Madrid

Hello! Classes have started, and every day I continue to learn more and understand more Spanish, though I'm still slow and have to think a lot when I need to speak. That's alright though. I'm taking four classes and all are taught only in Spanish. I have three Spanish language classes, one for grammar, one for conversation, and one for reading Spanish texts (it's more of a literature class) and my last class is an art/history class about the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish influences on art and architecture in Toledo. My art professor seems a little uptight and rigid, but the rest of my professors are super nice and seem to have a lot of patience and senses of humor! We also only have classes Monday through Thursday, which isn't that different for me, as I typically try to plan my schedule around Friday and decide what classes I am going to take based on whether or not I would have Friday class (it doesn't always work out, but I do the best I can!), but for a lot of other students here, no Friday classes is like a novelty.

Because we didn't have class, our school took an (optional) trip to Madrid for the day on Friday, and paid for us to get a tour of the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and the lunch, giving us the afternoon off for free time. Two of my friends and I decided to stay in Madrid for the weekend, and booked a hostel earlier in the week for Friday and Saturday nights. The Palacio Real was absolutely gorgeous. I realized part way through the tour that we had toured it when I went on the trip to Spain my senior year of high school. I remembered being outside it, but didn't remember going inside until my memory was triggered when we got to the throne room, which is a giant room with all the walls covered in a deep red velvet and guilded everything practically. My memory of going there was confirmed when we got to the dining room. Though dining room might be a bit of an understatement. It is used for official state dinners and has a table that can seat 200 some people. It's the biggest table I have ever seen in my life. And it wasn't even fully extended! We also went through a room where there was not just one, but five stringed instruments made by Antonio Strativari, the best and most famous violin maker in the world. He was alive from the the mid-1600s to mid-1700s roughly, and his violins today sell at auction for millions of dollars. One sold just this year for $15.9 million dollars. The Palace had two cellos, two violins, and a viola, all with matching inlay work on the front of the body of the instruments and fancy detailed floral paintings on the sides of the instruments, and carved scrolls. I about peed myself because it was so cool and so exciting. My violin, though purchased out of the Sears catologue by my great-grandfather, was built as a Strativarius replication. Sadly, we were not allowed to take any pictures inside the palace.

Friday night we met some other people staying in our hostel, three Portugese guys who were staying there for the weekend who spoke very good English and a guy who was half Italian half French, who didn't speak much English, but understood most of what we were saying in English. The Portugese guys were hilarious and taught us a new phrase...apparently in Portugal, when something is getting out of control/crazy, they say it is going to Texas! Evidently their opinion of Texas is that is is crazy... Talking with the French/Italian was interesting and a little slow going, but a good experience. By the time we started talking to him, another guy had come to talk to us, an American from Boston who had been in Spain for a day and a half and who came over to introduce himself because he was super excited to hear American English when we talked...haha. He's a senior at UMass Amhurst and he will be studying in Sevilla, Spain for the semester, but his program doesn't start until today (Monday). He joined in the conversation with Salvatore, the French/Italian and in the end, it was Alex and I who did most of the conversing and translating with Salvatore. Alex had two years of French in middle school and I had one year in college, and between the two of us, we were able to figure out what he was saying in his combination of French, Italian, and English. He would mix the languages in each sentence to try to get us to understand what he wanted to say. He also knew a little bit of Spanish, but spoke mostly French and Italian. It was really interesting to talk to him. My one random year of French paid off in the end!

Saturday we went to the Retiro park, which would be equivalent to Hyde Park in London or Central Park in NYC.  It's a gorgeous park that looks like it could be taken directly out of the 1800s, all it needed was ladies in full length dresses and men in fancy tuxes and top hats. There was even a man-made lake in the middle where we rented a rowboat and paddled around for 45 minutes! Pretty fun. After the park, we went to the Prado (the Louvre or Smithsonian of Madrid). The Prado is one of the largest art museums in the world, and we got free admission! All we needed was a student ID to prove we were students. It was AWESOME. I saw many paintings that I have seen numerous times in books and sat in front of both the Annunciation by Fra Angelico and a portrait of Mary Tudor for a while each, relishing in the fact that I was sitting in front of the originals.

As for nightlife, Madrid is insane. People go out to bars between 11pm and midnight, and stay out until 6 or 7am. Saturday night, the two girls I was with and I decided to on a "pub crawl" with a group of people from our hostal, led by a tour group, and sponsored by our hostal. Our "guide" was around my age and from NYC and had spent the summer in Spain and decided to stay longer. He's now teaching English and working for this tour company, giving walking tours of Madrid during the day and pub crawls on weekends. We went to three different bars and a discoteca, (bascically a dance club), where we got to just walk in instead of waiting in line forever behind all the other people who wanted to go to that club. Our group consisted of the three of us, the American from Boston, four Canadians from Winnipeg, a Swede, two girls from Turkey, and an Aussie. The first bar played a good selection of American 80s music, the second played a lot of Spanish music, the third played both and there a group of guys dressed up as Cowboys and Indians, which didn't phase those of us from the Midwest, but Bryant, the guy from NYC laughed because apparently they don't have parties like that on the East Coast. Who knew?! The discoteca played mostly Spanish music. We danced a lot. All night. I danced with the American, Alex, most of the night, and some with one of the Canadians (also named Alex!) and an Irishman who was staying at the other hostel that did the pub crawl with us. We tried salsa dancing and failed, but it was still fun! And resulted in lots of laughing. Typical...haha. When we got back to our hostel, it was 4:30am and there were still tons of people in the streets and still tons of people waiting in lines to get into clubs! It was insane. We went back to our room, and shortly afterward there was a knock on our door, the Portugese guys wanting to know if we were still awake because they had gone out as well, but went somewhere else and wanted to know if we had lived up to our promise the night before that we would stay out until late on Saturday. Laura wanted to sleep, so Meg and I left our room and went back to their room with them and hung out and talked until about 6am when they needed to pack up their stuff and head to the airport to catch an early plane back to Lisbon.

We woke up at 9:20 so we could check out of the hostal by 10am and then walked to the Plaza Mayor and through a gigantic open air market/crap fair type thing that happens every Sunday. It's called El Rastro, and is by far the biggest market I have ever seen in my life. It wasn't a food market though, mostly clothes of all sorts (including bras and underwear!), music, movies, purses, touristy things, electronic type things (power strips, calculators etc..) and anything else you can imagine. It was like the State Fair, but more dense. I don't even know how to effectively describe it so you all can get an accurate image of what it was like. It was unbelievable.

Sorry this got so long! But I had a good weekend and wanted to share it with all of you! I will post pictures of Madrid later this week, this post is already super long, and I need to sort through the 300 some picture I took and decide which ones to post! I love you all!