Los Hechos del Dia

A few of my current facts:

Midterms are over.

I'm moved into my new apartment.

I finally have internet.

Madrid is incredible.

I've found love. His name is Castellano, and although I don't understand him all the time, we're slowly developing a more beautiful relationship ; )

Every time I walk down the halls of my apartment building, the smell of Spanish food permeates my senses. One day I'm just going to invite myself to dinner,

"Afternoon" is evening, and "dinner" is bedtime. Eventually I'll get acclimated to the Spanish schedule. I'm still so far from there though.

I've made my second home the Baha'i centre. Although I arguably spend much less time there than some of dear friends, I'm still considering bringing a blanket and toothbrush to cut down on the commute.

There is no word for "insulation" in Spanish. It's a wonderful thing that I'd love to introduce to the contractors over here. Until then, I'll just have to continue wearing my winter hat and three sweaters at home.

Last night I attended a wonderful Baha'i gathering with tons of people from all over Europe. Unfortunately, at least four or these extranjeros told me they knew I wasn't from Spain when they heard me speaking in Spanish. Dang it!

My Spanish improving poco a poco...Unfortunately my American school and English speaking friends are not helping too much.

My apartment is an "interior apartment" i.e. all windows look out onto the wonderful removed part of the building - also called the brick wall 10 feet away. Goodbye nice views, you spoiled me for 20 wonderful years.

Life in Madrid is growing on me everyday. So glad to be here!

Mi cita del dia:

"Tan potente is la luz de unidad que puede iluminar al mundo entero"

"So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole world"

~Baha'u'llah

This post was terribly written and quite boring. Feel free to skip over it.

(This post was written incompletely about 3 weeks ago....please excuse the incorrect dates! : ) )

(Ride of Death)

So remember all those lofty promises I made....2 entries ago? About blogging on a regular basis and such. Hah! Well, I´m sure those closest to me knew that those were all lies!

Now, almost 3 weeks after my last week, my head is swimming with recent memories and adventures. However, as I´ve been running on Spanish time but not quite fitting in all those promised siestas that I've heard so many speak of, I´m struggling to string any thoughts together. Please forgive my discombobulated recap.

This Friday marks my one month. I already feel like I´ve been here so much longer. I mentally seemed to slip into life in Madrid at a relatively fast pace. Although this month has not been all high and happy, I haven´t doubted for a minute that Madrid wasn't where I'm supposed to be.

If you read my previous post, you might or might not remember my whiny complaints about my commute. I had hoped that each day I took the hour and 20 minutes to travel to school would feel shorter than the last. Alas, my aspirations did not come true... I ended up dropping my math class (probably the best decision I´ve made since I been here) and adding an honors class on nationalism (to the dismay of many of my friends I´m sure, I´m actually very excited for this class cause we get to write 5 papers!). This new schedule meant coming earlier to school. Ok, not the end of the world. Until I did the morning commute. Turns out that extra 30 minutes early added another 15 minutes.

Ok, yeah shut up Emily. You have a long commute. BD! There´s a point to this story though, I promise! As a consequence of spending many hours each day on the bus, I began to thoroughly pursue finding my own apartment. After many fruitless emails, searches and phonecalls, I found a very quaint piso in a wonderful neighborhood called Goya (did Goya actually live in this area?? Who knows...let´s go with yes....it sounds cooler). I´ll be living with a wonderful girl from Puerto Rico - she´s been living in Madrid for 10 years and speaks very little English (yay!).

I´ve made a few great friends at school (shout out to Madison cause I know yoúre gonna read this ; )) who have some generously been showing me a wonderful authentic Madrileño experience. This time of year Spain is overflowing with festivals as cities, town, villages, and communitites alike celebrate the end of summer with one last final horrah. And my god, do these people know how to party.

My first fiesta, in a village outside of Madrid, was full of free concerts, fried intestines, spicy fricken fried potatoes, and one very painful amusement ride. My sister frequently reminds me that one time, many many years ago, my life´s goal was to hit all the amusement parks in the states and Western Europe. I cannot imagine why in god´s name I would have ever said this. Apparently I did. I would now like to make a formal retraction of this statement. It it NOT my life´s goal to go to all the amusement parks. Perhaps, maybe ít´s actually one of my goals to make sure I don´t.

The ride, which looked like 4 minutes of jolly good fun, was a bit more like 4 minutes of shoving my stomache and fried intestines back down to their rightful place. Not sure it was worth my 3 euros, but lesson learned: I'm officially too old for rides. Please refer to the photo above.

All in all, a wonderful night. I learned that friends intestines aren't for me, and neither are carnival rides. O yeah, and like my mom has reminded me a million times - I really need to invest in a decent pair of shoes... I blame all my future feet problems on this night.

First Week

Have you ever noticed when you travel to other countries which word they use for "uh huh, yeah, gotcha, ok, good,"? Somehow, I swear other cultures manage to find one word that fits ALL of these! When I first moved to Slovakia, it was the first word I picked up. Upon being picked up from the airport, Zarin received a phone call and I swear she must have said "dobre" 30 times in 10 minutes. It quickly became my word of choice. I often found myself just nodding my head and saying "Dobre, dobre" when someone would speak to me in Slovak, pretending like I completely understood what they were saying.

Shortly after arriving in Spain I had a similar experience with the word "vale" (bah-leh). Luckily my Spanish is about 1000x better than my Slovak was. However, this is the word I once again find myself using in unclear situations. Of course this doesn't always work in my favor like when someone is asking something of me, but usually my comprehension is high enough to realize when I actually need to figure out what is being asked. Usually! But not always. haha

So a few hours from now marks my first week in Spain. Here are a few highlights from my time here so far: In these last seven days I've...

-attended school at an "american" university. Although I am technically attending an American school, I feel far from convinced. Teachers are late, Spanish students don't come to class on the first day, classroom numbers seem to change about 3 hours before class, making it almost impossible to determine where your class is actually being held. The campus is absolutely TINY! A note to all my CND girls - if you think our campus is small...check out mine!! The school claims there are 700 students, yet all the classes are basically taught in one tiny little building. Today I just discovered the best part about my campus though - a rooftop terrace where you can eat and look out over most of Madrid. Absolutely gorgeous. Going to a new school is exciting, but I must admit, I'm getting a little sick of making all new friends. I've gotten pretty good over the last few years at being very comfortable introducing myself to total strangers. However, it can get a bit exhausting. It'll be nice when I feel like I really establish a good group of friends (sooner rather than later, let's hope!)

-eaten more oil olivo, carne y marisco (olive oil, meat and seafood) than I have in the last 3 months combined. This truly is not an exaggeration. Spaniards are very proud of their olive oil (I didn't it realize Spain makes olive oil till I got here...) It is pretty much their ___ of choice (fill in whatever word you'd like related to the cooking and consumption (e.g. sauce, dressing, base, )). And more than anything, it's really the amount of olive oil that they use that impresses me. Almost unfathomable amounts.

- I have also eaten some truly amazing Spanish food, just about every single meal. This is all thanks to my incredible new Spanish/Persian Mom, Mitra. She is an incredible chef. Every night tomato gazpacho, tapas, jamon, spicy meat, paella, the works. If it has meat and fresh vegetables, she makes it! It's incredible. I'm being totally spoiled. When I live on my own I'm going to be so disappointed by my own food!

-So for all my friends back in the states, here's a few things to put the US in perspective: Most things here are crazy expensive. Pens (you know the cheapest ones from walmart with the black caps? the ones that cost like 99 cents?) 4.50 euros here! (about 6 bucks!) Plastic water bottle: 19 euro. Writing notebook: 7 euro. Lined paper: O that's right, they don't have it in Spain! Only graph paper. Very interesting...I would have thought lined would be more popular and less expensive with less ink?...who knows...Also, Spanish unemployment is at a ghastly 20% - twice as much as in the US. I was truly shocked by this number. I knew that Spain's economic situation was pretty horrific, but I couldn't believe it was this bad!

-Im currently living with a Baha'i family outside of Madrid (about 1.20 hours with public transport each way. very far and wont be able to keep this up forever, but surviving the commute for now). This family is honestly God-sent I swear. I've never experienced such hospitality, love and warmth from people that were my complete strangers. From the moment they greeted me, the Mahrami's have treated me as nothing less than family. Our time spent together almost always consists in learning and laughing over our different languages. A few words weve worked on were the subtle differences between "desert" and "dessert". Although very clear to native speakers, these two words tend to cause quite a bit of confusion for others. Also the English hard "E" as in "sheets" is often pronounced as a soft i...making the word......sh*ts! Haha I got quite a good laugh out of my host-father's mispronunciation of this one

Wow, I have so much more to say, but I think I'll save it for another post. Hope everyone is doing well, and thank you to all for the birthday wishes! (turning 21 is spain dosent have the same excitement as in the US since I can already go to bars here and I don't drink. However, now I can vote in Baha'i elections!)

Please sir, could you help me with my bags?....

Well, I guess the time has come. I'm now traveling, and blogging. Success! Today marks my first day in Madrid! I hadn't planned on writing something so soon after I got here, but the result of two two-hour siestas has left me more than wide awake. Incredibly, after only a mere 18 hours in the country, I still feel like I have a ton to say (granted, none of it may actually be worth your time, and this could just be the jetlag speaking). You've been prewarned though, so if you get to the end of this and say "Well he11 that was a complete waste of my time!", don't say I didn't tell you so.

So, after a rousing 6am flight out of medford, I walk/ran to catch my connection that was departing in 20 minutes. You know, just a nice "30 minute" layover. Nothing like a little adrenaline to get your travel jitters going. Gracias a dios I made it in time. From San Fran I made a brief stop over in DC, feeling quite nostalgic about the area I called my home a mere month ago. DC and Baltimore are worlds apart from the West Coast. I lived there for two years, and by the end of my time there, it really felt like home.

Anyways, back to the real story. So, if any of you know my travel habits, you know that I strategically pack all my heavies items in my carry-on, and pretty much pack it till the seam is about to split. This works out great for bringing way too many things, but not so well when it's time to lug the 50+lb bag into the overhead compartment. Everytime I get on a plane, I develop this instant feeling of embarrassment and anxiety as I scope out the friendliest, strongest, tallest male sitting on an outside row. When I spot my victim I abashedly ask in a sweet and quiet voice "please sir, could you help me with my bag? I would be so grateful". The man usually abliges kindly until he picks it up and says something to the extent of "Good God woman what do you have in here?! Bricks??" It's all a bit embarrassing but totally worth it compared to attempting myself to lift it (When I first moved to Slovakia I made this mistake which almost resulted in the decaptitation of an unsuspecting passenger sitting below).

This time as I boarded the plane I spotted my seat from a few rows back. Quickly my eyes landed upon my best subject yet: A dashing young spaniard quite fit for the job. Now I'm really not one of stereotypes, but if I were to think of a typical Spaniard, he fit the bill to the tee. Dark olive skin, black sweeping hair, and a beautiful Spanish accent. Perfect, I always knew Spain was the place for me.

I Comence! Kind of...

So. The time has finally come. I have put this day off for many a month, but now, as I sit here stuck working at school on a Saturday night, it's time for me to unleash my writing mania!! And frankly, Saturday television is pretty crappy.

To be honest, I've never really been interested in reading blogs. Lately however I started reading a few of my friend's travel blogs and it gave me the urge to travel...and to write.... In the future, hopefully I'll combine both - often, and frequently.