Christmas Time's a-Comin'

The last month or so in Madrid was a little bit of a blur. In November we were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner, but then I caught what must have been the Spanish plague (or I guess maybe the flu) and we had to reschedule. So our Thanksgiving dinner became a Christmas dinner, since we didn't have it until last weekend. It was a lot of fun (although hectic), and it was great to see NYU people from last year who I haven't seen since last June.

The NYU girls.

Group shot.

School was especially hectic the past couple of weeks, between field trips, Christmas concerts, the kids having to finish their textbooks before the end of the trimester (that's right, even kindergarteners in Spain apparently have to finish up their book of fichas, which I'm not really sure how to translate but it's basically just a bunch of worksheets that they have to apparently complete by the end of each trimester).

Santa with all of his reindeer.

The primary school students had to learn a crazy country Christmas song called "Christmas Time's a-Coming" for a Christmas concert, and they actually did a really good job (some of them even played instruments, instead of playing the music from a cd). With my preschoolers, I decided to teach them "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and all of my students colored a reindeer, which we then hung on the wall with Santa in his sleigh.

For some reason, this year's Christmas season didn't really feel like Christmas to me; I'm not sure if it was because we didn't have any Thanksgiving dinner or because for the first time in many, many years I didn't have papers to be writing and finals to be studying for. But Christmastime in Madrid is always cool; there are lights and trees and decorations (and people selling decorations) all over the city. The lights this year were the same as the ones they used last year, but they moved them to different parts of the city, so some I didn't get a chance to see last year and were new to me. This photo album has all of my pictures of the lights and other Christmas stuff in Madrid.

Feliz Navidad!

Portugal

As I said, last weekend we had Thursday and Friday off, so I went with some friends to Lisbon for three days. We stayed in Lisbon for two days and took a day trip to a town called Sintra on the other day. I really loved both cities, although the weather in Lisbon was pretty crummy most of the trip (the sky finally cleared up in the afternoon on our last day). Nevertheless, there were a lot of things

Elevador da Gloria, near our hostel

about Lisbon that I loved, some things that are similar to the cities I've been to in northern Portugal, and some things that are different. I love Portuguese architecture (though I couldn't tell you anything about it) and all of the red-brown colored roofs of the buildings, and I especially love the sidewalks made of stone that form mosaics in many streets and squares. I love the old-fashioned trams that still run in the city, and there are also still a few funiculars, which are basically trams the go a short distance up really steep hills (Lisbon is very hilly). One of these funiculars was actually on the street right next to our hostel, but we never rode it, mostly because we

Pastel de nata

had no need to, but also because it costs like two euros! I'll walk up the hill for free, thank you. Anyway, lastly, there is also still one "elevador" or elevator/lift that serves a similar purpose: it is an outdoor elevator that brings you from the lower part of the city straight up to the top of a hill to a higher neighborhood. Apparently there used to be two elevators like this, but only the Elevador de Santa Justa is still in use today (mainly for tourism, as the other trams are also). Another thing that I love about Portugal is the pastries...there are so many different kinds (unlike Spain) and they're all amazing looking and tasting. A few things I didn't like so much about Lisbon is the weather. The first two day we were there it was very foggy and cloudy. On the last day it rained in the morning and then finally the sun came out in the late afternoon. It could have been worse, but I know I would have liked the city a lot more had we had good weather the whole time. Next, I didn't like how there were Spaniards everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I love the Spanish (for the most part), but the whole point of our trip to Portugal was to get away from Spain, Spanish, and Spaniards. I'm pretty sure we heard more Spanish than Portuguese this trip. Another downside to Lisbon is that you can really see the poor state of the economy; in much of central Lisbon there are many, many abandoned buildings, residential and commercial, and the place isn't quite as packed with stores and restaurants as one might expect. (Spain, on the other hand, certainly shows signs of economic problems, but pretty much the entirety of the population thinks nothing of going out for dinner or drinks or shopping all of the time still.)

Sintra, the town we took a day trip to on our second day in Portugal, was amazing. The town is very touristy, but it's just so beautiful and fairy-tale like that you don't mind all the tourists around you. The town is mainly famous for all of its palaces, the Pena Palace above all. There is also the remains of a Moorish castle that is

Pena Palace in Sintra

pretty famous as well. We only had time to visit the Pena Palace (and the surrounding Pena Park) and the Castle of the Moors. Since both are on top of a mountain (which is terrifying to go up in a bus), there are some great views of the center of Sintra and the surrounding Portuguese country side. I loved Sintra, but I realize now that you could easily spend two days there in order to see everything you want to see, so hopefully I'll have a chance to go back in the future. (Actually, I'd like to go back to Lisbon also, because there were some things there we didn't get a chance to see from the inside, such as the Belem Tower and the Jeronimos Monastery, because of weather and time).

All in all, it was a fun trip, but I wish we'd had more time in both Lisbon and Sintra. At least the next time I'll go, I'll know exactly what to do and where to go!

Avila

Pretty view of Avila from at the top of the medieval wall.

View of the cathedral from on top of the wall.

 Last week was one of the many crazy Spanish holiday weeks. We went to school on Monday and Wednesday, and had Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday off. On Thursday I went to Lisbon for the weekend with a couple of friends, and Tuesday we also had off, so I went to a city that I've been meaning to visit for a while now called Avila. It's famous mainly for the medieval wall that surrounds it (built between the 11th and 14th centuries); it's one of the most complete, still standing medieval walls surrounding a city. (They're also really cool because you can climb up them and walk around them almost the entire way around the city, which gives you not only a nice view of the city but also of the surrounding countryside.) The old town is a UNESCO World Heritage site. There's also a nice cathedral, but I didn't go inside because it cost something stupid like 7 euros, and it was pretty enough from the outside. I'm not really one to say, "if you've seen one cathedral, you've seen them all"; I think all cathedrals are pretty unique even when they're the same architectural style. But I do draw the line at the Catholic Church charging me 7 euros just to go in and take a look around.

Hopefully I'll get around to posting about Portugal soon, but this week at school has been crazy and next week will be no different, between Christmas things and packing to go home on Thursday.

Spanish Elections

Spanish elections were a little while ago now (back on November 20th), but I keep getting sidetracked when meaning to update this blog. Anyway, when I was in Spain in the spring of 2008, Spain was voting for its next prime minister. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), the incumbent, won. I don't think there's a maximum amount of terms a prime minister here in Spain can be in office, but regardless, the whole country has been really unhappy with Zapatero for a while now because of the economy, the lack of jobs, etc. So he wasn't even running again. Which perhaps is a shame; I don't want to delve much into politics here, but Zapatero did do some good things while he was in office, at least in my opinion; things that for a still very young democracy like Spain are quite surprising and even controversial, like legalizing gay marriage back in 2005, and a few years later, abortion. Anyway, this time around, Mariano Rajoy of the Partido Popular (Popular Party), who ran against Zapatero back in 2008, won. I don't know much about Spanish politics (or politics in general, for that matter), but the PP is the more conservative political party here, and I also don't really like Rajoy, so I'm not thrilled about that. But hey, we'll see how it goes. You can read more about it in this NY Times article.

Autumn in Spain: Extremadura

This has been one crazy fall. At the very beginning of this month we had a long weekend, so some friends and I took a trip to Extremadura, which is a region of southwest Spain boarding Portugal. It's famous for the Roman ruins in many of the cities. We went to three cities: Trujillo, Mérida, and Cáceres. Trujillo was my favorite, although I can't really pinpoint why. It's a nice little town, not too touristy, and the Plaza Mayor is really pretty. I also really enjoyed Mérida because it has the most Roman ruins, including a Roman theater and amphitheater, which are really cool. The last city, Cáceres, is also very pretty and the entire old town is actually a UNESCO world heritage site.

The three of us in the alcazaba in Merida.

Anyway, as of right now I'm liking my preschool (infantil, as they call it here) classes; most of the kids, especially my 5-year-olds, are quite smart and cute. I also have 3-year-olds, who are challenging because they don't really know a whole lot in Spanish, let alone English, and 4-year-olds, who are, of course, somewhere in the middle. I also have seven classes in primary (elementary school), with 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Some of good, but those kids are much more challenging because they know how to misbehave more than the little kids do. On the other hand, I like that most of them (the good classes) can actually have a conversation with you in English, so I can do more activities and games with them that I couldn't really do with 5-year-olds.

So that's autumn thus far in a nutshell. In a couple of weeks we'll be planning Thanksgiving and then at the beginning of December there is another long weekend, so I'm going to Lisbon, which should be fun!

Madrid: Year Two

Well, it's been a while. This past month or so has been really busy, what with school starting and my being sick for the past three weeks. I'll leave school to another post, basically because that's a whole can of worms that I don't feel like opening here quite yet.

In the meantime, before I got sick, and during the recuperation period (a weekend in the middle when one cold went away and before the next one started), and this past weekend, I've been trying to really go out and enjoy Madrid and this great "fall" weather because last year I was always too busy and stressed out with schoolwork to have much time to go out and explore.

Living room with balcony

On September first I moved to a new apartment, not too far from my old one. It was a little sad to leave my señora's because I liked living with her and having her company, but so far I really like my new place. I live with three other people, two Spaniards (both from Basque Country), and one French guy. They're all very nice and I think we get along well. Our apartment is also pretty nice, aside from the new neighbors who just moved in across the patio from my room. [Patio: most Spanish apartment buildings are square or rectangular, and in the center there is a gap, with a patio on the ground floor and open air between the sides of the building on the other floors.] This particular patio is really small, so to begin with I could easily have a conversation across the patio without having to raise my voice if for

Our fifth roommate, Ella

Street view from the balcony

some bizarre reason I ever wanted to. Therefore, I could also theoretically see into their windows and their balcony, and vice-versa, if the curtains aren't drawn. It's just a little awkward. But it's not that big a deal, except when on some occasions it sounds like there is an entire frat house living there, all inclusive with loud music and constant, loud conversations. Luckily this doesn't seem to happen at night, so I can't complain too much, but some Sunday mornings I just want some peace and quiet. I also have another neighbor who tends to like to play (not very good) guitar around 10 pm, but he usually stops around bedtime so again, I can't complain too much.

Anyway, a few weekends ago, I went with some friends to a little town south of Madrid called Aranjuez. The town is mostly known for the palace, which used to be the summer palace for the royal family, and the ridiculously extensive (and beautiful) gardens. It's a really pretty town, and when we were there it wasn't overrun with tourists, so it was a great place to visit. I think it's on my top five favorite Spanish cities/towns.

The three of us in front of fountain in the Jardin de Parterre

 Additionally, since my family left in August I've been exploring some places in Madrid as well. Some places are very familiar to me, like the Retiro park, and some new, like Andén 0 (an old metro station that is now a museum) and my new neighborhood.

Anyway, aside from school and this stuff, not much else has been going on. Well, I suppose Spain's economy is going to crap (um, why couldn't Greece and Spain and those other countries screw up last year when I needed the euro to be weak when I was dealing with the exchange rate to take money out of my American bank account?). And the public school teachers have been going on strike for a while now, but that hasn't affected me because I work in a colegio concertado, which is basically the Spanish equivalent of a charter school. In my next post I'll hopefully get a chance to talk about my teaching job. My next project is to finish organizing a trip to Extremadura, an autonomous community bordering Portugal, for the four-day weekend coming up at the end of October. I also just booked plane tickets to Lisbon for a long weekend that we have in December. It's always good to have something like that to look forward to and to motivate you to get through long weeks at school.

Until next time.

Hot town, summer in the city

Well, summer looks like it's in no hurry to wind down here in Saharan Madrid (as a friend of mine nicknamed the city), at least if you define summer by the temperature outside. Actually, that's a bit of a lie; despite our past week of near, at, or above 100-degree days, the ten-day forecast claims that starting Monday, temperatures will hover just above 90. Ha.

I have a love-hate relationship with summertime Madrid. Unlike summertime Boston (or I guess really any of New England/NY), Madrid is hot and desert-dry. That means no thunder-and-lightening, and I can count on one hand how many times it's rained since June. I love the heat and lack of rain. But lately I've almost had enough of the heat. I can only take so many nights of trying to fall asleep at 2 am when it's a breezeless 85 degrees outside (and, what's worse, in my room). August in Madrid is the time everyone goes on vacation. Despite the economic problems here in Spain, many small shops close down for a couple of weeks and some even the whole month while their owners make the trek out of the desert to the water-laden coasts. I like Madrid when it's a little quieter. I hate when I go out to buy stamps or some fruit and find out the estanco (tobacco stand where it's most common to buy stamps) or the fruteria is closed due to vacation.

This August is a little different. The Pope is in town (really) for the Jornada Mundial de la Juventud, World Youth Day. Where does the Pope stay when he visits Madrid? Couldn't tell you. As for the thousands (literally, they're EVERYWHERE) of the world's Catholic youths, I think they're staying in schools, with host families, maybe in churches...who knows. All I know is that a lot of activities are taking part in El Retiro, the huge park literally 5 minutes down the street from where I live, so I've had multiple encounters with foreign language-speaking hoards of teenagers. The other night I was waiting to cross the street (on a couple of separate occasions, actually), only to be delayed by police on motorcycles escorting parades of buses full of bishops, priests, and other apparently important religious people. (Ever seen a bus full of bishops in their bishop garb fly by? Let me tell you, it's a sight to see.)

Confessionals set up in the park

Apparently they're expecting a lot of guilt-ridden teenagers.

Anyway, despite the Catholic chaos, this has been a boring month. Aside from finding a new apartment (in the process still) and working out all my documents to renew my visa, I really don't have any obligations, which means I've been reading a lot and watching a lot of tv. I was exploring the city on the cooler days (and by cooler I mean 95 degrees or less), but the past week or so has just been too hot to go out past noon.

Until next time, if the heat and boredom haven't killed me.

When 90 degrees begins to feel cool

Madrid - "the most Spanish of all cities"

Apparently one of Hemingway's favorite cities in the world was Madrid. I feel like I vaguely knew that he spent time here way back when, but either way, I thought this NY Times article was interesting.

On a more or less entirely different note, the other night we had an end-of-the-year party celebration at school with our program coordinator, professors, and staff. There are a good amount of us staying next year to teach and some even to translate, but it's going to be weird not seeing some of these people again. Coming from a university with a near 5000-student undergraduate class, being in a program of 23 people is a huge difference for me. It's had its ups and downs in terms of size, but overall it's been a good ten or so months.

Everyone, including some of our professors

Everyone with our program coordinator.

With our program coordinator.

That's pretty much it. The thesis is in the final stages (aka editing, writing a conclusion, formatting), so that's pretty much all that's in store for the final two weeks of June. Hasta entonces.

Just an fyi, an article from June 1st from the newspaper El Pais in English about the protests.

La Plaza de Solución

Well, it's been about two and a half weeks since the protests started here on May 15th, and as far as I can tell there is no projected end in sight. I'm horrible with understanding most things political, so I can't give a very good account of what's been going on, but I think the wiki article gives a good, broad summary. It's an interesting time to be in Spain.

I live a couple of miles from the center, so I actually hadn't been over to the Plaza del Sol, where people are still camped out (literally, with tents). I was in the area today, so I decided to walk through and take a look. It's not exactly the prettiest of sights but it's also not as dirty as the news has been claiming. I was probably also there at a relatively quiet time; not a whole lot was going on. I'm really curious to know how much - if at all - the protests are being covered in the news in the US. I haven't seen much on the NY Times online, and the fact that no one from home has mentioned it to me or asked me about it makes me think there's not a whole lot, but I obviously can't watch the news on tv.

Entrance to the metro, covered in signs and posters

"Now or never"

"There isn't enough bread for so much chorizo"

"Something beautiful is sprouting"

Reactions to high unemployment rates

So many posters

Plaza de ‘Sol’ución

22-M

It's kind of sad that the Spanish news has something to say almost every day (if not every) about what's going on in the US, but it takes a week for US newspapers to bother writing up a story about Spanish goings-on (this time, a week of protests in Puerta del Sol). Anyway, elections (for regional and local governments) take place today, so the protests will presumably stop after the results are announced.

Lanzarote: volcanoes and camels and craters, oh my!

This past weekend I went to the island of Lanzarote, one of the seven islands in the Canaries, which belong to Spain but are off the coast of northern Africa. Lanzarote, like the other islands, is pretty small, only 40 miles from the southernmost to the northernmost points, and a maximum of 15 miles wide. It's also completely volcanic, and several of the beaches are "volcanic" and have black sand, which I think is really cool. It's also really hot and really humid, although it gets very little annual rainfall.

Playa Grande in Puerto
del Carmen

On the first day we just explored the part of the island where we were staying, Puerto del Carmen. There are several "golden sand" beaches there and a lot of touristy restaurants and shops. Tourism is the main industry in Lanzarote, and there are a LOT of Germans and British people that go on vacation there (so much so that the airport signs are first in German, then English, and then Spanish). Anyway, we sat on the beach during the afternoon, and then after that we went to explore the area a bit more.

Really pretty volcanic crater in Timan-
faya National Park

On Saturday (the second day), we decided to do a day-long excursion that took us all over the island with a tour guide, which was really great because although there are buses on Lanzarote (called guaguas), they don't go everywhere. The tour bus first took us to el Golfo, a volcanic rock/sand beach with a sea-level crater filled with yellow-green water that gets its color from the algae in it. Then after that we went to Timanfaya National Park, were you can see all the volcanic mountains up close, which may sound boring but they are actually really pretty and many of them are lots of different colors. There's also a restaurant on top of one of the volcanoes (a semi-dormant one), and they cook their food primarily with the heat of the volcano. After that we went to a restaurant in a nearby town for lunch. We had potaje, a stew made of vegetables and chick peas, which was really good. Then we had fish with potatoes with the two sauces typical of the Canaries, mojo picon and mojo verde. The first one is red and spicy and the second is green and really garlicy. After lunch we drove through some of the vineyards on the island, which are much different from what most people probably picture as vineyards. The vines grow really close to the ground and grow in the soil that is below the black lava sand/rocks. Apparently the wine industry is really challenging because of the lack of rainfall in Lanzarote. Severe heat waves as well as rain too early in

Vineyards

 the season can more or less destroy the crop. We stopped at a winery where we were able to try a couple of different wines, which I wasn't a huge fan of (they had a strange, gasoline-like flavor to them). But apparently the wines of Lanzarote have a good reputation (as well as a certain goat cheese, which I sadly did not have the change to try). After that we drove up towards the northern part of the island, first through the Valley of a Thousand Palms, where supposedly in the 17th and 18th centuries (I think), the townspeople used to plant one palm tree for every girl who was born and two for every boy (how rude). As a result, the area has the greatest density of palm trees on the island. Next we stopped at a lookout point on the northwest coast, where you can see another small island, La Graciosa, which belongs to Lanzarote. Unfortunately it was a really hazy day so the view wasn't too clear. After that we went to Jameos del Agua, which is basically a volcanic cave. That was the last main thing we saw on the excursion. Over the course of the day we saw various works of art/architecture that Cesar Manrique, a famous architect and artist from Lanzarote. Some of the things he designed were the restaurant on top of the volcano in Timanfaya National Park, various statues, (at the entrance to the park, at Jameos del Agua, etc.), a huge cactus garden (which we didn't get to see), windmills, and Monument to the Peasant. All of his works are pretty interesting, although some are really abstract (in particular the Monument to the Peasant).

On Sunday, our last day, we decided to go to the town of Playa Blanca, where the beaches have practically white sand (looked more like normal sand to me, but hey). It's also right north of another island in the Canaries, Fuerteventura (although we didn't go there). We spent most of the day on the beach or walking around the town. Unfortunately I only have a few pictures of Playa Blanca because that's when my camera pretty much full-out died...but oh well.

Que bien te lo montas

Well, the semester is over. I turned in a paper Monday, took one exam yesterday morning, and had one more this morning. It's kind of a big relief because I'm anxious and looking forward to getting back to my thesis, which I haven't really been able to give my full attention to much at all this semester. (Right now I have the rough draft for one of the 4 chapters done.)

plain

cinnamon raisin

Semana Santa was a great trip (London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Toledo), although I would really like to go back to London, there's a lot we saw there but a lot we didn't have time for. In other news, lately I've been trying to cope with the lack of bagels in this country, but due to my lack of success with that, I found a pretty good bagel recipe online and I've made them twice now, the first time cinnamon raisin and the second time just plain ones. Maybe if I wind up hating teaching next year I'll just open up my own bagel shop.

Lastly, on Friday I leave to go to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands for the weekend with two friends. Then it's just me and the thesis 'til the end of June...

Los menores en Cataluña desde la transición: el uso del catalán y del castellano

Well, the semester is wrapping up and with that comes (for the MA students in Madrid), the graduate student symposium. Basically it is a huge conference in which every student has to prepare a 15-20 minute presentation about his or her thesis up until that point in time. It was organized into three sessions over the course of five hours, with presentations going on in three different rooms during each session.

Before the presentations. Nah, not nervous at alllll.

My presentation went pretty well. It was on the longer side, around 20 minutes, but after I started I wasn't nervous at all. All of the other presentations that I saw were really interesting. People are researching a really wide variety of topics, from linguistic topics such as Spanish versus English terms of endearment to cultural and literary topics like post-modernization and the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. My project looks to compare the the language uses in Cataluña between the younger people who have grown up since the end of Francoism in the late 70s and the older generations of people who grew up before then. (For those who don't know, in Cataluña there are two co-official languages, Spanish and Catalan, although over the past 30 or so years the people and government of Cataluña has put forth a lot of efforts to try to make Catalan the more politically and culturally dominant language.)

Brittany's a little rebel and was taking pictures 

during people's presentations. My advisor is

the guy sitting there...I don't think he liked my 

presentation much because I read too

much and didn't "improvisar."

Brittany and me!

Brittany and me with our mentor, José Pazó

Anyway, now that that's all over, we have only one week of classes left! I have one 20 or so page paper to write and two exams to take, then it's just thesis from then on through the end of June. I can't believe how fast this year has gone by, but this semester has been really busy so I guess that speeds things up.

I'll be posting my pictures soon from my spring break travels with Chris (we went to London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and various places in and around Madrid). For now I need to go to sleep and start pondering that 20-page paper that I need to start tomorrow...

[Photo credits go to Kat and Brittany, as I was too lazy to pull out my stubborn, semi-broken camera and take some of my own.]

Not an April Fools joke...

I heard that the Boston area got some snow last night so I just wanted to make you all feel better about that by telling you that its currently 77 degrees here!