IT'S UP PLEASE GO VOTE ON IT

My Threadless t-shirt design has been approved and can now be voted on! Please go and so so here.

Thanks very much!

unnnnnngh + the list

So.

I want to visit Mejorada del Campo, a town about 8 miles outside of Madrid, to see this. It sounds fascinating -- as well as potential source for a couple articles. I've got to get down to business on this freelance stuff.

My problem? I can't figure out what kind of town it is. This may sound odd, but basically from previous internet research I have garnered that "fringe" Madrid neighborhoods (those outside the M30 roadway loop) tend to be tougher and less fun for a tourist to find herself in. This is clearly outside of central Madrid, but it might be far enough out that the above recommendation doesn't quite apply. The Google satellite picture shows lots of pictures of houses with swimming pools. That implies. . . a wealthy suburban development? Maybe? In any case I would be visiting in the middle of the day on Saturday or Sunday, so there should be people around. On the other hand, because it's super small, I would stick out painfully as a tourist (read: target.)

Of course, with my current monetary situation, the cost of this proposed trip -- 4 euros 10 cents -- is about what I can afford.

---

List composed while I was walking around Granada.

in my quest for financial solvency

I have submitted my first (hopefully of many) t-shirt design to Threadless.com.

It is currently still "pending approval," but when that period has ceased, I shall post much notification with much glorious trumpeting and much less glorious begging and pleading to help me out.

trying to organize my brain which is skittering in ten thousand directions

I have four (4!) unplanned weekends left in Spain. (As well as the weekend in Paris and the weekend in Barcelona. Phew.) Then, I have realistically 7 days at the end of my stay -- October 1-8. (I fly out out on the ninth.)

So, what to do with these weekends?

I have approximately a thousand ideas -- and am anxiously torn between seeing the most famous things possible -- the sorts of things that were in my history of architecture class -- and seeing some out-of-the-way things (I want to go see Don Quijote's windmills!), or unusual things, completely random things (oh boy! I want to go see the only monkeys native to Europe at Gibraltar!), or perhaps places that are cheap because they are close to Madrid (Segovia and Avila come to mind.)

So, without further ado, what I am considering:

1. A weekend trip to Sevilla and Cordoba. They are relatively close to one another; I would take the bus to one of them, spend the day there, take the bus to the next one, stay overnight, spend the day there, take the bus back to Madrid.

2. Two days walking on the Santiago de Compostela trail. It's experiential! It's in northern Spain (where I haven't been yet!) It would a nice counterpart to the torturous climb up Mt. Fuji from last summer!

3. Segovia. It's so close to Madrid. And there are those aqueducts. Also, it would be a day trip. I like day trips; they leave me less completely totally exhausted than all-weekend extravaganzas.

4. Avila. Ditto on the closeness. Also, it's a UNESCO World Heritage site. Lots of Romanesque architecture. If I really wanted to see both of the above, they could potentially be combined into one weekend. . .

5. Lisbon. (as in, Portugal.) Potential for meeting a friend there? Not sure how this will pan out.

6. San Sebastian. Also in northern Spain (where I haven't been yet!). Supposed to be very pretty.

7. Go to Barcelona again, by bus.


#1 on this list is Cordoba. Everything else is squishy.

Granada for starters

I swear I am still working on Salamanca and Paris entries.

Granada in short:

La Alhambra is great. Pretty much every part of it is great -- gardens, fortresses, ruins, what have you. The Patio of the Lions is still under construction for restorations so that sucked.

I visited the cave houses in the Sacromonte neighborhood (north Granada) and the Albaycin, the medieval Muslim neighborhood. I super neurotically watched for muggers (before taking out my camera, a map, or stopping to look at a posted document I did at least a 360 and sometimes a 720 degree turn, and whilst walking down the marked "nice pedestrian walk" street on my excellent Granada tourist map I all but spun in circles), who kindly did me the favor of not showing up. I did get harassed by a "palm reader," cat-called (I think because I had a sunburn? More likely the guy was just a dickhead. I realized that I am uncertain of how to say "go to hell" in Spanish,) and asked for money in the bus station, but other than that I took loads of pictures, had some good conversations, and ate ice cream.

sadness. :(

This blog entry makes me so sad.

or that could be that I'm super behind on work. who knows?

ernest hemingway?

Books to make interesting people talk to you on the subway.

Now I want to read A Moveable Feast, even though I still have 200 pages left of A Farewell to Arms. I can't decide if I like Ernest Hemingway or not. I mean, if an author keeps you reading, even if you find some parts of their novel shallow or irritating, then that's saying something, right?

important Spanish things

1. Yesterday I saw six nuns. One in the morning and a gaggle of five in the afternoon.

2. Empandilla = puff pastry or pie crust wrapped around beef or tuna with tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Not so good from the refrigerator section of the grocery store, but pretty tasty from the bakery.

3. Spanish tortilla = omelette mainly consisting of potatoes and onions. Tastes like latkes. SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOD.

yet another one of those articles

Let me sum this article up for you:

You don't earn the right to enjoy your life until age 35. Say good-bye to your friends and get ready to kiss some ass.

ugh yeah

I just barely managed to get my photos up on facebook, so I don't know when the next blog entry is coming.

However, weird comment: I have started (well, actually this happened a while ago) to say "grathias" instead of "gracias" when I go to the grocery store/sandwich shop-bakery place. My accent is still kind of untenable, but I try to hide it here and there.

(In case you didn't get that: In basically all the Spain-Spanish that I've heard, the "s"-ish sounds -- made by s, c, and z -- all sound like "th." Unlike what I was told in high school Spanish, it's not a thing they do in Barcelona, because they speak Catalan in Barcelona. Barcelona is just one word that you can hear it in. And "d" sounds like "th" -- entrada is "entratha.")

I still can't make the real "j" sound, which is like the "ch" sound in German, generating somewhere in the back of the throat, or roll an r convincingly.

nothing like french to make you appreciate spanish.

I am still working on my Salamanca and (more comprehensive) Paris entries. However, I would just like to say that while Paris is wondrous and awesome and kind of like New York in that I think you could stay continuously entertained for years, it:

A) Is more expensive than Madrid. The Metro is 1.70 euros per ride instead of 1.00, and the train ride from the airport was 8.75 euros! compared to 2 in Madrid.

B) Has a hideously foul airport (compared to Barajas, which is the nicest airport I have ever been in, bar none.)

C) Has super long lines for various attractions that, while wonderful, are comparable to things in Salamanca or Madrid that do not have such long lines, and also cost somewhat less.

D) An uneducated English-speaking traveler can sort of read signs in French by guesstimation but all speech sounds like a garble of extremely similar vowels that don't really show up in English at all. Why is Spanish so much easier to learn than French when modern English is the grandbaby of Old English and Old French????

Moral of story: The movies are right, Paris is cool, but you should also go to Madrid.

Random side note plucked from the middle of the Paris narrative: Saint-Chapelle is awesome. As far as actual "sites" that I saw (as opposed to just walking around a lot), that was my favorite.

nuns

One important question I have been asking myself:

Are there more nuns per capita in Madrid, or have I just been noticing more because I expect there to be more nuns? (Or sisters, or whichever is the correct term for generally small elderly ladies who wander around in gray, white, brown, or black habits and wimple-y things and Sensible Shoes.) I see 8-10 a week, I think.

Or maybe I just walk a nun-heavy route?

sometimes I am befuddled by my own cooking

I just created a dish consisting of:

-- onions

-- ham

-- olive oil

-- green beans

-- rosemary

-- thyme

-- black pepper

-- "meat broth" (probably pork and vegetables)

-- basil

-- "tomate frito" (tomato sauce with garlic and sugar)

-- tortellini (with cheese filling.)

It's tasty. . .just. . . weird.

spain is going to kill me

There are $1.50 packs of a dozen palmiers (puff pastry with carmelized sugar on the bottom) or croissants EVERYWHERE.

sometimes it just works

The neuter gender in Spanish, from About.com. After three.5 years of high school Spanish and a semester of college Spanish, I had *never* seen this in a textbook, but I have read it/heard it multiple times.

Yay for learning!

this dog is awesome.

Doggy on "amazing feats of balance."

NEW SHORTS

MY NEW SHORTS. (Replacement for the ones that got stolen.)

The picture was unintentional.

travelly doo

Thought I had on the flight to Madrid, which was in the notebook that got stolen:


As you should be able to tell, red represents states I have visited. Orange are states which are dubious -- while I have technically set foot in them, does a layover on a long flight count? Does accidentally wandering across a bridge on the Mississippi count?

Moral of story: I also would like to travel more in the U.S. at some point (though at this moment I am still more attracted to international locales.) Mainly the stuff I would really like to see is in the west -- Rockies, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, and so on. Of course I'd like to go to Alaska and Hawaii, but those are not within reach of a driving trip (Grandma Dyer might disagree on the former, but I stand by my statement). And there's the usual host of cities I'd like to visit at the very least to say that I had (Philadelphia, Seattle, New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.)

the weekend: the worst and then the best

Okay, so this weekend was an experience.

I am going to write about it in reverse, because that way it ends on the really good note instead of just the okay good note.

So first: Sunday.

I hung out in my room for a while. I was kind of tired from the day before, so I made a big bowl of mashed potatoes and ate them. At about 3:00, I decided I needed some exercise and went out for a walk with my bag. I thought I might do some sketching. I went toward Plaza Mayor again; it's very pretty and the walk there is nice. I stopped in an H&M (thinking to myself: you know, sometimes globalization is not all bad) and bought a striped shirt and new pair of shorts (one pair of mine is getting some holes.) (Side note: Am now a size smaller in some H&M clothes than I was in May. Yay! Unfortunately, the sizes aren't real consistent in that store -- the same size is 34 on the first floor and a 40 on the basement floor.)

mashed potatoes

for breakfast.

I am so full of win I scare myself.

random notes

One: Realized something terrible today, i.e. that for some portions of Madrid's male population mullets are acceptable. NOT OKAY. I even saw one mullet that was shaved all around and then had lots of little skinny dreadlocks in the back. GROSS.

Two: Purchased bus tickets to Granada and back for the weekend of August 14-15. They were 30 euros (as compared to 37 euros online.) WHOOOO.

Three: For another personal treat, I bought myself an ice tray.

Four: I now have a tumblr, contemplating chicken. Taking a cue from a fellow design student/friend, I plan to use it to make note of images I find interesting/inspiring.

Five: One of my fellow Fenbeings, who happens to be Puerto Rican, commented once, "I don't know why they teach coche and carro as words for car in American Spanish classes. No one says coche! Maybe they say it in Spain." YES THEY DO. I HEARD THEM.

organizing my desktop/brain for some serious sketching

One lesson I forgot from yesterday: Do not believe you will be able to fry onions and a breaded fish fillet in the same pan and have both be tasty. It's awkward; the onions end up burnt and the fish fillet ends up soggy.

Went to a meeting thing for the organization which is funding my internship in Madrid, PromoMadrid. The meeting was entirely in Spanish; I would say I understood about half of it, and could have understood more had people spoken a bit more slowly. We were supposed to talk about our opinions and experiences in the PromoMadrid program. Most people said they were happy to work with MIT (please, shiny diploma, please help me convince people that I am good to work with) and that three months maybe wasn't long enough. (Hear, hear!)

lessons of the last two days

1. Older is not (always) better.

The 1954 version of Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart is charming, but the 1995 version (with Harrison Ford) is overall funnier, more touching, and has more sympathetic characters, in my humble opinion. Everyone is less disagreeable overall, there is stuff shot on-site in Paris, etc. (Watched this last night.)


2. It pays to keep wandering in slightly different directions.

During lunch today I stumbled upon the Temple de Debod, a portion of an Egyptian temple that was donated to Spain in the 60s after they helped (provided monetary support?) save some temples from the Aswan dam project. Tomorrow maybe I shall have time to actually go in the little museum, and take pictures. It's very pretty how they have it set up on the edge of the park.


3. Things that are familiar with a slight twist can make you laugh.

Today while standing in line in the grocery store I happened to note some little Disney board books in the display next to the checkout, La Dama y el Vagabundo and La Sirenita among them. Both of those made me chuckle; my mind shortcuts to "the Dame and the Vagabond" even though I know they mean "the Lady and the Tramp."


4. Don't make your (my) list too long, or you (I) will just ignore most of it and fall asleep.

I accomplished #2 on my list: Buy toilet paper.


5. Caramel flavor is not always good.

I bought some pudding cups labeled "flan," which is vanilla pudding with caramel sauce in the bottom. I took one to lunch today. It was gross, for reasons I can't fully articulate. Perhaps the flavoring was fake? Perhaps the lukewarm-ness turned me off? I don't know. Luckily I spent less than a euro on the pudding cups.


6. Corn flakes are always good.


7. People are not necessarily waiting to test you on your language skills.

We had a 20 minute coffee break at the end of work today. I actually held on to the conversation for 10 minutes or so before it got too fast and I got too lost. No one seemed to object. I also said a few simple things in Spanish, which is a start at the very least.

Well it is late and I must be up early. Good night.

yup, this pretty well sums it up.

Brilliant post about. . . well. . . attempting to be an adult. The "guilt spiral" is particularly characteristic of me.

On a separate note, after I walk to work every morning, my legs then throb for the next twenty minutes after I sit down at my desk. What's up with that? Combination of heat and concrete stress?

by train! by plane! by bus! probably not by boat.

I am queen of plan/list-making and now is not an exception.

I have spent a noteworthy amount of time contemplating upon my Lonely Planet Discover Spain guide. I have flipped through (I think) every section and made notes and dog-eared the pages.

A brief summary of my plans: