My life in Madrid

Hola todos! Disculpame por no escribir en mucho tiempo...

I am having a fabulous time in Madrid :) I have done a lot in the last week and a half.. I can't believe I've been here for almost 3 weeks! Part of it feels like it has been only a couple days and part feels like it has been a couple months. I am at the point where I feel comfortable in my daily schedule, but I still feel like a tourist when I'm exploring the city. There are so many places to see in Madrid - I have a good grasp on the big things, but am still working on trying to get to know the city. The city itself is more interesting to me every day - as with any big city, it has so many little pockets to explore. Each day I try to go to a new part. Today, I explored the neighborhood that I will be moving to in March and walked through a wonderful park just a couple blocks away, with botanical gardens and a sky lift to see views of the city.

My apartment! I am living in my home stay for one more month and will move into my apartment on March 1.  The apartment is fabulous... I will be living with 5 Spanish girls who are all students and all seem so nice! I have a corner room with my own balcony, it all comes furnished, and my room is painted orange! It is only 1 block from a good metro stop and about 20 minutes from school.. It seems like a match made in heaven :) I am really happy about it, but still excited to be able to stay with my senora for the next month.

This past weekend I went to Sevilla, a 6 hour bus ride south of Madrid. I went with 11 other friends from my program, and we all stayed in an awesome hostel. Sevilla is a beautiful town and it was great to get out of Madrid to see a more stereotypical Spanish city. The streets there are even more confusing than in Madrid! We took a long walking tour of the city and saw the great Gothic cathedral (3rd largest cathedral in Europe) and lots of beautiful old buildings and palaces that had to do with Sevilla's role as the main port city in Spain's glorious days of colonialism. I also saw Ruth, my roommate from UW. Always nice to have a familiar face :)

I was matched with a spanish student, Julia, to do an "intercambio." We speak both Spanish and English to help each other learn the other language. I have hung out with her a couple times and am happy to say that she is my first Spanish friend! She is very welcoming and a lot of fun to be with... I have met some of her friends and we have plans to meet tomorrow and possibly see a movie. She is studying indigenous cultures of America, so most of her texts are in English - so I'm going to help her out with those. I'm really happy that I got matched with somebody who is so great and is interested in hanging out! Besides hanging out, I think she will be a big help with my grammar.

Today was my first day of class! I had the 3 with other Americans: one on the works of the Prado, one on Islam, and one on syntax. I am really excited about the first two and am not quite sure about syntax, haha. We will see how tomorrow goes :) I had to leave home before the sun rose this morning, but it was   refreshing walking to class so early, and needless to say, I look forward to waking up bright and early again tomorrow morning.

I am going to upload some pictures in the next couple days, and will fill in some more details then! Sending my love, Bonnie

Ten Days In

Hola amigos! I realize I haven't updated in awhile... I've been fairly busy with everything! It's hard to believe that the weekend has come again :) I'm starting to feel like the vacation period of being here is over and now its setting in that this is actually where I'm living for the next 5 months. I have gotten to know the city quite a bit better in the last week, but of course still have a lot of exploring to do. I spent the afternoon last Sunday at El Retiro, a large park in the middle of the city. We also took a tour of "Old Madrid" - the "downtown" (which isn't a typical downtown, but is the old part of the city with lots of great plazas and oooold buildings). Yesterday I took a tour of El Prado - a fairly large art museum - and was able to see quite a few works of art that I had studied, very cool!

This week we started a 2 week grammar class to help us get in the swing of things. It is going pretty well - definitely learning some helpful vocab and phrases, such as "él tiene mucha pasta" being our equivalent to "he has a lot of dough" - haha. I register for classes on Monday, and as of now am hoping to take:

1. An art history class about the works at El Prado, with class on campus as well as in the museum

2. An "Islam in Spain" class - talking about history as well as current events.. along with a visit to La Mezquita in Cordoba!

3. A syntax class comparing English and Spanish - it's supposed to be very helpful in everyday language and the professor seems pretty cool

4. An intro to psychology class... I've always wanted to take it at Madison but haven't had time. It will probably be quite difficult, but I think I'm going to take it pass/fail

5. A class called "The Bible and its repercussion in western literature"... also should be very interesting, but hard because its a "cuarto curso" class, meaning Spaniards studying literature would take it in their junior/senior year. Also hoping to take pass/fail :)

The first 3 are "reunidas" - with other American students, and the last 2 are "complutense" - with all students at the university (UCM, Universidad Complutense de Madrid). I start the reunidas classes on Feb 1 and the complutense classes on Feb 15. My reunidas classes are all Monday/Tuesday from 8:30-1:00 (and at the Prado on Wednesdays), so that means that I have long weekends for the next month or so :) I'm trying to look at doing a bit of traveling on those weekends, potentially to Italy, Amsterdam or Sevilla to visit my wonderful friends from UW! Not quite sure - the prices fluctuate quite a bit each day and I've been talking to friends from my program about doing trips together, so we'll see what happens!

My señora continues to be great and I look forward to coming home each day. Most nights, we watch a Spanish game show called Pasapalabra (pass the word) that is a fun way to try to learn some vocabulary. She is so generous and gives us potato chips and Coke every night when we watch it before dinner. She has been cooking wonderful things and has been so great about my diet - she makes a lot of soups and roasted vegetables and is always concerned about me getting enough iron and protein. She makes us sandwiches each day for lunch (even though she's only supposed to provide breakfast and dinner). Two of her grandsons are coming over for the night tonight, so that will be fun to meet them! Her dog, Kika, is so cute and loves having us around to pet her :)

Today I have the afternoon off, so I'm going to go running right now and then out for lunch with a friend.. then I have an apartment showing (for after my homestay) and class. It is Marissa's (my roommate) birthday, so I think we're going out dancing tonight! Then tomorrow, I am meeting for the first time with my "intercambio", a Spanish girl who is interested in meeting w/ me about once a week to speak in Spanish for 1/2 an hour and in English for the other 1/2 hour. Below, I'm putting some pictures from the week: one from Toledo, one of my room, and a few from various places in the city!

A view of Toledo - a beautiful old city about an hour southwest of Madrid (the old capital)

A picture of all of the soy products in a store here... very nice :)

Me in El Retiro

El Palacio Real -  The Royal Palace - in Madrid... huge and very pretty

My desk area in my room... sorry for the horrible picture!

Finally, here is a link to my saved googlemap w/ markers:

Map showing where I'm living compared to various places in the city Love you all! -Bonnie

All settled in :)

Just finished up day 2! Everything is going great... I landed yesterday morning and then took a 2 hour nap, went to orientation and settled in. My senora has been just fabulous - she is very accommodating with me eating vegetarian/vegan. She is a lot of fun to talk to and is helpful when I don't know all of the vocab. She's a grandma whose kids and grandkids all live in the Madrid area so I think she sees them quite often. Yesterday, we - her, Marisa (another American student staying here from Tulane Univ) and I - ate potato chips and drank "CocaCola Light" and talked about shopping :)

The orientations have been pretty good so far... there are around 20 students here from UW, some from Indiana, some from Purdue and some from Tulane. The office is called the "WIP" office and has 3 staff members, all of whom are running our orientation. We now have the schedules for the classes, both reunidas (w/ other study abroad students) and complutense (in the bigger university). I register on the 25th or so... I'm not quite sure what I'm going to take yet, but will probably do one about indigenous Mexican/Guatemalan culture, one about Spain's role in the EU and maybe a history of Spain one. My job for tonight is to try to figure more out, wowoo!

I just went to the biggest store ever called El Corte Ingles... they have everything. Seriously! It's 6 or 7 floors levels plus 2 basements... it's like a Super Target plus a Macy's. I got some shampoo and pens. I was surprised at how most of their brands are American - most of the shampoo/conditioner was Garnier Fructis, Herbal Essences or Dove. It was also kind of expensive... but probably no more than in New York or anything. I also just looked at my body wash that I got and it says that its in the conglomerate of Sara Lee. crazy

Today I had toast (which is really small, 2 inches square) with jelly, fresh clementine juice (that my senora juiced herself), tea and a banana for breakfast; then she packed us sandwiches for lunch. I'm not sure what we're having for dinner, but she has this great thing called a Thermo-Mix that is like a blender and stove top in one - it is really cool.

Today at orientation, we had people from the US embassy come talk to us about what they can do for us. Tomorrow, we are talking about housing (our homestays typically end after 1 month), and then Saturday we have a day trip to Toledo! All for now, sending my love!

Ready to leave

Hey all!

I am just finishing up packing as I'm getting ready to leave tomorrow...  I can't believe my trip is coming up so quick! I'm all set and have everything I need to find my way once I get to the airport on Wednesday morning (at 10 am Madrid time).  My plan is to read the wikipedia pages on Madrid and Spain on the airplane to learn a bit more about what I'm getting myself into :)

I have a two and a half week orientation until classes begin February 1st.  I am very excited to get to know my host mom and all the other students who are going to be there with me.  I haven't spoken with my senora, but as far as I know she is a widow who works as a nurse and has a dog.  Her apartment seems to be in a pretty good location - a short walk to downtown and close to the metro that will take me right up to the university.

I sign up for my classes during orientation some time, but I plan on taking classes on spanish history and culture.  I'm really excited to take a break from classes at UW, but all of my classes will be in Spanish.  On that note, improving my Spanish is probably the part of this spring that I'm most excited for.  I'm a bit nervous about following the professors speaking in Spanish, but hopefully after a few weeks I'll get the hang of it.

That's all for now, I'll update when I'm IN MADRID!!  Love you all, Bonnie