going a little crazy

sitting around in my homestay reading gravity´s rainbow all day... i need to get out more. musuem-wise i´ve only hit up the reína sofía so far... it was excellent, saw guernica, pretty mind-blowing to stand a few feet from it, same with some of the dali´s. so far the language adjustment is still really hard - i´m trying to hang out with less american kids, but since regular classes don´t even start here at carlos III till oct. 1, i´m not entirely sure how to make spanish friends... have met a very nice group of about 8 or 9 english kids studying / interning here in madrid, met them at the concert i went to on the 14th (which was amazing), and they are somewhat incomprehensible as well... bocadillo time (i´m thinking chorizo, lamb, tomato, onion, lettuce today... maybe lamb and ham... like the rhyme scheme there). hasta luego

miscellaneous

so, just chilling on campus after my first class - spanish and EU law. seems semi-interesting, although understanding the profesora can be an adventure. right now i´m in the computer lab to save laptop battery power, using the extremely confusing spanish keyboards (also, this space bar requires like 50 lbs. of force. i´m getting quite a thumb workout). been a full week since i´ve been able to get off a good post, lots to talk about. Firstly, so I´m all moved in with my host-senora - it´s an apartment on the 6th floor of a building in little plaza, medium sized, although with many rooms, as there are 1. myself, 2. josefa (the senora) 3. Jesus (1 of her 3 sons - one of the others lives in madrid, the third in portugal), 3a. Mrs. Jesus, 3b. Laura (24 yr. old daughter of Jesus) and 3c. 13 yr old son of jesus who won´t talk to me beyond ´si´o ´no´. In addition, other relatives are always stopping by, and Laura´s boyfriend, Fernando, is over more often than not - a few times already i´ve come home at 5 or 6 am find him sneaking out. I like the encounters - a brief ´hola, que tal´and the assurance that i´m not the only person creeping around while Josefa sleeps. However, Josefa is very nice, and having had so many kids is very used to sleeping through semi-drunken 5am entries. By far the best things about the place are the location ( http://tinyurl.com/24pu3u ) which is a 7 minute walk from the main train station where the commuter train i ride to school departs from, 2 metro stops (about a 25-30 minute walk) from the plaza del sol, home of many landmarks, bars, clubs, shops, etc., and just in general i´m close to everything. Also, I have a room with enough space to walk around my (fortunately a full) bed, a little desk, little closet, and big ass windows that open up onto a balcony overlooking the alley behind the street through which i get many nice breezes. Oh yeah, and weekly laundry service is amazing. The worst things about the homestay are pretty much just the general restrictions of moving back into a household run by someone else - having to be home at a certain time for meals, being asked when/where i´m going out, not being able to walk around all day in my boxers on sundays etc....... and finally, the fact that i´m undergoing Gavage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras ) every day at 2 and 9 pm. Every day I have the same discussion with Josefa: D -¨"Me encanta su comida, Josefa, pero no puedo comer todo! mi estomago no es tanto grande!" J - "es bueno, pero el estudiante que estaba aqui antes de tu siempre comio mucho". Well....okay, but 1. I am a different person...i get the vibe from many spaniards that if you´ve met one american you´ve met them all, which is extra funny since, as a whole, the american populace is VASTLY more diverse than that of Spain. seriously, everyone here looks the same, and stares at any black person like they´re from mars or something. also 2. was the student before me augustus gloop? what the fuck, you made me eat (well, more my sense of guilt made me) 10 giant pork meatballs, with bread, and potatoes (and constant asking if I wanted more) for lunch, so for dinner it´s something lighter right, something like.... 2 giant fucking hamburgers! which were a dirty trick - not actual burgers, but some gnarly mix of ground pork and chicken.... yeesh. I wish she´d just give me easy, cheap spanish food - bread, jamon and tortilla are excellent. anyways, lots more to ramble about, but my buddy kyle from UCI is out of class in 2 minutes and we´re walking off campus to this awesome little bocadillo place for cheap (< 2 €) and gigantic sandwiches. now if only this country would discover hot sauce....

man

so i started writing this last sunday... finally get to post the first part.

Last week, we decided that, it being our first friday in spain and all, it would be a good idea to go out to a club. The 'we' here refers to myself, my roommate in the hotel Kyle Varga, from UCI, who I get along with quite excellently, friends Danielle and Rachel from SB, and Kyle's friend from UCI who is studying in Barcelona, and happens to be visiting madrid with three other girls from her program, all from various UC's. My first suggestion was that we go to Kapital, the largest (7 stories) nightclub in madrid, but upon googling it I saw a link for www.discotecasgratis.com, which was some club promoter's site, and so we picked one of the clubs on the site and called the given number, and got on "el listo de julian", which was excellent as we not only got into the club (Joy Eslava), but got in without a cover charge. However, we went to dinner first (about 11:30) at VIPS, a somewhat hilarious (for us) restaurant that served semi-american food - pizza, but with jamon iberico, or like a club sandwich with jamon and manchego queso.... tasty, and amusingly, we were the only non-madrilenos in the place. Of course, we had to get a couple pitchers of sangria with dinner - an excellent deal at 10 euros for a FATTY pitcher, especially considering the amount of money we would be forced to spend on drinks later on. As we rolled up to the club (only a kilometer from our hotel, nice walk), we saw a couple madrilenos (or so they appeared) getting rejected by the swollen-looking bouncer, I guess for not looking cool enough. With trepidation I approached, but julian was a man of his word, and we were on the list, and strolled right on in. This is about 1:30 am, but the club is just starting to get going - mostly people just drinking and sitting, with the dance floor populated but not crowded with a good mix of locals, students (american and otherwise) and the creepy german guys who wore vests, looked like they would be named "Dieter", and just stared at at girls to the point where I would feel uncomfortable just seeing it.

godammit

so, i´m on the campus for the first time and the wifi is being retarded.... i have many updates to give once i figure this out. stay tuned for updates on living with my senora (and her daughter, daughter´s husband, granddaughter, grandson, and basically the granddaughter´s boyfriend), the second night of clubbing, and much, much more.

p.s. '- mom thanks for bugging me about shorts and flip flops. seriously, like every other native madrileno i see is wearing them.

desayuno

so, despite the fact that the prevalence of olive oil in spanish cooking was one of the like 3 main facts that I had brought with me across the atlantic, it has still sort of taken me off guard, especially at desayuno today.... at 7:30 am, I don't know, olive oil just seems a little sickly, but it is in literally every single available dish at the (admittedly pretty damn awesome) breakfast spread, besides 1. plain hardboiled eggs (of which I had several...mmmmmm) and 2. the bread (and even then, I think I still tasted it). I swear that the goddamn coffee tasted like olive oil, and despite my underlying objections to the globalization movement..... thank god there's a starbucks down the street, because the coffee in the hotel is a terrible, terrible thing that bears only a passing resemblance to that which would accompany a solid breakfast in the states...

oh yeah, and just because they put out a bunch of chorizo and ham for breakfast does not mean I at all endorse eating it at this time of day... i have no idea if it's customary to have that stuff with breakfast or not, but one bite of chorizo was like biting into a ham-flavored pool of congealed olive oil....

fortunately, the tortilla espanola (is that the right way to adjective-ize it?) is as goddamn amazing as the chorizo is saltily horrific. Seriously, no wonder the Spaniards are condescending towards us americans (south & north), while we're eating a flat piece of flour thinking it's the coolest thing since sliced bread, they've got these wonderful omelet-cakes of potato, egg, maybe cheese, all browned on the outside and delectable and moist on the inside...mmmmmmm...... i think you can guess what i'll be composing my diet of while I'm here...

arrival

spain is pretty rad, at least as far as i can tell from a taxi ride and hotel room the size of my room back in IV (think a really big walk in closet w/ a nice bathroom).