Eva-living with a maid

We finally did it. Eva and I have officially become friends. When I first came here, she seemed rather distant. Don’t get me wrong, she was always smiling and helping me out, but we never talked. It just didn’t seem right. It probably didn’t help that I had no idea how to treat her since I don’t know how you are supposed to treat a live in maid. I tried to show her though that I was willing to do everything myself and I didn’t want her to do everything for me. After meals, I always try to pick up my place and bring my dishes to the sink. I clean up after myself, keep the room very clean, take my own clothes off of the clothes line, and do everything I can to make Eva’s life a little easier. However, for the past week, we just haven’t quite clicked, until now that is.

Just yesterday I was eating dinner alone because Ines was watching tv and all of a sudden Eva sits down next to me. I was rather surprised because before now she always sits in the kitchen and eats her own meal and never talks to me in the dinning room. This, however, is a special occasion because Eva has pictures of her children. It turns out she has 4 kids who live in Nicaragua and she works in Madrid sending money back to Nicaragua. She shows me some pictures of her daughter’s 15th birthday party and I feel like she is letting me into her world. It is just a little peek, but she has taken the first step to us becoming friends and I quickly am elated.

That was just yesterday and today our friendship was sealed. She actually ate dinner with me! Ines was not eating with us, so I was alone at the table and she just sat down next to me with her plate. We chatted about her family and her sister who also lives in Madrid and she told me that she hates being here and wants to go back to Nicaragua with her family as soon as possible. She still seems really skittish at dinner, but I know that we have suddenly become friends. It is awesome. She tells me some things about Ines that I need to keep in mind and some of her preferences which are strange, but I should abide by them just to make life easier. At some point in time during dinner, she whispers something very important about Ines that I try to understand but for the life of me, my spanish skills just don’t work when somebody whispers. She asks if I understand this big secret that she just whispered to me in unintelligible spanish and I nod my head yes. True I lied, but I knew it was important and asking her to repeat it would put her in an awkward situation. So I am just hoping that I eventually figure it out, or maybe it wasn’t even important in the first place.

After dinner I watch TV with Ines and Eva and again Eva and I talk to each other when Ines leaves the room. Eva offers me a bunch of pants that don’t fit her anymore and as much as I would love to take them I know they are too small for me. Eva is about 5 feet tall and she is skinnier than I. I don’t know what made her think they would fit me, but I appreciate the compliment and the offer for friendship. I even get offered a beer and it is then that I realize our friendship is absolutely sealed and I am incredibly happy. After awhile, she tells me that she just finished off the last of the beer and when she stands up she loses her balance and falls right back down again. We both bust out in giggles since it is obvious that she has had the last beer. It was the first time I have laughed in this house since I moved here.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Eva will help me learn to speak 3 languages, 2 of which I am almost fluent in and one of which I struggly in greatly. The first language she will help me with is, of course, spanish. She doesn’t know English so she forces me to talk around what I want to say and she always probes me for answers. Unlike Ines, she doesn’t just give up and talks to me in English, Eva pushes me to speak more spanish. It’s good for me, and although it can be frustrating, I like it. The second language Eva and I speak is through facial gestures. We say a million things through smiles, winks, head nods, and various other expressions. Ines is simply to blind to read facial gestures, to be honest she is lucky to look at where we are standing in the room so me and Eva’s facial gesture language is completely fine to do and helps us say a lot. Fortunately she also saves my butt whenever Ines asks me a question and I don’t know if she is talking to me or to Eva. I really like the facial gesture language. The last language we speak is the hardest. This language is the whispers and lip reading language. Of course, it is done in spanish and whenever Eva whispers there is always background noise like the TV or the radio on so that Ines doesn’t hear us. So not only do I have to understand what she is saying, I have to try to block out outside noises. The worst is when she just mouths something to me. I always want to understand what she is saying, but I never get it. Maybe with more practice we will be able to practice this language we have. Overall though, Eva and I have become great at communicating with each other and by the time I leave here I am sure my spanish will have greatly increased thanks to her help.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression and say that Ines isn’t nice. She really truly is a very nice woman. However, there is only so much a 75 year old woman who is almost completely blind can offer. It’s just nice to have Eva on my side and have someone I can chit chat with around the house. I like having a new friend and although it took a while, I am glad that we have warmed up to each other.

Pirates of the Caribbean

In Spain, they have movies in the Original Version this means that when we wanted to watch Pirates of the Caribbean we just had to find one of these movie theaters and we got to watch it in english. It was a freaking sweet movie! The theaters here are a little weird though. They dont have stadium seating at all, all of the seats are on the same level. I never knew how used to stadium seating I have become, but it was weird to be on the same level with everyone. Plus here they have assigned seating. So strange!

We all got concession stand candy and it was super cheap, which was also a surprise! They even had pints of Ben and Jerry ice cream so Katie and I split the pint during the movie. It was great! Plus in the theater there are bathrooms right there in the same room as the movie is playing in! We all had a great time eating ice cream and watching a movie.

Katie and I with our ice cream

Funny faces

Nik and Kelli making beautiful faces

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Plains...

Alright so apparently the saying, "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains" does not apply to Madrid. We have recently had a weeks straight worth of rain. On one hand rain here is absolutely essential. There have been some years with really bad drought problems in Spain and the madrilenos have had to monitor their water consumption. So in this case the rain has always been welcomed in Spain whenever it comes. On the other hand, rain sucks here! Everything in Spain is done outside so when there is rain, no one can leave the house. There is no partying at night. There is no walking aorund the city. Everyone is just trapped inside the house. How boring!



Before the rain week started though, my friends and I decided to go to the park on a Sunday.

First we just wandered around the city finding cool buildings and taking fun pictures.

We found this park that actually had these palm trees in it, something we never thought we would find in Spain!

Nik even brough his football so it was a perfect time to throw it around for awhile.

There was a group of musicians playing drums while someone was doing sweet flips. He is on the left in the picture doing some sort of hand spring or something gymnasticy like that.

There was even a great view of the royal palace from the park
Here are Katie, Kelli, and I in front of the city. I guess the dark ominous clouds in the background should have been a warning sign for us, but we didn't really pay attention to them.... About 5 minutes after that picture was taken we got DUMPED on. We sprinted back to a plaza and found cover in this staircase that led down to a parking garage. We had to stay here for about an hour before the rain let up a little and we sprinted over to the closest metro station. In retrospect, we will be paying much closer attention to the clouds in the sky next time we go out. Overall though we did have a really fun time and I don't think any of us will forget about our adventures in the rain.

New Friends

Since I cam here I have been making a few new friends from school. The girls I am closest with is Christina. She is from the Ukraine and does not speak any english so we can only communicate in spanish, which has led to some interesting events between the two of us.

Below is a picture of us eating churros. Churros are fried dough and then you dip them in chocolate (it is like Spains version of a doughnut) they are SOOOO good! Christina is on the right and Kelli and I are on the left in the picture.

Sadly Christina returned home on Wednesday of this week since she has been here fore over 2.5 months. I was sad to see her go but she said that she was ready to go back home. I guess it doesnt really matter too much since this is my last week in school anyway. I start my internship on Monday and am excited to be filling my time with more things to do!

Thank God!

Wow.

I have heard about pickpockets for forever now. Whenever I say that I am going to Spain inevitably someone says that I need to watch out for pick pocketers, but there was some part of my brain that was just like, "yeah yeah pick pockets, just hold onto your bag and you will be fine." Tonight, thouogh, I had my first run in with a pick pocket.

He wasnt even sly at all, and he scared the crap out of all of us. I was standing in front of a metro station with about 4 other girls and we were chit chatting in english and waiting for another girl to show. All of a sudden I was jerked backwards and I realize that someone was pulling on my purse. I immediately tried to hold onto it tighter and pull it towards me. He was also pulling on the purse of the girl next to me. The strap on her purse broke so once he had her purse he took off running. We were all stunned and couldnt believe what happened. About ten seconds later Katie took off running after the theif and all of a sudden we found ourselves running through the streets of madrid trying to find Steffi's purse. Of course we never caught up to him, which could be for the better since I dont know what we were going to do once we chased him down. We never thought that far ahead.

Steffi was stunned and so were the rest of us. She lost 45 Euros, her camera and her keys to her house. We went straight to Steffi's house to tell her mom what happened. We called the police to file a report but her house mom told us that it was pretty much a lost cause. We were all pretty frightened. Sadly for Steffi, in addition to losing all of her stuff this all happend tonight and it is her birthday. That poor girl.

It was all so surreal and sudden. I can still feel the sudden jerk on my purse when he tried to grab it. I know that he was going to have either my purse or Steffi's and I was incredibly blessed that he didnt get mine too, but I can't help but feel bad for Steffi. It was all so strange. I am unbelievably thankful though that none of us got hurt and nothing too bad happened.

For the rest of the night we were all on our gaurd. We took Steffi out to a bunch of bars and bought her a lot of drinks. That poor girl, robbed on her birthday! We figured the best way to cheer her up would be to just let her forget and we tried to crack jokes and have a good time for the rest of the night. I know though, that none of us really forgot what happened and it will take a while for us to forget exactly how easy it is to steal someone's purse and how scary it can be.

My Apartment

This is the outside of my house. Our apartment is 4 windows up on the right.

When you walk in the door, you walk right into the living room

This is the hallway leading to the bedrooms. The walls have that dark line running down them because Ines always puts her hand against the wall to guide her down the hallway.

This is the dinning room where we eat all of our meals

The kitchen, it is kinda small but Eva makes amazing food here

The Bathroom
My bedroom, the closet on the right is mine

My bed, which is quite possibly the most uncomfortable bed in the world. I can feel every single spring in the stupid thing.

So that is my new house and, minus the bed, I am feeling quite at home here.

3 weeks in Pictures

In our first 3 days here, collectively Katie, Kelli, and I all took over 300 pictures. Since then we have calmed things down a bit, but here are the highlights from these past three weeks.

Here is Kelly with all of our luggage, we had a lot!

Here are the 3 girls on our first day in Madrid
Here are the three girls looking very pretty on our first day in Madrid

This is our hotel which was located pretty much in the center of Madrid

This is our hotel room, we stayed here for the first 4 days.

Kelli with our hair dryer, it looked like a phone!

The first thing we did was visit Plaza Mayor, a very famous part of Madrid

Here is a beautiful painting from an artist in Plaza Mayor. Plaza Mayor is filled with artists and musicians who are trying to earn money from the toursists.

Nik, Katie and I in the Plaza Mayor at night.

A street preformer playing the water glasses outside the Plaza.

Beautiful buildings line all of the streets.

On our first day here we tried to find some cheap food and ended up at a greek restaurant called Doner Kebab.

This is the cook shaving meat off of this leg so it falls onto the grill and they can cook it for us.
Our first night out in Madrid!

Salsa dancing with Javier

Our second night out in Madrid!

The buildings here are so much prettier than those at home

The Plaza de Espana. This has a huge statue of Cervantes and Don Quijote.

Kelli and I in front of the Don Quijote statue in Plaza de Espana

Almost every day we have a picnic lunch with various friends from school. This is Viviana and Thomas, they are from Switzerland and are taking classes with us and we are picnicing in the Plaza de Espana
A beautiful Plaza we found when wandering around the city A gorgeous church
By the third night here we were missing American food, so we grabbed some McDonalds. Surprisingly, this McDonalds has wireless internet and serves beer! Not surprisingly, there is a Burger King about 3 doors down (there is always a competition).

This is The Atocha, it is the train station that was bombed in 2004. Now it is all restored and running perfectly

This is the inside of the Atocha train station. There is a huge atrium on the inside, it is really cool!

The palace of communications-an amazingly beautiful building!

This is the Puerta de Alcala. There used to be 7 puertas or "gates" to enter Madrid and this is one of the 7. Only 5 still exist today

Palacio Real is the royal palace. Although the King doesnt live there today, it is still well known

Palacio Real from the side (can you tell this is one of my favorite buildings)

Here is the Palacio at sunset. It is so pretty, especially when it is lit up at night.

Katie and I in a park next to the PalacioKatie in front of the Palacio Real.

This is a street preformer in front of the Palacio. They stand still like statues until you give them money then they do a little movement for you and go back to being frozen.

Sangria!This is from the "Garden of the views" there is a cathedral next to the Palacio Real and this is it at night.
The cathedral during the daytime

In the Garden of the Views. There is always a massive street party there and it has become one of our favorite hang out spots at night.

We took a tour of the city on a double decker bus, this is Javier and I
Kelli and Katie

Caitlin (a EUSA manager) and Nik
Here I am on the metro, it is the main mode of transportation to get all over Madrid. I ride the metro at least 4 times a day.

On the metro, it is common to have street musicians playing music to earn money. I see this group play on my metro at least once a week

Almendra, one of the EUSA program managers took us out for tapas. Tapas are like appetizers. Often a spanish dinner consists of many tapas at different bars. When you order a beer tapas come with them and after 2 beers and tapa plates, then you move onto the next bar for more tapas and more drinks. This is Katie, Kelli, and I waiting for out tapas.

Our group with Almendra walking from bar to bar eating tapas for dinner. The decorations are there because of a festival the next day for the patron saint of Madrid, San Isidro.

Outside of the restaurant where we ate our tapas.

The typical madrileno garb worn on festival San Isidro (the holiday of the patron saint of madrid, San Isidro). Mostly young children and older men and women wear these outfits.

Kelli and I couldnt believe it, pink tiger striped stirrup paints in a trendy store in Spain. I thought Europe was supposed to be ahead of the fashion trend!? Please don't tell me that stirrup pants are coming back in style!