Tuesday Meeting

Today Stephanie and I overslept and then realized that we had to go to the meeting at 12 to meet with Levonne. We got ready and ran to school but we were still the only ones late. We sat and listened to her for a while and then we turned in our questions. Then we walked home and went to H&M to do more shopping. After awhile we headed back home to study for our test in History tomorrow morning. Josune and I got bored easily but Alex made us stay and study together.

Then when we were all pretty bored of studying we found some tango songs and Josune and Alex showed off their mad skils.

Then Stephanie wanted to play too, but she wasn't in our class so we told her she could stay but she couldn't be part of our awesome team. Then we all got crazy with our lack of sleep and Steph started sending me facebook messages to come visit her in her room. It was hilarious but we finally went to sleep.

Levonne’s Visit

Today class finished up pretty early so I was able to get home after only about an hour or two. Mandy and I made soup for lunch and were sitting in the living room watching Shakira music videos when the door bell rang. We had forgotten that Levonne was still here and was scheduled to come and visit the apartments so she could see how AIFS was working as a program. So we jumped up and gave her a tiny tour of our apartment and she kept telling us that we are so lucky and we are taking this for granted – I asked what she meant by this and she just said it could be worse. I still don't understand how we're taking it for granted but there you go. After awhile they left and stood in the hallway outside our door forever, I listened through the door but they were only talking about going to visit the home stays.

I then went out with Mandy to go clothes shopping. I have been wearing the same couple of changes of clothes for over a month now and it is definitely time for a change. I went in Zara, a huge European clothing chain, and bought a few things. And then found a small bag for me to use when we went to Italy.

Later, as I was about to go to bed, I realized that I hadn't filled out the ten page questioner that Levonne asked us to have ready for the meeting tomorrow. So I quickly filled it out and then I crashed.

Easter

We woke up this morning and realized that "hey, it's Easter." So we got up and cleaned up the house so we could have a nice dinner. Some of the others went to El Rastro to look for a bag and I went out to have breakfast. I went to one of the larger bakeries in Puerto del Sol and had some tarajas and café con leche. It was a really nice relaxing breakfast, and I enjoyed watching everyone panicking about getting the pastries for Easter.

When I came home I helped, or tried to help, Josune make dinner. She made two oven roasted chickens with potatos and carrots. She also made us some tarajas for desert. We invited Doug and Sian to come over for dinner and we ate at about 8 at night. The food was amazing, and we sat around and had a nice evening with wine and good food.

After desert the others were teasing me because I love British history. So Josune found a quiz about general British history and Sian and I had to do the quiz to see who knew more. She knew more of course, she lives there, but I didn't come in too far behind. Then we took a harry potter quiz and it just went on from there. Everyone left around 11 and it wasn't too bad for Easter.

Postre Tour

Today we had a chance to join a tour of some of the bakeries that make the tarajas for Easter. Tarajas are slices of stale bread soaked in either honey milk or sugar wine and then fried with a little egg. They are like amazing French toast slices. We met up with our guide, a crazy woman with colors all over her pants. No, she really had colors on her pants – like red, blue, turquoise, mauve – it was crazy. She walked us around the city center and showed us some of the oldest bakeries and explained the different pastries that they make there. It was fun to see some of the places but we were sad that we didn't get to actually have any pastries.

After the tour was over we were talking to Doug for a little bit and he invited us to have dinner with Levonne. Levonne is the coordinator from Fullerton College who had come to Spain to conduct a site evaluation to see how the program was working out. She's a crazy old lady but pretty nice, so we said sure why not. Natalia, Josune, Alex, Doug and I met her at her hotel and then walked across the street to an Italian restaurant. We had a great time talking about our trip and teasing Josune about bossing us around to eat healthy. After a few hours we said goodnight and headed back home.

Good Friday

Today Natalia and I stayed in bed all day and worked on our homework and our trip to Italy, again. We relaxed until about 4 in the afternoon and then got ready to go out and see another procession. This procession was planned to walk along Gran Via, one of the large boulevards in Madrid, and in front of the Prado museum until they reached Puerto del Sol. When we got out of the subway and tried to head up to the street there were guards blocking off the large exits. We finally found an exit that was open and when we headed out we realized that we had arrived right in the middle of the procession. The processions usually last a few hours to go by one spot, but this one lasted barely an hour.

We were able to see most of the floats and the people following the procession. There were people walking barefoot through the streets, people who had arrived to see the procession and felt so moved that they took their shoes off and followed. After a while we joined the horde of people to go find Sian. When we met up with her we talked her into going to grab some tapas with us before going home.

We figured that it would probably be easier to walk to the square, rather than try and take the metro. Little did we know that we would be following the entire procession to the square. So, though AIFS warned us to please refrain from joining in any parades or marches, we found ourselves in the middle of the Good Friday procession to Puerto del Sol. We had a good time, considering it took almost an hour to walk a few blocks. We discussed our heritage and where everyone's family is from. Natalia's mother comes from Puerto Rico and her dad from Spain. Michelle is very much English. And Sian comes from England but she said that her family comes from northern and southern England which makes a big difference in lighter and darker skin color. Pretty exciting.

We finally made it to the same street we had gone to on our tapas tour a few nights before. We went to one of the bars we hadn't been to and ordered some wine and bread. After a while Josune and Alex met up with us and we went next door to the Sangria place so Michelle could try her hand at pouring Sangria straight into her mouth. After this bar we said goodnight to Sian and headed out to try and find some racciones because we were starving. Racciones are larger portions of tapas for a little bit more money. We wound up at a little bar and had some patatas and chorizo. We ended the night back at the ice cream bar for a little sugar. Finally we were pretty tired from our day of not really doing anything and headed back home.

Holy Thursday

Today we slept in until almost eleven. Natalia and I stayed in our pajamas and worked on booking some last minute things for our Italy trip. It was kind of nice to get to stay in bed and be lazy, I feel like I've been going none stop since I got here and it was nice to relax. Our roommate came home around one in the afternoon and it was nice to see her back home and doing really well. Sian was nice enough to go and get her from the hospital and make sure all the right paperwork was filled out, she took her home as well and helped her understand any questions she might have.

Later I skyped my parents to see how things were going. I made some soup for dinner, it's my favorite right now, and Natalia and I shared it before we headed out to see one of the processions. We met Sian and a few other girls in the Plaza Mayor at about eight. We were a bit early for the procession so we talked for a while until we saw people starting to line along either side of an invisible aisle. I was impressed that the people were able to keep the aisle exactly the right width for the procession to walk through, without any markers or guards. Interesting. So we lined up and got a front row view. We stood and waited for the procession to get here for over an hour. We watch some police on motorcycles ride through the aisle to make sure it was clear. One cop thought he was the best there was and kept speeding through the crowd and suddenly stopping; then he fell over. It was kind of sad because the bike fell on his leg so he needed help getting up, but he was kind of being a jerk so a lot people were snickering at him.

Behind Natalia and next to me was a tiny woman about sixty years old. Instead of asking if she could go in front or anything like that she took to pushing against Natalia. It was hilarious. So now she and I had an activity to entertain us. Every time someone would ask to go past us to walk to the other side we would scoot over and I would put myself between the woman and Natalia, and then a few minutes later the woman would worm her way between us again. We were cracking up.

Eventually we could hear drums and we knew the procession was close. The procession is slow to represent Jesus' walk with the cross, but also because they have one to two large floats that men carry. They carry the floats for a few yards and then stop and rest – they will do this all night. The people in robes are hooded so that there is no discrimination between the people who are being judged. The more penitent people walked the entire night barefoot, and we saw one person with chains around their feet. The contrast of the long purple candles they carried with the holes in their robes for their eyes made the entire procession rather eerie. I loved it.

A Trip to a Spanish Hospital

So I have a heater in my room and it happens to be immediately next to my bed. So close in fact that bed doesn't touch the wall because it hits the heater. It's an old fashioned water heater, and I love it. It keeps me warm at night, and on cold days I can turn it on a little and lean against it until it warms me up. So I named it Charlie. None of my roommates seem to understand that when I love something I name it. I get it from my mother. To try and explain myself I told them that I have a really nice pen that I named Felix, but this just seemed to make it worse. So anyways, they think it's hilarious that I've named the various inadament objects within our apartment. After telling Charlie how grateful I was that I was always kept warm he broke down on me.

I woke up this morning soaked in water. I hadn't slept well all night because I was cold – it turns out that when your blanket is soaked in water it can kinda chill you a bit. It turns out the little knob that turns the heater on and off started dripping sometime last night, just a steady drip drip. My blanket was soaked, the sheet was a little wet, and there was a puddle on the floor. Fun. So I pulled my bed away from Charlie and ran and got a pot from the kitchen. I cleaned everything up the best I could and walked over to school. I told Kieren that my poor heater was broken and he said the maintenance guy would come by sometime today.

While I was at school there were bigger problems. My roommate down the hall has been having some womanly troubles for the past two weeks. Today it seems she woke up and it was much worse, so much so that she needed to go to the emergency room immediately. Sian came from school and met her at the apartment, then they waited for the ambulance to come get them. The ambulance took her to the hospital where they told her that she needed to have surgery to stop the bleeding. The poor girl had never been to hospital before, let alone have surgery, and in a place where no one spoke English. So they put her out and completed the surgery relatively quickly. They then put her in a room to stay overnight so they could moniter her recovery. Sian stayed with her the entire time - she's amazing.

When I got home from school one of the girls from the downstairs apartment came up to give us our internet router. We were finally getting internet in the apartment and it was huge! She kindly helped plug it in and made sure it worked before heading back downstairs. So now we have internet and we can use it whenever we want – a luxury I took for granted before I came here.

So now that she was out of surgery she could receive visitors. That's where we come in. We are all really close and poor Natalia was frantic all day worrying about her, but that's why we love her. So at about 4 in the afternoon we figured out how to head over to see her. Kieren printed out directions for us to get to the hospital so we could find it relatively easy, very thoughtful. Natalia, Josune, Alex and I headed to the metro to find a train to take us to the hospital. It turns out we had to take this circle line that none of us had every taken before. We took about a million escalators to get to the very depths of Madrid and found an old metro train waiting for us. We jumped on and counted the stops until our station – there were 9 stops. We sat on this old, musty train for over half an hour to get to the other side of town. When we finally got there, we had no idea where we were. But Natalia was very useful with our new map and got us to the main hospital entrance. We went to information and asked for the maternity ward (they put all women with any problems in that ward); he laughed and said it wasn't here. So we looked at each other and then decided to rephrase our question. "Can you tell us where it is?" He looked at our map and marked where we should go. So we took off again. It turned out that the maternity ward we were looking for was almost exactly across the street from the metro stop we arrived at – fun.

We walked around the weirdest hospital I have ever been in. It was all glowing white, and almost entirely empty. Apparently the women here do not receive a lot of visitors. We finally found her room and she was thrilled to see us. We brought her a book and her stuffed owl which made her cheer up. We talked for a long time about how she was feeling and the excitement of being prepped for surgery when you don't know what anyone was saying. After a while I started looking around. I like hospitals – as long as I'm not the one in the bed. I opened all the drawers, there weren't that many, and they even had a tall blue metal locker for her belongings, but the lock didn't actually work. We played around with the buttons to raise and lower her bed, and took pictures together.

After a while Sian came back in to discuss some insurance information with her, so we headed over to visitor lounge. When you step into the room lights turn on above the vending machines – totally awesome. So we examined and discussed every possible item in the vending machines before deciding on a few drinks and I got an amazing chocolate bar. Then, since we were the only ones there, we did a couple of bored dance moves while we were waiting. Eventually Sian came and told us we could go back in. I messed around in her room some more and practiced reading the rules, which were in Spanish. We then tried to turn on the TV and it turns out that you have to pay to watch it. We checked the rates and found out it was only about 3 Euros to turn on the TV for the rest of the day. So we turned on her TV for her and then had to say good bye. We finally headed out at about 7 and trudged back down to the miserable subway train. We finally got to our apartment and had to run and get ready before we headed out for our tapas tour.

We got to the Plaza Mayor and met with Sian who was taking us on our tour of some famous tapas bars, this tour was through the program so we each paid 5 Euros and the school buys all of our tapas. We walked down one of the tiny alleys leading away from the plaza and reached the famous tapas street. We stopped into the first bar and each ordered a drink. I ordered a tinto de verano which is half red wine and half lemonade, which is really good. The bartender then gave us some thick slices of bread covered in a sort of chorizo spread – it was amazing. We stayed for a while and a few of us talked to Sian about different horror movies she's seen and what we've seen so that was fun. After a while we head back out and down the street to the next bar. The next place she took us to was a Basque place and famous for their extravagant tapas. We picked our own tapas to have with our drinks; I stuck with a red wine. Natalia chose a piece of salmon on toast with a relish of tomato and peppers. I ordered a slice of toast with jamon Serrano wrapped around a chunk of brie and filled with a berry jam, it was one of the best things I've had here.

Next we went across the street to a bar that is famous for their pitchers that they serve sangria and beer in. The pitchers are called burrons and they almost look like a glass bong. The top is open and there is a small spout out of one side. The pitcher is designed to be shared in a group of people, passing it between everyone. You start pouring it close to your mouth and then as you drink you are supposed to pull it further away from you. It was fun to practice and I can only assume that it gets more difficult the more you practice. Here they also gave us small dishes of thick chorizo sausage slices and a bowl of strongly pickled green olives. The spice from the tapas meshed really well with the sweetness of the Sangria.

After that we walked across the street to one of the older bars. Here we all had a drink and they brought us racciones. These are larger portions of tapas, usually served at sit down bars. We had French fries with fried eggs on top, pickled potato slices with grilled octopus slices, and chorizo sausage. After we finished our food we headed out to our last bar, and Sian had picked out an ice cream bar. This was a very fancy lounge that served gourmet ice cream. They had chocolate brownie, daiquiri sorbet, fresa con crema (strawberries and cream), dulce de leche (carmel), and a million others. When Natalia and I started getting tired we said good bye and headed back down the street. When we came to the end of the tapas street we ran into one of the many religious procession that take place in Madrid during Semana Santana.

It was rather eerie to see people in purple robes with tall pointed hoods walking bare foot through a small street. The procession is very somber to represent Christ's suffering until his death. We stayed for a while but eventually headed home. The processions are very slow and it was already 1 in the morning so we decided to take off. When we finally got home we used our internet until about 3 in the morning, it was great.

Churros con Chocolate

Today was pretty much the same as any other. But I got another package from home! In it my family sent me Girl Scout cookies, pictures, some of my tour guide books for Madrid, and lots of candy. My mom made me and my roommate Natalia Easter bags full of candy. It was pretty awesome. She also sent us some egg dying supplies – we're just not sure how that will work out with the extremely dark brown eggs they have here. Everyone is very jealous of how much love I get from my family. And now the wall over my bed looks like my refrigerator back home. Everyone loves to see what cards I will get from home because they always have funny pictures of saying.

After working on some homework for class the next day we decided to go out and finally get some churros con chocolate. We headed over to Sol and then walked a ways to a small alleyway off of the plaza mayor. Here Natalia had found a tiny little café that specializes in churros. We each ordered one and sat outside to wait for our treats. A couple sat down next to us and it turned out that they were from California as well. They had been living in Madrid since January but were both taking different courses – one half of the semester was Spanish courses and then the other half was whatever school classes you needed. So they were asking Natalia how she liked Barcelona and what they should see there. We also had a chance to talk to the woman about what we should see in Italy and also Paris. It was a fun coincidence.

When they brought out our churros I actually started bouncing in my seat from excitement. They give you a coffee cup full of thick, dark chocolate and a plate full of churros. The churros aren't sweetened with cinnamon or sugar but that makes the chocolate that much better. I ate until I was actually sick. Then we headed back home for some more studying. I eventually went to bed, happy that I finally got my churros.

Avila and Segovia

Today we all woke up pretty late and had to run around to get ready. Natalia and I were able to head out on time and had a brisk walk to school to meet the bus to Avila. We got on the bus and settled down, Kieren passed out any mail that we got – I got a card from Katie that greatly cheered me up. As we drove away we discovered that Kieren got a flip - the new, small video camera that plugs into your computer. He loves it. He kept turning around and videoing us, it was so cute.

After about an hour of driving through the beautiful countryside we arrived in Avila. We met our guide and started our walk around the city walls. We entered into the city museum and were able to walk up to the top of the wall. We saw the entire city and walked around a large majority of the wall. Some of the girls kept sitting on the wall and getting yelled at by the security guard. He hated us. After we climbed down from the wall (we used the stairs) we walked around almost the entire city. A lot of the people were having fun taking a million pictures of each other so eventually we left them to meet later at the bus.

Then we went into the Avila Cathedral which was built on Saint Theresa's birth place. She is the saint who all of the famous paintings and statues are made of – the ecstasy of Saint Theresa – it usually shows her visit from the angel and filled her with God's love. So we saw the small cathedral and then also got to see her relic. They have what is supposed to be her ring finger in a large glass container. It was pretty awesome and gross. Then we headed back to the bus.

On the outskirts of town we pulled over so we could get a panorama of the entire walled city. We took a group photo and Kieren played around with his video some more. Then we headed to Segovia. We drove about an hour and a half through beautiful countryside full of cows. Why is it that there are cows everywhere and yet they hardly ever eat beef? I thought about it for a while because this has been bothering me and then I figured that it must be because they eat cheese like crazy. O well.

When we pulled into Segovia it was an amazing site. Right in the middle of town there is a giant Roman aqueduct that splits the town. It was built over two thousand years ago and is the only Roman structure still completely intact. It is made up over 20,400 Granite stones, 166 arches and is held together by their engineering – there is no mortar or cement holding any of it together. Pretty awesome.

We got out and had about 2 hours to go eat lunch. Natalia and I stuck with Doug because he always finds the best places to eat. We walked all the way through town and deep into the center, we found a little restaurant downstairs from a hotel. Here we had a menu del dia, it was amazing. I got saffron rice with vegetables (saffron is really inexpensive here so I'm eating it like crazy) and short ribs with French fries. For desert we had a cake with a marzipan layer covering it. Almost everywhere you go in central Spain has marzipan because they have almond trees everywhere. Over all the meal was amazing.

We headed back to the aqueduct and met our tour guide for the city. She showed us the building in the city, which all have intricate patterns cut out of the cement. The poorer people used to do this because it was cheap and then the richer people copied their idea. Now all buildings that are in Segovia have to use the same ideas. We then walked to the other end of town to see the castle. The town claims that this is the castle Walt Disney used to design the castle at Disneyland but unfortunately Disney disagrees with them, it's a German castle. We walked through the castle rooms, which were very Moorish in their design which was cool. And then we climbed an extremely tiny and old spiral staircase to the top of the castle tower – 152 stairs. It was going great until we ran into a huge crowd of people trying to climb down. So I had to try and climb the tiny edge near the center of the spiral – it was terrifying. But when we got to the top and could see all of Segovia and the snow covered mountains in the background it was definitely worth it. Some of the girls danced to "Jump on it" and Kieren of course videotaped it – it's hilarious. But then we had to climb down the scary staircase.

After we got to the bottom we walked back through the city until we reached the aqueduct again. We said good bye to our crazy tour guide and got back on the bus for our long ride home. We finally got home at about eight at night. We said good night and headed back home. Once we got there we had a quick dinner and I went to bed immediately.