My past week in Madrid has been absolutely wonderful! The weather was beautiful last weekend, so I spent most of my time outside. I've been hanging out with my roommates a lot and getting to know them better - it has been a lot of fun :) Last Friday, they threw a party to welcome me to the apartment and for my American friends to meet their Spanish friends... que divertido! It was Spanish themed, so we painted a big red and white polka-dotted background for photo shoots, made paper flowers to hang up everywhere and wear in our hair... and drank a whole lot of sangria.
My fabulous roommates!
Saturday night was the Real Madrid vs FC Barcelona football match, so I went to a bar with my roommates to watch it. Most of the game it seemed as if Barca was going to win, so the fans were pretty quiet. It was still fun to be out and see everybody really into the game. The rest of the weekend, like I said, I spent outside... like on my terrace :) I got quite burnt, but I went and bought sunscreen, so hopefully I'll be set for the next couple months. Some of my friends and I took the Teleférico, which are suspended cable-cars that go over a big park in Madrid, we rented rowboats on a lake, and played a bit of soccer. I also saw my señora a few times last week! She has two new students, who are both really nice and go to Stanford.
I had an exam yesterday for the Prado class, so I went to the museum a few times to study and prepare. The test itself went well - I am really liking art history a lot. My other classes are also going well - I am beginning to work a bit on papers that will be due in the middle of May. In my mapping class, we're talking about the first maps of the New World, and the professor seems to think that we (there are 4 Americans in the class) know about and have seen all these maps that the Library of Congress has. Apparently the US government paid some ridiculous amount of money to buy a map made in the sixteenth century that is the first time the new world was referred to as "Amerigo". He made us promise him that we would try to go to the Library of Congress when we go home next year and see it for him. :)
I've been trying to figure out my travel schedule for the upcoming months, specifically about this summer. I have decided that I am not going to go to Uganda - for a number of reasons, but mainly because everything would be too rushed. I am sad that I am not taking advantage of this amazing opportunity, but also a bit relieved. I think that come the end of June, it would have been difficult to start up a big energy-intensive project in a completely new place. Also, being here, I don't have the time to adequately prepare for the project. I'm hoping that I will be able to go next summer (after graduation) or fall 2011, and stay for a couple months. So, I am still trying to figure out when I'm coming home, but I'm thinking sometime around July 1. I may fly into Chicago and spend a few days with Sylvia when there, and then head back to Minnesota to spend July with family and friends - hopefully with a trip to the Boundary Waters in there!
In my remaining two and a half months, I am going to be vvvvery busy. Besides school - which is going to pick up a lot from now until the end of May - I have some wonderful travel plans. This weekend, our program is taking us to Extremadura, which is a remote region of Spain. I'm really excited for the trip because it is supposed to be much (MUCH) less touristy than everywhere else, and I am curious as to what we're going to see. I know that one of the best-preserved Roman amphitheaters is there, so that will be cool! Next weekend, I am meeting Christina (friend from high school and roommate from UW) in London.. I can't wait. I already have a playlist of Beatles and Mary Poppins music to listen to on the flight, and I am going to watch Notting Hill before going. I'm really looking forward to spending 4 days with Christina and getting to see London! I'm so lucky to be able to see so many of my friends from home. It is kind of surreal to have people from my life at home mixed with my life here. Ruth, my roommate at UW who is studying in Sevilla, is coming to Madrid tomorrow. I love having visitors so I can show off a bit of the Madrid that I've been enjoying for (more than) 3 months now!
As for May, I am going to Mallorca, an island off the Valencian coast, with my roommate Vanessa. She is from there, so I'll be spending a few days with her and her family. The island is supposed to be beautiful! During the summer, it is pretty touristy, but she said that during May it will be fine. I'm really looking forward to spending time near the water - and hopefully at the beach if it is warm enough! My high school friend Will is planning on coming around May 20 and staying here in Madrid with me for a bit, and then I think we're going to go to Sevilla and Lisbon for a long weekend. It is so exciting being able to do such a wide variety of things in a relatively small area. It still amazes me how much the culture and physical landscape of Europe differs. I'm so lucky to have been able to see what I've seen.. but am even luckier that I still have a couple months left here!
Speaking of what I've seen... I still haven't written about half of my trip to Italy! I got together with the girls I went with last night to reflect on the trip, and we all came to the same conclusion: everything was fabulous.
I think I left off in the middle of Rome. Our second day in Rome was spent at the Vatican. We had reserved ahead of time our entrance time for the museum, so luckily we got to bypass the hundreds of people waiting to get in. I felt kind of bad, but at the same time can't believe how many tourists go to places without doing what everybody recommends, which is simply reserving your entrance time. Anyways, we spent about 4 hours total in the museum. They have a very large collection of Egyptian relics. It is hard to think back to the museum and remember what was there because the Sistine Chapel and Raphael's works shine out so much. They have Raphael's School of Athens, which is one of my favorite paintings. It is so neat to see frescoes in their original place - where the painters meant them to be. Thats one reason I really like visiting churches with built-in altars or frescoed walls... just thinking of the painters themselves planning around the lighting of the specific building, or who the audience is. At the end of the museum is the Sistine Chapel, which was amazing and I hope that everybody who reads this can go see. I love Michelangelo. After that, we got our mid-day dessert: crepes with nutella. Pure goodness. Then, we headed to St. Peter's Square to get in line to go inside the Basilica. The Basilica was breathtaking, but in a very modest way. The hour or so we spent there really brought to mind the unpresuming aspects of Christianity for me. We tried to climb the dome, but because it was Easter week they had weird hours. Oh well, I suppose it is just another reason to return to Italia :)
Well, that's all I have time for now. More on Rome and Florence later! Love, Bonnie
(Side note... As I was writing this blog, I bought my ticket home! I'm flying into Chicago on Monday June 28, and hopefully I can spend a few days with Sylvia before heading back to Minnesota. Wowhoo!)
Bon, hope the volcanic ash doesn't cancel your trip to London!
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