Saturday, June 19, 2010

We went to El Escorial for our final excursion. It was so sunny, but surprisingly cold, and it didn’t help that we toured the depths of the castle/monastery in the crypts. The whole point of the building was to be close to Madrid but not close enough to catch the diseases or be with city people. So the king used it for living, studying, hunting, and I think part was a monastery. Anyways, we toured a small part and mostly looked at the tombs in the crypts below the church. It was pretty creepy, but so ornate at the same time. Except for the children’s tomb…that was just creepy. And our tour guide was too excited about that one. Our Nebrija guide, Rafa, is always trying to get us pumped up and excited, which he’s pretty good at, but our group is so huge and it’s so hard to move everyone so it gets complicated and he says “Purdue, Por Dios!” and he always asks “Everybody happy?” Then we toured the library where they have the books on the shelf opposite of how we have them nowadays. The binding faces the back to protect it and the pages face the inside of the room, so the title is printed on the ends of the pages. It was an interesting place but way to big so see in a few hours and not as exciting as Toledo and Segovia.

Then again, the town was a lot less touristy and much smaller and more quaint. We ate lunch on some steps of a random street and then a few of us decided to go hiking because Rafa told us that there is an old throne up in the mountains where the king used to go sit. Thank goodness Steve is just as adventure-seeking as me, because we led our group up the streets and then off the road onto a random path we found. Turns out the path led to a restaurant, where there were cars but I don’t really know how those got there because the road was so narrow and dirt and not really a road at all, definitely just a trail. So then we veered off the trail and just hiked through the brush to get a better view of the mountain top, and we found a gorgeous field and a stone wall, that we then climbed over to get to a rock for the optimal viewing platform. The only problem with the whole adventure was that Tara and I were in dresses and flip flops, which was interesting in 6 foot brush and prickly bushes. Tara’s flip flop broke before we could make it back to the city center, but all was good!

When we got to town, we went to Retiro to soak up some sun, and then we went Rebajas shopping, which is when all of the stores do major sales, only twice a year! But we didn’t find anything good yet.

Then I came home and napped for an hour and woke up to hearing Jaime and Alejandro quizzing each other on spelling words. I went out to watch TV and listen to them, but they were looking at a futbol magazines and sometimes saying dates so then I concluded that they were memorizing the Mundial futbol players names and stats or dates? They’re so into it!

For dinner, we had Chinese food and the kids had Burger King. No comment.

Then we went out on the town for Myra’s birthday. We met up with everyone at a local bar up by our school and tried some drink called licor de bellota, which is made from acorns. It was really yummy and had some recipe to cook using it so I want to get some to bring back! It was a frustrating night though because like always we had to wait at least an hour for everyone to show up and then with a big group no one can make any decisions. In their defense, a group got stuck on line 6, the grey line, and it is pretty much in the center of the earth. At least 7 escalators to surface or change lines. But all in all it was fun. We have a song called “Stereo Love” that we hear EVERYWHERE and now if we don’t hear it we request it. We didn’t know the name for the longest time and finally one night I did some research and sang into a program online and found the song! Now we play it wherever we go…


Sunday, June 20, 2010

Something odd I’ve noticed and keep forgetting to say: people walk their dogs here without leases, on the street, in the road, and the dogs always always stay right by them. Pretty crazy!

Today was such a thrill! A smaller group of us decided to go hiking in the Sierra mountains near Madrid, so we met at the Plaza de Castilla bus stop to catch a bus out to Manzanares el Real. The only problem is that there is a bus number and then a separate station number, and they change all of the time. So when we got there the bus wasn’t in the place we thought it should be, so I asked a man at a desk and he wrote stuff all over a sticky note and handed it to me. We figured out one number was the bus number, one was the station, and the -3 was the floor. The only problem was that when we got to the -2 floor, the only stations the sign said were down were 1-10, and we were looking for 23. We eventually walked to the other side of -2 where there were stairs leading to a separate -3 floor. Who would’ve thought? Anyway, by the time we made it onto the bus I was already feeling accomplished!

We traveled 40 minutes into the countryside towards the mountains, not really knowing which stop we were looking for but knowing that it was by a river. Thank goodness we asked the bus driver because he told us when we should get off of the bus, and he was right! Our stop was in the middle of town, and we went into the local grocery store to stock up on some snacks (warm fresh-baked baguettes and Milka chocolate!) before heading up the road. Eventually we were able to see the river, so we made our own path to the river and then found one that followed the river. When we got to the base of the mountain (which was more like a 500-600 feet pile of giants rocks), we began our ascent. As you can imagine, I was in the group that trail-blazed and ran ahead, running up the rocks and jumping from one to the other like no big deal. Well, a group of us, Sam, Steve, Eric, Elena, and I, got pretty far ahead of the others and we were trying to find a route to the top when I thought it’d be a fine idea to pull a Man vs. Wild scramble up a corner made by two rocks. I was climbing vertically and pushing from one foot to the other to move upwards. My hand reached the top, which was about 12 feet higher than the rock below me, when my foot slipped and I fell all the way down and was caught by Sam. After the initial shock, I was just glad that my camera, which was in the hand of the arm that got beat up, was surprisingly safe, and determined to overcome it. It only took one more try, but I was definitely shaky. We all agreed that it’s best to move quickly and surely rather than slowly and too planned out because then you get stuck or slip. In our attempt to divide and find the best route up, Eric and Elena separated from Steve, Sam, and I, so when we arrived at what we thought was the highest peak (but when we got up we could see the one a little more over was higher) we could see Elena and Eric on an equal peak a bit away and they wanted us to take pictures of them, which we did, but we had all three cameras so they couldn’t get a picture of us! This inspired us to move on to the “real peak” and we met back up along the way. Before moving though, Steve, Sam, and I set up the camera on timer and we tried to take a picture of the three of us while my camera balanced on a rock in the blustery wind. Our first problem was that the ideal location for us to stand was in between two rocks, prompting Sam to tell Steve to “levitate,” but we got it situated and I jumped over to get into the picture but for the last 5 seconds watching the blinking light on the camera we all thought it was for sure going to fall because it was being blown around so much! Luckily it didn’t! It was a lucky day for my camera, not my right arm. At this point we were concerned about getting down, because we were running up routes that would be completely impossible to slowly move down. Our theory for getting up way that “if there’s a hole, there’s a way.” What a moto!

After another false summit, we finally made it to the highest rock in our range. We could see for miles: the town of Manzanares, some old city ruins, snow in the mountains, the city of Madrid in the distance, and a gorgeous lake. We could see the other group making it up too, and we were so excited that everyone was going to accomplish the mountain! We picnicked on top of the second highest rock, because they tippity top looked so daunting. After a while though, Eric was determined to find a way up the last rock, and he did. Of course I couldn’t say no, so I tried too and luckily he was able to pull me the last 20% of the way. Then we helped Steve, who pretty much gave us his hands as he wiggled up the rock. Then, we sunned and napped for a while. The other group made it to the base right below our set of rocks, and we joked about being stick between a rock and a hard place. Oh mountain jokes! But then they turned around to go back the way we had come, but after we packed up later in the day, we decided to try going down the opposite side. Turns out there was a trail over there, at least most of the way! But it was a lot more fun going up the way we had gone. This trail took us right down, around, and back to town. It took us through the ruins too, and we walked through what looked like was once a house. And it turns out we were on wild boar hunting territory. So we’re lucky we weren’t hunted at by hunter or wild boar. Haha.

We finally made it back to the river and walked along it back to town. There we bought huge waters and gelato while waiting for the bus back to Madrid. It was a great ride, with the sun setting (at 9:30, how weird!) and then Sam and I took the Metro back together and everyone starred at our bloody, scrapped up legs. Madrilenos aren’t very sporty.

I made my way home for dinner, which was a fried egg omelet with some sort of cheese in it. And my mom sat down with me to plan out the rest of our dates and I told her about Alex and my mom coming and she planned in days to meet them and eat here. And then my mom said, in Spanish, “I bet you’re not happy Alex is coming” and I didn’t really understand what she said at first, but my dad was worried I had taken it the wrong way so he explained, “Here we do this for joke. You say the opposite. So it really means I bet you’re happy Alex is coming.” Thank you for explaining sarcasm to me. I bet Lauren’s glad to know that other countries make use of such a great form of mockery. And it reminded me of Family Guy, “It’s funny because it isn’t true.” Haha. Anyways, they’re all really excited to meet everyone. My mom even wants my real mom to come over as soon as her plane lands. I told my host mom my real mom only speaks English and Italian. She said “Vale vale” and that they could just drink some coffee all day. Then, I showered and tried to wash off all of the cuts and dust before going to bed and getting my first 6 ½ hours of sleep ever in Madrid!