On Friday I went with the visiting Americans, the Spaniards who will go to the US for their exchange, and a few teachers to Madrid. This was the necessary trip to Madrid that all new comers need. However, after 5 months here the normal, tourist path isn’t super exciting. I did, however, enjoy the company. We took a train to the center of Madrid, and walked through the streets to the Palacio Real. There we saw the Palace and the Royal Armory, something that I hadn’t seen before, and then continued on. Next to the Plaza Mayor and Sol. In Sol we had lunch and had some time to walk around. Afterwards we went to the National Library and eventually returned by train. The mixture of Sol, Plaza Mayor, and the Palacio Real are pretty much the core elements of any tourist trip to Madrid. While for any Spaniard, and me too, these aren’t very interesting, if you are coming to Madrid for the first time be sure to see them.

On Monday we are going to Segovia, another place I have been to a few times. But I will enjoy the company, and maybe see something new. I’ll detail the touristy parts of Segovia in my next post.

I have written before about the exchange between my Spanish high school and a high school in Boston. 10 students from there have arrived here and are staying for 10 days. Later, during spring break the Spaniards are going to go to Boston to do the same. It is nice to see some other Americans and speak some English. While I have spoke English with my family and some other exchangers I haven’t spoke much in groups. Group conversations are probably the hardest things in Spanish. While I am improving a lot it is nice to speak a little English. They are going to Barcelona tomorrow and will be back Thursday. We are going to go on a few trips around Madrid and those should be fun. I’ll write more after we go.

I am ashamed to admit that until today my room has been pretty blank. So far to the extant that I didn’t have stuff on the walls or ceiling, only on my desk and other surfaces. Today I decided that I needed to change this. Our house here is pretty clean. It is cleaned daily (during the week) by our super-nice maids who live in a little house connected to the main one. My host brothers’ rooms don’t really have anything on their walls or ceilings. I found some scotch tape that I really didn’t think would leave anything on the walls and was ready to put some pictures and stuff up on the walls. Luckily, I first asked my host parents if that would be okay. My host Dad said no and that he would get me a cork board or a piece of wood to use instead. I was a little shocked because in the states I would massacre my wall to put stuff up, such as speakers on the walls; and plan to do so in my college dorm. Anyways, my host Dad got me a big piece of wood that I put on my desk leaning on the wall and filled it with pictures and flags and stuff. I am very glad that I added some stuff to my room to wipe away the austereness that resided there until today.

But really it made me think about the differences between family life here and at home. While, maybe my house is different than normal Spanish households the difference is that my 19-year-old host brother spends much less time in his room than I would expect. He has a TV there (which is new, he got it about 2 months ago) and a large bed. He doesn’t have a desk or a music system. Actually, we listen to music much less here. In the states I am so used to every single teenager listening to music a lot, or just hanging out in their rooms with music on. And they all have a stereo or something in their rooms. We as a family spend a lot more time sitting in the living room in front of the TV, whether the TV is on or not, that is where we almost always are. I sometimes feel bad about going to my room because I feel that the whole rest of the family is downstairs together and I want to be a part of it. Although, I have seen some friends’ rooms which are much more like what I am accustomed to. Maybe it is just because this house is new (my host family moved here this summer) and they are still decorating it.

Today while my host family and I were sitting on the couch talking with my host family’s son who is doing an exchange in Illinois this year the topic of food came up. My host mother asked her son what he had had for lunch. He said he had a bowl of soup. She went off an a slightly humorous but true rant. She was worrying that her son was going hungry. Here in Spain for lunch we have two plates. For example, today we had pasta first and afterwards chicken and potatoes. Then, we top it off we a postre, or desert such as a fruit or yogurt. Just soup for lunch must mean he was starving. He tried to explain that he had a bigger breakfast. I tried to explain that he might have dinner at 5:00 which would be much larger than a normal dinner here. But really the point that shown through is the difference between the cultures. In Spain food is much more important to the people. My host dad takes a lot of pride in the legs of Ham he buys. I made the grave mistake once of referring to it as Jamon Serrano not Jamon Iberico. He quickly corrected me and explained that the Iberico is of a much higher quality and much more expansive. He is proud to know someone who makes them and gives him a special price. But I digress. While my host parents are encouraging their son to go out to a restaurant and eat another meal if he is hungry, the real stress my host mom feels is that he isn’t getting a good and balanced diet. It’s more than just being hungry or not, it’s a matter of diet. The Mediterranean diet is a matter of equilibrium. Anyways, my host mom was very fired up about this and I understand that maybe even though I eat so much here, I won’t get super fat because the diet is good. We will wait and see until the end of the year, but it would be nice if she was right.

First, I would like to apologize for using Zephyr when I really should have used something indicating a strong, almost hurricane winds, not gently breezes across pretty flowers. Anyways, this weekend I went on another hiking trip to Cercedilla. We went to this same town on our first hiking trip, but took a much easier route than this weekend. The trail of this weekend had a significant change in elevation and we made it above the tree line. Up there there was snow and ice and you had to be careful as you walked. It also was extremely winding. In all of Spain the last few days it has been very windy. This has even caused some tragic deaths, but I am alive and well. Up on the mountain the winds pushed hard and the wind chill bit at your face. I learned that wind chill, or maybe there is a more fancy definition in English for the sensation when the wind makes it feel so much colder than it actually is, in Spanish is sensacion termica. Overall the trip was nice, if a little cold.

Today I was sadly required to sleep in and go to a Rotary function in the nearby town of Majadahonda. I took the train to Majadahonda and met up with the other Rotary exchange students and advisers. We then went to the Ayuntamiento (City Hall) of Majadahonda and met with the mayor. He was a nice guy who had been to Eugene and both of his children had studied in the US. He proudly told us that his daughter was currently at Stanford. We were given gifts of T-shirts with the Ayuntamiento de Majadahonda written on them.

Later we walked around Majadahonda with a girl who lives there for a while and then split our ways. I stuck around with a few others and went to Madrid. Here I actually saw some touristy stuff rather than the more usual areas I normally go. I saw a park with a ancient Egyptian structure that was moved to Spain in 1968 and the Palacio Real. I had seen the Palacio Real from outside a few times but I had never gone inside. Today I did. It has a ton of huge rooms that are each decorated. Decorated is an understatement. Every inch of every room is covered in something. Many have huge frescoes on the ceilings and carvings and paintings on the walls. Some others were filled with museum-ish setups showing the silverware goldware and plates used by the kings of Spain. There was also an old pharmacy that looked like something from a movie with old vials and bottles containing weird, unknown substances.

Now, I have spent more than 4 months here in Spain and I sometimes forget that Madrid has so much stuff that I haven’t seen. I don’t feel like a tourist, I live here, but I still need to see a lot more of Madrid.

Today I went to the office of foreigners of the Ministry of the Interior of Spain. This process was decently easy and arrived early and was out within 45 minutes. Now I have to wait for 40 days before I will receive a residence card that will allow me to enter and leave Spain an unlimited number of times. This whole process has been surprisingly slow. I made my first appointment to meet with the office in September, and now I have to wait 40 days more. Wow, the Spaniards are really slow.

While I was there in the office there was a British woman who was asking if any of the police spoke English. None did. So I helped her and explained the process that I had to go through to get an appointment. Then at the appointment bring all the papers and wait another 40 days for your card. She seemed happy to get some help because she didn’t speak any Spanish and was pretty lost.

Tonight I am going to see a play with my Spanish literature class. Hopefully I will understand it, and then enjoy it. We will see.

Today I had soccer practice with one of the two teams I am playing on. During this practice we ended up goofing around and doing very little. What I noticed with it was how similar people are from all over the world. The shenanigans of adolescent boys vary little between countries, I have now found.

The weather is quite cold here with a mix of rain and snow. I walk to school and bike around town bundled in layers of clothes. I am a little scared of the cold of Connecticut next year. I will have to boast the American economy when I return to ensure that I am decently warm.

I have been getting many comments on these posts but I think you are reading them. Comments are very welcome, just use that dandy little box at the bottom of the page.

This Thursday I will have to go the Police Station of Madrid and ask them very nicely to give me a student residence card that will allow me to stay in Spain for the entire year and have unlimited entries if I so wish to leave. To achieve this I need to go this place with all the necessary papers at the precise time and hope that I have everything I need.

Right now I am in a slightly tricky situation. I am not really illegal here, but not really legal either. When I entered Spain I was given a 90 day normal tourist visa that I had to change to a year-long visa here in Spain. With the first month I made an appointment to get this new visa. The appointment was in January, past the 90 days. So right now, I don’t have a visa to be in Spain, I think, but I will get one soon. It’s like a loop hole because of the slowness of the Spanish. Hopefully this meeting will go quickly and easily and I will soon receive my card. I’ll write more afterwards.

To finish of my winter vacation I took a trip to the South of Spain to Málaga. Málaga is in the south of Spain  where the sun is guaranteed to shine 200 days of the year and therefore many retired Europeans from other countries move here. The center of the city is nice but I still think the Madrid center is better. But right now in December, you can go outside without the Madrid gear. The Madrid gear for me includes two jackets, gloves, scarf and hat. And I still am cold sometimes.

The second day I was there we went a little further south by train to Fuengirola. There we visited the Zoo and observed how touristy it is with nearly every store speaking English. After that we went to a small pueblo, Mijas. Mijas is situated on a hill/mountain side and every house is white. Every house! Unfortunately, it was cloudy and we couldn’t see the beach and the other cities far into the distance. This view, I was told, is spectacular. We then stayed with the president of a Rotary club on the coast. She is Danish and took us to have a Danish lunch. This was open faced sandwiches on rye bread. It was quite good. However, this wasn’t enough Scandinavian culture for one day. We also went to dinner with her and some friends of hers from Sweden for a typical Swedish dinner.

The following day we went past Gibraltar down to the lowest point of the Iberian Peninsula, Tarifa. Spain has some tiny cities on the northern coast of Africa, so it wasn’t the lowest point of Spain, only of the mainland. From Tarifa we could see across the Straight of Gibraltar to Africa. I have now seen Africa. You can also see both the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic. Later in the day we went to Puerto Banus, in Marbella, one of the richest ports in Europe. There were many Yachts and fancy cars. I saw two Ferrari’s and many other expensive cars. I also went into a clothing store there and found some jackets for 1,500 Euros each. Wow!

We returned to Malaga and spent some time on the beach and in the sun before heading back up to the cold of Madrid. It was a very nice trip to finish off my vacation. School starts the 8th.

After Marbella