¿Queréis mirar mis fotos?

I've posted a ton of pictures on Facebook, but obviously not everyone has Facebook. So, these are the public links to my Facebook albums so everyone can see all my pictures. These are all my Spain pictures and some Italy pictures with more coming.

La Noche en Blanco
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2129959&l=58dce&id=20012315

Madrid
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2129961&l=e34c7&id=20012315

Parque de Buen Retiro
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2129960&l=9ebde&id=20012315

Toledo
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2129958&l=c06e7&id=20012315

Italy (more to come)
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2128330&l=562f4&id=20012315

More Pictures

The internet in my piso is about as fast as dial up, so I can't upload any pictures. Luckily the internet at school is super speedy, so I I can finally post those pictures of my piso. I don't have any of my Spanish family. I don't think I'm at the point with them yet where I can take pictures and not look like a creep. Soon, but not quite yet.

Until that time comes here's a photo tour of my lovely piso. Here's my bedroom. It's pretty tiny, but I like it.

The bed/ windowMy desk and more window,And if you turn around you see my closet (complete with clothes falling everywhere) and door (it's directly across from my closet, kind of hard to tell in this picture.)
Not the best pictures, but there's nowhere for me to take a photo of the whole room. I could get a ladder and stand outside my window, but that's kind of weird.

And I know you're all dying to see my bathroom. Lovely.
I semi have my own bathroom. They family only uses if the other one is occupied and to wash laundry. Everyone here has their washing machine in the rbathroom. I think it's kind of funny, but there's literally nowhere else in the house to put a washer, so I guess it makes sense. They don't have dryers here though. My undies hang out the window in the courtyad when they're drying. This would probably be embarrassing, but I don't know any of the neighbors.

You have to talk through the kitchen to get to my room. Here's the door to my bedroom and bathroom.Here's the kitchen. This is actually a decent sized kitchen for Spanish standards. The gate is to keep Victor out so he doesn't get into my room. Last time he slipped into my room unnoticed he came out waving a bra. Oh Victor!On the other side of the Victor safety fence is the rest of the apartment. The door on the right leads to the bathroom and the other one is Javi and Mabel's bedroom. Across from that is Silvia and Victor's room.
That's the entire piso. Hope you've enjoy the tour. Hopefully soon I'll have photos of the family to share.

This isn't the Toledo I know!

We had a group trip to Toledo this past Sunday. We got up bright and early on Sunday morning so we could leave Madrid on the 9:20 train. We took the Ave, which is Spain's fast train. It only took half an hour! Fast. I was particularly looking forward to this trip since Toledo reminds me an awful of another city I've been to... Toledo, Spain however is absolutely NOTHING like my home town.First of all Toledo, Spain is really old. It's be around way longer than Madrid and was actually the capital of Spain until the 16th century. Toledo is filled with churches. We made it to about 6 of them, including the cathedral.We couldn't take pictures inside, but it's over the top ornate. There are bishops and royals buried right in the middle of the floor as well as under the alter and in any number of the cathedral's 20 plus chapels.
We also made it to San Juan de los Reyes a convent that Isabella and Ferdinand had build to house their graves.In the afternoon we had 2 hours of free time, which we used to explore the city a little more. I bought some really cute leather saddles for 5 euro (that's US$7)!! Exciting! I also got some great Toledo pictures.I took this picture in one of the churches we went to. At first all I saw was the tragic scene of some guy who was just killed. Then I noticed the guy on the left hand side. I think I laughed for a good ten minutes.
By far, the best mullet I've seen was in Toledo. I couldn't resist taking a picture. One of the girls in our group wants to make an album of all the mullets she's seen. I thought I'd do my part to contribute.Toledo is known for it's swords and blades (hence the Toledo Blade). There were tons of store windows like this throughout the whole city. What you'd do with any number of these knives, I don't know. Although, I think the more important question is how you get them through customs.
I'm pretty sure the highlight of my trip was finding the Calle de Toledo de Ohio!!!

Guess I'll Just Fake It Til I Make It...

La Noche en Blanca was last Saturday evening. Lots of European capital cities have "White Nights". Basically, the point is that the whole city stays up all night and goes out to see the various attractions that are open late/ have special exhibits that night. Although, as one of my professors pointed out, that's not really different from any other night. Madrid is known for its night life and it's not unusual to see the streets littered with people at 5am.

My friends and I went to see a tight rope walker walk between two buildings downtown, but unfortunately it was too windy. We did get to see a neat light display. There was just a big empty lot filled with over 4,000 of these huge light bulbs that changed colors. It was a lot like the lights before Christmas, only in September. I'll have to upload some pictures later. The Internet in my piso (apartment) is kind of slow.

I moved in with my Spanish family on Sunday. It's really scary. They're very nice, but my comprehension of what they're saying to me is minimal. Half the time I just say "Sí, sí" to everything they say to me. That tends to backfire pretty frequently because I pretend like I understand what they're saying to me and then they'll ask a question and I have no idea how to respond. Oops.

Despite the fact that his sister claims he speaks Chinese, I kind of feel like the two year old is the easiest to understand. "Tren, tren, chooo chooo" is just about my level. I'm quickly learning that becoming fluent in another language is not going to be quite as easy as I had originally thought. Perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised by that.

Well Spain is just peachy

Okay, so the blog dated Sept. 2 is out of order and should actually be dated Saturday, September 6. If you were confused, that's why.

Not much has happened since I last posted. We started our orientation classes. We're all taking History of Spain, Art of Spain and a composition and grammar class. We're only in these classes for a month and the our actual semester classes begin October 2. The orientation classes are helping get us all into the swing of speaking Spanish though, which is good because we're not doing enough of that right now. This upcoming Saturday night is La Noche en Blanco. Lots of capital cities in Europe have "white nights." It's basically just a night the entire city stays up all night and there are all kinds of free activities, mostly related to the arts. It should be a lot of fun. After that, on Sunday I'm moving in with my host family, so I'll finally be forced to speak Spanish all the time.

One of our professors took us on a tour of the city last week. It was really informative but I think I want to go on the same tour again when the spring semester students arrive. The whole tour was in Spanish, so I only understood about 50% of the information. Here's a picture of the Palacio Real (Royal Palace).
This is a fountain that's in the garden in front of the palace.
Dad, here's an engineering feat for you. This is the first sculpture in the world where the horse is on his back legs. I guess those were really hard to do back in the day b.c of the physics. (Clearly I'm not a science major.) The numbers for this were crunched by (and like I said I was being told this in Spanish, so I didn't fully follow it) either Galileo or by one of his descendants. Or maybe it was Galileo did the numbers and one of his descendants designed the sculpture. Either way, it's the first of it's kind in the world and it has some relation to Galileo. Conclusion: I can't understand Spanish AND I don't understand physics. Oh well, it's a nice statue.
And here's one for Mom. She doesn't need to be told, but for those of you who don't know this the Plaza de España. The man sitting down is Miguel de Cervantes and the two greenish fellows in front of him are his fictional characters Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

More Adventures in Italy

After my first exciting day in Southern Italy, the fun continued. The next morning we got up and went to the house of another relative. He and his daughter took us to Pietrelcina, which is the birthplace of (and I know my St. Pat's friends will appreciate this) who else, but Padre Pio! It found it to be incredibly ironic that I ended up there so shortly after the Dottie Z scandal. I was half expecting to see the woman herself pop out from behind a building. Who knows, now that she has so much free time on her hands, she very well could be traveling around Italy!

When we got back to the town in which we were staying our Italian relatives took us to the most amazing restaurant where I had my first real Italian meal. In Italy, you start with one of two antipastos (appetizers) and then you have one our two pasta dishes. Next comes meat, of which there are several varieties. Then there's fruit and after that dessert and coffee. The food just keeps coming and coming. It was soooo good but afterwards I was pretty sure I would explode.Luckily we all got our share of exercise afterward. My grandma attracted the attention of a baby horse that ended up charging at us. It was cute though!
After lunch we were able to go see a grotto that had been covered up to protect it from invaders and then forgotten. It was only recently discovered when a man's cow fell through the roof. Obviously the statue and the tacky paint job are new additions, but you get the point.

The next day we went to a Montevergine. It's a mountain top abbey where women used to go to pray if they were pushing 20 and still weren't married. Hence, Montevergine. It had a gorgeous chapel.
My grandma and I almost got kicked out because I was in a sleeveless dress and she was wearing polo (apparently two of the cardinal sins of church going in Italy). Luckily, my grandma played the dumb American card and the guy trying to kick us out just gave up. Go Grandma! After our perilous trek up the mountain (think hairpin turns plus crazy Italian driver) we stopped at a restaurant for another amazing 7 course Italian meal. While there made friends with a parrot who lives at the restaurant’s bar. So cute! During our last two days in Italy, we stayed with another family and were able visit even more Italian relatives. They were all the sweetest most welcoming people you could hope to meet. Here's my grandma with an Italian relative.
Some of the things I didn't expect to see while in Italy were tons of wild dogs (I don't know why he's sideway, but still cute either way).
Telepizza (home delivery, 1 meter long!)
and tons of tobacco farms.

I’m so grateful to my grandparents for taking me on this trip. I learned more in a week that I ever imagined I could. I really hope that I’ll be able to come back and visit these people again!

Adventures in Italy

I've been in Madrid for a few days now and I'm loving it. It's really intense because (surprise) everyone speaks Spanish here. My trip to Italy was AMAZING. My grandparents and I were talking about how every year since I was really little I've been asking "can I go with you next year?" This year was finally my year and it was awesome. I got to meet a ton of Italian relatives, all of whom were sooo nice. They we're all very welcoming and took us around to see many of the wonderful sights of southern Italy. The very first thing we did when I arrived (after about 20 straight hours of travel) was go to the car dealership that one of my Italian family members owns. And because it's Italy, we were able to see the prize winning Lamborghini. It was hilarious to see my grandparents sitting in it so I took tons of pictures.
Aren't they cute?

After I had slept off my Jet lag for 12 hours, I was ready to begin my first full day in Italy. My Grandparents, one of the relatives we were staying with, and I drive up to the top off the mountain they live to check out Italy from above. Southern Italy is trying to make overcome years of poverty through manufacturing alternative fuel sources. When we got to the top of the mountain, all you could see for miles and miles were huge wind mills.
When you actually see it in person it's a really impressive sight. The windmills are HUGE and it's awesome to think about how much natural energy they're capturing.
We were also able to go to a small lake where the Napolitanos like like to go to get away from the city on a Saturday or Sunday. That afternoon we went to the nearest city to where we were staying, Benevento. It's a really old, very beautiful city where some of the buildings were built BC.
We got to check out the local museum, which had some really great Roman and Egyptian artifacts as well as some more modern sculpters and paintings. This was one of my favorites. What a face!
We also saw the Arch of Tryan, an ancient Roman emporer.Alright, that's all I've got for tonight. I'm going to hit the sack becasue one of my classes starts tomorrow. More to come on my trip to Italy and of course the begining of my year in Spain.

Viva España

I arrived in Spain last Monday evening. The rest of my study abroad group wasn't due to arrive until the next morning, so I was the only non-Spanish speaker in the entire building that night. For the first two weeks that we're here, we're staying at a dorm on the Universidad de Madrid campus. It’s pretty nice and I have a great view from my window. I can see the three tallest buildings in Madrid.

I don’t know what this building is, but I think it’s really pretty so I took a picture of it too.

There are probably 20-30 Spanish students here for summer classes. Originally my plan was to lock myself in my room the first night I was here and not come out until the rest of my group arrived. Hunger got in the way of that plan however, so I ventured down to dinner at 10:00pm. If walking into a cafeteria full of people you don't know by yourself is a scary thought for you, imagine doing that AND being barely able to speak the language. I sat down with a group of engineering students and managed to make it through dinner. I don't think I've ever said the word "what" (or "qué," I suppose) so many times in a conversation. Before I left for Spain, I was pretty confident in my Spanish speaking abilities, but it amazing how much harder it is once you get here. I just keep hoping I’ll wake up and speak fluent Spanish, but I doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Lesson learned: guess I’ll have to work a little bit harder than I though to make this Spanish thing happen. I’m okay with that, though. That’s what I’m here for! Luckily, the rest of my groups arrived the next morning. I hadn’t met any of them prior to leaving since they all go to Marquette, but they’re really nice and we’ve been getting along really well. We’ve gone to see the Parque de Buen Retiro together. It’s the Central Park of Madrid. The main attraction is the huge pond.

Behind the pond is a monument to King Alfonso XII. I’m not really sure what this guy did to get this monument, but props to him because it is seriously amazing. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

I’ve also been able to meet my soon-to-be host family, although we’re still in the dorms for another week. My family consists of Isabel, Javier and their two kids, Silvia (9) and Victor (2). I wasn’t able to meet the mom when I went because she was at work, but I met the rest of the family plus a grandma, two aunts, three uncles and a cousin. I’m glad I’m living with a family that’s so involved, but I’m also REALLY nervous. I had an incredibly hard time understanding the little girl because she talks a mile a minute. The dad is a fast talker too, but slows down when he remembers. All three of the uncles are married to Americans, and it was really nice to have one of them there because she knew exactly what we (one of the other students in my group is living with the grandma, so she was there, too) were going through. I’m excited/ nervous for my move-in date next weekend. I know that my Spanish will improve drastically once I move, so I’m trying to focus on that and not on the fact that I can’t comprehend these people when they speak to me. Yikes!