free time to explore the city and also two Spanish university students came along with us. Daniela (one of the students- pictured above with me under the Arco de Triunfo) had lived in Barcelona so she brought us to a really great tapas bar and some cool neighborhoods full of thrift stores. I didn't get anything but I did find a mysterious stash of tshirts from Minnesota athletics!! I was so excited- there were shirts from the Eden Prairie Soccer Association, from Eagan, Burnsville, Mound, Harris and many more. It was the craziest thing. Plus they all cost like 25 euros and had probably most recently been worn by sweaty Minnesotan teenagers.

Here's a photo from inside the famous Barcelona market we visited. These are some of the fresh juices you can get. I got coconut, it was thick and delicious, sweet just my luck. My favorite kind of juice! It was sensory overload and I wanted to buy everything. There were tons of chocolates (I bought some for my host family) and AMAZING candied ginger which is one of my favorite snacks in the whole world. I wanted to stay here and explore and eat forever, but we had to go to Figueras to visit the Teatro Museo Dalí. It's an entire HUGE museum devoted to Salvador Dalí's work. It was pretty amazing, and the experience itself was surrealist because the museum used to be a theatre so the exhibition space is very unique. I got lost a lot, there were a lot of winding hallways and dead-ends and like five floors and small, dimly-lit rooms where you had to get up really close to the small drawings and paintings to really see them. Then as soon as your eyes had adjusted to peering at a tiny oil painting of a person made out of rocks in a velvet-lined room with a very low ceiling, you walked into a room where the entire ceiling was painted geometrically to make you think you were looking up into the sky and at people who were standing on top of your point of view and rising into the sky. Dalí had an impressive command of painting technique and his vision was remarkable, but I was pretty overwhelmed after hours of exploring this amazing museum. If you get a chance, it's definitely worth the short trip outside of Barcelona.

Basically after that, I just walked around Barcelona with friends, listened to people speaking Catalan, enjoyed the beautiful weather and parks and prepared myself to return to Madrid, where I could once again understand all the street signs!

Love you all and hope to connect with you soon! Much more to come about Paris and Morocco.

hanging out in Malasaña!

My highlight of this week is that Alice and I have been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with our Spanish friends from choir! They're really sweet and correct our Spanish gently and bring us to very cool places (this week they have been mainly music oriented!) First we went to a little bar to watch the concert of some friends of our choir friends. The band was called Los Astronautas and they were really cool, we got to talk to them afterwards and they signed our CD we bought! The music was like indie rock, and the bar had awesome decór: burning incense, disco balls in the shape of Buddha's face/head, ceilings draped with red lighting and rosy scarves and even big Dragon puppets hanging from the ceiling too! The next night we went to KARAOKE! But first Alice and I got a bit lost- I read the directions wrong and we walked around the wrong neighborhood looking for (and asking people about a restaurant that did not exist in that neighborhood) Kapitas Karaoke for like half an hour before we figured out what had happened. We finally made it to the bar, sang some ABBA and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The karaoke bars here are a bit expensive- they either jack up drink prices or require a minimum amount spent in order to sing. But they bring tons of free little foods like gummy bears, nuts, chips and chorizo and jamón (OF COURSE). I love this country and its food. The tapas are so great. I can't wait to go to Granada where I hear you get tons of free tapas with every caña (little beer).


This week has been more low-key for my group of friends, meaning we've been having more tapas and sangria instead of crazy dance clubs. (This also means a little bit more sleep and time to do homework, which is good because we've hit pseudo-midterms. Working on papers and take-home exams in Spanish has been VERY challenging. Thank God for dictionaries).
Realizing I've been here for seven weeks is amazing- I feel very settled in here and I love living here. Madrid is definitely a city to live in, it's not a great city to come tour for its architecture (loads of apartment complexes) and a lot of the tourist attractions are the nightlife and shopping... but I LOVE living here, it's such a social city full of people who want to share their tapas with you and tell you how cold they think Minnesota is. Plus, of course, the metro makes everything easy. I've been taking more buses lately too since I've figured out a couple of the routes to take. The buses are a trade-off- they allow you to view the city and I definitely understand more about the layout of the city now, but they are often subject to the constant Madrid traffic and very slow.

Meanwhile, the weather here is FANTASTIC! It's sunny all the time with a cool fall breeze. It's finally sweater weather, just what I've been hoping for over the last seven weeks of sweating in the Metro. I still sweat on the metro but at least now when I get outside the breeze cools you off. Also my host mom has been killing me with delicious food lately. Today we had these amazing hard boiled egg things stuffed with shrimp or something that I LOVE and also ox tail stew thing that was so so so rich and delicious. I had a really interesting conversation with her and Marta, her son's pregnant wife who I love, recently about how cooking is the one thing that Maria, my host mom, would find joy in when doing housewife-y things while she was raising her five children and even now. It was really interesting hearing her talk about how much she loves cooking because you actually create something and you challenge yourself and your creativity to make the recipe new every time you make the dish. She takes so much pride in her cooking, I love complimenting her on how delicious it is (which is seriously every meal. I am not joking. Cafe Mac is going to seem so sad in just a few short months). She says the emails she gets from former students always say that they miss her cooking. And she says she teaches everyone how to make Tortilla Española. I can't wait! and I won't describe it here so you'll be surprised when I make it for you in the states!

On the illness front, I am feeling much better but still coughing. Marta gave me vicks vapo rub, which is incidentally exactly the same here in Spain. Marta is also going to give me a french manicure soon, but I haven't been home for long enough while she's here. Busy bee!!
exploring more parks! This one is a garden next to el Palacio Real.

More updates on travel soon, I'm trying to figure out what to do between December 22nd and December 29th. This awkward period is after my program has ended and after my choir concert IN THE PRADO MUSEUM and before I do more, already planned traveling. I might be on my own, might take a train, explore the south of France or some Spanish islands, whatever is cheapest probably (which may be staying in spain, plus it'll give me more time to practice my spanish). Leave a comment with suggestions of what to do in Western Europe around Christmas!

Love Natalie

Sinus infection, enfermedad, visit to the médico, olé!

This weekend has been very low-key as I have another lovely sinus infection and not much desire or energy to go out, which brings me to my new favorite story about my first use of my Spanish medical insurance. I thought it deserved its own blog entry, plus the last one was already too long. After steadily medicating an unrelenting fever with paracetamol (spanish tylenol) and blowing my nose every minute, I decided I needed a doctor and antibiotics. After lots of talking with my host mom and people at the Hamilton Centro about where to go, we found the closest clinic to my house. Or at least I thought it was a clinic, but it was actually just an apartment building with a tiny gold sign that said "Jose Peru, Medico." Naturally I had a bit of trouble finding it because there was no sign or door or anything that looked remotely like a clinic or doctor's office. It's only open one hour a day, so I showed up early to beat the rush. I was mistaken in my belief that this medico was popular, so after I rang the buzzer half an hour early I was told to wait outside until it opened. Still skeptical, I told myself I would reserve judgment until I was inside the office. This was probably a good decision because once inside I discovered this clinic was in fact was a septuagenarian Spanish doctor's apartment, straight out of the early 20th century, I kid you not. This is what it looked like:

I found that picture by googling "19th century doctors office." I was kicking myself for not having my camera the whole time. Everything in the waiting room would definitely classify as antique, all the books in his huge bookcases were leather bound, the exam room had a table and instruments that would have been at home in a horror film about organ harvesting or maternal death set in the 1920s. You think I'm exaggerating? I'm not. Everything was metal and cloth, no sterilized pre-packaged plastic here. His stethoscope was made out of rubber. Actual, harvested-from-a-tree, rubber. But it's not like I experienced any of these instruments first-hand because the extent of his medical exam was the command "Dígame." So I did. I told him, I have a sinus infection and I want antibiotics because I get these all the time. Before my trek to the office I looked up the Spanish name for Azithromycin, my favorite sinus infection drug, and told him that's what I usually take. It's called Zitromax here in case you're curious, but it's still manufactured by Pfizer. After he looked it up in his drug reference book CIRCA 1997 (THAT IS TWELVE YEARS AGO) he asked if I wanted it in 500mg or 1g pills... yes because I am the one with the medical degree and all. Then he tried to convince me to take amoxicillin because it was much cheaper, after he quoted the price to me in PESETAS. I've never even seen a peseta, they were the money used here BEFORE THE EURO. After I got over this I tried to explain that, thank you for taking a medical history and all, but I am actually allergic to amoxicillin, so no thanks. This didn't seem to phase him very much, as he talked about the peseta for awhile and then his childhood. Then he mentioned his interest in black and white photography and something about the faded sepia ANTIQUE photograph on the wall of a philosopher-looking man who was a professor of his dad's. In the 1920s. I could not even make this stuff up. But it's okay because it all ended with him handing me not one but TWO prescriptions. The extra is in case I need to go back for a refill if the drugs I picked out for myself don't do the trick. He also pointed me in the direction of a very, very cool pharmacy that's been around since 1895. It was the bomb. Riding the metro is also really fun right now because everyone gives me dirty looks and LOTS of space. Gripe A (Swine Flu) is a major concern here. I also FINALLY

So since I've been sick I've been forcing myself to stay inside more or at least come home earler, so I went to a movie theatre the other night with my friend Alice! It was really great, we saw The Informant (the new Matt Damon movie, it's called El Soplón here). It was Version Original which means English voices, Spanish subtitles which is really fun because I learn new words. We had some interesting new experiences at the Spanish cinema: we learned the word Palomitas! which means popcorn, and we learned that you get a seating assignment like in a real theatre.

But now I'm starting to feel the sinus infection going away and I'm hoping the full-blown cough will soon be gone too. Tomorrow I'm heading to the outdoor market, the Rastro. The 75 degree and sunny weather is really helping me feel better. Suck it, Minnesota! First snow today in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, sorry guys!

Hope to hear from you soon,
Natalie

Avila, Tordesillas, Salamanca, olé!

Catedral in Salamanca with Rachel, Meg and Alice

Last weekend we had a Hamilton-sponsored day trip to Avila and an overnight in Tordesillas and Salamanca. They're all a couple hours outside Madrid and we were supposed to board the group bus at 10. But that morning when my alarm went off, I naturally pressed off instead of snooze. I didn't have enough time to make it to the Hamilton bus via metro, so my subdirector called me and told me to catch my own autobús. By the time I had taken the long trip on the metro to the bus station and the long trip on the bus I'd run through half the music on my iPod and it was about 4pm in Avila. Oopsy! Avila is well-known for the preservation of its medieval cathedral and the "muralla" that surrounds the city. This wall looks like a fortress and is really cool because you can walk around on top of it.

Rachel, Alice and I on top of the wall!

Unfortunately I didn't see much of Avila because we left about two hours after I got there. But it's okay because the next morning I was actually EARLY for the bus to Tordesillas and Salamanca, after hearing the day before that we would be visiting more cathedrals, a medieval market y UNA BODEGA! What's a bodega you ask? A vineyard!
THE GRAPES
Tordesillas is kind of known for vineyards I guess, and we visited one that has a very large, very far underground tourist tour that we went on! We had to wear like cotton disposable suits to cover our clothes and got to tour the machinery of the plant as well as the old-time casks and wine cellars. The tour was a bit long and VERY cold underground, but it was a ton of fun and I learned a bit about wine. Plus we got to taste their Vino Tinto and Vino Blanco at the end of the tour! And, as always, there was chorizo to go with the wine.

Tordesillas also had some really beautiful old buildings and a very pleasant river that ran through it, a charming countryside oasis that is very close to Valladolid, one of the programs I was considering applying to before I chose the program I'm in. It was a very sleepy town and odd to think of myself there for the semester instead of MADRID. I love Madrid. Anyways, then we went to Salamanca! It's famous for having one of the oldest universities in Europe and also having two cathedrals in the same town that are connected to each other. Needless to say, we toured both. It was really interesting to see the contrast between the Romanic art and architecture next to the 16th century cathedral built adjacent and 300 years later. The old cathedral had this incredible retablo, a gilded, illustrated Biblical text to help the unlettered population.
And they both had amazing views (see first picture). Plus our fearless leader and know-it-all guide Joaquin led us around and told us interesting things about all the cathedrals we saw (for the last time, very sad). My personal favorite building we saw was a Saint Claire cloisters in Tordesillas. It was smaller and not as overwhelmingly carved, plus I'm named after Saint Claire so that was cool. It had tons of arab influence in the color scheme, tiling, painting, archways, geometric carvings in walls and floors AND it had these amazing paintings on the ceilings of really interesting geometric dragon heads on the intersecting sections of the vaulted ceilings. So cool. Unfortunately no pictures, maybe I'll draw it for you someday. Also in Tordesillas we got to spend a couple hours at this massive medieval market. The whole town was there, and half the people were dressed up in medieval peasant gear. For some reason all my photos of people dressed up in peasant gear are actually small children because they are cuter, but here you go:

The market had tons of cool jewelry, crafts, food, cheese, the local specialty grape juice, clothing (especially the ever-popular gypsy pants! I'm waiting til we go to Morocco so I can get them for cheaper) and MORE FOOD. I ate some homemade chorizo that was amazing, there were a lot of pastries around too. I also bought myself some artisan pottery that's very simple but was cheap and cool. I loved the market, we stayed there like all day, which was long enough to see a gypsy sword dance. Awesome.

Then we had a wonderful stay at this very very nice 5 star hotel that had a lap pool, hot tub and INCREDIBLE food. It's called the Paradour. We ate a huge dinner together and as usual it was a few courses plus a good house vino tinto. Plus the continental breakfast had soy milk, soy yogurt, and gluten free bread, muffins and pastries. I didn't know what to do with myself so I put a lot of it in my purse for later.

So needless to say, I am loving España, and I especially love traveling by autobús. More to come soon! I'm not traveling again until Halloween weekend when we will be going to BARCELONA with the whole group. Hopefully by autobús but I'll understand if it's by plane because it's a long way. In between I have a few day trips planned and general explorations of the city. Hope all is well with you!

Love Natalie

Lisboa, Portugal!

I love Lisboa! I just returned from a wonderful three days there with my friends Alice, Julianne, Mary, Meg, and Rachel. It was 80 degrees and sunny in Portugal the whole time we were there, the steep cobblestone streets and hand-painted tiles everywhere really made the city feel ancient (unlike most of Madrid), the people were very nice and helpful (and some of them spoke a little Spanish or English), and there were a million different hand-made portugese pastries in every shop. Since the Portugese colonized Brazil and began the transatlantic slave trade out of needs for sugar cane labor, they've had an excess of refined sugar for the last 500 years or something. That's a long time to be perfecting pastries. Our wonderful day trip guide also told us that all of the pastries' recipes mostly come from monasteries. For example, the nuns would separate the egg yolks from eggs to use the egg whites to starch the priests' robes, and they learned to make pastries with all the extra egg yolks and sugar. Holy innovation, they were soooo good.

On the aforementioned pastry tour, we rode around with our fantastic local guide Bruno (that's him with the pastries, those are called Pillows of Truth) as he showed us the coolest parts of Lisboa. We went to the westernmost point of Europe (called the end of the world because the portugese actually thought its cliffs were the end of the world before they started exploring and colonizing), toured an amazing castle called Sintra that's on top of a mountain, ate the best ice cream in the world (it literally won that prize), lounged on a beach in Cascais, ate pastries, went to Belem and, oh yeah, ate more pastries. Sintra was amazing, a huge mix of architecture with lot of Arabian influence, plus everything was covered in these amazing hand painted tiles (one of my favorite things about Portugal: hand-painted tiles everywhere on every building!) and incredible terraces and carvings everywhere. The surrounding grounds and mountain are all a nature preserve with a variety of trees and plants the crazy king had shipped in, like Sequoias and Japanese trees.

We also visited an amazing museum and its gardens called the Gulbenkian, tons and tons of ancient pottery and ceramics and an amazing collection of Baroque and Renaissance oil portraiture. I think I've spent the majority of my money here in Spain (and Portugal) on the metro, and on postcards and stamps. I love sending mail so I can't help it! Watch your mailboxes, everyone!

Our hostel was really great. Not only did it have an awesome location (walking distance to the awesome electric tram tracks and cool bars, but the atmosphere was very welcoming and safe and it was beautiful and cool. A Portuguese mum cooked a big family MEAT PIE dinner one night, all you can eat for 5 euro. I know, some of you are probably wondering why this wasn't the first thing I wrote about. Meat Pie is my favorite kind of pie, but honestly this one wasn't as good as the one I got for my birthday at Macalester or the meat bread from the Menogyn kitchen this summer. (mad props, chefs. you trumped a portugese mom). Plus there was a really cool patio/lounge area/bar, AND we had this awesome view from our TWO balconies.

All in all, a fantastic trip. I hope to go back sometime soon, after I've slept more. We're all exhausted from traveling, and we're heading to Salamanca tomorrow to tour a winery!

Back in Spain, I've been reading a lot on the Metro. Books are pretty expensive here and the English section has a limited and very odd selection, but I bought myself two books! "Tender is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald for a little St. Paul connection, and a book of Spanish love poetry my Spanish lit professor recommended called "La Voz a Ti Debida" (by Pedro Salinas). I really should be reading more in Spanish to develop my language skills, but it's hard to turn down all the Pulitzer Prize winning books my friend Alice brought over (I highly recommended "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout). But I have borrowed "Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal" (the first one) from my host mom and I'm reading slowly but it's easier than the poetry because I've read it before. Also probably because half the words are spells in latin and written with middle schoolers in mind.

Okay that's the scoop on Portugal! Hope to hear from you soon,

love Natalie

the end of the world

Orientation Recap

Hola a todos! I just returned from spending the weekend in Portugal and have lots to share, but first I wanted to recap a bit about the orientation trip I took my first week in Spain. This will be an overview because it was about three weeks ago, but I'll hit the highlights. We spent 8 days traveling by coach bus in the north of Spain, from León to Oviedo to Santander to Comillas and finally Burgos before returning to Madrid. León is home to two of the most important churches in Spain, the Catedral de León and the Basilica de San Isidora. The Basilica was my favorite for its painted vaulted ceilings. They look a bit like frescoes, and they represent the largest concentration of Romanic paintings in the world. These illustrations of Biblical text were incredibly detailed and a tool to proselytize and educate those who couldn't read or write. The Cathedral in León also had incredible carvings, stained glass and sculptures of the Virgin Mary- it's dedicated to Nuestra Señora (the same as Notre Dame in French, or Our Lady in English) and I was lucky enough to be there on a Sunday and attend mass in a cathedral from the 13th century. I couldn't imagine living in the 13th century, probably illiterate and doing some sort of manual labor and living in a simple hut with no art, beauty or decorations and attending mass in a place covered in miraculous constructions of art and carvings and beauty.

We then moved on to Santander where we stayed in an amazing beachside hotel that fed us incredible food and we had views of the Mar Cantabrico from our windows! There we took a boat tour of the coast and lounged on the beach. When we finally arrived to Comillas where we'd be spending four days taking classes and exploring the little town, we were pretty tired. But somehow we had the energy to again go the beach! After that we took classes, explored Gaudi's Capricho and an amazing 19th century palace and adjacent chapel, took our language placement exam, discovered two delicious Spanish foods: churros y chocolate and sangria. We also had our farewell fiesta and took over a tiny bar in Comillas with all 36 of our group. It was great to get to know everyone better in my program and speak only spanish- talking to my mom on the phone for the first time was super weird, english felt very strange! Now I'm settled into the rhythm of attending my regular classes and exploring Madrid via Metro on the five days a week that I don't have to go to class. I also bought a little flowering plant for my room, photo attached, but it had a rough weekend without me while I was in Portugal and I'm hoping it'll bounce back. I have a lot of weekend travel plans coming up, Salamanca, Barcelona, Paris, and Morocco, so I'll be super busy over the next month. Every weekend is full!! Hope all is well with everyone, I miss you guys and think of you often.




Leave comments!
Love,
Natalie

If you've never heard the song Loba/She-wolf by Shakira, get it. Your life will change.

So now that I've been here almost a month, here are some things that I've noticed that are strange to me about Spain: Spaniards do not care about their personal space. Or at least they are very willing to invade others'. I think it stems from very crowded metro trains. Everyone here is also really into saving electricity. All of the lights and most of the escalators are motion-sensor or on a timer, so it's not uncommon for lights to turn off on you. This is especially disconcerting in the bathroom. Oh and everyone here has bidets- though the best thing about this is that the cat in my house (yes Hannah I have a cat, he is beautiful and his name is Ramses, BE JEALOUS!) sits in the bidet and drinks from it because he likes running water better. I have no clue how my host family discovered this, but I love it. I continue to eat extremely well, everything from gazpacho to paella to all kinds of ham to papas fritas (french fries, they're EVERYWHERE here). The only thing is they eat mayonnaise on everything. I happen to hate mayonnaise and may possibly be dying of mayonnaise poisoning, if that is possible, but I seriously love everything else that my host mom puts on my plate. I'll probably die of eating something too delicious before I die of mayonnaise poisoning.

I guess I should write a little about my classes, since I'm technically here to study... I'm taking four classes, one that is Spanish grammar only and three others. My grammar class is only 8 people, the professor is incredibly sweet, and we get a receso for ten minutes in the middle of the hour and a half. I have started to worship the coffee machine (like literally a machine that fills your cup and even makes cafe con leche for you) that is in the basement. Only .45 centimos for a cup! My favorite so far is Escritoras Españolas Contemporaneas (Spanish Contemporary Women Writers) because the professor is fabulous and we're reading amazing short stories and selections from novels. We had a discussion about Lacan, the French philosopher and his theory about the self (in Spanish) during our first week of class. It was amazing. My other class is Anthropology of Spain: Gender and Culture. I hope it delves deeper soon, so far the reading is very difficult to get through but not as interesting as I'd like. I'm trying to reserve judgment. My final class is about painters and is called Arte y Communicación and I love it. Starting in October every other class we meet in museums around Madrid like the Prado and the Reina Sofia (home of TONS of Dali, Calder, and Picasso- including the Guernica). My professor is super dynamic and she often brings up words in english that she loves because they are beautiful- including sunflower and skyscraper.

Last weekend was this huge annual art festival that's called La Noche En Blanco: literally the entire population of Madrid was out in the streets, visiting the over two hundred art performances and installations scattered throughout the city. All the museums were also open all night long for free, and the metro was open until 3AM!! It was incredible to see all the people in the streets, and I learned some hip hop dance moves from a huge screen set up in one of the plazas with a group of like twenty other strangers and my friends. It was super fun and I even ran into two friends from Mac- Gabi and Eshita! Eshita is studying in Madrid and Gabi in Paris, and I couldn't believe I randomly saw them in a crowd of 8 million people. It was awesome and great to see them!

Yesterday my friends and I were feeling like a little America, so naturally we went to MACDONALDS! I have never craved fast food so badly until I saw this GIGANTIC McDonald's on Gran Vía during Noche en Blanco this weekend. It tasted exactly the same, and gave me the exact same sicky feeling afterwards too. Congrats on your consistency across continents, McDonalds.

The best thing about my schedule is that I only have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I have a four-day weekend every weekend. I love it because it gives me time to rest up from the weekend nights when I'm up til 5, to explore the city more and to go to CHOIR! Two of my friends Alice and Julianne and I joined the choir at a catholic university nearby. It rehearses on Wednesday and Sunday nights, and it is becoming one of my favorite things. All of the people are incredibly nice, I get to practice my spanish and make friends from outside my program and I get to sing!!!! It's been since high school that I've sung regularly (excluding of course acting as my campers' radio all summer and performing at Menogyn camp fires...) and for me it's an awesome way to relieve stress. Did I mention practice my spanish? We're singing a few songs in RAPID FIRE spanish and they're a challenge.

Also, have I mentioned how much I hate the euro? I have a currency converter on my computer (a mistake, surely, because I look at it too often and cryyyy over the 1 euro = 1.47 dollars AYYYY DIOS MIO!)

So, LISBOA, PORTUGAL this weekend!! We're leaving really early tomorrow morning and getting back really early on Monday. We're taking an overnight autobús on sunday night, can't wait to report on our adventures! I'm on my way back to the metro now- I come home for an hour for lunch and then turn around and ride the metro for 40 min. back to school to go to class again. My favorite thing about this is that it's often cooler in the mornings than the afternoons and I get to change my clothes. Plus I also eat with my family instead of packing a lunch, which rocks.

I love and miss you guys, hope all is well at home (or at your study abroad home too, amigos!)

Love,
Natalie

blog time, time for blog.

Hola!

So I've been in Madrid for almost three weeks now and I am finally surrendering to the "blog while I'm abroad" craze. I was riding home on the Metro tonight (my favorite thing to do and probably the place I spend the most of my time, always listening to my iPod shuffle which is full of Shakira and rap and upbeat music to walk around to) and I was thinking about all the stories I wanted to share with all of you, and this seemed like a cost and time efficient way to do so. I named this blog Natalia Pescada Grande because it was my mote (nickname) in Señor's spanish class at Blake. (Pescada Grande = big fish, after my last name Pike). Also I often introduce myself as Natalia here because it's much easier to pronounce than Natalie which is french. I'll try and get the basics out now and bring in the details later.

I love this country, for many reasons, but two of them are the metro and the meat. It is pretty near impossible to be vegetarian here. Meat and seafood are in everything, and the Spanish idea of vegetarian is tuna on top of salad. Naturally, I am as happy as can be. There are like twenty different kinds of ham here. On the topic of food and meat, I'm really becoming used to the food schedule here and I loveeee my host mom's cooking. She is amazing. She speaks French and Latin, knows everything about art and learned to cook at Le Cordon Bleu, plus she has a cat named Ramses and she buys me gluten free bread. Normally the midday meal is at 2:30pm with as many of her grown children as can make it that day (she has 4 that live in Spain and all live very close, 1 lives in France). We eat three courses at this "comida" and usually eat a little snack around 7 and then a small dinner of leftovers around 9 or 10. I love the midday meal because I get to talk to all of the family members and the food is SO GOOD. I'm so lucky that I have time between my classes to come home and eat. The house is usually just me, Maria (my host mom) and Pilar (her youngest daughter who just turned 30 who lives with us). Also, Maria's youngest son Luis is super nice and his wife is pregnant with a little girl they are going to name Natalia! Maria just finished knitting the other Natalia an adorable yellow baby sweater. Now she's working on the booties, which she knits while watching crime shows like CSI and Bones. Dubbed in Spanish, of course, so I understand about 2/3rds. I usually understand enough on TV to get intrigued and then miss enough to be frustrated when the plot resolution is lost on me. It's tiring, but good for me to listen to tons of Castellano.

On the topic of the metro- it's cheap (if the euro is your currency), clean, fast, safe and most of all EASY. I live in southern Madrid which means I have a long (45 min) ride to the campus of my school, and I'm not very close to my friends either but I am really close to the places we go out to on the weekends and the city center. The only bummer is that it closes at 1:30 in the morning, which is very early on the weekends. Most weekend nights I come home around 4. I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursday, so this is frequent.

On the topic of Madrid- I love this city, I've only been here for two weeks since I spent a week in Northern Spain for orientation, but I can't wait to explore it more. I've been really fortunate with my program- they are so invested in us getting out in the city and really speaking the language. We get reimbursed 50% of any cultural event- theatre, fútbol games, bull fights, museums, movies, etc. They've also hooked us up this weekend with students from the Spanish University. In small groups we walked around the city and went to the Rastro sunday open air market to get an insider's scoop on the city. I had two of the nicest women, Claudia y Daniela, to lead me around all of their favorite places and neighborhoods. Claudia brought us to the most beautiful libraries to study in that used to be palaces and churches. She also showed us a Centro Cultural that is covered in graffiti, has a rooftop terrace and 2 bars in it that hosts free classes for immigrants to learn Castellano Spanish and other classes for community learning. It looked like an awesome speakeasy, populated by lots of students, families, tattoos and dreadlocks and bikes out front. Daniela told us about a small café where you can see flamenco singers and dancers and guitarists perform and I'm really excited to check that out.

Please excuse the run-on sentences! I've forgotten how to write in this language while absorbing myself in another. Plus I have a lot to say.

Leave comments and come back soon, I'm planning on posting more soon!

Love from across the atlantic,
Natalia Pescada Grande