Now I know why all my former teachers were bitter alcoholics...

AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!  Sometimes you just need to scream, know what i’m sayin?!?  This week has been completely exhausting and yet I’m still as happy as a fat kid with chocolate.  A lot of chocolate.  Good chocolate, with caramel on the inside.  I love my job more and more every single day and even tho I have some students that are a bit difficult (you know, difficult like climbing mount everest in flip flops difficult) I still love them.  For example, I walked into class on Wednesday to be greeted with all of the students cheering that I was going to be teaching them that day.  On the blackboard they each wrote a personal note to me about loving me and wishing I was with them everyday and other nice welcoming words.  Perfect, right??  Then, five minutes into my lesson there was so much chaos and touching and kicking and screaming that I was wishing I had earmuffs and a BIIIIGGGGG bottle of wine.  These students are soo eager to learn and so likable and yet so frustrating and annoying that my head is on the verge of exploding every time I have them.  I remember back in the day that I was a less than desirable student (didn’t rise to my full potential, a complete handful, and an all around asshole at times to my teachers) and now all I want to do is go back in time and kick my own ass for all the hell I raised for my teachers.  Looking back at all of the side comments from my teachers like “oohh, I can’t wait for the weekend” or “I work to hard to get paid so little” and the other annoying comments they said that never made sense at the time, I must say that now is the time that I have never realized how true those statements are for the life of a school teacher.  By “ooh, I can’t wait for the weekend” I now realize they meant “I am counting down the seconds to the moment when I can quit being in charge of the lives of all these bundles of exhaustion and let down my hair, put on a hot dress and drown my stress with a cheap bottle of vodka and loud raunchy music in the discoteca”...you know, in so words.  I spend hours and hours trying to make power point presentations fun and exciting and in the first 2 minutes of showing the class I have to completely change it because they are not interested or don’t understand.  All that time lost.  I would say that it makes me want to pull my hair out.  BUT, to be honest with you, I am too fond of my hair to ever think of pulling it out and I actually liiiiikkkeeee thinking on my feet, being creative, and interacting with my students.  I feel like the more stressed I am the better I am at my job.  It makes me realize how much I care about them and what I am teaching them.  I makes me feel like I am really getting my hands dirty and changing lives out here.  And, maybe the most important, it makes me feel like they know how much I want to help them.  I actually feel like I have finally found my purpose for living at the moment.  I feel like I should be writing a letter to all my old teachers and thanking them for all the hours they spent to make me a better, more well rounded person.  In that letter I feel like maybe I should also write a little apology for sucking a few years off their lives from all the stress I caused them.  wwhhhoooooopppssss.  My bad, guys.  If I could do it over I would have been a better student but to be honest with you I am glad I acted the way I did because it has made me the person I am today.  And, I have decided that I like where I am and what I am doing.  It’s weird how all things come back around to you but I am really enjoying the ride and can’t imagine doing anything else with my life right now :)  If I could convince my family to move over here with me I would say that I would never go back to the states but, baby steps, maybe I’ll just convince them to visit first...

laxin it up

This weekend was GREAT and very well deserved.  I was soo busy all week with teaching class and being a student in class and all the commuting so it was soo nice to just relax this weekend.  Friday after classes I met all the roommates out for drinks at a wine bar near Christina's school.  Great wine and great tapas.  We then came back home and napped for an hour or so and decided we were going to trivia night :) We showered up, got dressed, had a few adult beverages here and set out for trivia at an english bar in the center of Madrid.  We playes really great and ended up beating about 10 teams to come in a solid third.  Although I ama  big fan of being the best, for a first outting i'll take top three.  After that we walked around downtown for a while and finally made it back home somewhere in the early AM.  Saturday I caught up on Dexter.  All day, DEXTER.  Holy moley I'm officially obesessed and I spent all day Saturday in bed watching TV.  It was so fantastic and we made a great lunch and great dinner to go with it.  Great success. Sunday I woke up late, worked on some lesson plans and then headed out to my first actually training session and practice with Team Madrid.  Lacrosse here isn't big so it wasn't a great shocker to see there were quite a few different levels of skill on this team.  We half the field with the men's team and the first hour was just conditioning.  The mean started to run and the ladies were just kind of goofing off.  I asked if I could join the men's team in training and I guess they thought I was joking so they said "yeah, go for it".  To their amazement I ran over to the guys and started their workouts.  Much more effective.  I have decided that I am going to train with them from now on.  I like the girls but it's a great challenge to keep up with these guys and I figure if I'm taking the effort to come out to these practices, I want to get the most out of it :)  Tomorrow when I have to walk to class and I'm tight as can be I might not be so proud of myself, but right now I feel pretty good about it.  there are a few americans on both the guys and girls' teams and I really like the players.  Our next tournament is looking like it's going to be in Munich, Germany so I'm SUPER freaking excited about that one!!  This eveing I'll be working on lesson plans for the week and hopefully hitting the sheets around 12.  Great weekend but I'm actually excite to get back to work and rock out some sick classes :)

Earned that white coat, son

I'm officially a TEACHER at Collegio Patricino de San Jose :)

I know, it looks rediculous.  However....all the teachers at my school wear these white lab coats all day long to class.  Today, they gave me mine.  I think it makes me look smart, I'll rock it for a couple weeks or so.  Today in class I showed all my students a power point I made about ohio and my life back home. Not gonna lie, it was hard to cram everything into just a 1 hour lecture, but I managed.  I showed them all these pictures of THE Ohio State University, the 'shoe, brutus, american football, and of course a few pictures of people spelling O-H-I-O.  This was a real crowd pleaser.  Now not only do I hear O-H!!  all day long, I now see the arm motions to go with it.  You're welcome, columbus...you're welcome.  My goal is to somehow convince the head master at my school to let me stream the OSU- M*ch*g@n (dirty word, I know) game for the kids to watch.  I think with a few more weeks of laying on that american charm I somehow have my kids will be front and center for the big day.  Now, to convince Gordon Gee to send over about 1000 OSU t-shirts.....  Anyway today's classes and my masters classes this evening went very well and I'm starting to finally get in the groove of having absolutely no down time until 10:45 every evening.  Somehow living in Madrid makes it all okay :)  Im telling you, I am run into the ground all day it was a bit crappy outside and even sprinkled this evening and I'm still all smiles.  There really is something magical about this city.

Oh, you're single???

So I was under the impression that, for the most part, the Spanish like to be very private about their personal life.  Apparently that doesn't mean they don't want to know everything about yours.  At the end of each first class with my students, I let them ask me any questions they wanted about myself or the US. They were very innocent questions about ever being to California or New York.  And they asked about my family and why I moved to Spain.  Finally, one of my 16 year old boys asked me if I had a boyfriend.  Before I could say that this was a personal kind of thing, another teacher looked at me and asked "yes! do you have a boyfriend??!!".  Awesome.  No, I said, no boyfriend here.  This lit the room on fire.  They went from shy kids who barely understood english to a bunch of rabid reporters.  "why don't you have a boyfriend?" "but you are so pretty" "how old are you? aren't you going to be married soon?"  "you should have a boyfriend, I know some older boys if you want help."  Now my class has turned into my very own dating service.  If this wasn't enough, they went ahead and told every single other teacher they have during the day as well as all of their friends.  By the end of the school day today I recieved at least 20 marriage proposals from my students, an offer to get "coffee" with a male teacher, AND one student even informed me that the leagal age of consent in Spain is 13.  I know, shocking.  He knew how to say "the legal age of consent in spain is 13" all in english.  I wasn't even mad.  As I left the building today, the girls students were screaming at me to meet their older brothers and the boys were shouting that they loved me and asking me to never leave them.  Spain just went from the greatest place ever to the most awkward place ever in about T-minus 2 seconds flat.

So much time and so little to do...

SSSIIIIIIIKKKKKKKEEEEEEEE!!!  Holy mayhem, Batman.  My Tuesdays are absolutely nuts!  I woke up at about 6:30 AM and finished getting my things ready for school.  I scarfed down a bowl of cereal and was out the door and ready to go.  I taught 5 back to back lectures.  I know, you are thinking "okay, 5.  That's not that bad."  Well, when you have to speak VERY slowly and clearly and repeat yourself about 100 times over and over and over and wlak around the class and be energetic and fun and smiling and helping the students for 5 consecutive hours, you get a bit exhausted.  Trust me!  I was finished at 2 and had to speed walk to the metro, switch trains, speed walk from the metro and walked into my apartment at 3:10.  I threw another bowl of cereal down the hatch and grabbed my things for masters classes.  We were out the door by 3:20 and back on the metro.  We arrived to class at 4:14 (class starts at 4) and didn't get out of classes until 9:00.  We then got BACK on the metro and headed home.  We finally got home near 10 and I started lesson planning for the next day.  I was going to show them a little more about myself so I made a powerpoint about ohio and about my family and luckily my mom was willing to take some pictures of the house for me and email them so I could use them in the power point.  Another crazy day down...

MAGNUM. I broke down and got one...

It's not my fault, today was really good but when you teach 5 lectures on a Monday running on 3.5 hours of sleep a double chocolate magnum is more than deserved for dessert :)  Today was really great, all my planning into the wee hours of the night last night paid off and my kids were (for the most part) all participating and even SMILING during my class.  We had some great discussions and aside from the few pain in the butt students, I was pleased with their attitudes.  It has to be hard for students to come into my class once a week when they are forced to speak spanish so I give them tons of credit and am so happy that they are accepting me and lsitening to what I have to say...even if they don't understand it all. I think they just like me because I don't give them homework or tests and all they have to do in my class is talk.  Either way, I like it!!  Got done and went to Dunkin (could be one of my greatest discoveries thus far in Spain)  and grabbed a coffee, chocolate donut, and went to work on lesson plans for tomorrow.  So far my greatest accomplishment here is getting all of the students to be Buckeyes.  The first day I told them that where I come from, it is custom to greet your friends with a loud and proud O-H!!! to which they must respond I-O!!!  Now, every time my students see me in the halls I'll hear a much appreciated O-H!! my response, as I smile in euphoria?? I-O!! as loud as I can!  Our next lesson will start with "We don't give a damn about the whole state of Michigan..."  Appropriate??  Does it matter??  haha just kidding, but seriously, we will be watching that game in class.

the life and times of an english teacher in spain...

Yes folks, that there is a slice of heaven in that picture.  I found it...what do i win?? free wifi and chocolate donuts paradise :)  Dunkin is in Madrid and it's fantastic.  This weekend went by so fast i literally didn't have time to keep you all posted.  Sorry for the delay, I know how you all live and breath for the blog.  ssiiiikkkee, but it's a nice thought! Friday was great, I only have to teach 2 1hour classes and one of the classes has a pretty good grasp on english.  The other one?  We'll call that my "special project" for the year.  After class I came home and slept for about 3 hours.  After waking from my slumber I hopped in the shower and started on the booze.  Cut me a little slack here guys, I had a VERY busy week.  I earned this, okay?  I went out with Michael and Kristina to their friends place, wine bottles in tote, and promptly arrived at 11 pm in the prostitute district.  Don't get me wrong, their friends' place was really great, but it was seriously in prostitute alley and the ladies of the night were out and ready for a friend.  After a few adult beverages we headed out to the bars in sol.  The walk was great, especially due to the fact that there are no open container laws in this great country.  We ended up getting lost and went into a few great places and ended at a wicked good walk thru pizza place. Fan-tas-tic.  The three of us (stanek, michael, and myself) walked home to our apartment, made some more food.  had another beverage and hit the sack :)  Saturday Michael peer pressured all of us to day drink all day and we played drinking games from the time we got up (1pm) to the time we went to bed (12am).  Michael had his first big boy soccer game sunday morning so stanek was whipped enough to go to that while i slept in.  When they got back I was informed that they won, Michael got a goal...and a black eye.  What a nerd, huh?!?  First game of the season and the silly american get's the black eye.  Sunday was super lazy until about 9pm when I finally was willed into doing lesson plans for the week to come.  Serisously, up to my eyeballs in colored paper, glue sticks, and markers.  Finally made enough name tags and activities for the first few days of the week for my lectures and called it a night at about 2AM.  Starting the week off with a bang...

Soy Unbelievable

Second day of teaching...already in love with it :)  I took a shower last night and discovered that if I take a shower the night before, I can sleep in an extra 20 minutes.  A-MAZ-ING.  Grabbed a bowl of cereal and was out the door by 7:55 this morning.  I normally have stomach aches in the morning if I grab a bowl of cereal on the go (refer to the melonera 10K fiasco for details) but I switched to Soy milk in my cereal and it’s fantastic.  It’s sweeter than skim milk and tastes a bit like vanilla.  Perfect for cereal.  So I got to my school today 20 minutes early (SURPRISE, I WAS EARLY!!!) and started saying hello and making spanish small talk with basically every single worker in the school.  I would just say all the other teachers but that would be a lie.  Having an American in such a big school causes quite a stir and they ALL want to know what I’m about.  The janitors, the cafeteria workers, the mail man, secretaries, EVERYBODY.  The fact that my spanish isn’t that great is just fantastic to them.  I think they all have a challenge going to see who can teach me the most Spanish.  I went into the break room to get a cup of coffee and I had 3 people jump to get my cup and say  “copa” and another 2 ran over to get the pot of coffee and show me how to put the leche (milk) and azucar (sugar) into the coffee like the spanish do.  People jumping to do things for me...I could reeeaaaallllyyyy get used to this : ).  I finally met with another teacher named Fatima, who showed me my schedule for the day.   5 1-hour classes with 35 to 45 students per class.  Okay, I think I can handle that.  Then I find out that I will be teaching these classes by myself.  Ridin solo, I’m feeling good about that so far.  Then I asked her what my curriculum looked like and I was hit with a bombshell: there is NO curriculum!  I waited for air to finally fill back in my lungs before I asked her what I was supposed to teach these students for the next 9 months and she replied: “Well, whatever you would like.  You are the new English conversation teacher so we don’t have any material for you.  Do whatever you would like with them.”  I’m sorry, come again?  Como?!?  I have groups of 45 13-18 year old students for one hour each with absolutely no curriculum.  After my legs regained the strength to hold me up I stood up, walked to my first class, and introduced myself.  By the end of the day--5 lectures later--- I decided I officially have the best job in the entire world.  Literally, WORLD.  I can play games with the students.  I can joke with the students.  You guys all know me, I can talk about anything to anybody in any situation for hours.  And now I found a job where I get paid to live in Spain to do just that.  I get to organize and lead group discussions or group games or group insanity for an hour each.  It’s going to be a lot of prep work and I am going to have to be EXTREMELY organized but I have decided that this is going to be the most exhausting, outstanding, frustrating, creative, irritating, rewarding, trying and absolutely wonder year of my life.  LET THE CHAOS BEGIIIINNNNNNNN!!!!

starting class and teaching...

first day of teaching. right outside my school's gates

Christina and I tried to get up early Tuesday to get some things accomplished before real life living in Spain started.  By 10:45 we were out the door and on our way to the bank to see what was up with our accounts.  We sorted everything out, got my ATM card activated, and everything is good to go, yo!  Seriously, if you saw my bank card, you would be jealous.  This is my first bank account that is ONLY mine.  no cosigning with a parent, no joint account with the rents.  all mine! weird, i feel like this has concreted the fact that I am on my own out here.  Feels nice...for now :)  After that we went to visit my boyfriend, the most beautiful man named Javier (Javi), to put some credit on our phones.  Javi is breath taking; don't worry, i'll be sure to take a picture of him at some point and share.  After I picked my chin up off the floor and wiped the drool from my chin we left the phone company and went to Sol so I could sign up for some Spanish classes.  I enrolled in a 12 week course so starting Sept 27th I'll be teaching everyday, going to master's classes Tuesday and Thursday nights, and going to spanish classes Monday and Wednesday nights.  Don't panic ladies and gents, I still have Friday and Saturday to get crunk!  After Sol we grabbed some quick grub and were off to classes.  Classes, other than being a bit looooooooooooong, were pretty good and I think this semester is going to go pretty well.  I'm excited to start things up and get the ball rollin, know what i'm sayin?! After a long day and realizing we need to be up early to teach in the morning, we decided to meet Nova Scotia out for drinks.  Not bad.  Got home around 2 AM, set my alarm for 6 AM and called it a night.  

I woke up this morning feeling fantastic (siiiiiiikkkeeee) and showered, grabbed some breakfast, and was off to the metro to get to my school. I arrived on time with the other American girl teaching at my school and started the morning in a closed door meeting with all the higher-ups for our school go over all of the important things we needed to know for our teaching positions (in spanish, of course).  Surprisingly I think I got all of it and went thru the day without being told that I was doind something wrong.  Either I understood my duties or they just let it all slide the first day, updates to come!  I actually taught a few lessons today which was a bit odd since I wasn't informed I would be doing this and had nothing prepared.  Luckily for me (and my class)  I always have SOMETHING to say and I got thru 4 lessons with out any down time or awkward pauses.  I'm like a local celeb at the school along with the other American because we are very different and all the kids want to know EVERYTHING about the U.S., aka California and New York City.  The fact that I have blonde hair is really just icing on the cake :)  I was really hoping that I would be teaching the younger kids but was informed today that I will be working with the older kids: 12-18 year olds.  Fantastic.  They are all taller than me and in most cases, much more developed.  However, I will say that I really enjoyed teaching them today and am excited to see how much English they know.  It was a really great day and it ended with me literally running into every single person I know in Madrid.  I felt like such a rockstar while I was walking home and making small talk with somebody on every corner of every block on the walk home.  Not gonna lie, today went out with a bbbbbaaaaaaaannnnnnngggggg.

Potato bars and Nova Scotian dreams

Our potato bar dinner :)

After the event filled Melonera things are finally getting back to normal in our neighborhood and we took it pretty easy on Sunday.  Slept late, dilly dallied around for quite a while and then Christina and I wondered around Sol for a bit.  When we got back we made a baked potato bar for dinner and that was absolutely wonderful.  Def puting that on the menu again sometime here.  Went to bed late and heard loud booms and looked out the window to see fireworks RIGHT on top of our building.  Crazy, but beautiful.  We woke to yet another alarm on Monday morning because we had to go to our FERE meeting.  FERE is the organization that all of the catholic schools in Madrid are apart of and if we are teaching in a FERE school, we needed to be at this meeting.  We arrived on time and sat, very painfully, through hours of things that we already had heard at our own orientation.  There are two programs with language assistance at this meeting.  My masters program and a program called BEDA: Bilingual, English devopment assessment.  The woman that is in charge of this program is named Meredith and is from a small town called Halifax, Nova Scotia.  This is all find and dandy except she must have done all of her recruting right in Halifax and almost everyone in that program is from there.  Again, this would be great except I have never seen so many people so proud to be from such an obscure place in all of my life, and I'm incredibly proud to be from OHIO....so that's kinda sayin something :)  All the Nova Scotians in the place were talking it up to be Disneyland or Hogwarts or something spectacular.  To be honest with you, I have heard some friends from Nova Scotia talking about how wonderful this place is, but after the ranting about it I'm a little over it at the moment.  So anyway, after we heard about the importance of only speaking English to our kids to enrich their english vocabulary (we got this speach delivered to us in SPANISH, by the way.  Weird?) and we heard endless useless fax about the differences between Canada and Spain, we were free to go.  We came home to a quiet apartment and layed very low the rest of the evening.

The day the shit finally hit the fan (or streets) in Spain

La Melonera 10K

Woke up feeling pretty great for a Saturday morning.  We had BIG plas for the day and we decided to kind of be lazy until our run.  Tonight is our race and then La Noche en Blanco, which is a huuuuuge party in the streets of Madrid as a farewell to summer.  The government puts it on and has hundreds of activities for everyone to participate it.  We mapped out our night so we could hit all the fun things that we wanted to do and they included: the race, a free IMAX showing of Wild Ocean, crazy big game of twister, "a night of balls" that included tons of balls being dropped into the square for all to play with, a big dance party, free breakfast in Retiro park, and a great view of the sun rising in the morning.  Sound great, right???  Well, as we were getting ready to leave for the race I realized that I didn't eat very much and didn't want to be hungry during the run.  I ran into the kitchen and quickly made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.  I was still a bit hungry and we still had some time so i grabbed a bowl of cereal as well.  Milk was clearly a bad choice.  We walked over to the start of the race and it was hot.  The race started at 6:30 in the evening which just so happens to be when the sun is the most intense here.  Great idea by the planning committee, right??  So we lined up with the other thousands (literally) of runners and took our places.  The gun shot rang and we were off.  The race started off great.  I had a good playlist going and the sights were beautiful.  I even took some pictures along the way.  As we kept going tho, I noticed the sun to be getting pretty extreme and I was getting REALLY hot.  Like almost unbearable hot.  It didn't help that along the sides of the race people were throwing up and a few people were even passed out due to the extreme heat.  Well, at about the 5K mark the milk that I had just consumed finally kicked in and I was in immediate need of a bathroom.  If you are a runner, you will sympathize with what was coming next.  If you are not a runner and are squeamish about bodily functions, I suggest you stop reading now.  I had to stop running and start walking, looking for any signs of a bathroom.  Since there are no public bathrooms here, clearly my search was useless.  I decided after walking 1.5K that the situation wasn't getting any better or worse and decided to start running again and tried to get my mind off the situation.  At the 9K mark i decided that I was going to have an accident if I didn't stop and find a toilet immediately.  I was sooooo close!!  AND if you finish the race you get a free Tshirt!  FREE!  I had to finish.  I put all of my efforts into not soiling myself before the finish since the street was lined with onlookers and ran thru the finish line!! I made it! now, for a bathroom.  There was a long line to exit the finishing area and they were throwing slices of melon and soda at you.  real refreshing after a race, huh?  I was doing okay trying to stay calm in the massive group of people and it happened.  My stomach turned for the worst and I needed to get out of there ASAP.  I grabbed my shirt and some mellon since they wouldn't let you leave without it and started walking up the packed street for a bathroom.   No such luck, so I went behind a construction area, pretended like I was streching and unfortunately was no longer in control of my bowel situation.  A boy that was working the race just so happened to walk past me with a bottle of water and asked if I wanted it.  YES, i wanted the water sooo badly!  Again, I pretended like I was stretching, with massive amounts of people walking within feet of me, and poured the water down my back to try to clean up as much as possible before I had to walk back to my apartment.  Needless to say, I lost a sock or two in the clean up.  I then walked about 2 miles home to find my other roommates that ran the race sitting outside of our building.  No keys.  All I wanted to do was take my freaking clothes off and take a freaking shower and we were locked out.  Our roommate with the keys didn't realize that we didn't have any and walked down to meet us for the IMAX.  The problem?  The IMAX was about a 30 minute walk away and started at 10:45.  The time at this point? 8:15.  After a trip over to the local bar where Jose Carlos was a doll and let me use the restroom and 2.5 hours later, we finally got ahold of the keys and let ourselves inside.  I'm not sure if it was the heat, the milk, or the ham, but I was now puking and needing the restroom at all times and quickly decided that La Noche en Blanco wasn't for me and called it a night while the roommates and some friends went out without me.  Now, most people wouldn't tell you that they shit themselves in public, but if it wasn't me that had the problem, this story would have been really funny so...you're welcome :)  Bring on the jokes, bring on the laughing, I'll laugh with you.  And just remember--->NEVER drink milk before you run in 100 degree weather.  And if you have to, tell me aaalllllll about it when you're done!

Orientation

My school in Alcala

Today we awoke to the more than annoying sound of the alarm at 7 AM which was probably the most painful thing that I have endured since moving to this beautiful country.  After hitting the snooze button and finally getting up at 7:15 we had a total of 25 minutes to catch our train to Alcala, where our lecture orientation was being held.  Since we had about a 15 minute walk to the train station this seemed right about perfect.  I showered last night so all i really needed to do was grab my bag, some breakfast and head out.  Since Christina is a perfect roommate, after i washed my face and came out of the bathroom, she had a plate of scrambled eggs ready for me on the table.  Perfect.  We ate, we walked, we got lost, we eventually made it to the station and boarded our train.  We had to switch trains at Atocha to get on the train that would take us to our orientation and then we sat there, music in our ears, for about an hour on the train.  We arrived there exactly at 9 and needed to get to our school, we thought, at 9.  Great, we're late.  It was only about a 15 minute walk to orientation but we decided to grab a cab and get there as close to 9 as possible.  We stormed in there, asked where we needed to go and were promply told that we were the first ones to arrive and we would start at 9:30, like the paperwork said.  Sweet.  We busted our butts to be the first ones there??? Not cool at all.  Orientation went through as quickly as it could and we were out of there in about 4 hours.  We learned some very important things both about our lectures and Madrid and I found out that I was one of two people in the program to not be a Spanish undergrad.  Normally I like sticking out in the crowd, this time...not so much.  On the train back to our place I met with a girl who convinved me to pick up Spanish classes on the days we don't have lectures so I'll be checking into that Monday morning.  Hopefully I'll be better at this Spanish nonsense after a 12 week class :)  We have our race tomorrow so today after we got home we just layed around lazy style for the after noon, christina and I got a kebab, and called it a day.

let la melonera begin!!

Just drinking a mini

Happy Thursday y'all :)  Today was the first day that we got up by the sound of an alarm and I have to tell ya: I didn't like it.  Not at all.  I in fact disliked it so much that I turned it off and slept for another hour.  After we dragged ourselves out of bed, Christina and I set out to see her new school and meet some of the teachers.  She was looking lovely in a pretty blue dress and I believe my words as we were getting ready to her were "yes, I want to walk with you, but i'm NOT taking a shower!" My plans were to walk with her so she didn't get lost on her way to the school and then turn around and come back home.  Both missions failed.  We got lost.  Finally after we found the place (late, as usual) we, as in BOTH of us, were invited out for a drink with a couple of the teachers.  Awesome.  I wasn't even wearing real pants and this was my first encounter with professionals in Spain.  Typical.  So we went out for drinks with them and they were fantastic!  I am so jealous of her school situation; she already has colleagues and knows where her school is and I haven't even had a glimpse of my school, let alone any type of communication with them.  Anyway, the teachers seem great and I even swapped emails with one of them so we can get some coffee some time and she can brush up on her english while i look puzzled at her when she speaks Spanish.  Sounds magical, I can't wait!!  After this exhausting day of getting up before noon and going to a bar pants-less, I decided to go home and get ready for la melonera.  This is a festival for our neighborhood and has literally hundred of activities going on all weekend.  I was soo pumped for it I didn't care that we have to wake up at 7 AM to get to orientation tomorrow!  Alyssa, a friend of the roommates, came over and we headed down to the fiesta, tin cans in tote.  We got there just in time for the endless supply of meat to be nice and cooked and the churros fried to perfection.  Of course, what's a fiesta without adult beverages? so we headed for the one of 6 bars that I saw at this place.  I knew I had to wake up early tomorrow so I opted for a Mini Sangeria.  Now, normally you should praise me for this type of responsible behavior, but I feel compelled to share with you that a "mini" here is a cup that is literally the size of my head.  Definitely a 2 hander for this little senorita.  As you can see above, the drink was pretty fantastic :)  I would also like to point out that the prizes here for the fair games are just as bizzare as the people at the fair.  Check out the pics on facebook, but just to recap some of the prizes that could be won during a nice game of bingo: a stuffed animal, a mini motorcycle, a microwave, a flat screen TV, an iron, a coffee maker, a lamp, a stereo, a life sized barbie doll, and of course: a WHOLE LEG OF HAM!! what is it with the Spanish and Jamon?? I will never know...

Been all around the world and I I I....love it!

The statue of David with my roommate, Michael.  C'mon, it's funny :)

So today, Wednesday the 8th of Sept, was the last just chill day for us and it has been wonderful!  Woke up around noon, had a bowl of cereal and took a shower.  Today also marks the first day that I shaved my legs in Spain.  Yeah, you do the math on that one.  It was very neccesary.  Almost as neccesary as it was for me to share that with you :)  Christina and I made a delicious lunch after I watched about 4 more episodes of Californication.  Both the show and the food were great.  After lunch (rice and beans and all kinds of veggies AND Chicken, Dad!) we decided that we didn't want to strain ourselves too much on our day off so we took naps.  Beautiful, glorious naps.  I haven't been able to sleep here.  I don't know if I'm just too excited or jet lagged to the max, but I've been trying to hold off the nap so I could sleep at night.  Today I gave in.  I'm not even mad about it, it was great.  After our naps Kristina, Michael, and myself decided to check out the new "Parque Europa" which is a park that was made with all kinds of various monuments from around Eruope.  Two trains, about a 2.5 mile hike and 1.5 hours of travel, we reached our destination.  SOOOOOO GRREEEEAAAATT!! We saw Paris, Rome, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Berlin, Greece, Copenhagen, and London all in about 2 hours.  Just magical.  The picture above shows Michael and I in Florence with David.  He didn't know I was looking up for the picture.  I believe that I failed to mention to all my great roommates that us Flynns will stop at nothing to make good clean fun both inappropriate and uncomfortable to all other humans on this earth in any given situation.  Since this given situation included a statue of a naked man I was clearly obligated by our Flynn duty to carry out this legacy.  Once we went around Europe about one and a half times we called it quits to make sure we would catch our train home.  We did our 2.5 mile hike back to the train station, rode the first train, switched, and walked home.  Home sweet home.  I grabbed a quick bite for dinner (amazing omlette) and hit the hay.  The hot stagnent air of the evenings have finally switched over to a chilly breeze at night and it's amazing.  Hopefully I'll start getting some sleep with this good weather :)

Our first house guest :)

Woke up late as usual.  Seriously, can you say "living the dream"??? When I woke up our first house guest of the year had arrived.  Michael and Kristina have a friend that just moved back over to Madrid and is looking for an apartment so she's going to be living with us for a few days.  It's great because we have that extra bedroom so we have plenty of space.  It looked like it was going to rain today and I'm surprisingly a little exhausted from going around and exploring so I decided to do a little TV streaming to my computer.  I caught up on this season of Weeds and started a new series called Californication.  Unfortunately it's fantastic and I watched about 5 episodes in a row.  wwhoooopsies.  There went our day.  So for dinner we went to a local tapas place and it was soooo good.  Beer and food for cheap.  Cant beat that.  If you're really hungry I suggest going to a place that serves more than just tapas becuase the portions are super small (compared to portions in america at least!) but the tapas were really good.  As we were sitting down eating I was looking around and realizing that I didn't see a single non-alcoholic beverage on any of the tables around us.   Even though I would never automatically count this as a bad thing, it got me thinking quite a bit.  People around here walk EVERYWHERE.  They drink beer and wine all day and night and i as far as I have seen, I am the only one in about a 2 mile radius that has a water bottle.  The people of Madrid have to be so incredibly dehydrated.  To top it off there haven't been any water fountains in sight and there are no public bathrooms.  I guess when the only liquid entering your body goes thru your kidneys and liver first instead of your baldder, the chances of having to go to the bathroom while you are not at your house go down pretty significantly.  Crazy Spain.

getting my race in shape

beautiful path in Retiro during my run

Today has been VERY eventful.  Got up to our internet man setting us up.  AWESOME!! i love starbucks but i was getting a little sick of having internet for only a short bit everyday while the other customers looked on as I spoke english to skype everyday.  After that was hooked up Kristina, Michael and I walked to a store about 2 miles away to sign up for the Madrid 10K.  While we were in line to register we heard about another 10K being held in Alcala, just outside of Madrid city, that we decided to register for as well. Great.  Now not only do I have a 10K to look forward to in just 4 days I also will be running another one the first weekend of October :)  Since i haven't run in about 3 weeks this Madrid 10K will be no easy task but I'm still pumped!  After we hiked back to our place we had some lunch and Christina and I went over to retiro park so I could run for a bit and she read a book.  My run was amazing.  There are a million different little paths all thru Retiro for you to run, walk, sightsee, fornicate, or just hang out with a good book.  O, did you catch that one? Yeah, on my run I witnessed my first act of public fornication, which i have heard is no big deal in Retiro park.  Let me be the first to say: EEEWWWWWW.  Not only is it yucky, but it's hot out here.  Like peel your skin off and put it in the freezer hot.  Double yucky.  ANYWAY, after a beautiful run Christina and I hopped on the metro back to our place and naturally grabbed a Doner Kebab for dinner on the way home.  The guys there already know us and gave us a free shot after dinner.  Perfect ending to a great day :)

Lazy Domingo

Continuing the chronic-what?-cols of B-renn-a and rounding out the first week of life in Madrid.  Today has been a super lazy Sunday consisting of vegging out, making lunch, and going to starbucks to use their internet to keep in touch with the fam.  On our walk back from the metro to our apartment we said hello to our Doner kabab waiter (it's been a week and people are already remembering us) and walked into a gellatoria for "dinner".  Fantastic.  After our frozen treat we went back to the apartment and read for a bit (still no internet, TV, etc.) and made a sandwhich a little bit later on.  Read a little bit more and called it a day.  Can't do too much at once, right?!?  Crossing our dedos (fingers) that we get internet tomorrow!!

Poppin' (anti)Acid

OOOO man I can get used to the life I'm living over here right now.  At the moment we aren't in classes yet and my teaching doesn't start for a little while longer so right now I've been taking things niiiccceee aaaannnndddd sslllooowwww :) Today we slept in super late.  Like 2 in the afternoon late. A-MAZ-ING.  Since my stomach isn't of the strongest sorts the food here isn't treating me as well as I would like but it's too good to say no to it.  So my life has become a game of kill the heart burn before it kills me.  When I wake up, I pop an antacid.  After lunch, an antacid...and so on.  So, after we got up I made some lunch (and popped an antacid) and enjoyed the barely there breeze from our nice big windows.  After that we went to the locutorio up the street (where we use the internet) to try to stay as connected as I can and get some work down on the PC.  After that we came home and napped, naturally.  Since we woke up late we figured it would be in our best interests to stay as well rested as possible.  After we all woke up we walked to a part of Madrid called Chueca and there I fell in love.  With tapas :)  Chueca is right next to Sol and Plaza Mayor and all the amazing art museums and has quickly become my favorite place to walk around in.  We went to a tapas bar called El Tigre and it was the greatest little place I have been to yet.  If you come to visit me, have no worries; you WILL be seeing this place!  After we finished our perfect little tapas I popped another antacid and we were on our way to a sangria bar that was in what looked like a wine cellar underground and had great live music.  We enjoyed our sangria and went to a few more bars.  Since there were four girls and one guy in our party we were ushered into a few places for a few free shots (seriously, Mardid just gets better and better) and Kristina and Michael and myself called int quitsies for the night.  Christina and Callie wanted to stay out so we parted ways, walked home, I popped my last antacid for the evening and said "buenos noches" to el mundo(the world).

Buckeyes are alive and well in Madrid

Today was awesome :)  We slept in until about 10 and then got up and took our showers for the day.  Then Christina and I packed a picnic and took the metro to Retiro Park.  This is my new favorite place in Madrid.  It is a huge park that right in the middle of madrid with a rose garden, pond, tons of running and biking trails and beautiful monuments and fountains.  This place goes forever!! It’s so beautiful.  We walked around for a while and then sat down under the trees for our picnic.  Spain threw another curve ball at me when i looked up and noticed five long, rounded leaves in clusters with pointed balls in groups of one or tree all over the tree.  HHMMMM, could it be?  I shook a branch until a little nut fell off and I was in shock.  BUCKEYE TREE.  No, seriously, there are buckeye trees all over Retiro.  Little signs of home all over the park to help me feel welcomed.  After we explored a bit more (and only walked thru maybe a quarter of the park) we headed home and got our Abono passes on the way.  They are one month metro passes that you get so you can ride the metro as much as you want for a really reasonable fixed one time fee when you pay for the Abono.  When we finally got home we quickly changed and headed out for Christina’s friends apartment because they were making us dinner.  They are Dominican and they are fantastic.  So nice and welcoming and their english is very good so that is always a plus!  This was the meal they cooked: the salad consisted of lettuce, mayo, tuna, and onion all cut up and mixed together.  You are then supposed to put this mixture on a tex-mex dorrito and each it like nachos.  It was actually pretty good.  Weird.  After a few drinks, dinner, and conversation we left their place to meet Kristina, Michael, and their friend Cally out for Michael’s birthday.  We went to some bars and a club on our street and had a pretty great time.  We got home around 4AM and listened to music, played some card games and then drank until about 5:30.  Thus, I am telling you about the day the next morning, hung over and tired :)  But it was really worth it and I slept like a rock.  The jet lag is starting to go away I think.  It’s another beautiful blue-skied 95 degree day here in Madrid and I think we’ll be walking around again today to figure out where things are.  Everyday’s an adventure, right?? :)

I have a spanish bank account!! I'm soo cool :)

Today has been a pretty solid day.  Christina and I decided that since we don’t have classes yet we should go ahead and get as much done as possible so we went to the bank and opened up our accounts for school.  Luckily her spanish is much better than mine and we were able to get this done as painless for us and Eduardo (the guy working at the bank) as possible.  Account is open and we will be getting our cards in just a few days.  By the time we were done roaming for the morning and we got home Kristina and Michael were here and getting settled in with all there stuff.  Christina and I made some lunch and napped for about 2 hours.  Perfecto.  We got up and went to the store with all the housemates and did some final apartment shopping (hand towels, trash can, shot glasses...etc.) and I think we are good to go for a while.  We went exploring again and there is so much to see here that I don’t think I’ll get everything in within our 10 months.  Sooo different from Ireland :)  Got some great dinner this evening again at a local cafeteria and went to the internet cafe to get some things accomplished online.  The people at the internet and cable place told us they should be out very quickly to set up our stuff here, within 15-20 business days.  aahhh, the spanish are so relaxed about everything.  Im American, I want things done and I want them done NOW.  Not here my friends.  They all close their shops and take a nap in the middle of the day for 2 hours and I swear people are just out walking around and hanging out with friends all day long, they don’t even have jobs and aren’t considered bums.  I don’t know how things get done around Spain, but while I’m here I can promise you they will be doing things a little faster around me if I can help it!  Anyway I am doing great and finally able to recognize things around my apartment and I know the general area pretty well already.  The fact that we don’t have internet at our own place is pretty frustrating but there is an internet cafe just up the road so it’s not too horrible.  There ‘s just not a whole lot to do in the actual apartment but it’s good because it makes me want to explore all day long.  SUCCESS! 

Rode the metro by myself AND discovered ranch!!

Woke up this morning tired and hungover and totally ready to start the day!!  Christina, my third roommate, flew in today and it was my job to get her from the airport and take her back to our place.  Sounds easy, right?  Well if you know me you know my sense of direction and taking 19 different stops and 3 different trains on the metro all by my lonesome is quite the task.  I got to the airport (very surprisingly) on time and didn’t get lost on the metro!!  YYAAAYYYY.  Then all I had to do was navigate through the airport and get Christina.  Done.  We drug, literally, all her bags back through the metro and got off at our stop and walked to our apartment.  Luckily you don’t have to take any turns once you get off the metro to get to our place and we found our way back easy enough.  Also lucky, she really liked the place.  Christina took a nap for a couple hours and I put all my stuff away.  I repeat; I found a place for everything, MOM!! :)  Kristina and Michael went back to their old place to get there things and will be back tomorrow so after Christina woke up we did some exploring and got our european phones.  Super cheap but I already dropped it and it still works!  Total plus!  We got dinner out at a local place and it was a little...interesting.  We saw a place really close to our apartment that said DONER KEBAB on it.  Great; more unrecognizable meat meals, my favorite.  So naturally as I turn to Christina to let her know that I don’t consume mystery meat she turns and tells me that these are her absolute favorite food and we MUST get one.  So I held my tongue and we walked inside to find three foot high and 1 foot wide hunks of meat rotating and sweating on stakes.  She got her doner kebab and I felt obligated to try things out.  Dos pollo doner kebabs, por favor.  We sat down and they brought out these mounds of the so called “chicken meat” and veggies that were stuffed in what appeared to be an english muffin.  To my amazement, it was like heaven had a present just for me and it was wrapped in grease drenched paper.  Then our fries came out and all of my worst nightmares came true: the fries smelled amazing and cooked perfectly golden brown...and then white and brown sauce was poured on top of them.  I threw up part of the present heaven gave me just a little and, as I tried to fake a smile they told me to “eat up”.  No bueno.  I tried to get a fry that wasn’t covered in gunk but it was no use.  The white sauce was everywhere so I figured it wasn’t going to get less soggy by the minute and threw it down the hatch.  The biggest shock of my life came when I first didn’t immediately make the fry reappear.  The second came when I realized the white sauce was RANCH DRESSING.  aaahhhhhhhh!!!!  Seriously, you threw me for a loop with the sauce on top of my fries, Spain.  BUT I regained all my faith in you as a country when you served me ranch.  I like you Spain.  This is going to work out juuuuuuust fine!

Made it here with my luggage!!

So when they tell you the flight is 7 hours they are lying.  Badly.  I left the US at 7pm and I arrived in Madrid at 8:30am this morning.  Even though I was in the air for only 7 hours I feel those 13 hours that have passed since I have set foot on land right now and the jet lag is already kicking in pretty bad.  The flight was overall pretty okay.  My ears usually don’t pop on planes so I guess it was normal that they didn’t start now.  But once we landed the pressure went away pretty quickly and I am doing very well now.  When I got off the plane, Liana and I went through customs, grabbed our bags, and walked out the door.  I tripped as soon as we got off the plane and was waaayyy close to spraining my ankle within 10 minutes of arriving in true Flynn fashion.  However all was good and we met Kristina and Michael right outside the doors.  Perfect.  From there Liana went to her host family and I went with Kristina and Michael to our apartment.  19 metro stations and about 200 stairs later (with my two 50lb luggage bags in tote), we were out of the metro and on our way to our place.  The apartment is about a half mile from the station and Kristina and Michael each grabbed one of my bags so that effort (on my part) wasn’t so bad.  Thank God we live in a building with elevators so going up to the 3rd floor wasn’t horrible.  Once inside our place I was totally impressed.  There are 3 bedrooms, a huge living room with major windows, 2 bathrooms and a kitchen.  It’s great and we entered into a lease with the landlord today.  I would say we “signed a lease” but that would be a lie.  We are renting from the cutest little Spanish man I have ever seen and he is still getting around to the paperwork.  For now it’s just cash for the rent and a word that the place is ours until he decides he’s ready to draw up the lease.  Since I am my father’s daughter this obviously makes my heart stop to think that we don’t have any documentation that we actually are going to be living here and paying rent to this man.  However, when in Spain... right??  After we dropped my things off and double kissed Luis about 30 times we decided to do a little exploring around and get some basic needs for the apartment (food, soap, alcohol...etc.)  We went to the grocery store and the chino place near by and got our goods, dropped them off, and then went out for food.  We went to the cafeterias (what they call the little bar/food places) near our place (YES, literally everything is right by our place.  Que bien!!) and got some canas.  Canas are beers and then you get tapas for free.  The good news is that for the beer and tapas it’s only about 1.35 Euro total.  The bad news is that you don’t get to pick the tapas that you get so when we got mayo/ham/noodle salad I wasn’t as impressed.  When we finally got home we decided it would be best for me to stay up as long as possible to get rid of the jet lag easier and go to bed at the normal time Spaniards go to bed.  Naturally, the best idea we came up with to pass the time was to drink a little bit and get to know each other.  We have no internet or TV right now so it only seemed logical that booze should be involved.  About 3 hours and muchos bottles of alcohol later: here I am.  Totally spent and a little toasted.  Ready for my first night’s sleep in Madrid.  Buenos Noches :)

And the journey begins...

Alright guys, I can't believe it, but the time has finally come.  I've got my bags packed (thank God!) I'm at the airport, and as far as I know I'll be getting on a plane that will take me to Madrid in about 20 minutes.  I decided that I wanted to write a blog during my stay in Spain for several reasons.  The first: so I can remember all the amazing things that I'll be experiencing.  The second: to let you in on  what is exactly is going on with me and so you can enjoy my adventures as much as I am.  The last one: so when i come home all of you can laugh with(at) me becuase of all the shenanigans that go on during my stay :) I don’t have many (minus the “m”) friends over there but I am pretty sure there are many students in my program that are in the same boat so this should prove to be a pretty exciting adventure that I am about to take.  Although I hate admitting it, I am just as excited as I am nervous and I am eager to get the first few awkward days of not knowing where things are and not knowing anyone around me to pass so I can really enjoy my time and get as much accomplished as I can.  My plane has started to board so I have to pack things up here.  Goodbye USA, hola Madrid! :)