self-correction

magical = mágico

I'll keep that in mind the next time a stranger tries to talk to me about Alice in Wonderland...

random Wednesday

Tonight I saw "Los Sustitutos (Surrogates)" (dubbed into Spanish, and for only 5E -- gotta love figuring out the discount days), and I've decided that Spanish-language action movies might be the type for me; I left the theater pretty confident that I understood about as much of the film as I would have had it been in English!  So that's.... something.

Afterwards, I went with a bunch of Fulbrighters to MadridBabel (a free event hosted at Cafe Madrid every Wednesday night, where people are encouraged have "intercambios" with others in all sorts of different languages [let's be real, usually English and Spanish]), and it ended up being really fun!  The last time I went I actually really enjoyed myself as well, and Cathy made a good friend from that night... but tonight, I wasn't in the mood to meet new people and I wanted to go to sleep early, so I wasn't planning to stay for too long.

However, this was before I met Moises and his two friends.

Thankfully, and surprisingly, they weren't at all sketchy or creepy or really even that weird.  We talked about Cape Town, Harry Potter (okay, maybe they were a LITTLE weird), San Francisco (that convo was early on -- maybe the "oh my boyfriend lives there!" preemptively stopped their creepiness...?), and how my name wasn't Jennifer (as Moises kept calling me).  One of the guys asked me how I got home without a car when the Metro was closed, so I explained that I took a "buho" (literally "owl," but that's what the night buses are called), aaaaaaand he thought I said "burro."  Sorry friend, I do not ride my donkey home on the late night. That's purely a daytime activity.

The even more ridiculous conversation I had with a random guy who thought he knew Minnesota from the movies was also pretty incredible.  He asked what movies were filmed in Minnesota, because he was SURE he knew it, but he couldn't figure out from where... so I threw out "Grumpy Old Men."  He asked me to repeat the title, and then in Spanish, so I said, "....uh, Viejos... Hombres... Enojados??"  He, for some reason, looked even more confused, and I politely excused myself from the conversation.  While chatting with Cathy a good 10 minutes later, he came up and stood awkwardly in front of us.  When I finally acknowledged his presence, he shouted at me, "Alice in Wonderland!"  I politely asked him what the F he was talking about, and he told me in Spanish that Alice in Wonderland was from Minnesota.  I told him I didn't think so -- in fact, I was pretty sure it was a magical place (though of course I don't know real words so I said something like, "Pienso que es un pais ma-hee-cal, no..?") -- but he insisted that he'd gone to ask his friends, waaaay over on that side of the bar, and they agreed that Alice in Wonderland (with the Queen, and the rabbit, and the hole) was from Minnesota.

So apparently we have a new cause for state pride.  Thaaaaaanks Lewis Carrol, you honorary Minnesotan, you!

Other highlights of the day included buying strawberries, Clementines, a toaster (no "oven" but I'm learning to deal with the real oven instead), 0.30E bread for 0.28 (since it was either that "perfect" change or breaking a 1E coin... I must be pretty pathetic if the guy behind the counter didn't hold me to my 2cents), and a Marvel Comics (tribute to Justin Young) '09-'10 school year planner; getting my exercise on again in PE; attending a presentation by two Native American women from the US who make short films and were brought here by the American Embassy (and then brought to my school via me --> my coordinator); and finalizing details for a dress-as-your-fave-Spanish-fashion joint birthday potluck, coming soon to a culturally sensitive Fulbrighter's piso near you.

inspiration

Today, in Educación Fisica (EF—or really, since it’s part of the bilingual program, PE [for Physical Education] is appropriate), I participated with the students in an endurance circuit of sorts, with basketball and soccer dribbling, jogging, jump rope, and step-aerobics.  At each station, the students were supposed to memorize the health benefit (which, for dribbling a soccer ball apparently includes “Improves appearance”), as they were asked to recall them at the end of the period.

I realized today that I’ve a) been here a few days over a month, and b) not exercised in just as long (other than wandering around the city, which I did far more frequently early on).  I actually REALLY enjoyed today’s PE class, though, so when I was at the nearby “Chino store” (un-PCly called such because these frequent small-scale Big Lots discount stores all seem to be run by Asians) shopping for a new backpack (success: light blue with yellow trim; logo on the outside pocket says “LOBO” with an abstract wolf design—clearly the only reason I even picked it up) small/big enough to be my RyanAir carry-on, I wandered through the toy aisle and stumbled across.... jump-ropes.  So I bought one. 

For €1 I figure it’s worth it to at least *tell* myself that I *could* be working out if I wanted to.  I’m gonna look up gyms online tomorrow...

day-trippin

I’m not gonna lie to you—it’s absolutely pouring out.  And lightning even occasionally lights up the entire neighborhood outside my floor-to-ceiling living room window, with the thunder claps following so far behind that every single one of our Wyoming thunderstorms this summer would scoff at this pathetic attempt to fit into the same category.

I bring this up not with the purpose of informing you about the most boring topic possible in my life, but to admit that I’d really rather be lying in bed right now, falling asleep to the steady bouncing of raindrops on the rooftops outside... but, since I’ve noticed it’s been a good while since I’ve written anything, I wanted to give you a quick taste of my life these days.  But I’m overwhelmed by the task of updating about everything from the past so-many-weeks, so I’m just going to post random clumps of similarly-themed information whenever I find the time, and hopefully that will suffice to catch you all up on my life.  Vale?  Vale.

So Cathy and I really did go to Cuenca with Guilherme, my Brasilian almost-flatmate, and a bunch of international randoms he somehow brought together: besides me, Cathy and Gui, one girl was from Singapore, two girls were from different eastern European countries, and then we had with us two actual Spaniards. 

The only information I knew about Cuenca before jumping on (after almost missing) the (not-even-THAT-early) train was what I’d gleaned from Wikipedia: Cuenca has a really cool “old part” in the middle of the city up on a hill, and they tout their casas colgadas (“hanging houses”) as a point of interest.  I’ll admit it—I was interested.  I wanted to see the hanging houses.

And so did the rest of the group.  I don’t know where they heard about them, but Gui was carrying around a more larger Spain guidebook (in English, for some reason) than even my family owns, so maybe he had passed on fascinating tidbits of info, but unfortunately, what none of us were anticipating was the fact that approximately 1.5 hanging houses actually exist in Cuenca.  After hiking past the top of the old city, I pointed it (them?) out from afar, and we purposefully marched back down the hill to take a closer look.  Yup, even upon close inspection, said hanging houses were nowhere near as cool as promised.  It was essentially one house that had a few balconies attached to the side of the building (I guess “hanging,” if one were to use a generous adjective), overlooking a deep canyon with the river below, and then another house set farther back into the street, so its “hanging” balconies weren’t even out as far as the others’.

Naturally, being the positive, young and idealistic explorers that we are, we didn’t let a silly little misrepresentation ruin our day.  The sun was out, the gray skies had disappeared, and there just happened to be a festival for San Mateo (which none of us had known about), culminating in a modified running of the bulls in their Plaza Mayor (not as cool as Madrid’s). 

Overall, the day was hilarious and absolutely ridiculous, starting with the bizarre group of strangers (not only our funny mixture of personalities, but also incredibly varied levels of Spanish); to our lunch at a café where every single person’s order was incorrect in some way; to the fake running of the fake bulls (literally, men wheeling plastic, painted bull heads/torsos into crowds of laughing children); to the fake running of the “bulls” (actually female cows attached to ropes [held by probably the same men as at the earlier event], running through more contained, yet more frightened, crowds); and every thing in between.

Cathy and I ended up taking an earlier bus back than the rest of the group to try to be in Madrid for the start of La Noche en Blanco, a 9pm-7am city-wide street festival celebrating arts and bein’ artsy.  Though we missed the kick-off, which was supposed to be hundreds of white balloons with poems on them set into the air from Plaza Mayor, we still managed to participate in other incredible events throughout the night. 

Near the Prado Museum around 1am, I was in love with the public ballet lessons given by a man on a giant projection screen, but even more in love with the dozens of people lined up at the makeshift barres (long metal barriers set up for exactly this purpose), actually following along and not even laughing at each other as they pliè’d and arabesque’d. 

Around 2am, Cathy, Lily and I joined a large crowd of people to dance to a live DJ’s strange musical selections in Plaza de Cibeles (where, a week later, I joined a far larger crowd in support of Madrid’s candidacy to host the 2016 Olympics—check out this photo [I'm the one in yellow: http://bit.ly/sQNaV ] and click the link at the bottom to read the short article).  The three of us attempted to start a train throughout the crowd, but only got ~2 strangers to join... regardless, we continued to be generally the most dance-tastic people for a solid half hour until the rest of the crowd realized that really was what they wanted to be doing, too.

After grabbing some tortilla española and wandering around for a few more hours, I crawled into bed sometime after 5am and slept until 3 (as much as that was my strategy all through college, it’s DEFINITELY how I’m surviving weekends here).

Speaking of weekends, this coming weekend is long (not that they’re ever short—we don’t have to go into school on Fridays), as Monday is National Day in Spain.  Some Fulbright friends and I are hopping on over to Costa Brava via RyanAir, staying in a beach town called Lloret de Mar, so stayed tuned for an update on that.... ha, in the next month or so. 

Otherwise, I haven’t done too much traveling... Lily, Cathy and I went to Toledo this past Saturday, and although my parents claim I went there at age 9, I certainly did not recognize anything.  We mostly wandered around in search of sites of historical and cultural significance which we knew to be somewhere in the old, walled part of the city, but we ended up FINALLY stumbling across the Sinagoga del Tránsito about 20 minutes before it closed.  The synagogue was built by Muslims, for Jews, and used by Christians for hundreds of years, and is now part of a museum about Sephardic Jews in Spain.  It was actually really interesting, and I wish we’d had more time to spend actually *in* the museum.  Luckily, Toledo is only about a 45-minute, €9.70 (roundtrip) bus ride south of Madrid, so I think I should be able to make it back there (possibly tagging along with one of my classes, as I think the third-year students are going on a field trip in April!).