Ávila es aviliciosa

This past Friday I went to Ávila (in Castilla León) with my literature class as a bit of a day field trip. I never enjoy waking up early, of course, and I had to be up at 7:45 a.m. for this trip, so clearly I wasn't too excited about going there. And yet, I was very surprised with the trip, having enjoyed the city.

Ávila is the birthplace and major residence of Santa Teresa de Jesús (Saint Theresa), who did a whole bunch of crazy stuff in her life like being penetrated by a flaming arrow held by some type of tiny angel representing God. There's a statue in Rome by Bernini commemorating this called "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa" or better, in Spanish "El Éxtasis de Santa Teresa." I've only seen it in a documentary but it rivals Michelangelo's David. It's that awesome. She was a member of the Renaissance's mystic movement, along with San Juan de la Cruz. Basically the mystics believed it was possible to become one with God before you died. They wrote poems that seem like raunchy love stories and they experienced things that you wouldn't expect to hear about God. The experience of being one with God in this world was so great and indescribable though that they had to make their literature seem sexual in order that the general public would understand what exactly it was they were going through.

Anyways. Ávila. We got there early morning with the sun straight in our eyes as we overlooked the city from some stone cross on the outskirts. This is one of the few cities that was/still is surrounded by defensive walls. They are the coolest parts of the city. That a this one plaza, but I'll get to that later. 

Then we headed to some church, another one, I know. Don't try to ask me to recall the name or whether it was really a church, cathedral or basilica. I have no clue. There were crosses and some Jesus statues. And benches and candles and all that fun stuff you'll find in any of the three. It was still pretty cool though, but we were only there for a few brief moments. We headed to the catacombs below the church where there is now a museum to Santa Teresa and all that goodness. We read the part of her autobiography where she talks about being impaled by the glory of God in the catacombs and a part of her famous poem "Vivo sin vivir en mí" (I live without living in myself) where she says she's living but not really because she'd rather be with God. Another line "muero porque no muero" I'm dying because I'm not dying. Powerful stuff and one of my favorite poems of the era. 

Of all the places to possibly hold a religious relic, one of Santa Teresa's fingers is just through a giftshop in Ávila. It's very decrepit and old and green and brown and hairy (mold?) and has a ring attached. The story goes that Franco had one of her hands and would touch it before he signed any laws or did anything important. That hand is now in Sevilla, I believe. The other, in Rome. No one knows which hand the finger in Ávila belongs to, and I'm not quite sure why not, you'd think whoever has the hand would just check and tell us. My theory is that it's from the right hand because of the ring. In Rome and Spain the marriage ring goes on the right hand -- and although she was a nun and couldn't get married she was a rebel, so it's possible, no?

The walls, as I have said earlier, are probably the coolest part of the city because you can go up and run around on them and survey the area below you. How the city has expanded beyond the walls and all the farms surrounding it. You can peer into the city and see everyone heading about getting ready to eat lunch (if you're up there at about lunch time, that is). Needless to say there will be some cool photos from this section coming up soon. I spotted while up there this plaza, empty with a line of benches like a church on one side, interspersed with barren trees. For no reason whatsoever it made me think of Russia (I have a weird association system in my brain). I was in love and headed down to find lunch around there. Yet, the place was full of banks, yema stores (candy shops, basically) and a Burger King. No restaurants with menú del días, I was very disappointed and ended up eating two dürüm kebabs (they're doner kebabs wrapped in a mexican tortilla instead of a pita -- amazing). 

Had some wine and yemas (yemas are yolks in Spanish, but yemas de Ávila are candies made from yolks covered in sugar. Really sweet, pretty tasty too. Made up for the fact I didn't get any wine nor postre (dessert), as one would if they had a menú del día. We intended to go to some basilica but there were problems with payments or something (they didn't give us receipts and that's what we needed), so we just shrugged our shoulders and headed home, passing out on the bus because I was dead tired. 

Good times.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to you imperialist American Indian killers tomorrow!

No, but seriously, I'm going to miss Thanksgiving. Hope you all have fun and drink one for me and eat a biscuit and gravy sammich for me too!

The best way to cheer up when classes, school, and host families suck

A menú del día.

While a healthy (read: not healthy) serving of red wine. Arroz a la cubana (this time with a banana!) and huevos with tomato sauce and chorizo (not so good chorizo though). Sitting back and relaxing, the itis sinking in. Icing on cake, The Simpsons on T.V. How fun. That's how those extremely dull literature classes that convinced me that I really do have ADD were wiped from my mind and I was in a state of bliss (which apparently the closest Spanish word is éxtasis). 

But then I had to teach those kids. No bigs, just had to play a board game I made up with them for an hour, then back to the good life. Headed out to a new favorite café, Café Continental, which is where I'm at still, three hours later. They have WiFi, how cool? Oh, and cheap mojitos--though I see why they're cheap, they taste less than good. Ungood if you will. They use spiced rum instead of the traditional (and in this case, better tasting) white rum. The juice, I am told, is not good here as well, and the margarita is more like a martini than a margarita, which really isn't a problem but it's just false advertising. 

Been spending the afternoon flying through homework so I don't have to do it tomorrow or Thursday (no more homework for the rest of the week and it's only Tuesday)...so tomorrow, no tutoring, no homework--going to hopefully spend the day attempting to write something cool. Perhaps a short story, perhaps the beginning (or middle! or end!) of a book. 

Was spending the rest of the afternoon looking at my possible classes for next semester then for this summer and next year back in Madison. I only have 40 more credits to graduate. Sure, I could just graduate with a Spanish major, but I want to do LACIS too so I don't feel like a complete bum. And I want to take some French but that would just prolong my stay in Madison (not that that would be a bad thing, it's just I don't know when Obama's $4,000 tuition credit is going to be cutting in). If that does happen to happen though, perhaps I'll just ride out a few more years in school just learning stuff I want to. Already planning on taking more creative writing classes when I get back. Every time I look at my schedule and plans I think I know what the heck is going on and get a huge headache then look at it the next day and I feel completely lost again.

But hey. 

The monotony of monotony

The days can get so long and so tiresome here. The weeks will drag, or at least the school day portions. Sure, classes aren't that long. Three hours a day, that's all I have, only four days a week. But then there's that lull time where there isn't much to do. I'm stuck in the house, on my bed (since there is no other furniture in my room and there's no way in hell I'd go out into the living areas of this infernal household), hunched over bored out of my mind. Dicking around on the internet, probably the real reason it took me two weeks to update my blog. I wait for other people to finish lunch or something, so we can go out and get coffee or something at least, but that adds up after a while and not everyone wants to get coffee all the time. So I'm stuck at home. I've been spending the last two weeks downloading and watching entire seasons of The Simpsons. It's becoming my new hobby, my new obsession. 

So when I have free time, instead of doing homework (which I always hold off until after dinner), I'll watch The Simpsons. It's great, I'm catching up on my childhood, while seeing episodes I've never seen before, and learning a lot about family, oddly enough. School days are such: school, lunch, Simpsons, ???, dinner, homework, bed.

On Tuesdays and Thursday I do tutor two kids for an hour. Getting paid, getting paid. At times I find it hard what to do with them, I'm finding it's hard doing this teaching stuff, especially when you don't have a lesson plan or even an idea how or what to teach kids. They're at the point where they understand plenty of English vocabulary but have no idea to how string together a sentence or understand a question. So I'm trying to teach them set phrases. We end up playing games all the time, which isn't bad, but I feel at times like I'm doing a shitty job. I did make up a game for them though, that we just started playing so hopefully that'll last a few weeks and they'll actually be able to ask and answer typical questions in English. Oh, and I taught them Go Fish, which they seem to like.

Had a brief fling with a sickness this past Friday, perhaps because of the previous night's botellón and dancing (ha-- I'm allergic to dancing, and yet I still go...). So most of Friday was spent inhaling medicines and trying to get fresh air and not succumb to the sickness. Saturday I was in much better spirits, and it happened to come on a good day because it was the birthday celebration of Javi, one of our Spanish friends.

We went to his house for dinner and drinks and games. He lives just off Calle Mayor in this absolutely beautiful and big typical Spanish...villa? hacienda? It's gigantic and has a courtyard. Totally jealous. Stayed there for a while, enjoying ourselves, then went to go meet up with Rebeca and Maya. Had some drinks and patatas at a bar that was closing down (how happy they were to see us leave), then off to Gabanna Bar for dancing (oh no, the allergies are acting up). I actually stayed for quite a while, which is a rarity with me. I helped fend off a French creeper from the ladies. Simply had to walk near them and he darted away like a cockroach or mouse. At one point he put on a black glove, which I believe was his signal of his affinity for OJ. 

We had to fortune of Armani's host family being gone for the weekend, and her mother said she could have a friend over if she wanted. Of course with us that means four friends. Don't you know you multiply everything by four in Spain? Yes. So we headed to Armani's at three or four in the morning and began devouring food. I basically inhaled two pizzas with little help from the rest. They were jamón york I think. Not sure, didn't pay too much attention, just ate. We sat around the kitchen eating and eating and shooting the shit (and downing water)...it reminded me so much of home. This was the first time I've actually been able to sit in someone's house or even kitchen at the end of a night and just chill out and eat. It's the rarest thing in Spain yet so common back home. For those back home having such experiences right now: cherish it. Eventually you'll get old and people stop doing that. How lame! Or you'll study abroad in Spain or some other crazy customs country and not be able to sit drunkenly around a table eating whatever is in front of you and feeding lettuce to a hamster at 4:30 in the morning on a Sunday.

Seriously.

¡Qué perezoso!

Ok, so maybe it's been two weeks and I haven't updated. Very sorry for that folks but I'll try harder to keep this updated more.

You see, I've just been doin' stuff. And things. And when I get home at the end of the day of doing stuff I'm usually not in the mood to type so more. I do force myself to write every night in my journal, even if I don't at all feel like it (you should see how illegible the more drunken entries are) -- but getting on the computer and typing is a different story, I suppose. And I apologize, though I've kept in contact with you guys anyways, so you know I haven't died at all. That much is for sure.

What have I been doing? Hmm...

Last I left off was the day before election day. Holy crap a lot has happened since then.

Election night here was interesting. We are six hours ahead of the east coast, so about the time polls were closing in the States, most people were already in bed and asleep. But not me. I pleaded and begged my friend Monica to implore her parents to keep the internet on all night (I steal it from her house since it's so close by). They relented and I stayed up watching a live feed of MSNBC and having about four other tabs open on my computer with maps and percentages and all that good stuff about the election. It was 4a.m. and it looked like Obama was going to win but there was no way I was going to go to bed until it was official. Around 10p.m. central time, the election was going to be called, I could tell, as soon as the West Coast polls closed. At about 9:50p.m. central time, the internet cut off. I frantically called Monica and my mom and Angie back home to tell them there are problems and they might need to relay the results to me in a few minutes. Monica scrambled, thankfully, and got the internet turned back on at 10p.m. CST, the live feed to MSNBC came back in the moment they got back from commercial and announced Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.

Now keep in mind it was 5a.m. in Spain. The streets were quiet and dark. I was in my room with the lights off, on the phone with my mom. I had been up for nearly 24 hours. I was shaking. I couldn't fall asleep. I called Armani to let her know, her mom had already called her. We were both freaking out, too excited and too emotional to do anything but just run around in awe. I was pacing throughout my room trying not to wake up my host parents. I quickly scribbled in my journal a few words of disbelief then tried to fall asleep.

Received a text from our teacher a few hours later saying she was sick and class was cancelled. I like to believe she was just giving us the day off because she knew we were up awaiting the results. I slept soundly until my second class, then headed in.

That night was a time for celebration. Maya, Monica, and myself headed to our favorite café/bar, Macandé and got a bottle of cava (Spanish champagne). Maya and myself downed it and stumbled to meet up with the rest of our friends. I was in an American mood so I demanded a hamburger, but the best place to get burgers in town (a bar called la Amstelería -- literally "the Amstel shop") was full because there was a football game on. Regrettably we went to Tony Roma's. Regrettable only because I hate being that American that goes to the only American restaurant in town, a chain no less. Whatever, I was excited, Obama will be our new President, time to celebrate. I got a burger and wine. Later we headed to a new fun café/bar we found called Café Renacimiento (Renacimiento=Renaissance). The building appears to be an old church or temple, and it's about three stories tall with plenty of seating everywhere. We've been there on weekend nights and it fills up quickly at night.

Post-election? My mind was still racing from my pre-election fury. Ask anyone here and I was not a fun person to be around before the election because I was constantly freaking out, worried, and anxious about the outcome. Now, of course, I've calmed down.

We had the usual botellón on Thursday. We ended up at the karaoke bar singing, appropriately, "We Are the Champions." The spirit of victory constantly remained with us the triumphant ones (unfortunately one of our amigas here is a--dare I say it--McCain supporter. Or rather, was.), Friday was filled with more celebrations, wine and tapas and raciones in the afternoon, café after café of celebratory rounds. It was and still is a great time to be an American. Very different though being abroad, it gives you a new perspective I suppose. Everyone here was extremely excited for Obama and us Americans. For once we weren't hated!

La Luna would have been on Friday if I had not had a bad run in with Lambrusco on our way there (it's something to say when you can walk past a cop with a bottle of wine in our hand...), having stuffed myself again at dinner, taking swigs of carbonated beverages was not a good idea. I went home early.

Unfortunately ended up staying in altogether on Saturday because I was beat from the rest of the week, the week of craziness, so many emotions packed into so few days and hours at times is very dangerous.

Then Sunday, the day everyone universally dreads. The day of waking up tired, not wanting to shower or change, having a mountain of homework to do, and generally being grumpy. You can't ever get to sleep, causing Mondays to suck too, you don't feel like going out because you have all this homework but you really want to get some fresh air, to escape the monotony of the house. Yeah, Sundays pretty much suck. So that's why we headed to Madrid to watch a movie--in English! "Burn After Reading" if you haven't seen it (came out in September in the States) is the new Coen brothers movie, a comedy about espionage and misunderstanding, really. It's quite good and I recommend seeing it if it's still in theatres by you.

That was two weeks ago, the fated election week. It's lunch time now but after I do that I'll let you all know what happened this past week. And what a week it was.

Oh, and I'll stop being lame too, what with the whole not-updating-in-forever thing. Oh and if I ever get stable and quick internet at the home location I'll upload some cool photos I've taken recently here in Alcalá.

Que recordarás las tardes de invierno por Madrid

I spent the majority of the past two afternoons in Madrid, which is quickly becoming a favorite pastime of mine. I went yesterday as an escape and it was definitely needed, and refreshing. To get away from the monotony and occasional annoyance of Alcalá. 

Armani and I went yesterday during the afternoon for such an escape, with no particular plans in mind, which is really the way to go when heading to Madrid -- no expectations, just wandering around, trying to get lost and discover something new, something hidden away -- a treasure of the city. And we did just that. 

For the first time in exactly two months I had a bagel. We were told of an international deli/market in Madrid by Fausto our cultural director that not only had bagels but also plenty of international foods. This was our first stop, our main mission of heading to Madrid.

I searched the relatively bare shelves encountering quite a few American goodies -- Betty Crocker cake mixes, Hersey's chocolate syrup, Southern Comfort -- and other foreign goods like Grey Goose (which is impossible to find elsewhere) and my favorite oddity, corned beef in a can from Brazil. So to answer my own question from long ago, yes, they do have corned beef in Spain and Madrid was the place to find it. Unfortunately it's canned and from Brazil, which might effect the taste of a reuben if I ever attempt to make one here. They had New York cheesecake and apple crumble pie or something and plenty of good old America foods. 

Anyways-- the bagels. Plain toasted with cream cheese. It didn't really have a hole in the middle but no matter the shape a bagel is a bagel if it's cooked right, and it was. Delicious, though it has nothing on Bagels Forever, of course. The guy behind the counter was incredibly nice. We got to talking and told him we were studying in Alcalá and all that jazz. He's from Kenya and moved to Madrid just four years ago, he started out studying then decided to stay. Says his favorite place to go in Spain is San Sebastian, so of course I got along with him. He didn't even charge us for the bagels, it was so cool. 

We headed onward to the giant Corte Inglés by Puerta del Sol in order to search out Moleskin notebooks (as I've almost finished one and only have one left, which will be filled quite quickly I believe, I needed backup). The bookstore didn't have any, which it odd for us Americans seeing as every Barnes and Noble and Borders are full of them, you'd think books and notebooks go hand in hand, those that read tend to like to write too. But no, there were no notebooks at all. They did have the smallest English language section I've seen, weird considering the very tiny book stores in Alcalá have a larger selection of English language books. Mostly it was full of American trash novels, Stephen King and the like, but they did have nearly every Hemingway about Spain and even the ones that weren't. I picked up "The Old Man and the Sea" as I've been dying to read it and it's a short breather before I get back into a Spanish book. 

At regular, migraine-inducing Corte Inglés (I actually took Excedrine in the store due to the sensory overload), they had a huge pile of Moleskin books but not a single normal sized, hard back, book style lined notebook. They had every possible variety of a 2009 planner--daily, weekly, big, small, soft cover and hard. They even had lined regular journals...but reporter style, which just doesn't fly with this kid over here. So I gave up and headed onwards to find some food. 

Walking around Puerta del Sol searching for a doner kebab I saw an alimentación with a wall of tiny one shot bottles of booze, and I immediately thought "Hey maybe they have a tiny bottle of absinthe as a cute little gift," so I searched the wall. Nothing. I walked around the corner, looked in the window and my heart skipped a few beats. There it was, or there they were. Four bottles of absinthe, a 70%, the 80% that we had in Asturias, another 80% called "Yellow Absinthe" and finally one labeled "Cannabis flavored Absinthe" with a weed leaf on it. They were reasonably priced, being about $22 a 750ml bottle, which is awesome considering the fake stuff in America costs about $75. You can guarantee I'll be picking one up shortly--but I decided to hold off yesterday.

From there to Starbucks at la Plaza de Neptuno and an odd thing that has been known to occur to us study abroad folks: forgetting we're in Spain for the briefest of moments. It seems hard when you're sitting en terraza right off a large plaza with a statue of Neptune and fountain and corrals of cars circling around at rapid speeds. The weather was perfectly cold and a bit windy. I looked up into the sky and remembered, wow, I'm in Spain, what is everyone in America doing right now? It's a crazy feeling to lose sense of yourself like that, even for a brief moment.

Sunday brought Maya, Monica, and myself to Madrid to see Guernica and la Reina Sofia. It's free admission to la Reina Sofia (the modern art museum) on Sundays so aprovechamos la oportunidad as did nearly everyone else. The place was packed, especially around Guernica, Picasso's immortal painting of the Spanish Civil War. The rest of the rooms paled in comparison, obviously, but there were plenty of paintings that caught my eye. One in particular was un mundo by Ángeles Santos . Such detail and imagination in that work. I could stare at it for a very long time. Another wasn't a painting but an installation by Nancy Spero, who has a temporary collection there. It was called "May Pole" and it was a room with a maypole and attached to the strings were severed heads of humans (not real ones of course), it was horrifying and humbling at the same time. I felt as if the heads were real. It was eerie.

Like the lunch at Llanes, the lunch I had Sunday in Madrid was perhaps one of the best lunches I've ever had. We went to Kaixo a very stylish and gourmety restaurant. The food was out of this world and a complete surprise from what we could have expected. I got croquetas, a pretty standard Spanish delish food. They came, five of them, on a small flat and black plate with a cut up tiny tomate in a flower shape and stacked like a pyramid. They contained jamón ibérico, and they were the best croquetas I've ever had. I knew these wouldn't suffice, so I got a toasted bread half sandwich thing. Brie cheese and caramelized onions. It was bliss in every bite. Oh, and a fine (if a bit small) glass of red wine on the side. 

Did I mention dessert? Tarta de higos. Fig deliciousness. It beats out apple pie. It beats out any type of pie/cake thing I've ever had. At first it was alright, but as I dug into it-- the sweet, sweety honeyness of figs overcame me. Add a café con leche and I am done.

What do you do after a lunch like that? How do you go on? Well, head to a historic café that was founded in 1888 and was frequented by artists and writers and poets during the Franco era. It's expensive, it's ritzy, but it's awesome and full of historic atmosphere. There were reserved tables when we came in. We sat in a corner and observed the people. An old, white haired, man came in and sat at the reserved table. The waiter brought his drink before he could even order. We immediately began speculating who he could be. We decided he is a famous artist as he was sketching away in a journal he had, and was showing it off to different waiters, and a lot of his friends came in probably had extremely intelligent and important conversations. [Side note: sorry if I'm not making much sense but I'm watching the live feed from MSNBC right now as I am far too anxious right now for the election (YOU BEST HAVE VOTED!) and am planning on staying up until we find out who won this thing (which might be til 6am or so here in Spain)]

From there we headed home, as it was the only sensible option. A dish of four flavors of ice cream from the café and the energy you get from sitting in such a monumental environment, you have no choice but to head home. One of the best lunches I've ever had then this enlightening café. What was next?

Don Juan en Alcalá. A once a year outdoor theatre spectacular. Rotating stages. Crowds of people running from stage to stage as the scenes changed. Thousands of alcalaínos huddled in the freezing cold watching this one of a kind celebration.

Then home, and sleep.

Final note. Vote. VOTE. VOOOOOTE.