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-6th 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 6th. 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 7th 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.
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