Still catching up on the blogging... kinda long again.

Hi again. So I have some time to kill for a bit so I figured I would write a little bit more about whats happening in my life here in Madrid. I don´t really know where to start, so don´t be too suprised if its really scattered in thought. Try and keep up and I apologize ahead of time.

So for the first month of being here we had to take intense language, history, and culture classes. Those just finished last Thursday. And they were intense. I loved them though... for the most part that is. The grammar and composition class we had was really really helpful for me, especially since I didn´t do well with using spanish regularly once last semester ended. And the history and culture class were pretty awesome too. I learned a lot in both of them. I honestly came to Spain knowing very little about the country and the people. I knew a bit about their political interests and their economic crisis, but thats it. I now know about their political system, their recent political history (post-Franco), and their population issues. I never knew for the last 15 years or so there has been a massive immigration from Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. In culture the most interesting fact I can say I learned was that the number one cause of death in women is due to spousal abuse. Isn´t that insane! That lecture was really intense. Almost unbelievable. And of course they explained the gastronomy of the culture and how its based on olive oil, fish, ham, and wine.
If you don´t know me well enough to know, I am a very picky eater usually. If it doesn´t look good I don´t touch it. Or if I don´t know exactly what it is. However, that has totally gone out the window since my arrival here. For one reason, during our first two weeks in the dorms we had no choice in what we ate or when for that matter. If you didn´t like it you either went without eating or you paid for it elsewhere. I kind of liked the food situation there though because it forced me to try new things every day. I eat fish now... big shocker to some of you. Just earlier this week I went to a restaurant that has foods from Galicia, which is in the north of Spain. They´re main diet consists of fish of course. I willingly ate calamari, not the kind I´m used to though.. these rings were huge and very fishy.
My favorite foods so far have been tortilla española, mixtos con huevos, napolitanas de chocolate, and cheese. Haha... tortilla española is basically eggs and potatoes with greens and such mixed in. I don´t know how its cooked, but it is delicious cold and hot... I prefer hot though. Mixtos are grilled bread with ham and cheese, and con huevos is with eggs too. I tend to make these at home now. Napolitanas are great! They make them with ham and cheese too, but I had a bad experience with one once and just don´t want to give it another chance. Haha... I prefer the ones with chocolate cream and chocolate sprinkles on them, but they make them with like a custard in them too. They´re crossaint-like too. And cheese is everywhere. When you go to the tapas bars. You buy a drink and they give you a small serving of a normal food. I.E. I order a beer and they give me a small bite-sized piece of bread with jámon serrano (cured ham), queso, tortilla española, or some other sort of topping, like a tomatoe paste. So you kill two birds with one stone by going to a tapas bar and drinking and getting dinner in too. I really like that law here. It goes way back... If you want I can give you the history of the tapas too. Haha... There are a few tapas bars that I really like and when people come to visit I will surely be taking them there. One of them is in the downtown area and is run by three brothers. They´re very nice and friendly, and they give you a LOT of tapas with your drinks. So it makes up for a jarra being 7€. I think I come out of that one more full than tipsy.

We had a week break between last Thursday and yesterday, which was our first day of our fall semester. I stayed in Madrid and did some traveling. I already mentioned how I went to the Reina Sofia and saw many of Pablo Picasso´s paintings, drawings, sketchings and all. It was sooo amazing. I just have to mention it again. During the break I also roamed town a bit on my own. I chose to go pack to El Parque Del Buen Retiro and took a few pictures of statues and the lake there. I sat and enjoyed the weather for a while on a hill next to the lake and read a book in spanish and listened to music on my ipod. Haha, but the first time I went to Retiro was on a Sunday and it was amazing! I love drum and bass music and hadn´t yet enjoyed a drum circle back in the states. But every Sunday at Retiro near the giant staircase into the water there are several small drum circles and its amazing. So many people are in the park on Sundays, walking, playing the drums, laying out in the sun, having botellones (which is when the youth meet in public places and drink calimochos or cervezas... usually a preparty, but can occur at any time of day.). The police are in constant patrol there. Its so amazing though. I´m hoping to make it the huge market they have on Sundays called the Rastro. The last two Sundays its been rainy, just recently rained, or looks like it will rain, so I haven´t gone yet.
Like I said, we just started our first semester of courses yesterday. And as of now I´ve only had two classes. La Mujer en Literatura Hispañola. I´m enjoying it so far, but then again we´ve only lectured on women in the Bible so far. And thats an interesting topic to me anyways. I´m really suprised at how well I´m understanding my professors so far. I need it to be relatively quiet though. Any small noise and I loose my train of thought and get lost in what the instructor is saying. The other class I have is Relacciones Internacionales. Which is what my major is pretty much and I´ve taken a course very similar back at LB. The issues Spain and the U.S. have are very similar in the highest levels. So I´m grasping the concept pretty well so far. Eventhough the instructor is really hard to understand. Those are just my Thursday/Friday classes though. On Monday/Tuesday I´m taking an advanced grammar class, a class on the geography of Spain, and a class on the economy of Spain. The hardest class for me will probably be grammar. I´m positive about it. Haha.

Oh! I almost forgot to talk about the music here in Spain. Music is one of the things in life I can´t live without, so go figure when we had to do a presentation on an aspect of spanish culture for class I chose music. Basically they listen to a lot of american music and foreign made music. When you listen to Los Primeros 40 FM station more than half the songs aren´t in spanish, and a good 80% of those songs are in english. Crazy right. They´re much more international here when it comes to music. Me and my friends also had the chance to go to a huge music festival held here on the university campus by the Metro company. Its called Metro Rock. And it was AWESOME!!! Haha... It was two Saturdays ago and we had been seeing the signs all over since we got here. But I was the only one that had mentioned really really wanting to go, but I wasn´t about to go by myself. So when the girls called Saturday morning to say they wanted to go, I jumped up and headed over. It was so great. It would take me forever to describe it all. I have a bunch of pictures and videos up from it. There were soooo many people there! It was insane. Me and the girls got there really early, shortly after it opened. We bought tickets from scalpers because they were 10€ cheaper than buying them at the window. There were two stages. One for bands and rock music I guess you could say, and the second was mostly electronica. And both were absolutely fabulous. We listened to a couple groups that I really really liked. One is the group called Elbicho, they´re a spanish group and in their performance they remind me of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The other artist I was totally into was Melendi. But I had alreaday known I liked him. Haha. He´s hot. Haha. There was a reggae-like band called El Tio Calambres that I liked too. I haven´t had the chance to give them any more of a listen though. The electronica stage was off the hook when the DJ started. His name was Alexander Kowalski... he was amazing. I didn´t stop moving until Emma needed to sit or else she would faint. There was a drum circle that acted as a filler between acts on the main stage. They were soooo awesome as well! Our first trip to give them a listen was fairly early in the day and we didn´t dance much, but after we saw Elbicho we got down with the drum circle... Haha! It was sooo fun!!! The last DJ didn´t go on until 2:30 AM! I would have totally been down to stay the entire time if I had someone else to stay with me and a safe way to get home. My place is kind of the main tracks, so I wasn´t sure if the nocturnal buses would have gone my way and I didn´t want to test it and have to pay a lot of money for a taxi back, especially if I ended up waking up my roomates. Gosh, after that show all of our feet were nasty black and brown from the dirt at the electronica stage. Haha... such a great time though! My favorite adventure here so far.

For a while I was planning on moving out of my apartment and finding a new place, closer to my friends and the downtown are, and cheaper too if I could find it. But I wasn´t having much success and was able to get more comfortable at my current place, so I chose to stay. I live with 2 other women. One is probably in her late 20s or early 30s, she´s from Africa, but used to live in the NY. She speaks english perfectly fine. She has a 6-yearold girl that lives with us, and right now her mom is visiting. The other girl is probably in her early 30s too and is from Venezuela. She only speaks spanish, so I get some practice in, but she was just on vacation for 2 weeks and got back on Wednesday I believe. So we haven´t had much talking time. I live in a barrio called Tetuan. It has a lot of immigrants. No very many Spaniards. But its cool. I´m okay with it.
I really don´t know what else to say, so I´m just going to leave it here. Have a great day everyone!