The Week in Review

so a lot of exciting things happened this week!! Namely, MY PARENTS CAME! yayyyy that was fun. But before they came, my new spanish novioooo and i had some dates which was lovely, and I finally expeienced Pacha for a Comitas Wednesday celebration. It was really fun especially since like 10 ppl from my program went, though i wore the completely wrong shoes, but whatever.

Moving onward to the weekend! Since my parents have already been to Madrid and Barcelona, we decided to go South to Granada to see the infamous Alhambra. Absolutely amazing. They say that if you die without seeing the Alhambra, you haven't lived (or something like that), so I'm glad I saw it. We also went over to Sevilla to tour there, which was so amazing and gorgeous, even though it DOWNPOURED the whole time we were there.  BUT major pro was that I got to spend time with my parents in a beautiful place, and ALSO got a leopard print dress from Zara, score. This will certainly be making an appearance for New Years and on Penn's campus, so get excited.

Seeing my parents was bittersweet. It was so great to be with them and i am SO thankful that they came (really made my Thanksgiving), but it also made me realize that part of me really doesn't want to leave Madrid. Of course I want to spend more time with my family and friends, but I love this city so much, and have really found a place here, especially in the last month and a half or so. Sad that once you get perfectly acclimated to a place, you have to leave... but such is life.

After relaxing some on Sunday, and catching up on lots of exciting work that I had to do, I had another date on Monday to watch El Clasico (football game between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona). Really intense and a big deal here... unfortunately we lost. No, we didn't loose, we got CRUSHED. ugh. Although Christiano Ronaldo is a BEAUTIFUL man, his skills are no match to Messi. Alas, it was still fun and the spirit of all the football fans was pretty exciting.

Today I had an econ presentation, so nice to get it over with, and my last class of Lit. CRAZY. only 3 more days of class and 5 more actual classes to go. Not too much work left before exams, so that's great! Means i get more time to go out and enjoy Madrid while I still can. Starting with some after-dinner drinks with Allison at Mercado de San Miguel, finally!!

turning into a madrileño

soo since my keyboard is STILL in spanish, im gonna have some fun with accents as i explain my journey to being a madrileño. firstly, apparently the € is doing badly so THAT's great! not that it has anything to do with me becoming more spanish, but its a button on my keyboard now which is kewl ¡¿Sí o Sí!? as our profa Cecilia would say

anywayyyyy, me becoming more spanish. i had a date with a hispanic guy (technically hes colombian but he lived in barca for 7 years and now hes living in madrid, so close enough). we met in a salsa bar/dance club type situation on Thursday (obviously being latin american, hes a phenom dancer which is the BEST TRAIT EVERRR) and then went on a date last night. I was supaaa nervous at first becasue of the whole language barrier sitch but it was totally fine and not hard to speak with him in Spanish... though he can always tell when i pretend to know what hes saying when i actually don't... ¡lo siento Francisco! Things i have learned from him: 1. In colombia, the name Carlota (the spanish version of my name that I tell ppl here bc they legit cant prounounce CHARlotte) means you're from the upper class 2. also in colombia, people with light skin, freckles and red hair (re: gingers) are considered really pretty because they're so rare

moral of the story? I should move to Colombia. Hasta luego estados unidos.

Moving onward, after my date last night, i met up with Allison, and since she has mad Spanish conexiones because of her buddy from our University (Luna), we went to like a Spanish pregame party situation at one of Luna's friends' apartments and then to a club called Moma after.
Suchh a spanish night haha and legitimately I spoke spanish 99% of the night. success.

Disconnected

This weekend we're going on a (mandatory) class trip to Extremadura which is a region in the west of Spain. It happens to be the least visited autonomous community of all of Spain...out of 17. Why they decided to bring us here is a big mystery. While other Penn programs in Spain go to Granada, Madrid, and Barcelona on class trips, we decide to go to the middle of nowhere. In addition, apparently service is really limited. Great. And there's no way for us to escape, so says our tourguide Pablo. This is sounding less and less appealing by the minute, but let the adventures begin!

Other quick updates
-went to a Real Madrid v Muricia football game last night. We won (obviously), and the game was super fun. The stadium, Bernabeu, is reallyyyy nice and has heating lamps so it's not cold at all! so smart. Even though we were literally sitting in the last row, the view was pretty good, and Ronaldo played (google him if you're unfamiliar)
-gave my econ presentation today, wooo! nice to be done with my first real assignment of the year hah
-had a tortilla espanola for dinner tonight- my first one since Sunday sooo that was kinda a long wait for me, but luckily Concha reads my mind.
-almost done with Season 1 of Glee. Score
-computer still in Spanish, not score.

HASTA LUNES!

thank GOD for la tortilla espanola

so I know I have a lot to be thankful for, but right now, on the top of my list are Fiesta days/ Puentes in Madrid and la Tortilla Espanola. Spain loves to partayyyy apparently because there are TONS of holidays here. Many of which, at least this semester, fall on Tuesdays. This means that Monday is a "puente" (bridge) which in turn means that I have 2 day weeks (no class on Friday obviiii).
Last week we had a fiesta on Monday (dia de todos los santos), and this week we had one on Tuesday (patron saint of Madrid), so I have been busy (mainly with travel, though classes are actually starting to make me feel like a real student these days). So here is a little bit of my extended weekend in review:

Thursday- my computer got a massive virus and needed to be taken to the doctor (PC City) for a little slumber party. Luckily it is clean now (apparently it was REALLY REALLY sucio... probably thanks to me trying to watch Glee online...) though all of my keys are in Spanish (like the symbols are all mixed up/not what my english keyboard tells me they are), and the language of all websites is spanish and programs are spanish etc. But i supposed this is helping my cultural imersion...

Friday- class trip to El Escorial with our infamous tourguide, Pablo (Pabs). Most long-winded tourgide in history, which is unfortunate because he is really smart and some things he says are really interesting, but he has NO IDEA how to cut tours short/ how to not talk about every single artifact that we pass by/how to read people. at all.

Saturday- went down to Andalucia (southern Spain) with Allison: first we stopped in Cordoba to see La Mesquita which was so amazing and definitely exceeded my expectations. Then we went on to Granada that night which was really fun. We didn't tour Granada (going down over Thanksgiving with my parents) but we went to dinner and went out afterwards tapas hopping which was entertaining. Only downside: finishing half a bottle of wine and then drinking 4 canas was PROBABLY not the best thing for an early morning trip to the mountainside... Also, I learned that I, in fact, am not good at drinking beer (have a tendency to spill and drink slowly), while Allison is a pro... must be a midwest thing? (re: Pretty Good at Drinking Beer)

Sunday- went up to the mountains to hike through the white towns. 2 hour bus ride up was the worst bus ride of my life by far. When I say I was clutching to a plastic bag for dear life as we wound up through the mountains at 70mph in a smelly bus, i'm not exaggerating. LUCKILY for us, nothing happened and after about 10 minutes of sitting silently outside when we reached our destination trying not to hurl, we were successful. Furthermore, after we bought fleeces (definitely worth the 14E to stave off the chilly mountain air) and had a tortilla espanola to settle our stomachs. The Tortilla Espanola is perfect for hangovers, settling stomachs, and to put on a bocadillo for a quick and portable lunch. Can't wait to bring these back to BabyB (my house next year). It's a serious love affair. I probably average about 1 every other day (don't judge).

Monday- went to Ronda (old town in Andalucia with lots of Moorish influence), which was quaint and cute but not tons to do there. Among the things we did: see a really cool/huge old bridge; Climb down 60m of stairs into a gorge where we proceeded to take like 2 pictures, and then there was nothing else to do (damn you tourist traps), so we had to climb back up the 60m of stairs.. in casi pitch blackness... dicey. annddd we ate some italian food (typical on our weekend trips). Then I had to wait for my train back to Madrid for like 3 hours in the train station (really overbudgeted time needed in Ronda, but oh well). Came back to my senoras and my lovely fixed comuter, which one of my senoras (Paloma) picked up for me.

Tuesday- ugh real student day, had to do work and prepare for an Econ presentation on Thursday... crazy!!
sooo now I get to prepare myself for an intense 2-day week before going on a class field trip with Pabs to Extremadura (the least visited region of Spain.... great).

Summary: Work load is starting to increase, but this gives me more structure and I feel like a productive human now. Also, I had a great weekend, made even better by the fact that my computer is fixed and Fall is beautiful here!

Barcelona!

For those of you who actually follow my blog (aka Hope), sorry I haven’t written in a while… I was sick last weekend/everyone stayed in Madrid because we had a class trip on Friday, soooo I didn’t do anything of real interest. My senoras were so nice to me though and took complete care of me (including giving me special tea for my stomach in an “I <3 NY” mug”—be cuter.)

ANYWAY onto more exciting things!! This weekend I went to Barcelona which was a lot of fun.  The art and architecture there is phenomenal and I spent like 2 hours at La Sagrada Familia (thank you audio guides) which is Gaudi’s famous church (/the most visited construction site in the world since it’s unfinished). The insanely long line was definitely worth it. I also saw Gaudi’s houses, Dali’s house (2.5hrs outside of Barcelona, but worth a trip if you have time), the Picasso Museum, Park Guell (Gaudi’s park), walked down Las Ramblas and Passeig de Gracia (like Barcelona’s 5^th Ave) and around Barri Gotic/Born—super cute area. I got to see some Penn girls that were also there and also 2 girls from Bronxville which was really nice. Seeing familiar faces in a new place is always so great.

Since it was Halloween weekend, a lot of people were out and about Barcelona at night because “Barcelona is totallyyyy the place to be this Halloween weekend, like it’s gonna be sick” –according to a group of 4 Bostonian guys who were on our flight. Sweet life.  We (Allison and I) went to some clubs on the beach after a delicious dinner on Friday night, and then Saturday we met up with a few other Penn girls for some draaanks and the later with a Bronxville friend of mine/her program friends at Chupitos (a shots bar). Chupitos was really fun and quite an experience. It was super packed with people and the shots were quite entertaining (and also good).  All in all, a really fun trip with only a few problems. These were: 1. Allison and I had some serious travel fails while trying to go to Dali’s house. Including a 2+ hour gap between when we arrived in Girona (we flew into that airport) and when our train to Figueres was (a quick ride to Dali’s house). This forced us to ‘explore’ Girona- difficult with a large bag- so we ended up at a random Girona fair/carnival? Very strange. Allison has classy pictures from it… 2. I tried to go to the Boqueria (huge market) on Sunday. It was closed. Extremely disappointing, but as Allison pointed out, you always need a reason to go back to a city! 3. I went to McDonald’s 3 times. Dicey. But their cono kit kats are so good! 4. The 10 person room in our hostel was notttt quite ideal—every time people came in, they decided it was acceptable to turn on the lights while they rummaged around in their bags and their lockers and talked with their friends. Not proper hostel etiquette, especially when they popped on the lights at 5:30am, 7:30am and then the next day during a completely acceptable siesta at 6pm. Rude.

Besides those minor hurdles, Barcelona was great. I definitely suggest going there, although be warned that you will speak more English than Spanish (or at least that was the case for me, save for at Chupitos bar). ALSO bank on being exhausted when you return/ try to plan your trip when you have a nice fiesta day for recovery! Thanks for partying, Spain. !Feliz día de los Santos!

creeperz

sooo today i tried to go on a nice peaceful jog to Parque Retiro per usual. It was a nice day con mucho sol and i was just minding my own business running down some streets before getting to the park. I'm running across a big street and this guy comes at me from the opposite direction and like grabs my shoulder. Clearly he's a creeper so I continued running past him without a second look. THEN he turns around, runs after me, and stops me on the other side of the road. woah buddy. I reluctantly take out an ear of my headphones and he proceeds to ask me, in English, if I want to run with him tomorrow. No. NO I do NOT want to run with you tomorrow random-creepy-asian/spanish guy. Would I like to run with him next week? Also no to that. I decided it was best to run away, quickly, but for the rest of my run I had a strange feeling that he was going to run up behind me and stab me with a knife--- you never know with these types, right? Perhaps I'm a little paranoid... (but he was exceedingly weird)
Anyway, as I was coming back from running in the park, one of the limpiezas (street cleaners) got all up in my grill and said something to me, probably inappropriate, but luckily I had my headphones securily blasting some Eminem (old ipod, get at me).

Good news of today though-- Allison and I had coffee with her Comitas buddy (a girl who goes to our school and who's actually from Spain) and we're gonna go out with her on Friday woooooo making new Spanish friends!

I miiiight be a little obsessed with Amsterdam

Where to begin!

First off, I’m sorry if this blog gets boring because I’m essentially just going to repeat how much I love Amsterdam. As of now, it is one of my favorite cities, if not my favorite city, in the world.  We did lots of exciting things there so I’ll break this up into parts so it’s better to look at.

Rotterdam

First stop on our trip was Rotterdam to stay the night with Noah and visit Penn kids before touring Amsterdam. We went straight to Rotterdam from the airport via a Harry Potter train. Private cabins meant that we could blast the jamzz, and I quite enjoyed being deejay and reciting various HP quotes.

After about an hour of literally bouncing up and down in our seats, we arrived in Rotterdam where Noah so nicely greeted us, paid for our tram ride (which we tried to avoid) and welcomed us to a pregame that was in full swing in his room. So strange, and nice, to see ruit tables set up and red solo cups decorating the space- flashback to America hollaaaaa. First stop was up to the roof to …show us the scene of Rotterdam from above, and of course introduce us to some international friends and the Colonel. Then back downstairs to rep the U. S of A with a game of ruit. Afterwards, we headed off to club Hollywood which appeared to be the scene of a 14 year olds birthday party (baby blue and white balloons were decorating the ceiling and there was a big “14” plaque). We went inside to see a crowd of people that was quite younger than what we were used to. Although it was in fact not a birthday party (rather the 14^th anniversary of the club), we were amused to find many teenagers on the dance floor (one of whom literally nuzzled my neck when he danced with me- awk central). We decided the dance floor wasn’t really our scene at the time, so we purchased coins (yes, coins at a club) and went to the back patio to buy delicious mini pancakes from this Dutch woman (you couldn’t pay with Euros, only with coins which seemed pretty silly to us).

We danced some more and then headed out around 3 to go get K___ which is terrific after-club fare: French fries with thinly sliced shwarma with a little cheese and lettuce and garlic sauce. In retrospect, this sounds kind of disgusting, but I swear it was amazing. Finally off to bed alongside the ruit table. Frattyyyyyy

Amsterdam Day 1

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed (literally dragged) and trained back up to Amsterdam to sightsee. Despite the rain, we walked through an outdoor market, where we equipped ourselves with touristy looking, but functional, hats and gloves. Then we went to the Heineken Experience which is what it sounds like. Mix of educational video clips, ‘rides’, and of course various taste testings. When we were done, we took a walk around to get a feel for the city (including the red light district which was filled with bored 20-something year old girls in bikinis just standings in windows and sometimes texting) and experienced some of Amsterdam’s culture.  After relaxing inside for a little, it was pretty dark and still raining, so we headed home.

Allison and I stayed in a B&B on account of needing to sleep before our Sunday run, and got a glorious fluffy bed, sofa, kitchen and clean bathroom to ourselves. Heaven.

Amsterdam Day 2

On day 2 we had planned to go on a bike tour, and the weather cooperated with us surprisingly. We went to Mike’s Bike tour to find our hippy guide with dreads ready to go. Score. She was actually really knowledgeable and gave us a brief (very interesting) version of Amsterdam’s history before we started off on our 4 hour adventure. Highlights include: going to a cheese/clog factory in the Dutch countryside, complete with samples of course; seeing a windmill; going through Vondel Park; and of course biking along beautiful river boats, canals, reclaimed land, parks etc etc. We also got to be a part of Dutch culture by ringing our bells at stupid tourists (role reversal) and learned some super fun facts. Only 20% of Dutch people have tried weed (our guide didn’t try it until she went to Australia ironically enough), whereas 40% of Americans have; there is a biker’s union and a prostitute’s union in Amsterdam; the number one crime is bike theft; the city symbol is XXX (the connotation with porn came because porn was shipped through Amsterdam’s port and thus each box was stamped with XXX); and their first Dutch king was William of Orange. This is the (unfortunate) reason that the country loves orange. In my opinion, this is its only downfall…

After the countryside tour was finished, we walked into town and Allison and I saw the Anne Frank museum. This was also really interesting and something I truly enjoyed. The museum is incredible in the artifacts that it holds: a map on the wall where Otto Frank (Anne’s father) traced all of the Allied troops’ movement as they neared the Netherlands; marks on the wall showing the changes in height of the children; pictures/postcards that Anne had glued to her walls; Latin homework between Anne and her teacher (with corrections in red); documentation of the family members and their journey through concentration camps; and documentary footage of Otto Frank (the only one of the 8 living in the Secret Annex to survive) when the museum was completed. Powerful and educational. A must-see in Amsterdam.

Later we headed to Vondel Park to pick up our running packets for the race the next day!

Amsterdam Day 3: Race day whaddup

RACE DAYYYYY!!! After carbo-loading the night before with a homemade pasta dinner for 2 (romantic, eh?), I was ready to run.  I met up with Lane and Rick McVey as we prepared to dominate the 8k course. We started at 10:30 just outside the Olympic Stadium, ran 8k through Vondel Park and Amsterdam city, and then finished on the Olympic Stadium Track. It was pretty awesome because it was my first race, I got to see Lane, I got to see a new city in a whole new way, and I got a medal! Sweeeeet. To make everything better, I finished in about 46 minutes which was under my goal time. All in all, very exciting

Then while Allison ran her ½ marathon, I shopped around Amsterdam and found some quite interesting things…

We met up again and headed to the airport where they stole my face lotion (I swear the bottle was not too big UGH), and obvi suffered delays because of strikes in France- how typical. But other than traveling woes, Amsterdam was an INCREDIBLE trip. Sorry this is absurdly long but seriously, what an amazing city.

ps. along with cheese, you gotta try stroopwaffels - DELISH- got free samples of cheese, chocolate, and these cookies at a store across from a coffee shop (typical) on a side street near Dam Square. ah-mazing