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.




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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