A Pool Story

READER DISCRETION ADVISED: I may use some only-known-by-swimmer words... Sorry friends.

Yesterday I decided to go to the pool for the first time during the weekend during my stay in Madrid because I have too many times left on my 10-time pass for the pool/gym and it's one of the only weekends I've been in Madrid. I lifted first all by myself and with lots of cramps in my legs, but decided to do basically everything I could think of because I had nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon (everyone was working on their final papers and I was waiting to steal a computer from a friend so I could write mine, but she had to finish first). After lifting I headed down to the pool and did a 1500 warm up (that's long for those of you who don't know) full of swimming, kicking, and pulling because I decided I was going to swim for an hour and a half, something I haven't done since last winter, if I remember correctly. At some point during my warmup I realized that I wasn't in a lane with only slow people which is usually what I find in the 2 lanes that have big signs reading "PUBLIC: HIGH LEVEL"... basically no one in Spain can read or they can't swim, one or the other.
Anyway, so I was swimming and realized that there was an older-ish man (50 perhaps) that seemed pretty fast. After I finished my warmup I started doing some 200's building slow to fast by 50. After the first one I realized that this older man was waiting on the wall with me to leave again. Suddenly, in english, this man says, "you are very fast. can i follow?" so I replied, in spanish, "yes, i'm not really fast right now, but that's fine." we did some more 200s and he was on my tail the whole time... pretty impressive for someone used to swimming with really old, slow people who don't seem to have ever received a swimming lesson in their lives. After 4 200's fast, I decided to do one with the 50 in the middle fast and told him. He mentioned something to me about not understanding the language, at which point i was REALLY confused whether or not he could speak english OR spanish... still not sure... but he said he was just going to follow me. So we did another one fast and i told him i was pooped because i had lifted before and that was just SO MUCH more impressive, but he still wanted to follow me AND go fast. I convinced him to do a bit of drill and let him go before me to do breaststroke because i told him i am "really. really. slow" so he went. Afterwards, he still wanted to do things fast (SHEESH! old people these days! they just can't stop! I'm thinking i'll introduce this man to my mum) so we did 8 50s alternating who went first. when i went first, he was right on my heels and when he went first i was lagging.
so basically then i felt slow but he really wanted to do 8 and not 6 as i suggested so we did that and then swam "really soft" in his words. then he told me he had been a runner in the past but now he swims more and thinks that swimming is harder. it was a lovely experience AND my first workout where i was pushed and pushed myself in Espana! And by a middle-aged man that speaks some unknown language!
I'm tempted to bring him back to Carleton because let me tell you, the one time he touched my toes by accident when he was behind be during a 200, man did i push myself. there'll be no old spanish men beating my tushy this winter... perhaps some freshmen girls, but that's completely different.

Quick Updates

I don´t even know where I left off the last time I wrote, so I´m going to do the best I can.

So after the weekend of Rikka in Segovia and Madrid I think we had a pretty relaxed week and that following weekend had a group trip to Cordoba and Sevilla. In theory, I like group trips, but I don´t think I would recommend Sevilla to anyone who doesn´t love religious art and touristy food. Cordoba was pretty neat- The Mezquita and Alcazar there are wonderful and we had delicious "batidos" (smoothie/milkshakes) in a tea shop before playing in the gardens of the Alcazar one day. We found kittens and took tons of pictures in the gardens before we realized that the building was closing. The very nice guard woman let us run through everything (picture about 7 americans who also happen to be carleton students running through the towers of a building so that they can see everything... i think the woman thought we were locos) before the experience of the "men" eating "rabo de toro" which is exactly what it translates to: bull´s tail. It seems to have quite a bit of fat for a tail, but the girls I was with only ate tortilla and gazpacho. much better.

Sevilla, as I said, was full of religious art and tourist attractions along with a bit too much time as a group, but the good news is that our hotel (4 stars!) had a pool on the roof. That pretty much completed every day.

After that weekend we had another week of classes and I was going to go to Pais Vasco with some friends but by one day before our scheduled departure when we still hadn´t made plans, we decided to do a 2 day trip to Salamanca, much closer and apparently something to see. The best part was that it´s not in the desert and there are trees that change color! Almost like maine but with less color. Saw the cathedral, teh university, and a wonderful art deco museum that was the highlight for everyone. It was VERY cold though, and the bus ride home took forever, I think because us driver was too nice and agreed to let people off in random hotels along the highway..

This past weekend we had a trip with the whole group (thank goodness the last whole group trip... i almost didn´t make it) to Barcelona. WHAT AN AMAZING CITY. the temperature is always nice (around 65-70) and they have a beach. oh and the olympics were there in 92 so that was basically the only thing I needed to see there because that´s my thing. We also so a bunch of Gaudi architecture (look him up if you´re not sure who he is... it´s pretty crazy) and spent a good amount of time there, but not enough in my opinion.

I will try to write more soon. We only have 1 week from today left and I have to write our final paper before leaving for Lisbon, Paris, and Dublin and before I return to Maine the 27th. I´ll try to write more soon. Love to you all!

some pictures to keep people happy for a bit

I´ve been on the internet today for the first time in a really long time, so i don´t have time to update you all with stories of where i´ve been the past few weeks. I´ll let you all know that it continues to go well and I am AMAZED that I am nearly done with my time here in Spain. Today I worked on some plans for travel after the program (which ends next Thursday the 15th... wow.).

For now, here´s a link to the pictures I put on Facebook. I´m having soem troubles putting them all into the albums they´re supposed to be in, but it´ll do until I get them all sorted out.
http://carleton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016959&l=88aae&id=19102934
and
http://carleton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016962&l=12460&id=19102934

sorry everyone! I´ll do better someday... When I´m back in Maine I promise I will try to write about some of the things I did. I´ve been keeping a mini journal, if that counts?

Last week´s festivities

Hola mundo! Well, I´ve been pretty bad at this but here are some of the things i´ve been up to:

Last week I spent my first lunch with my professor eating in a restaurant where I am a REAL client of the place. We now know the owner and 3 of the waiters and the food is delicious. It´s the Argentinian restaurant and it has really good steak (apparently), but I´ve only had fish, chicken, and tortilla (eggs). Speaking of food, we had our last pizza dinner as a group and I tried the hawaiian pizza that also has mandarin oranges in it... a little bit different in Spain.

Saw Guernica (Picasso´s painting) in the Reina Sofia, a huge museum of modern art, which isn´t really my thing, but Guernica was pretty neat. Today we saw Miró who really shouldn´t be famous. I´m pretty sure I could put some black lines, a blue spot, and some black circles in a painting and i wouldn´t be famous...

Saw my first movie in the cultural center near my house and watched a movie about swimming with my family in my parent´s bed, but it was alright and not as strange as it sounds. Also spent some time with my little sister skaeboarding in the street and might have a fracture in my elbow right now... I´ll go to the hospital tomorrow and get back to you all about that one.

This weekend was pretty exciting. Rikka who´s studying in Granada came to visit Madrid and we showed her around and went to Segovia on Saturday to see Alcázar which was the inpiration for the castle in Disneyland in California... it was pretty amazing. I promise I´ll get pictures up before the new year... It was also a holiday on Friday complete with the army marching through a plaza and government things to celebrate Cristopher Columbus, I think. I´m just glad there weren´t any carbombs. Needless to say, I hardly left my house.

That was a lot of info, but I hope it keeps the 3 people that read this busy until I can write again. I hope everyone is enjoying beautiful falls wherever you are (not falls like from a skateboard into the street but more like autumns)!

Vamos a la playa... and la alhambra

Finally here´s my update on my weekend to the south last weekend. last thursday night after our art class i hopped on a bus with 3 friends (Tim, Abbey, and Becky for those of you who know Carls) for 5 hours to Granada. Of course, we couldn´t just drive all the way there so we stopped in a weird town in the middle of nowhere to use the bathroom and have a snack and there i saw my first WANTED ad for ETA members. We really wanted to steal it off the wall but figured it wouldn´t be such a good idea although it would go marvelously with my growing collection of wall decorations, including the phone number of my pal Paco. We arrived in Granada around 12:30am and took a taxi to the apartment of the woman that a friend studying in granada (rikka) lived with for a month because she graciously offered 4 beds to us and her apartment to use because she lives alone in a huge apartment and is 29years old and and architect. well that´s not the reason, but yeah.

Friday we slept really late and went up the mountain (literally) to the alhambra for our designated entrance time. IT IS AMAZING. for anyone who is ever in spain, you absolutely must go. it was the former palace of the moors when they were in power and constructed as a "paradise" on earth, so it´s pretty beautiful. many amazing pictures but i´m way slow at getting those up, so it may not happen until i get back to maine.

spent some time with Rikka in a tea place and exploring the very north-african-like traditions of the south of spain. including FREE TAPAS (which are also the size of a meal) which is the tradition in andalucía.

Took the bus to Almería on the southern coast on saturday afternoon and another bus to the small beach-town of San Jose... beautiful. our hostel was 12€ and had everything we needed (beds and beautiful terraces outside). had a dinner on the beach in the dark of bread, cream cheese, and nectarines and went to the beach, Playa de Genoveses, on Sunday. 2km walk through the town and desert to get there where there was a herd of sheep and their shepherd and many nudies (hey, it´s europe!). spent 6 hours there swimming, reading, and walking and it was wonderfully relaxing. an amazing beach with not so many people and in a national or natural park. a great way to spend the weekend. the 8 hour busride back to madrid was a bit of a chore, but it was overall a great weekend and a nice escape from the city lifestyle.

p.s. everyone should try the lebanese (i think?) food called chawarma. it´s in a pita and has chicken and veggies and a sauce and is amazing.

"I love when Carleton pays" and "sketchy old men"

Ooookay, so I have some updating to do. It´s been awhile...

So the week after the noche en blanco was the European Mixed Curling Championships in the Palacio de Hielo right in my neighborhood, so i brought a whole group of clueless americans to the palacio to watch 2 hours of curling goodness... ireland (my team) lost, as did Spain (my other team), but wow! what an opportunity!

The next day, Friday, the entire group of us Carleton kiddos along with 2 of our professors went to Toledo (40 minutes away) to explore the labyrinth of the old city, see the cathedral which is amazing and huge, but kind of expensive, and see a bunch of El Greco´s paintings. The best part was the hotel because Carleton paid (well we actually did, but it makes me feel better to think that it´s not actually from the $200,000 that was formerly mine that Carleton will have by the end of 2010) and there was free breakfast and it was a nice hotel. also saw a sinagogue and a huge hospital from a while back which were both pretty amazing.

Last week was full of classes and sketchy waiters (well... only one). Went to Principe Pio for a cheaper than normal manu del dia and had two wonderful camareros, one young and one old. the young one helped us to understand the type of bean in one of the dishes by taking us to the window of a store down the street that has them. at the end of our lunch, we waved goodbye to the younger one as he left for his own lunch or the end of his shift. meanwhile the older one asked us about where we live in teh city and as we left gave us the standard besitos on both cheeks. of course, i was the last in the line to exit the vecinity and he asked me if i wanted the phone number. i, thinking he meant for the restaurant and not understanding why i would ever need it, said sure, being very nice. he whipped out his little notebook and wrote "Paco movil ########". oh and did i mention that he´s about 75 years old and has a lazy eye? so that was the highlight of my week by far... and it´ll be a great addition to my wall decorating back in carleton.

Tuesday we went to El Escorial, a palace/monastery about an hour from Madrid and ate ice cream there.

Wednesday we encountered a place that we want to "become clients of" and humberto huergo always tells us we must do and they have argentinian food and delicious postres and wonderful camareros that don´t try to give me their number and we met the dueño there too (the guys who owns the place). we will be returning to that one, unlike to paco.

Thursday after our class in el prado with javier Tim, Becky, Abbey and I took off for the south in a bus... i will write more about that one another time. the library´s about to kick me out because i always steal their internet.

La noche en blanco

Well I have some updating to do, I suppose...
Last Friday: Had an outing with Agnese, one of the monitores who´s paid to be our friend and went to a bar with sand and a flamenco bar to listen to the men in the basement singing and playing guitar, etc. As we were leaving the flamenco bar, some madrileños in their apartment above the street called to us about a fiesta they were having and agnese invited ourselves in, so we went there and chatted with them for a while in their very nice apartment before deciding it was time to head home (I was spending the night in caitlin´s apartment because her parents had a wedding to go to and she´s afraid of the men in her neighborhood) to relax, watch a movie, you know. on the way home we encountered a certain sick soul in the street and spent the next 2 hours getting said person home... hmm so that was a fun night.
I spent all of Saturday (after paseo #3 with Mario in the morning) sleeping and getting some work done and Saturday night was the noche en blanco (2nd annual). it´s an event where basically the entire center of Madrid is closed off to car traffic and museums and sights are open late for people to visit and bars stay open really late and there are concerts, etc. A group of 6 of us decided to start at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, the Real Madrid stadium for a tour and perhaps to see the "spectacle" on the field there. We showed up at 9, waited in line until 11, and only got to do the tour but it was pretty neat. We saw the dressing rooms, the field, and the museum of the team/history of the team. Afterwards, we decided to head towards the center in the PACKED metro and decided there were too many people where we went (Ópera) so we went to Abbey´s apartment for a snack at 2:30am. After waiting for an hour for a bus to go back to Gran Vía to see the Daft Punk concert, everyone lost motivation and I ended up going home to sleep until 2pm.
This week we haven´t done anything all that exciting other than find a great place to get a menú del día for cheaper and tonight we´re going to the european mixed curling championships!

Link to Facebook

For those of you who don´t have facebook, here´s the public link to see my pictures. So far, I just have ones from italy, so sorry about that, but it should improve. and i still can´t get some of them to be upright.
http://carleton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015870&l=27d53&id=19102934

First weekend

So here are my updates from the first weekend here in Madrid.
As it was our first weekend, we weren´t allowed to travel yet, which was fine in order to see the city, but I am excited to travel also.

On Friday night we found a bar that has a dinsoaur theme which was great for a Jurassic Park lover like moi and also as a reminder of my experiences in first grade. Heavy music, though, and everyone was wearing black except for us, which made it a little canteo (awkward) at first, but then we made friends with some madrileños that smoke like chimneys and spent some time with them before taking the nightbuses (búhos) home.

Saturday we had a class that involved talking a walk through a part of the city with our most laid-back professor, Mario. Really the architecture in Madrid is not all that fabulous, but I guess it was a nice way to spend a Saturday morning. Later on we met up with the monitores (our hired friends that help us to know the city) to eat some tapas in a bar and spend some time with them.

Sunday morning I went to El Rastro, a huge market that has every single thing anyone could ever need (or mostly stuff you will never need, and that´s what makes it what it is) and I bought some good things, like pashminas and a spanish flag (not the controversial political one with red, yellow and purple but i´ll have to do that). then we went to the museo de america where they have objects that conquistadors brought back from the New World but we had to walk through it quickly and missed a floor so we could eat lunch in our houses.

Today we had classes and ate another wonderful lunch from a menu del dia for 10€ and tonight i´m going to a flamenco festival that is free and in one of the metro stations (chamartín) where they have a lot of events. it´s happening all this week and should be really neat to see if we can get a seat. hasta luego!

Sorry...

Ok so it´s much easier to put fotos on Facebook. if you have it, they´ll be there for now, until i can find an easy way to do so. and if anyone knows better than i do how to do it, please share.

nothing much has happened since last time i wrote... more exploration, some classes, chocolate and churros, another wonderful lunch out for 9€... same old.

the big order of business now is to find a pool or a team that we can swim with. even I´M getting antsy to swim. Craziness. I´m also getting excited to see some new things during the weekends and do some trips to other towns/cities. if anyone has any suggestions, let me know!

Finalmente una biblioteca!!

Well i´m in madrid and finally found my biblioteca so i can use the internet for free for 45 minutes (this time at least). i arrived on saturday in the afternoon from italy and my padre and hermano were in the airport waiting for me although we were supposed to find our way to their houses on our own. que suerte! my dad´s name is Kike (like "Quique") and my mom is Lucia and lucia has 2 kids, Ivan (15)and Victoria (11) and Kike has 2 kids, Lucas (15) and Bruno (12) and now they are a new big happy family. our house is a work in progress because they moved there in july and a dentist and his family lived there before and Kike is making many changes so right now our kitchen is outside of our house and one day i didn't have hot water for a shower because it was unplugged so he could work on things in the kitchen. it's very interesting, though, and pretty crazy around the house with that many kids of those ages and all in school now and a house that is under construction and 3 dogs and we live basically in the suburbs. it pretty much takes me 40 minutes to get anywhere (or longer) by metro. I have a 10 minute walk to the nearest metro stop, too (Arturo Soria, for those who know madrid). it´'s nice though because it's a more residential area, but we are still in the city, so it's quieter but it's not like i'm out in la mancha (think don quijote).

we started class on monday and they all should be alright. i´ve done all my reading in parks and seen a fair amount of the city so far. when i have to travel so far, it´s easy to know a lot more about the city. this afternoon i have class in the prado museum to see some el greco works. last night we have a welcome dinner that carleton paid for and that was wonderful- i made sure to get the most expensive dessert at the end, too. then we went out with the monitores (madrilenos who are in their 20s and are there to help us acclimate and experience the city, and whatever else we need help with. and then i had to go back to my house really late by one of the night buses and i was a little lost, but it only took about 5-10 minutes to find where i was supposed to be.

p.s. i promise i'll do my best to keep in touch and get some pictures up here...

genny and her family!

Well here I am in Sesto al Reghena/Bagnarola/Genny's area and it is GREAT to see where she lives and meet her family and spend some time with them as they show me around the area. They are so great. it's amazing to have someplace to stay and people to show me around.

We went to Venice on Monday and saw a lot of the city including the Palazzo where the doges held meetings and kept prisoners. The city is a real labyrinth, though-- apparently even venetians need maps to get to places. Genny's sister Ilenia took her University test while Genny and I saw the Palazzo and walked around and were attacked by pigeons. We ended up on the wrong bus home at the end of the day because Ilenia's boyfriend told us which one and it would have been the right one if we'd been there 15 minutes earlier.... so we took the long way home and had to get picked up in a different town and pick up the car later. and man did we do a lot of walking! i thought we'd fall asleep on the train and never get back.

Yesterday we went to the Alps to a town where all the rich and famous people go on vacation. You can ski there, but mostly it seems that the people who go on holiday there just spend money in the designer shops. I had an expensive Araciata there and then we drove through the mountains some more until I almost threw up all over Ilenia and Carlo in the front seat, but the mountains were beautiful. I'll have to put pictures up sometime.... but my camera battery is going to go soon and apparently Italy has different outlets from the rest of Europe... I hope Spain's are what I expected...

Today we went to the Villa de Manin about 15 minutes from home and are going out for pizza soon. I hope everyone who is traveling is seeing as much as I am and that everyone is well wherever you are. Take care!

Let's try this...

I'm not so sure that I will be able to keep up with all this this fall or if i will even have time, but i'll try it out and hopefully everyone will enjoying hearing about the adventures in europe. so check it out when you can and i guess i will try to spend the time, too.

So I am leaving for Europe tomorrow and will be in Italy by Monday to spend 2 weeks with Genny around Venice, Florence, and Rome and then head to Madrid on the 8th for the term. Keep in touch!