American Again

So this blog sort of fell off the face of the earth once I boarded my plane back to the United States.  Don't get me wrong, I wanted to end my story on a high note, maybe concluding my soliloquy on Christmas Eve, surrounded by family and Christmas trees and peanut butter cookies.  But I can be honest and say that the end was pretty anti-climactic.

The night before I was due to leave Aurelia and I had a nice moment where I insisted she take a picture with me, one where after much pleading, she finally relented, although she's holding a poinsettia up very close to her face because the previous photo she wanted to block her face completely.  She had been insisting that she'd send me a picture of back when she was young and beautiful, to which I responded "te conozco como eres ahora" which means "but I know you as you are now".

The group of friends I was closest with went out one last time, although half of us decided staying out until 6 am might be pushing it for us...we got churros one last time at San Gines, the famous churreria y chocolateria and headed home and home.

I left Aurelia's house at about 6 in the morning, which was definitely overkill because my flight wasn't until 10 and the ride there takes about a half hour.  Although I hadn't missed or been late to a flight, I wasn't about to risk it the day before Christmas Eve.  I left the Madrid airport without any overweight luggage fees (although my mother said there was a mysterious charge on the card and my tickets, so they may have just forgot to tell me).  And finally after a lengthy 8 hour flight to Philadelphia, I exited my flight (spilled chocolate milk in my nice purse) and turned on my blackberry for the first time...where I proceeded to get 600 emails to my phone and a startling amount of texts messages of "where are you and why are you not responding to my texts?"

Home was just as I left it, there wasn't any culture shock of going back to America, mainly because my family acts like a crazy Spanish family anyway.

People continue to ask me how my abroad experience was...and for the past two months I've been struggling to sum up what it was really like.  Adjectives like amazing and wonderful don't cover what it was like to live in a completely different country, surrounded by people you've never met before.  I don't think my life was changed drastically from my experience, but at the same time people have noted I'm a different person than when I left.  For the most part, all my interesting stories are now predominately centered around my life in Madrid and I can't seem to have a conversation without uttering the phrase "when I was in Madrid..."

I loved every minute of my abroad life (well, minus my classes, let's be honest) and I've seen some wonderful places I didn't think I'd have the opportunity to see this early on in my life.  I'm almost scared going back to Europe to visit wouldn't compare to what it was like living there this fall.

As for my journey to discover who I was...when I think about it, I wasn't really lost and I had my own identity.  I doubt I'll ever integrate myself into a Spanish or Latino culture where I'll be able to have a conversation without someone asking me "...Where are you from?" but after my time abroad, I don't necessarily identify fully with my American side either.  I'm pretty much where I started, a hybrid of different cultures with the ability to fake a legit accent for a good 2 minutes until I get flustered and admit I'm American born.  And if I learned anything from my current international business class (i.e. not much), it's not where you're from that counts, but how you approach the places you're going.

T minus 36 Hours

Yolanda Yusef was crazy scary during our final presentation.  My group and I have been preparing our market research presentation for the past 6 weeks, all leading up to this 45 minute presentation we had to give in front of our class and another class of the same topic.  1. I hate public speaking 2. Public Speaking is harder in a different language 3. Answering sporadic questions throughout our presentation made it even worse. 

Yolanda would stop us during our presentation and ask us questions about the history of the company.  Luckily I knew this part and was able to chime in and adequately and articulately answer her questions.   She would then ask us why we chose both a quantitative and qualitative approach to our research.  I let my other group members handle this question.  Finally she criticized how fast all my group members spoke, where we were looking (i.e. only at her and not at the entire class) and the layouts of our slides.

And then surprisingly, when we managed to finish the presentation she congratulated us and apparently...we had done the best thus far in the class?  Not what it seemed like from where I was standing, but then again she had only pointed out really minor flaws in our presentation whereas the others, she had issues with their actual project, as opposed to the presentation.

I thought I'd add this in so that my mom knows I've actually been doing schoolwork / being stressed out about it.  In twelve and a half hours I'll be taking the final for this Information Systems of Marketing class and from there, I will be packing away my Madrid life into two very full suitcases, having one last rage with my friends and catching a taxi to the airport to HOPEFULLY make it home in time for Christmas, my favorite of all holidays!

Perhaps I'll update from the airports, because apparently I have quite the adventure on my way home.  Madrid to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to LaGuardia and finally LaGuardia to Buffalo International Airport!

My Spanish Miracle

So as I mentioned, I've taken and finished three out of my four big final exams for this semester.  Wednesday will be my Sistemas de Información de Marketing test with my favorite teacher, Yolanda Yusef.  She really reminds me of my aunts from Mexico in that she's kinda loud and kinda nuts.  Everytime I enter the class, generally early and before all my other classmates, she grabs my face and goes "Ay, Querida".  I still haven't figured out why, but as I was telling my friend D, I believe it is because I'm pretty much the youngest and quietest person in the class.  I have my suspicions that I am actually in a grad class, mainly because everyone in the class is around 23 years old, all my group members for instance, are 24.  She also loves to make me talk about the United States, which is a little different, since none of my other professors have shown much interest in the topic. 

Since the class is mainly focused on Market Research, she made me discuss with the class the concept of "door to door" surveys in the United States.  Obviously I don't actually have much experience with this, but I can say it's plausible that these surveys are more accepted in suburban communities as opposed to city communities.  From there we got into a topic of Jehovah's Witnesses.  Yeah.  Yolanda is pretty nuts but my class was amazed by the Jehovahs.

The other tests, were surprisingly short.  The one I was most worried about was for my Historia Contemporanea de España class, which literally revolves around Franco.  This is easily my most uninteresting class and honestly the one where I had slacked off the most.  I even went as far to not read the book that was assigned.  Although I had studied fervently the history in the week before the test, it was only the night before the test that I opted to finally pick up the book and skim through it.  My eyes landed on the section "Milagro Española".  I quickly read the section, actually finding it interesting, and then proceeded to pass out for the night, knowing that in about 6 short hours, I would have to wake up for the two exams of that day.

As it turns OUT...the Spanish Miracle, which I hadn't even heard about until I'd picked up the book, played a major part of the exam!  I consider this a Spanish miracle in itself.  Although since reading that one section of the book, I might consider actually reading the book, even if it is written in a Pro-Francoism stance.

Porto, Lisbon, Barcelona, and My Greatest Disappointment

Since I went on a giant and epic adventure over my long break, its hard to summarize it all into a compact little blog post.  For those of you who know me, feel free to ask me more questions and details, no doubt I will tell you all about it when I go home ( 9 DAYS! ), and for those of you from Alaska who are my fervent readers, well...I guess I won't have the opportunity to tell you as I won't be going to Alaska anytime soon.

Porto and Lisbon were amazing and SO affordable.  Other than the hostels where we stayed, we virtually spent NO money.  Barcelona sort of made up for that, but really, Portugal is amazing, beautiful and cheap.  Early morning the day we were in Porto, we went on a wine tour and tasting for 4 euros!  Port wine is very very sweet and really made for desserts fruits and cheeses.  It was totally worth it though, and we got to see the giant vats where they let the wine "mature".  After wards we headed to this cute little restaurant right on the waterfront that serves Francesinha and its LITERALLY so so good that every time I remember it, I crave it.  It's only made correctly in Porto, and incorrectly in a few other places of Portugal.  Here is a picture that you can all drool over.

From Porto, we headed to Lisbon, which although they didn't have a food as amazing as the Francesinha, they did have cheap food and upon arrival at our hostel (which actually had the nicest staff in the world) we ran two doors down the street to the Tofa Restaurant where we proceeded to a plate of meat and fish respectivly, mine being accompanied by a piece of sausage, their version of french fries (flat and circular), what looked like pork (not a big pork eater so I skipped that part) pickled vegetables and an egg.  We each had sangria as well as coffee, and the bill came to 13 euros!!!!!!!!!!!!  We literally feasted for under 7 euros.  That would never have happened in Spain, let me just tell you.  The next morning we went and climbed up a giant ass hill to see the old Castle in Lisbon, and it has a really pretty view of the city.  It would have been better, but it was really cloudy when we left that morning and at the Lisbon Airport, it had started to torrential downpour.  Luckily we missed it all and managed to leave on time.  Our friend Roofie and Di had actually come in that day, and taken a tour around the city.  Evidently not too long ago, Portugal was hit with a massive earthquake and fire that burnt almost the entire city down.  When they rebuilt, the King wasn't very creative and he wanted all the houses to be built the exact same to save on time.  Here's what it looks like from the Castle.

And finally Barcelona!!  We had such a wonderful time in Barcelona, other than that fact that everything was back to being expensive and we spent probably a full day waiting in various lines.  Apparently we went at the wrong time to Sagrada Familia and stood in line for an hour and a half (again, sorry Tita) but it was worth it to see Gaudi's architecture at its finest.  From the outside, the Sagrada Familia is really really ugly, and looks like a space ship dropped it off in the middle of Barcelona.  Its all dark and black and kinda looks like something Ursula from The Little Mermaid would live in but when we finally got in, it was amazing.  It was all white and for some reason really cold, but lit up so beautifully.  The stained glass behind the altar was gorgeous but the most amazing thing was probably the ceiling.  It was really intricately done and it seemed to go on forever.

And now I know everyone knows how much I've been obsessing over Puyol.  To be fair, my uncle warned me he might not be playing...but December 7th, we ventured to Camp Nou to watch FC Barcelona play Rubin Kazan which is a Russian team from the city of Kazan from the Republic of Tartarstan (yea where?), but to my extreme disappointment, Puyol did not play.  I got to stare at the giant that is Piqué for most of the time, and Messi was sent out in the second half...but no Carles Puyol.  My disappointment surpassed the time I couldn't see the inside of the Colosseum, as I don't actually have any emotional attachment to that ancient building.  Stoically I remained in my seat and accepted my fate.  Bah.

On a brightnote, the people we met at our hostel were some of the funniest, nicest, and most interesting people we've ever come across.  Its just so amazing how some european kids our age live.  One was there in Barcelona just "living", no plan for the future and it was apparent that he wasn't all that upset about not knowing where his life was going.

Anyway, its go time for exams and presentations now.  I've actually had to sit down and study every day this week!  First one is this thursday, but hopefully it won't be too bad!  Friday the 17th, is doomsday, two exams in four hours.  Then the following tuesday I have a presentation in Spanish with my marketing group and then that Wednesday I'll be taking the Marketing final a month and a half before everyone else in my class does.  AND THEN THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23rd, I WILL BE ON A PLANE HEADED HOME!

Rome Can't Be Built or Seen in One Day

I love Madrid, don't get me wrong.  The people, the food.  Wait strike that, don't love the food, but I love the history, I love how friendly everyone is, I love how people generally can understand me when I speak Spanish (*cough* Paris *cough*), I love how cheap transportation is, how mild the weather generally is...

But I am in love with Rome.  I sort of feel like I'm cheating on Madrid, but only a short 32 hours in Rome was NOT enough for me.  I can commit to saying that I would love to go back to Rome in an instant, to visit it with my family, to visit it with friends, go retire to Rome.  And I would probably.  The food was excellent, everything was walkable, the tiny little hostel we stayed at was adorable and the staff was super friendly (The Ciak Hostel, no where near anything but the Colosseum).

I went to Rome with Tita, of course.  The first thing we did when we arrived was drop off our bags (at 11 pm at night) to the Hostel where Veronica and Nate had already PTFOd, and pretty much ran to the restaurant down the street that the front desk clerk at the Hostel had suggested, but warned that it would be closing at midnight.  Three blocks and two minutes later, we had arrived at Mama Mia Pizzeria (yes, that is what it was called) and we had sat down to the delight of our waiter, who actually turned out to be the sweetest old egyptian man ever.  We quickly decided what we wanted, as we were starving and true to our words, hadn't eaten anything all day in preparation of this meal.  We split a Neapolitan calzone (cheeeese), I ordered ravioli and Tita ordered spaghetti with ragu.  We split a tiramisu and since the Egyptian man loved us so much, he gave us free lemon gelato and some chocolate.  We happily walked back to our hostel and passed out with our food babies / comas.  Everyone snored happily that night.

We then woke up bright and early (well, 9 am) to a lovely breakfast provided by the hostel (3 day old croissants and toast-it-yourself bread) and proceeded to begin the sight-seeing marathon.

We began at Vatican City, by taking the metro from our Hostel on the west side of the city all the way North East.  Vatican was just as impressive as I thought it would be, even if Tita needed some arm twisting to get there. 

We went in and visited the Vatican museum and got to see the Sistine Chapel, both were filled with some really interesting objects and painted super elaborately.

 

But since we only had one day to see everything we could, we had to keep moving.  From The Holy See, we walked to Castel Sant' Angelo, which was built as a mausoleum for Roman Emperor Hadrian, but later used as a fortress, a castle, a prison and today a museum!

From there, we walked to the above, Piazza Navona.  Famous for being the place of the ancient roman "games" and competitions, and then later open markets.  It also has fountains by Bernini in the center.  There were food and toy vendors all over the place and at the north end, were artists selling their paintings.

This would be the ceiling of the Pantheon.  When it rains, it pours through the roof but drains into the floor and they rope off the area so no one gets wet.  The hole is there because back then, they didn't know if the building would be able to support the roof so in order to make it lighter, they cut this big hole.  The pantheon was originally built as a "temple to all the roman gods" but is now a Roman Catholic Church known as "Santa Maria Rotunda".

We made it to the Trevi fountain, and it was PACKED with people, all throwing coins and taking pictures.  The Piazza it is in isn't big at all, in fact the Trevi Fountain seems to take it all up.  We managed to squeeze to the front and take some pictures but it was, of course, beautiful!

We hiked up to the Spanish Steps, although we are still unclear as to why they are called the Spanish steps, other than the fact that the Spanish embassy to Rome is just down the street.  Tons of people just chilling out here too, but you are NOT allowed to eat here ( I read that later on wikipedia ).  The Church at the top is also really beautiful, but the sight from the top is even better.  As there aren't any huge buildings or towers in Rome, you have to climb to the top of hills to get a view of the city.

In between the Spanish Steps and the Colosseum, we saw the Neptune Fountain, the Roman Republic and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, which was actually hosting a exposition on Teotihuacan, Mexico, and the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II.

Now... for some reason my blog will not allow me to put any more pics up on this post, which is OK since by the time we go to the Colosseum, it was getting very dark (even though it was only 6 pm) and my camera doesn't really work well outdoors at night.  This is where the most tragic thing happened to me...we found out that the Colosseum was closed at 3 pm.  I'm sure we would have known, had we looked at our iPod World Travel Guide App before we began that morning.

3pm was when we were at the Spanish steps.  I didn't feel too guilty, since we did in fact get to see the Colosseum, albeit from the outside.  I think my feelings can be most easily described through an analogy to one of my favorite television shows.  Do you remember in America's Next Top Model?  When the girls go on Go-Sees and they make interviews around the city, but have to be back in time or else they are disqualified?  And there is always one girl that is disqualified, even though she did an amazing job on her interviews?  Yeah, I know how that girl feels.  We sat outside, looking up at this massive building, knowing there were ancient ruins to be seen within, but due to the low lighting and no doubt the high chance of us falling and hurting ourselves or the ruins should we enter, we knew there was nothing more to be done.  We had seen what we could.

Rome wasn't built in one day, and it would be an injustice to try and see it all in one.

We decided to go for a full Italian dinner and drown our sorrows in red wine, which was super cheap anddd tasty.  Mmm Lasagna.

Its Only Ten AM and I've Already Had an Ephiphany

I've been thinking a lot about my time here in Spain.  I've seen loads of sights in Madrid and have, I assume, done all the touristy things there are to do here.  Between my two classes where I don't know any AU kids, I regularly converse in Spanish with a couple of girls I have gotten to know this past semester and in my Sistemas de Informacion de Marketing class, my group has recently completed a very impressive Market Research Survey and handed it in (although to be honest, my participation was generally research and idea based, evidently my written Spanish isn't a strong as I thought it was).

So what has me worried is that I only have about a month left, two weekends in which I won't even be in Madrid.  This coming weekend I'll be visiting BK in Rome with my good friend Tita.  I've been excited about this trip since I booked it back in September and I can't wait to just...EAT.  DD had come and visited me in Madrid and one of the main topics we discussed was how good the food was in Italy.  In fact, thinking about going to Italy and eating just made me facebook stalk a couple friends' pictures, since they recently returned from Rome.  I never had any doubt, but just so everyone knows, Spanish food isn't all that good.  Sure there's paella (although I still like my dad's paella way more) croquettas (good but heavy on carbs) and jamón in general, but I think some of my favorite meals here have been when it WASN'T Spanish cooking, but rather some other ethnic influence.  Let's be serious, gazpacho is pretty gross.

I knew I always wanted to stay a year here in Spain, but this has me considering it even more since it seems the semester has gone by so fast.  I can't, of course, since I would never graduate early from AU like I've planned on doing since I was a senior in high school.  I might not even graduate on time if I stayed, due to the fact that I'm not allowed to take Accounting or Finance classes here in Spain and all the classes I currently take only have a 50% chance of ACTUALLY transferring back to AU.  Third reason being that although Universidad Pontificia Comillas tuition is really only about 5000 euros or so, I am still paying full AU tuition, the additional money AU is of course, pocketing and building another useless piece of architecture that will no doubt fall down during the next snow storm.  No wonder they encourage students to go abroad.

I was talking with Águeda (yep, crazy name) and she was telling me that grad school is so ridiculously cheap here in Madrid, compared to the United States, where all education is expensive, AU significantly so.  So cheap, in fact, that a year might cost about 5000 euros, which is about $7,000.  And that's at Universidad Pontificia Comillas, which is one of the top schools in Madrid.

Magerit - Matrice - Madrid

No, this is not a cheesy album title but rather what I encountered today.  Surprisingly but willingly, I woke up this beautiful but chilly Sunday morning at 8am to meet Ruthie at Plaza Mayor to go on a walking tour of old Madrid.  For three euros, we followed the very quick "Fred" throughout the streets that me and mis amigos have been known to wander / get lost, and pass the very buildings that hold hundreds of years of history.  My bad.

On this tour, I learned more about Spanish history than in my actual Spanish (Contemporary) History class.  The development of the name "Madrid", the walls that once stood that are now indicated by different colored stones of the street, some ancient ruins that I always assumed were actually metro stations (awkward), and the creation of my favorite cathedral, Catedral de Almudena.

I went last week to mass at this Cathedral (yessss everyone can be shocked), and this week after our tour with Fred (yesss be even more shocked), and although it starts off super warm in the cathedral, it gradually descends to freezing, but the mass is pretty and the inside of the Cathedral is gorgeous.  It's a really contemporary cathedral, with cubist stained glass and the most colorful decor I've encountered of Spanish Cathedrals.  Granted it was finished about ten years ago, so that may be why, but its still my fav and recommend everyone to go, as the lack of post-life Jesus paintings are at a minimum.