It's March!!

Buenas noches! The past week has just flown by for me... there are so many things I want to tell you guys! Last Wednesday was my last night with my señora, so we had an action packed night of watching Pasa Palabra, a spanish game show based which is great for vocabulary, she made me my favorite soup (a carrot and zucchini puree) and we played board games. Before I get too far into this post, I would like to apologize in advance for my English - I honestly feel like my writing is not nearly as interesting now that I'm getting used to the Spanish sentence structure.

At any rate, on Thursday, I left to go meet my roommates from UW in Amsterdam! It was an absolutely wonderful weekend... so nice to see my friends. Amsterdam is a really pretty city - filled with old row houses lining the beautiful canals. Our hostel was right in the middle of everything... meaning it was right in the Red Light district. It was actually really shocking, even on day three. Just walking down the street on Friday morning you would glance to the side and OH there is a woman in the window wearing less than a bathing suit dancing and trying to make eye contact with me... the whole prostitution atmosphere was a bit crazy. The Red Light district was pretty touristy - lots of souvenir shops and gawking visitors. In the middle of the main street of it was a pretty canal filled with probably a hundred beautiful white swans... I wanted to take a picture of them, but you have to be careful about taking pictures with the prostitutes there in the store fronts. Besides that part of Amsterdam, the rest was great! The atmosphere was really nice and chill... we visited a few of the fabled coffeeshops and also had some really great falafel. The food I was most excited about was the french fries - I guess they originated in Holland... there were street vendors everywhere selling them! The weather was pretty dreary - chilly and rainy the whole time. Luckily, my señora let me borrow her nice winter coat so I was all set :) Here's a picture of Ruth and I, with some bikes and a canal in the background.

We were able to go to the Anne Frank house, which is a museum including the secret annex. I haven't read her diary in at least ten years, so I'm thinking about reading it again - in Spanish this time! It was really sobering to be walking along these beautiful canals and then remember that Amsterdam was very much affected by WWII. It all sparked conversations about how different the United States is - not having any foreign wars on our soil, we cannot see the effects of total war - on civilians, on structures or on the atmosphere of a city. Amsterdam also has two monuments dedicated to WWII, one of which is a really nice called the "Homo-Monument."      (Side note - I get the feeling that in Europe there is less of a worry about being politically correct or offensive... if there were a monument to homosexuals in the US, it would not officially be named the homo-monument. For another example, the equivalent of a dollar-store here in Spain is a shop typically owned by Chinese immigrants, and people usually call the stores "Chinos"... which would again probably not be widely used in the states.)

Anyways, we also went to the Van Gogh museum, which was really cool! I really like being able to see a lot of work by one artist together to understand how their work evolved throughout time. As for my art class at the Prado, everything is going great. Last week, I had my first "tutoria" - the two hour session I'm going to have every Wednesday that is at the actual museum, seeing the paintings in person that I've learned about in class. I'm really excited about it - I am still so happy I decided to take this class! I ended up switching my classes with Spaniards around, so now I'm taking a class called "Cartography: Strategies in Security and Defense" and another called "Geography and Gender". Both are going really well so far - I got really lucky with the professors! Turns out that I now have all of my classes on Monday/Tuesday (with the Prado tutoría on Wednesdays), so that will make it a bit easier to travel.

Speaking of traveling, I have a busy month coming up. This weekend, I'm going to Barcelona on a trip with other students from my program. Then, my dad and Terri get here next Wednesday! I'm so excited to see them, but also excited to have visitors to show around the city. They're heading to Sevilla for a couple days while I have class, and then we're actually all going to Barcelona again the weekend of the 19th. I've always heard that Barcelona is a great city but in completely different ways than Madrid, so I'm really excited to get to know it. After my dad and Terri leave (they're here for two weeks), I'm going to Italy for spring break with a few girls from my program.  And then, what do you know, it's April already!

I'm really happy in my apartment ("piso" en español) so far. When I got home from Amsterdam on Sunday night, I moved my stuff over here. The location is great - I'm only about a 25 minute walk to class (or 10 minute bus trip) and am right by most of my friends. Turns out there are 6 spanish girls all around my age plus me... a lot of fun! I'm really glad to be living with so many people, but am having a hard time keeping them all straight, haha. They have all been really welcoming and I haven't had any problems whatsoever. Everything came furnished, and I ended up borrowing sheets and a comforter from my señora. I have been unpacking and decorating, and it is starting to feel like home :) Here's me sitting on this nice sofa-wedge-thing that came in the room:

I've been trying to explore my new neighborhood, but it has been hard with the rain. I feel like it has been raining for at least 3 or 4 weeks now... everybody says how uncharacteristic it is, but that still doesn't change the fact that the forecast for Sunday is 43 and rain! I'm really hoping that it starts to warm up here in the next couple of weeks. There are so many things in Madrid that I look forward to doing once it gets nice out. I have been fitting in as much running as I can, but it is hard to motivate myself after being in class from 8:30-4:00 Mondays and Tuesdays. I've been teaching English, which has been great! Besides classes, traveling and moving, I've just been trying to hang out with friends as much as possible. Last night, I tried to go to free yoga at a community center with my friends Melissa and Amanda, and we ended up at this really cool hippie-feeling place that felt like a commune. I feel like I keep stumbling upon wonderful little places like this, and its really making me love this city.

All for now, besos! -Bon