I think I have gained 5lbs after the past 2 weekends

November 13-15 (Taco Bell and Burger King)

So I was talking to Gonzalo one night and I was telling him that the first thing I wanted after landing in Chicago from Australia was Taco Bell. I even had my mom go out of the way in search out a Taco Bell, slightly ridiculous I know . It’s not like its even great food, and I can’t even really describe or justify the craving. I think they put drugs in the food to be honest because there is no real logical reason that of all food to crave, I crave Taco Bell when I move abroad. So anyways, I was telling Gonzalo all this and the GENIUS that he is did some research and found that there are like 3 in Spain, and all are in Madrid! So on Friday he called me after my private lesson and said he was taking me and Alissa to Taco Bell!!! Pretty amazing if you ask me. So we drive up to Barrio de Pilar and the Taco Bell was decorated/designed the exact same way as all the new ones they are building in the states. While the menu is a little different, they had all the classics and “Taco Bell musts”. While I am not sure if Gonzalo particularly liked it, he tried it (it was his first Taco Bell!) Yay for a Chicken Burrito from Taco Bell in Madrid!

November 20-22 (Doner Kebab, Take a Wok, ½ of a Falafeel, Doner Kebab, and a midnight pastry that was a ½ off)

So now that I have picked up 5 private lessons (I wouldn’t suggest any more than 5 for other auxilliaries) I am working about the same amount as I would be in the states. So when the weekend comes around I just want to sleep and relax. Lazy-yes, boring-yes, necessary-yes. But this weekend I thought I would make a real attempt at going out despite an overwhelming desire to just sleep and watch movies. So Thursday me and Alissa met up with Jasmine and Bethany and we were SUPPOSED to meet up with Megan, Rocio, Tom, and Lonely Boy at El Tigre. So we go to El Tigre and the line is ridiculous. People are eating their tapas over trashcans out in the street. Even if we wanted to join in on this, it was impossible to even get to the door, and don’t even attempt to get inside. We tried to get in touch with the rest of the group but that was met with extreme difficulty So we switched to Plan B…but we didn’t have a Plan B. So we walked around for what felt like an eternity but was really only about an hour. This is one of the problems of not being a “local”. We really only know the “touristy” areas but unfortunately everyone else knows those same areas, so they are impossible to go into. And then when we try just a random place the people look at us like “why are you here? We ensured this wasn’t in a travel book”. So after an hour of wandering, no food, no drinks, nada, Alissa starts talking about a kebab. BRILLIANT. What other way to drown your sorrows on a failed night than a kebab. So then we at least had a mission in meandering. So we saw this little sign that said Kebab, we went in, it was AMAZING, and my night was complete J

On Saturday, Alissa, Natalie, and I met up with two of the girls that they work with at a private academy, I can only remember one of their names-Carmen. So we went to this place that Alissa had gone to with a random person and she couldn’t stop talking about how amazing it was. (WARNING—WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ MAY MAKE YOU QUESTION MY JUDGEMENT AND HOW SAFE IT WAS, BUT I FELT SAFE THE ENTIRE TIME AND HAD A REALLY GOOD TIME, SO NO HEART ATTACKS PLEASE.) So this “place” was in Malesana, which is a neighborhood in Madrid. The actual place is called the Patio of Malesana, or something to that effect, and it is an abandoned building that a bunch of hippies have kind of taken over and have made it in to a type of community center, but its not technically their building. It’s controlled anarchy at its best. It is a community center in all aspects of the word because they give classes, have computers, entertainment, BUT they also serve drinks and allow massive amounts of pot smoking. So at first we just took it all in (I’m not even going to attempt to describe the really cool “graffiti” that was on the walls but know that they were all making a statement…my favorite one was a cow that had a world map on his side and he was drinking from a canister than had TOXIC posted on the side and all of his utters but one were being pumped into containers that had LETHAL written on this side, and then just one utter was going into “organic” bottles. Take what you want from it, but I loved it) So we got a drink, were chatting, and then I start hearing music. Reggae music, reggaeton music, hip hop music. I just couldn’t control my hips, I had to dance! So we go out of the room where they served alcohol and its like an open air concert. I’m going to try to describe this building, so bare with me.

So imagine apartment buildings that open up only to each other with a courtyard in the middle. That is what this place was like. So of course, it was open air. We were like on the 2^nd floor, so we looked down and it’s packed with people just dancing, a Jamaiacan guy rapping, people are just loving everything! I wish I could have just bottled up that feeling. Think Woodstock and that is how I felt. While I couldn’t tolerate the massive amounts of marijuana smoke on a weekly basis, I would definitely go back.

Either we had the munchies from all the pot or we were just hungry, but we starting having a craving for a Kebab again! So we left the Patio, found a really cheap Kebab place, and then me and Alissa had plans to stay out, but decided to just go ahead and head home. So we get off the metro at our neighborhood and we hear laughing coming from this pastry place. We had just talked about how we had been eating massive amounts of crap. So we just look at each other, and start laughing. Why not?!?! So we go inside and its like heaven! They are all handmade pastries and 50% off after midnight!! We couldn’t possibly resist…it would have been a crime! So I ended the night with a full tummy and a fulfilled desire to hear some reggae music…only to be awaken at 4 AM by my roommate bringing home drunk Spanish guys practically yelling in my front room acting like the only English they know is “foreplay”, but that blog will be fore another day.

On Sunday Gonzalo borrowed a bike from his uncle and took me biking!! I don’t know if because it offered a sense of “normalcy” to my life in Madrid or because it reminded me of home, or because it was just the feeling of being outside—but I loved it! Pretty sweet guy, huh! To top it off, he made me a Gonzalo special sandwich after...what more could a girl ask for?

Cultural Note 1: Window shopping is an actual event here. I love going past stores and women are just staring at the window displays.

Possible Cultural Note 2: Either I have just been around some dirty people, or picking your nose isn’t as bad here. I don’t know how many times I have seen people knuckle deep in their nose and show no concern about the appearance of having half their finger in their nose.

School note: We were learning clothes in school the other day and we taught the kids underwear. So we were saying “stand up if you’re wearing a sweater.” “Stand up if you’re wearing a t-shirt.” Then the teacher said “Stand up if you are wearing underwear…..everybody should be standing up!” All the kids started laughing and stood up and the girl that knows the most English in the class shouts “profe, profe…no tengo!” We just looked at eachother and moved on to the next topic hahahaa

Tomorrow (Wednesday) Gonzalo is picking me up from school and we are going to Valle do los Caidos—its where Franco is buried as well as the soldiers from both sides of the Spanish Civil War…the history and political science major inside of me is pretty excited about it to say the least!

Thursday-Barcelona!!

"i don't think you understand, I speak english..."

Sorry about the abandonment! I don’t even have a good excuse, I just haven’t really felt like writing. I’ve had two good weekends, I really like my job, I have no complaints, and I would just rather live it than write about it, but I know that I will want to read about my memories in the future, so I still need to blog, even if its not necessarily the thing I want to be doing at the moment. So I have neglected my blog for the past 2 weekends, which seem like a whirl at this moment but I will try to break it down. Last weekend me and Alissa went out with Ana and her boyfriend Antonio and we had a great time. We first went to this restaurant and had tapas (one of which octopus and I actually tried it!), but the main reason we went there was because of these drinks/shots you can get. So imagine a small ice cream cone the size of a shot glass, covered with chocolate on the inside. Then they pour this alcohol into it and you take it like a shot, but it seems really sweet because you start drinking the chocolate. And then, you eat the shot glass! It was just really something different. The restaurant was called Madrono I believe. Antonio also tried to convince me there use to be bears in Madrid. While I believe him, that’s like telling someone that bears use to live in New York City. It makes sense, but seems completely illogical given the condition of it now.

Also, being the history and political science geek that I am, I really enjoy talking to people about Spanish history and politics and such. It has really shocked me the frequency of conversations about the dictatorship, and for the record, I don’t bring it up!! Anyway, somehow we started talking about being left-handed. Well, Antonio is 28 and is left-handed and he was telling me that his generation was the first generation to go to school post-dictatorship and that it was difficult for the teachers to teach him how to write because under Franco everyone had to write with their right hand, and that it was believed if you couldn’t write with your right-hand you were believed to be “slow”. He didn’t have much more information on the topic, but I thought it was definitely blog worthy given that I am left handed.

So afterwards they gave us a brief tour around the area which I liked because it was all places I have been several times to go out at night, but for example the area that I go to for my intercambio night was formerly known to be the writer’s neighborhood.

So after that we went to this Polynesian-themed cocktail bar and had drinks out of these really cool cups. I don’t even think they can be called cups. They were like hollowed-out statues. There are pictures on facebook J So thankfully, this all happened on the night of daylight savings time, because afterwards me and Alissa met up with Gonzalo and some of his friends (around 3 a.m.) It was really sweet because Gonzalo had told me that only one of them spoke English so I was expecting to not be able to communicate with them at all, but to my surprise Gonzalo had taught them all the phrase “nice to meet you” so when we were doing the besos-greeting thing they all said “nice to meet you”. It’s the little things that get me, obviously.

So this past weekend was Halloween weekend. It was my second Halloween abroad and I definitely see the tradition has caught on abroad. Obviously not to the same extent as it is in the states, but I was really surprised the amount of people that were dressed up and had their faces painted. Anyways, I didn’t do any of that business, LOL. On Friday night, Jasmine and Megan had a get together at their house and it went great. Gonzalo and Jesus made some Sangria for us, random internationals showed up, I think you get the picture. I think the funniest thing was that a group of Erasmus students buzzed up to the apartment and said Julio told them there was an American Halloween party there, which was true, but we had no clue who Julio was, but the more the merrier right? So up came a big group of people we had no clue who they were or who told them about the party, but they were great. One of the guys invited even invited us to a botellon the following night. (Botellon is pretty much just drinking in the plazas/parks/streets/etc.) Great times, great times. So after getting home at 6 a.m. and sleeping ALL DAY Saturday, me and Alissa met up with two of the girls she works with and just had a girls night and I really liked it. It’s nights like Saturday that make Madrid feel like home, yet still being able to enjoy things in Madrid. So here we were, dishing about stuff, just having a great girls-night, but at the same time eating tapas and drinking Spanish wine. I was telling them that I am going to be so spoiled by my working situation here, that it will be impossible for me to find a job that I believe to be "worthy". I was telling them I'm going to go into an interview and tell them "I can only work 5 hours a day, I need a 2-hr lunch break, 30-minute coffee break, all Friday's off, and I expect to be paid $20/hr plus insurance and all paid holidays" and when everyone laughs in my face I am going to see "I don't think you understand, I speak english..." LMAO Maybe it was a had to be there moment, but I had the entire table laughing at the ridiculousness that we live. Oh the life I lead. I think that about sums up my past two weekends……

This past week at work me and the other three auxiliaries put on “a play” for each of the classes. Paula thought it would be a good idea that once a month we organize “a 15 minute play” to act out a fairytale, and then we go around to all of the classrooms (infantile-6^th grade) and act out the play. So this month we did the three little pigs and the kids loved it!! Thankfully the dialogue is really repetitive so some of the kids understood a majority of it, but we were so over the top in our actions they all at least had a sense about what was going on. In case you’re curious, I was the pig that built my house out of brick J

Cultural note: So last Friday I was talking with Ana and she was telling me about all of the Christmas stuff that goes on in Madrid and how I should make sure to go, and then she mentions the Three Kings. I’m like Three Kings? So after probably 15 minutes of talking about it, Santa Claus doesn’t bring the kids presents here, the Three Kings do, and they bring the presents on the night of January 6^th. Ana was also telling me that the three kings leave presents for you at your families house so kids go to their family members house all day on the 7^th to see what the Three Kings left for them. AAANNNDDDD, instead of leaving cookies and milk for Santa Claus, the kids leave water for the camels. True story. So then I was talking to Marina’s mom and she told me when she was little she would leave brandy out for the Kings because of all the work they had to do hahaha. I guess this just took me by so much surprise because I thought everyone did Santa Claus, and the Three Kings bringing presents is something I had never even heard of before.

Random observation: It is possibly just my school, but I am really shocked by the amount of fathers that bring their kids to school. I’m not talking about 4 or 5 dads, over 60% of the parents that bring their kids to school are dads. Talk about a cultural difference that needs to catch on in the states.