Madrid and Valentine's Day

Holaaaa todos!

Man, time is absolutely flying! It is so hard to believe that we're over half way through February and I've been in Spain for nearly 4 months now. That means that I only have 5 months left until I'm finished with Spanish language school and my au pairing job. Crazy! So, I realize that it's been a while, a little over two weeks since my last post. I apologize for that, especially since I really haven't been up to too much. I just haven't had anything to write about up until now.

So, on the weekend of February 6-10th, I took Spain's bullet train from Barcelona to Madrid. The train was actually incredibly convenient (security was a breeze!) and fairly comfortable with big seats, free headphones, and a movie on the TV. Haha, and as always here in Spain, the movies were dubbed over in Spanish... which really tends to bug me because A.) I can tell that the mouths moving aren't matching the words spoken and B.) I know most of the actors' real voices... and it really throws me off when I hear a Spanish voice in replacement. :)

Anyways, the Reader's Digest version of my trip is that I left Barcelona incredibly early on Friday morning, spent three hours on the bullet train (went around 300 km/hour), stayed in Madrid from Friday until super early on Monday morning when I caught the first train going from Madrid back to Barcelona at 5:45... and I slept the entire way back. The city is freezing and crowded with very confusing streets and older metro than Barcelona (it doesn't have lights to tell you what stop you're at!). Though I did feel a bit overwhelmed with all of the people, it was amazing to be somewhere where Castellano is the main language.

The longer version goes something like this: The entire weekend was incredibly freezing! There was even a little snow in Madrid on Friday... just a slight shower of flakes, ya está. Oy, I was constantly wearing around four layers of clothing on top to try and battle the freezing temperatures. Anyways, I met with two different friends of friends during the trip... but they weren't able to meet until around 2 pm or so. So, just after arriving, I was freezing and tired, and after walking to the first tourist attraction (the grand square, or something), I saw a tour bus and didn't hesitate to hop on and get out of the cold. On the tour bus, I took off my boots, put my feet on the heater, and wore my blanket. I probably looked like some sort of homeless stray that had wandered onto the bus. Anyways, that occupied me for around three hours while I was waiting to meet up with lunch with David. David is a friend of my camp counselor friend, Mike, who I met at Redwood camp in 2006, and whose wedding I'm attending in Switzerland in May. David took me to an awesome restaurant at the top of a building where we ate tapas, which is a traditional Spanish style of eating and is basically a bunch of little servings of different types of food. I consider it the perfect cuisine for the dining ADD person.

Anyways, after that, I met up with Alicia, a friend of my friend, Cesar, who I met at UW in 2006 in the University Chorale (choir). Alicia is a Spaniard from Granada who actually attended UW for a year about a year or two ago, where she met Cesar. She is now living in Madrid and made me feel incredibly welcome and at home during my weekend stay there. She and I did pretty much everything together from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon/evening. We visited all of the main attractions including the Royal Palace, Retiro Park, some statues of some famous guys, other parks, a church, and other such places. It was awesome spending an entire weekend with just Castellano (and a bit of English as well… I gave in with Alicia when I was tired). I loved meeting and hanging out with other Spaniards and speaking in my broken Spanish. I felt like a part of Alicia’s group of friends from the start, which was awesome. It made me realize that since I’ve been here, I have only met/become friends with a handful of Spaniards. My closest friends here are all foreigners and the church that I attend is comprised of mainly South Americans who immigrated to Barcelona (a lot of people from Ecuador and Colombia). The people at the church are incredibly friendly (much friendlier than most Spaniards) and for the most part, their accent is a bit easier to understand. If I do stay for another year in Spain, I’ll have plenty of time to meet new people and practice Spanish. I’m definitely considering Andalucia and maybe the Santander area for my next year here. After visiting Madrid, I’m 80% sure that I don’t want to live there, even if just for a year. However, nothing is for sure yet. We’ll see.

We just had Valentine’s Day… and it passed quite uneventfully for the people of Catalunya. Only the various bakeries advertised the holiday and no one seemed to give it much attention here. My host parents informed me that the reason the holiday is like this is because the main “Valentine” holiday is on April 23^rd and is the day of Sant Jordi (the patron saint of Catalunya). This is a cool holiday that I’m really looking forward to witnessing. On this day, the men give the women flowers and the women give the men books. Honestly, I would much rather prefer a book over a flower… but it is a tradition, so I guess it’s okay. I’ve been told by several people to check out Las Ramblas on this day because apparently it is one of the busiest days on this street with tons of vendors selling huge amounts of books and flowers. I'm excited to see that.

Anyways, I haven’t been up to too much. Things are going so well with the family and I absolutely love the kids. They're completely comfortable with me now, which makes my job so much easier and a lot more fun. The kids are absolutely adorable... like any children, they do have their moments of frustration, fits, and fighting, but I absolutely love them. I just introduced them to one of my all-time favorite children's movies: The Adventures of Milo and Otis. Also, I taught the kids the songs, "You Are My Sunshine", "This is the Song that Never Ends" (Lambchop), "Part of Your World" (Little Mermaid), "A Spoonfull of Sugar" (Mary Poppins),"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (Mary Poppins), and a couple other favorites. They love it!

My schedule has become quite routine, so the weeks seem to be passing faster and faster… though I am still sick, so that’s put a damper on the last month and a half of my stay here. I’m off to the doctor again sometime this week. Lately, I have been missing a few things from home and was actually talking with my Seattle au pair friend about that, and so I ended up making a list.

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Things I miss from home:

-My home (parents’ house, of course)

-Relaxing and feeling at home with family

-Hearty breakfasts (the breakfasts here are very meager… they never eat eggs, hash browns, waffles, pancakes, French toast, etc…)

-Driving myself places with the music blaring

-Happy hour with friends… especially The Ram and Ivars

-Friends who know me pretty much backwards and forwards. It can get quite tiring meeting and trying to get to know so many new people. Sometimes I just crave being with my family and good friends.

-Mars Hill Church

-The dollar. It is worth SO much more in the States!

-My cell phone plan.

-Nights to myself, free of any obligation after work. Here, my work continues until around 8:30 or 9 pm, when the kids go to bed.

-Costco, Target, Fred Meyer, and basically all of the huge stores where you can buy practically everything you could ever want/need for pretty cheap. Stores here are way too small and expensive. Plus, they only have one all-inclusive store, called Corte Ingles… and it is known for being very expensive.

-Puget Sound

-Popcorn, Ritz, huge boxes of Goldfish and Oreos. They aren't as popular here... and they come in smaller packaging, and they're more expensive!

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But, if I went home this very instant, I would definitely miss a lot from Spain as well.

Things I LOVE and will miss about Spain:

-Iberian ham (the cured ham legs I talked about earlier)… it is probably my absolute favorite meat now! And it is fairly good for you as well.

-The Mediterranean diet.

-The AMAZING Metro system here. Seattle’s system is horrendous compared to Europe.

-Everything is within walking distance… or metro distance.

-The Spanish language… and learning Spanish as well.

-Meeting so many international and random people through school and church .

-The SUN!!! I think we normally get around 5 or 6 days of sunlight per week during the fall/winter/spring. Great, huh? Seriously, Seattle needs more sunlight. After spending a winter here, I think I might get depressed during the rainy, gloomy Seattle winters/springs.

-My host family and the adorable kids I get to take care of.

-The novelty of a different country and the extensive history of Spain and Catalunya.

-Churros con chocolate.

-The cheap but super tasty coffee here. The coffee in the States is SO watered down compared to the café here.

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I’m sure that there is much more that I could add to both lists, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Haha, if you’re still reading at this point, I just want to let you know that I added some new pictures (Flickr) and videos (YouTube) from Madrid and life in general over here. I haven’t labeled the pictures yet, so I’ll get around to that when I have a bit more free time. If you want to see the pictures/video, I posted the links on the left side of this blog.

I hope this finds all of you happy, healthy, and well. :) Take care.

Cuidate,

Linnell