Black Thursday for Two Months

Location: Madrid, Spain

Thursday June 24, 2010

Imagine what our bank accounts would be like if there were clothing sales at 30-70% off for two two-month periods per year in the States. Yep, that’s Rebajas, national sales for all stores. Summer sales run from July through August, but they start the last week of June for the Community of Madrid. I guess that’s one way to get the stock off the shelf and to stimulate the economy during the crisis (Spanish’s way of recession, less auspicious, huh?).

Jade wanted to go shopping, because she hadn’t gone seriously since she’s been to Madrid. And what perfect timing to accidentally wait until the end of June. We went all over Fuencarral and Gran Via, dropping into small boutiques and larger chain stores like Blanco. Mercado de Fuencarral, a small mall with boutiques and corners of hip hop/alternative clothing, impressed Jade, even though it wasn’t her style. I thought it was okay, but I’ve been to better mini-malls of much cheaper clothing in Mong Kok, HK. The only bad things about Rebajas, are the crazy bitchy shoppers who are trying to get that same size small you are. It seems that a lot of European stores here understock on the X-small/small sizes. Damn it!

Getting ready for that night was quite an adventure when I decided to get the liquor from Melissa’s house (from Kapital night) to bring to Jade’s place. Never thought I’d be running around the city, looking like I was in a hurry to botellon late at night, so that I could make some club’s deadline to get in for free. But there I was. Running around was not so fun when the weather was hot. But pregaming certainly was. And thank god I did run around, because the weather went bat shit crazy after I got into Jade’s apartment by raining cats, dogs, all other animals on Noah’s ark, and beyond (since many other animals were discovered after the story of the ark was written) and thunderstorming like crazy, enough to make Stacey shit her pants. I could hear yelps from people running around on the street from Jade’s fourth floor apartment window. Jade and I bonded over her boyfriend and my Asianness as we drank before heading out to Joy Esclava. It’s funny how universally the same Asian parents are.

Ducking under a landing to avoid the rain that had finally calmed down a bit, Jade and I spotted a large group of IES kids who came from El Tigre. What great timing! Plus we made the deadline to get in for free or two culpas (drinks) for €10. A club made to look like a theatre, Joy opened up in the middle, as if the orchestra seats on the main floor were ripped out and replaced with a large dance floor with the remaining balcony seats on the upper floors overlooking it. The club was quite American, as we heard English spoken everywhere and American music with some Spanish music on the dance floor.

When I got back from the restroom, I found Jade talking in English to a Spanish boy who studied in the U.S. for a bit during college. As they were talking, his tall and cute friend, Julio, with dark curly hair and dark-brown eyes (wingman? Probs…) came up and started talking to me in Spanish, asking about my program and how I was enjoying Madrid so far. The twenty-four-year-old revealed that he studied in New York for two years during college. When I asked which school, I couldn’t understand him at first, thinking that he went to some small little-known liberal arts college, until he kept repeating himself, insistent that I knew the school. Julio was saying Cornell. Ah. So I told him my school. Do most Ivy-leaguers say the state in which one goes to school before saying the school itself? It was weird that I couldn’t understand his “Cornell,” when all his other English words (when he had to explain some Spanish word that I didn’t understand) was accent-free. When Jade and I discussed later, we grew suspicious that both our guys didn’t have any accent when they spoke English. Her boy didn’t speak Spanish to her at all. Were they American students trying to punk us?

My boy suggested that we go dance, but I lost them as I led the way into the crowded dance floor, right after Jade had instructed me not lose her. -.-“ I wished her good luck with the two guys in my head, because they were no where behind me. I ended up finding a group of IES kids and started dancing with them, figuring that it would be easier for Jade to find me in one spot rather than wandering around trying to find her. She finally got to me without the boys, saying that they left to meet up with friends, but that they would find us later (which, didn’t end up happening, of course. Wompwomp.).

But that’s all right, because I had supah fun dancing with the IES kids to the loud American music. A drag schoolteacher, complete with her matronly black pencil skirt and black cat-eyed glasses with its beaded necklace, lead her slutty students onto the stage to lead them in go-go dancing to the music. They even had a cute little routine down for “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that half of the schoolgirls were actually schoolqueens. Hot damn, did they have nice legs! The DJ took more liberty with the music as time went on, jumping from hiphop to slower R&B to 80s to classics, like “At Last,” during which white balloons rained down from the ceiling. It was quite a weird mix. Jade and I decided it was time to find the Buho when the DJ decided to change to house music and stuck to it.

Bo Finn Finn

Location: Madrid, Spain

Wednesday June 23, 2010

It’s curious how I start to crave food that I didn’t even like that much before in the States once I am away for a long enough time. Jade invited Lauren and me over for a dinner of some homemade tacos. Even though we had to make do without the taco seasoning, the soft tacos were quite delish. And I don’t even like Mexican food that much! Except for maybe Taco Bell chalupas with their delicious light and fluffy shells and E. coli-laced lettuce and dodgy taco stand tacos by Bob’s gas station on 82^nd. Ah, nothing like some homemade food and good company on a Wednesday night.

Jade and I headed out to a bar in the Northeast part of town to meet up with Nikita, Valentina, Alex, and Nikita’s friend of a friend, as Lauren stayed behind, because she wasn’t feeling too well. As Nikita and co. were running on Spanish time as usual, Jade and I waited outside of the metro stop. Nikita wanted us to come because she felt it was a bit shady to hang out with a guy she barely knew. Valentina felt the same way. I think we’re a bit anxious and paranoid from our orientation day and from the countless hassling we get from creepy and often culturally insensitive (okay, more like, culturally-ignorant, since the concept of political correctness doesn’t actually exist here) Spanish men on the street.

Alex came to find us sitting under a bronze Velázquez statue outside the metro stop to lead us to bar Bo Finn, where we saw Valentina and Nikita sitting in the tereza with two Spanish guys. Greeting them with two kisses on each cheek, we sat down to chat. It wasn’t as sketchy as we had predicted. Nikita’s friend, whom she met during a summer program, is a Madrid native, but because he currently has final exams, he sent his friend, Ramiro, to show us around town instead. Ramiro, dark-haired, lanky, and with your typical Spanish features, seemed quite goofy and nice. Both spoke English. But our table spoke in Spanish the whole time. Ramiro’s mannerisms in talking and joking reminded me of Celia’s. His friend, Alejandro or Alex (we’ll call him Alejandro here, even though more people call him Alex, so as to not mix him up with Harvard Alex), was a bit shorter, but hotter, with tanner skin, lighter features, light-brown eyes, and light brown hair. After ordering a pint of beer for myself, I chatted with Alejandro, since he was sitting to my left. Talk about good Spanish practice, when I had to converse one-on-one with someone who wasn’t as patient or good at explaining things in Spanish as Carmen. It was also good Spanish cultural immersion when the bill came and Alejandro paid for it before we offered to chip in (the other kids did later for their tinto), which is unlike Americans, with whom going Dutch is a given.

Speaking of my señora, according to Ramiro and Alejandro, it’s not correct to refer to my señora as “mi señora,” because “mi señora” implies that she is my master and I am her slave, which hopefully, isn’t true, unless IES did a bad-bad job at matching students with señoras. Instead, we should say “la señora con quien vivo,” i.e.: the señora with whom I live. Alex commented that “la señora con quien vivo” was a mouthful and awkward to say. When he said “torpe” for awkward, we found out from Ramiro that torpe doesn’t fit “awkward” in our American sense of the word. Instead, torpe means that something is hard to describe. There is no word in the Spanish language to describe an awkward-turtle situation, other than, perhaps, incómodo (uncomfortable). Good thing we’ve been using “torpe” loosely and loudly all trip… how awkward…

3-in-One Art

Location: Madrid, Spain

Tuesday June 22, 2010

Instead of cleaning, lubricating, and protecting, three art exhibitions in one building meant being able to go gallery hopping after Prado class in the beautiful air-conditioned Círculo de Bellas Artes building. I was especially impressed by Óscar Muñoz’s Volverse aire (To Become Air), one of the exhibitions that focused on the temporality of an image and capturing that image. He had multiple pieces that addressed how one can never capture a portrait perfectly, because the image is constantly changing and that specific moment will no longer be true a moment later. One on wall, he had five videos running of him in the process of painting five different anonymous portraits with water on hot pavement As he moved on to repaint the next portrait, the just-finished one would start evaporating. On another wall, a mounted video showed the artist’s self-portrait in black coal powder on the surface of water in a white porcelain sink. As the water drained for three minutes, the artist’s image gradually became distorted as the water left the sink, until the image was finally obliterated when the sink gurgled as the last of the water left. On the adjacent wall, a row of small round mirrors that resembled smooth silicon wafers were set up for viewers to peer and breathe into. The appearance and disappearance of the warm breath signified changes in a person image. I realize that my description of this great exhibit is pretty shitty. I stumbled upon a blog from an artsier-than-thou blogger who wrote a much better analysis that makes mine seem quite derderder. Please, have at it.

I didn’t like László Moholy-Nagy’s El arte de la luz (The Art of Light) and Fernando Sánchez Castilo’s Episodios nacionales (National Episodes) as much as I did Muñoz’s. I totally understand that Moholy-Nagy was quite avant-garde for his time, which I do appreciate, and that Sánchez was experimental by featuring blind people –the exact subjects that would not be able to experience PhotoEspaña—in his video shorts. But there was something about the simplicity and focus of Muñoz’s idea that made his exhibition more attractive. And is it bad that I totally loved the stereotypically great commercial photographs at the Save the Children photo gallery that was also in the building? I’m just a sucker for stunning photos with no pretention to changing the art world.

Even though Madrid has about three and a quarter million inhabitants, it seems small when I keep running into IES kids at places of interest. I found Valentina, Nikita, and Alex also checking out Círculo de Bellas Artes for research on their project on Gran Villa. We wandered around Gran Villa to Chueca, hiking five million miles in circles, so that Alex could take pictures. During our walk, we stumbled upon a doggie park. Two-dozen dogs of all breeds played as their owners looked on. One female dog got special attention and unwanted action from multiple excited male dogs around her. It was a shame that no SATC fan was there to get my Elizabeth gangbang joke.

Con Azúcar Abundante

Location: Madrid, Spain

Monday June 21, 2010

Isabella, Dashell (a short-haired black rising junior at Yale), and I were at Casa de America to check Adriana Lestido’s photo exhibition: Amores Difícules (Tough Love) , when the security guard at the front desk stopped me to ask if I were Chinese. At this point, I was thinking: okay now, even employees at official places want to be pushy with knowing my origins… I get it. I look Asian. But this time it turned out to be different. This time, he rolled up his shirt to ask what the two large Chinese characters meant that were tattooed on his right bicep. I couldn’t be of much help, seeing that my Chinese reading level is of that of a housefly. I could only read the first word: 清, which means pure/clean. But I blanked on the second. It did have the water root, so I guessed it was related but in simplified form. When I told him that I didn’t know the second character, he was, like, “Joder! Nobody I’ve asked knew either. I got that tattoo from an old Chinese lady on the street, and she reassured me that it meant pure.” Too bad. Too bad. After a bit of research at home, i.e.: asking my sister, it turns out 清凈 means peaceful. So no scam here, ladies and gentlemen. Phew.

Lestido’s photo exhibit’s message was… how can I put it lightly… something along the lines of… I AM A FEMALE ARTIST. LET ME TAKE PICTURES ABOUT FERTILITY AND BABIES AND LOVE AND BEING A WOMAN. Not that it was bad or anything, there were some very touching pictures of mother-and-daughter pairs and teenage mothers with their children.

We also went to a group exhibition Encubrimentos (Concealments) at Instituto Cervantes that was just a couple blocks away from Plaza Cibeles. The exhibition of Latin American artists was awesome and the set up was great, with black tap running every which way along the walls and over the partitions. One especially creepy work was pictures of empty rooms with real and imaginary suicide notes that people left before taking their lives in those rooms. Raised above the area of the exhibition, gallery-visitors sat/lied on small grey beanbag chairs to look at the photography books strewed on the ground and to watch a great video of photos/video that was projected onto a large screen above timed to music and that showed a sequence of artistic images of different people/families. Everything flashed by quite quickly. Sex, giving head, pregnancy, food, cuddling, birth, babies, babies, babies, toddlers, playing, crawling, kid, pet, kid playing with pet, falling asleep. It was quite indie.

Our dinner was set with the cooking class we signed up for through IES. A group of fourteen IES girls (oh no, not stereotypical at all, we just know our place in the world) sat in a semi-circle in little school desk chairs in the unfurnished living room of an apartment that looked on a kitchen, making us feel like audience members of a cooking show. The chef made us a giant ceramic punch bowl of sangria first, pouring in the soft drink, red box wine, fruit, and azúcar abundante (geez, thanks for the specific instructions, printed-out recipe lying on my desk). God, no wonder restaurants make a killing off of tourists ordering sangria at €15/jarra or litre. As we snacked on Iberian ham and tomato sauce on toasted bread and drank our sangria, Isabella and Vivian (an Asian rising junior at Harvard) volunteered to help make the tarta de Santiago that had to be baked during our class while we cooked the other dishes. I went up to help cook the paella with Emily (a white rising junior at Trinity University). She worked the large paella pan hard as I added the chicken, seafood, rice, etc. In the beginning, the chef yelled at me, because I was going to dump the sliced pieces of chicken breast into the paella pan of hot oil, which probably wouldn’t have been a good story… The cook then made a large tortilla española (think: thick, perfectly round potato and onion omlette) to show us how my favorite Spanish dish (typical, I know, I know…) was prepared. She then brought out two small bowls, a large box of presliced and cooked onions and potatoes, two small frying pans, and two giras tortillas. So we each went up to make our own delicious mini tortillas with expert beating, mixing, frying, and flipping action. The paella was quite delicious, too. It was a shame that a lot of the girls don’t like seafood. I don’t understand how life would be enjoyable otherwise. To finish off, the chef took out the lightly baked tarta de Santiago and sprinkled powdered sugar on top with a stencil of a sword on top. What a meal!

After we took off our aprons and thanked the teacher and her sous-chef, we were in a mad rush to catch the last half of the Spanish World Cup game against Honduras. Originally, we were going to watch the game at the closet bar, figuring that we could watch it outside the stadium with the hyped crowd for Friday’s game against Chile when we would have the entire game to watch. But we changed our minds and decided to rush to the stadium, five metro stops away, which turned out to be a good thing since one can never predict where one will be during a future game. The game was projected from a large screen outside of the fúbol stadium, with a mad crowd of people in yellow and red standing in front and botelloning it up. Because we got there so late, we had to content ourselves with watching from the left side of the crowd, where there were god damn tree/pole/people in the way. I didn’t think I would ever fantasize about cutting down a tree ever in my life. Thankfully, the American guys standing to our right was nice enough to allow us to inch our way into the crowd more, the guy standing next to me even gestured for me to stand in front of him. No doubt, the crowd was bat-shit happy that Spain won. Riding the excitement was just as exciting as seeing the victory. Now, I really ought to learn the Spain song instead of mumbling along with the crowd. Don’t want to be like the Key Clubbers with the Canadian National Anthem, now do we?

Photo credit: Haley’s dad.

The Wheels on the Bus Goes Round and Round, But the Bus Goes Nowhere

Location: Valencia and Madrid, Spain

Sunday June 20, 2010

The breakfast workers were even pissier than the morning before last, because word had gotten around that students took food out of the buffet yesterday either for snacking later or for friends who were too lazy/running too late to come down to the restaurant to breakfast, which is so obnoxiously American, don’t you think? I’m sure the hotel staff was mighty glad to see us check out and take off to the beach.

Other than the one in Hong Kong, the Valencia beach on a weekend afternoon was the most crowded beach I’ve been to. Imagine a sea of people (npi) everywhere you look. It was like the halls of Sunrise during passing time but turn the middle-schoolers into European families in bathing suits under the hot, hot sun. Being the lazy bums that we were, we followed a baby boardwalk that lead to the Mediterranean, stemming from the main boardwalk, walked a couple of steps in the sand, and plopped right down with our towels (, snacks,) and shit. I don’t understand how people lie out in the sun for so long without getting bored out of their minds/feel like their pieces of bacon being sizzled in a pan for a good ole Saturday morning brunch after getting a great half-hour episode of Fillmore! that made you feel like you were a inadequate and totally uncool junior high kid. Granted, I did take naps on the Porto beach, only because you were liable to have sand cake up your eye if you were to open them. So after lying out for a bit, Nikita and I went on a walk along the ocean, wading deeper and deeper to get accustom to the cold temperature of the sea. I confess that I’m not one to ride shotgun without using my seatbelt , or go hunting with Cheney, or run and dive into chilly water. Once accustomed though, the sea was extremely refreshing to swim in. And no wonder the beach is so popular! It’s calm as Hindu cows and flat. We swam in to our necks, bobbing in the dark salty waves like apples in a barrel of water.

We were given almost three hours of free time, which turned out to be plenty, because I couldn’t stay on the beach for too long. I used Amy’s spray-on sunscreen after swimming, because I figured my initial sunscreen probably washed off a bit with the water. And her 30 SPF sunscreen, I swear, felt like bacon grease, because I felt like I was frying in the sun. Yummy, huh?

The whole group reunited at where the bus dropped us off for pickup back to Madrid, but the IES admins came to us to deliver the sad (okay, well funny) news that our bus was stuck in the sand of the parking lot. This was obviously not met with cheers as many people were way ready to head back. To kill the hour and half that they needed to get a tow truck, we got sandis (sundaes) at a way over-occupied Boorgur Keeng (Burger King). Nomnomnomz. On our way back to the beach, we saw all the IES administrators standing around not doing shit in the parking lot. Our giant-ass lime green bus was still going nowhere. But half an hour later, we were on the road again, apparently tow trucks are hard to come by on a Sunday. Don’t know why they found that surprising when that is universally true for all goods and services in Spain. (Think: the ghost town of Mataró during the weekend.)

After refreshing ourselves in Madrid back from the drive, Lauren and I visited our poor ole Beth (okay, Jade… I guess calling her Beth would be a bit too morbid) who had just fully came out of her strep throat battle that morning and was bored out of her fucking mind. We made the mistake of watching Totoro in Japanese with English subs for entertainment, which turned out to have pretty cool animation that illustrated a story with a nonexistent plot. I guess it is entertaining if you enjoy hearing the high pitch squeals of Japanese children who are so high energy that you’re left wondering whether their father laced their rice with crack in their bento box. I think I was most entertained by the main theme, because the tune is on my first CD EVAH(!): a mix of popular anime themes. Yes, I’m THAT Asian kid. And I did enjoy Totoro’s cat bus. If we rode that around in Valencia, we would’ve no problem leaping out of the sandy parking lot.

Morsels with the Morsas

Location: Valencia, Spain

Saturday June 19, 2010

The breakfast buffet at the hotel would have been super awesome if it was kept well-stocked, but I think the servers were very pissy that a shitload of Americans were taking over their restaurant. I found that the trick to get a good breakfast was to raid as much from the table as possible, because chances were, food wouldn’t be there if you wanted to go back for seconds. I loved the fresh orange juice and the every type of ham. The fresh fruit and pastries were a plus. I got super sad that the hotel was always out of eggs. Like, wtf? I hadn’t had scrambled eggs since coming to Europe… is it so hard to get some breakfast eggs around here? ><>

After b-fast I burned my eyes out without my sunglasses, which were left on the nightstand of my hotel room, as we visited the Hemisferic and the Acuario at La Ciudad de Las Artes y Ciencias. Why did everything have to be so fucking white and surrounded by large pools of shallow clear blue water that reflected even more of the brightness?!?!? The cultural/entertainment area was completed in 1998, and the stunning architecture and design of the place still looked amazing and futuristic. At La Ciudad, which has a form of “organic architecture,” we visited L’Hemisféric (the iMax theatre = eye), L’Umbracle (the caged landscape walk = ribs of a whale), and L’Oceanográfic (the oceanpark/aquarium = water lily). La Ciudad also has El Palau de les Artes Reina Sofía, where Carmen was performed live the night before, and El Museu de les Ciéncies Principe Felipe, which I sooo wanted to visit, but IES admins were poopers.

Watching an iMax movie about Egyptian mummies was quite an adventure in LHemisféric. Each person wore this funny “surround sound” headgear (okay, random creepy photo I stole off the internet…), from which the narration could be heard in five different languages: Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and German. You know how the screen looks funny when you take off the glasses at a 3-D movie? Well, it was funny to take off the headgear during the movie, because all you could hear was the dramatic background music. I listened to the movie in Spanish, because it flowed better. The rhythm of the British narrator with his deep voice was awkward at times.

The IES admins allowed us an hour and a half of free time to visit the aquarium. L’Oceanográfic is supposedly the biggest aquarium or oceanpark in all of Europe. And given only an hour and a half to see it all? Talk about putting us in a rush! The park turned out to be really big acreage-wise, but the tanks were average size, although, they had a lot of space for the smaller species, and long-ass glass tunnels for visitors to walk through. But I felt that there definitely was not enough space for the bigger animals, three or four giant walruses were crammed into one not-so-big tank, so that they would always be in the view of the visitors. Valentina and I were quite excited to take pictures of our college mascot. Yay, Morse! I thought that the belugas were way cute and beautiful. They always look so humoured, smiling and always ready for a good laugh, although in reality, they probably hate being trapped in a tank. My favorite fish was one in the shark and fish tank. It looked like a big, swimming black volcanic rock with two awkward little fins at the top and bottom of his body to project him forward. Its tail did not do anything though. It was the funniest-looking fish I had ever seen.

We ate IES lunch at a restaurant called La Galería, set inside the center of a shopping mall. I usually associate mall food as bad foodcourt food, but this restaurant served some kickass food. I ate everything that was thrown at me: the appetizers (smoked salmon on a small half of a lettuce heart, salted fish over a large slice of tomato, and croquets), the entrée (deliciously on point chicken paella, because too many people in the program didn’t have the balls to eat seafood), and the dessert (a pudding/flan-like tart). Before the paella was served, a waiter cradled a giant full paella pan in his arms, showing off the size of the pan and the amount of food made for each table.

That multi-course meal knocked me into an hour-long hard coma, from which I had to come out of with a brain transplant of a dying star. Sorry, Susan! So I was feeling quite good to do the optional guided visit to el Museo de Ceramicas. The cheesiest sounding museum ever, right? Who would want to go somewhere to stare at plates and silverware all day? It turned out, the museum is located on the upper-floor of a large house that used to belong to a family of Marquises. Walking through the furnished Baroque and French Rococo rooms was pretty amazing. Who wouldn’t want an oriental room or a ballroom or a garage for my decked out, gold-plated carriage?

Isabella and I didn’t want to waste daylight, so we took the bus to the beach in order to catch the sunset with the majority of the IES group that decided to spend their afternoon there after lunch. Oh how calm the Mediterranean was compared to the moody and windy Atlantic in Porto! It wasn’t quite hot enough to go swimming, since there was no strong sun to warm us up and to dry us off. Instead, we contented ourselves by wandering around, taking pictures, and burying Alex in the sand.

After some thorough almost-July-sand-sculptures-festival-in-Pioneer-Square-worthy sculpting, we transformed Alex into a powerful merman with a Bowflex bod and a large trident (seriously, just a trident). We even sculpted a boulder, rocks, and seaweed on the bottom, because his actual feet couldn’t follow the curvy line of his tail. The human part of the body was especially hard to do, because his chest kept cracking every time Alex breathed or laughed. So we had to be content with making a merman who looked as if he were in dire need of some Jergens.

Being surrounded the sea made us thirsty for agua de Valencia at a restaurant back by the hotel. And I don’t mean water coming from the tap (which tasted horrible, btdubs. I drank it anyways, but it was always a bit salty, and it made my Nalgene smell like the ocean… I guess it’s the complete beach town experience). I mean the drink of Valencia: orange juice, champagne, vodka, and gin on the rocks, i.e.: the most refreshing drink ever that will make you feel quite happy… It is also apparently the biggest accomplice of pickpockets in Valencia, because tourists don’t expected to get so drunk/vulnerable/easy-to-rob so quickly.

That agua de Valencia was followed by more American drinks back at the hotel, where I stumbled upon a bunch of IES kids drinking and talking about religion. Your typical Friday night conversation, huh? Instead of blowing up into a huge fight, the discussion between the practicing Catholic and the now-questioning Christian ended civilly when we headed to an Irish pub near the hotel, where we would order pints of beer. Andrew (a white sunburned brown-haired rising senior at Puget Sound), who was especially drunk already, kept ordering and ordering drinks. At one point, he ran out of cash and walked out of the pub to look for an ATM without saying a word. When the pub was closing, a staff member came by to our table to say that we had ten minutes before we had to leave. Andrew nodded and walked out without saying anything, going in the opposite direction of the hotel. It was all quite comical at first. We laughed at how he does this whenever he gets wasted. But then we realized that someone probably should’ve taken care of him, since he was wandering the streets in a strange city. It would’ve never flied if Andrew were a schwasted girl friend in a drunken daze. We hung out in the lobby to wait for him to show up but ended giving up when it was about 5 am. We’re such caring friends, aren’t we?

Photo credits: Selina Wan, Liza Mazyck, Valentina Savath, and Liza Mazyck

Sharing is Caring

Location: Valencia, Spain

Friday June 18, 2010

During the few brief minutes that I was awake on our five-hour bus ride to Valencia, I noticed the gorgeous landscape of the rolling green and yellow fields. I brought it up to the person I was sitting next to (Valentina? Lauren?) that I could imagine Don Quixote riding through these fields with Sancho Panchez at his side. And what do you know? As we were pulling into Parador Nacional de Alarcón (i.e.: a national luxury hotel set inside an old castle) for our group breakfast, the guide told us that Quixote traveled through this area in his adventures. And can we talk about how delicious the classy breakfast with appetizers, churros, and every type of ham you could think of was? Since half of the group didn’t go to bed the night before, did it count as our drunk food?

If we thought b-fast in a castle was good, we were as pleasantly surprised at our accommodations in Valencia. I think I’ve gotten used to staying in cheap-ass hostels from traveling like a poor college student, it was a nice change to stay in a beautiful and comfortable hotel again. Lauren and I got a 5^th-floor corner room, decorated with a modern theme, with two beds, a pullout futon, two flat screen televisions, a balcony, a shower, a bathtub, and two fluffy robes. We got the nice room, because it was originally going to be the three of us: Lauren, Jade, and me. But Jade felt quite under the weather with strep throat that week, and she couldn’t man-up to go on the weekend excursion. A girl named Kelsey came to sleep in Jade’s place instead. Kelsey had missed the group motor coaches in the morning, so she took a bus to Valencia by herself, arriving a tad bit later than us. I felt just a little bad for having claimed the nice beds before she got there. No straws were drawn. No numbers between 1 and 100 was thought of. No paper/rock/scissors were thrown.

After taking one of the most amazing showers of my life (despite the fact that the shower/shower-tub were poorly designed… who makes showers with glass doors that don’t go all the way to the floor? Who makes shower-tubs with only one door that covers half the shower?), we took a guided walk of Valencia’s historic district. On our way to the city’s main cathedral, we found the Tree of Life in a park. :D

At the cathedral, the IES administration decided that the students needed to burn off their gourmet breakfast by climbing five million flights up to the top of a very handicap-unfriendly bell tower, from which the entire skyline Valencia could be seen. At another church, our guide pointed out nonreligious details that decorated the exterior of the building, such as the bare ass of a guy who mooned all who entered.

Our tour ended in the evening, opening up free time for us to explore the city. We didn’t get very far, because we stumbled upon a live projection of Carmen (the actual opera) in the center of a plaza. There was a gated area of hundreds of seats set up and a loud sound system. It was a bring-the-arts-to-the-poor-masses sort of event, so entrance was free. I immediately jumped at the opportunity, hoping that Nikita, Alex, and Valentina would be up for it, especially because we had seen the flamenco ballet version earlier that week. The actual opera was performed in real life in the main opera house in Valencia, so, the physical performance was not too far away.

Sitting in the front row, just a bit to the left, we were amazed at the power and technique of the singers. The other kids got as into it as I did, which was cool, because I wanted to stay to watch the entire opera, which would end up taking three hours and a half (they had three insanely long intermissions). The opera was also great Spanish practice, because we read the Spanish subtitles as the characters sang in French… La Amour is so much more fitting than El Amor… During our viewing of the opera, we also learned how kind Spaniards in Valencia were. When the weather became super icky, we huddled there in our seats in the cold, being rained on, as most of the audience gave up and left for shelter. The family that was sitting to our left (complete with baby in baby carriage) lent us one of their two umbrellas. Four people sharing one umbrella was a difficult task. Valentina held the umbrella, I sat on the right of Valentina, and Nikita and Alex put their heads in our laps. I didn’t realize how picturesque our formation was until tourists started taking photos of us.

(Before the rain)

Each actor fitted his character quite well. Don José, whose not so attractive physical qualities set up his insecurities about Carmen’s unfaithfulness, superbly impressed me as a singer and as an actor. Carmen, who looked quite harsh and sharp in this show, was much more the seductive vixen than the innocent girl-next-door. I absolutely adored Micaela’s soprano or mezzo-soprano voice and the vision of her in all blue. I’m just a sucker for sad lonely girls singing songs of rejection, think: “I’m Not That Girl,” “I’m Not That Girl (reprise),” or “On My Own.”

Instead of spending money on a cab, we decided to do the 15-minute walk in the pouring rain, because we were already soaked from sitting out in the rain. No doubt, we looked pretty classy to the front desk receptionist after our fun trek through that typical Portland weather.

Have a Happy Happy Ununbirthday

Location: Madrid, Spain

Thursday June 17, 2010

I love doing free things like checking out the photo galleries of PhotoEspaña. It reminds me of what @sushimonkey and I would be doing back in Portland: finding random things to go to and new sights to see. And when is a better time to do it then on the day when I only have one class in the morning? Lauren and I visited the BBVA gallery, an exhibition room on the first floor of skyscraper, to see Harold Edgerton’s Anatomía del Movimento (Anatomy of Movement) exhibit.

An American photographer, who experimented with different types of speed photography during the twentieth century, Edgerton (1903-1990) had some pretty sweet photos on display. He created crazy photos by breaking down and looking at everyday things in totally different ways with his high-speed photography. In his laboratory (not his studio, mind you, his la-BOHR-a-tor-ee), he shot CSI-esque pictures of speeding bullets shredding into objects in the early/mid-1900s. There were funny impact photos of the exact moment when a football (Americano) player makes contact with the ball with his foot during a kick. His cameras were able to capture pictures to the hundredth of a second to create futurist photos in which I could trace the path of a ping pong ball during a volley or the shape of a diver as he twists and slips into the water. I also greatly enjoyed the documentary video of Edgerton at work in his laboratory that explained many of his experiments. It was narrated by a guy with that fifties announcer voice. I have to say, that voice is my favorite! The world would be such a better place if more people spoke like that! I felt like a little kid at OMSI for the first time as I watched the film.

We then went to a group exhibition, entitled Profecías (Prophecies), a handful of metro stops away at Museo de la Ciudad. The exhibition featured landscapes and stills from the Photography Collection of Fondo Fotográfico Universidad de Navarra. Various photographers reimaged real-life images by altering the images with CGI. One made pictures of the Alhambra into a collage, slicing together indoor and outdoor scenes. Another photographer created imaginary images on the computer that were inspired by real photos of landscapes.

My family nicely waited for me to have lunch, even though I told them they could eat ahead of me, because I was going to get back thirty minutes after our usual lunchtime. They insisted on waiting, because when I lifted up my napkin at the lunch table, two small presents (a fan and a necklace) were sitting there. It was the sweetest thing ever, because I had briefly mentioned in passing that my birthday was on the seventeenth when I arrived in Madrid at the end of May. It was also literally the sweetest lunch we’ve had, because Carmen brought out chocolate truffles with a lit candle for dessert, and we always only have fruit for dessert on regular days. Miguel and I attacked the candied orange slices dipped in dark chocolate. Nomnomnomz!

Feeling the gallery urge again, I visited a group exhibition, Entretiempos: Instantes, Intervalos, Duraciones (Between Times: Instants, Intervals, Duration) at Teatro Fernán Gomez and Isabel Muñoz’s El Amor y el Éxtasis (Love and Ecstasy) at Comunidad de Madrid after Lauren and I finished a liquor-run in preparation for that night (€5 rum! €1 box sangria!). The Entretiempos exhibit was very art art art: look at me, I’m being artsy by taking strange photos. I mean, there was a photo of a young woman in a short floral dress lying on her back with her legs sticking straight up in the air and blue and white tea cups balanced on the bottom of her wedges as her feet were flexed.

I absolutely loved Muñoz’s exhibition. Set in an old hollow mill-like building (sans the windmill, her huge vibrantly coloured photographs were hung on the round walls, telling a chronological story to the viewer as he climbs the dark metal staircase in the center of the building. Muñoz is the first nonbeliever to take photos of Sufism and Sufists during their ceremonies. The first floor depicted men thrashing their long dark hair in religious fervor as they headbang their way into a trance. The second floor showed grisly images of the believers’ acts of self or group-assisted mutilation, of which subjects were not supposed to feel because of their separation from their visible body and their close proximity to Allah. Swords cut into chests. Metal pokers went through cheeks and jaws. Knives stabbed into heads. There was a beautifully composed photo of hands gently holding up the leg of a companion whose foot was being delicately stabbed with a shiny dagger. Such grace. On the same floor, videos of the ceremonies played on screens that were visible through slits in the walls, illustrating Muñoz’s and our feeling as outsiders as we observe these ceremonies that we can’t understand. On the third floor, Muñoz potrayed images of whirling dervishes in all-white or all-red dress-like wear, increasing in speed until they reached self-transcendence. A projection of a spinning figure in bird’s-eye view turned without stop on the round sloped-in ceiling. A small flight of stairs climbed over that ceiling into a large, white vaulted space at the top of the mill. Dark-blue cushions and pillows lined the circumference of this top floor so that viewers could lie down to watch the collaged video of dervishes twirling to religious chanting. It was so trippy… and would’ve been even trippier if acid was involved in the equation.

That night, we pregamed at Melissa Moon’s place with total bitch drinks… the rum and juice probably tasted so delicious, because there really wasn’t the 30% of alcohol in the rum as the bottled had promised. Haha… Regardless, after an hour, we were happy enough to head over to Kapital, where we would meet basically 99.9% of the IES program. Some people had bunches of cards from their club promoter friends, so everyone got into the 7-floor club for free. It wasn’t mad awkward at 12:30, because most people were hanging out on the top floor that had automated sliding ceilings that opened up to the night sky. People lounged around, drinking, and looking silly in the free shit Dewar’s was giving out to promote their new White Label whiskey. In their clubbing clothes, people wore red fedoras and red sunglasses and took free t-shirts. John G. corsaged me with a giant red flower (on a hair tie) for my birthday, and Patrick was kind enough to hang onto my free t-shirt, which I highly doubted that he was going to be able to do the entire night, but he pulled through!

Speaking of free things, we got free –okay well, stolen—whiskey from the bar thanks to Alex’s nimble Romanian fingers. Many of the IES kids already had glasses from drinks at the bar, so we all secretly passed around the whisky and killed that handle quite quickly. Patrick’s cousin, who’s in Madrid for an internship, was not so lucky with his “borrowed” bottle from the bar. A server discovered it and took it away, saying that if a bouncer saw, Patrick’s cousin would be thrown out onto the street. It was probably for the better, because the IES kids were doing pretty well for itself at that point. With our liquid courage, we took over the second-floor karaoke bar to “sing” songs like “Say My Name,” “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” and “Lady Marmalade.” I’m sure the Spaniards appreciated all the loud drunk Americans.

Actually they did enjoy seeing drunken Americans. Both Alex and Nikita had a bit too much after killing that whiskey straight in too little amount of time. While Nikita was stuck in the bathroom for the rest of the night, Alex passed out with his head back in a white chair on the second-floor near the stairs (read: high traffic area since everyone has to go from one floor to another). He became quite the tourist attraction with his comical mouth gaping open and his red Dewar’s sunglasses. I even did the honors of being photographer for groups who wanted group photos with him. He was so The Hangover credit-worthy. Haha!

Those who were conscious danced on the first-floor’s large dance floor that was complete with awkward go-go dancers (like Barcelona’s Catwalk) who were dancing too slowly to the pumping European techno/house music that was blaring through the sound system. I didn’t enjoy the Modern Love-type music as much as I did being power-hosed down by the stage-smoke that was sporadically and violently vomited from the ceiling. Admittedly, I enjoyed dancing the American music more on the third-floor, where a smaller dance floor, surrounded by lounge areas, played American songs like “Rude Boy.” The survivors who were left stayed here and danced until the club closed at 5:30 am.

Lauren and I decided to wait for the metro to open since the first train starts bright and early at 6:00. As we were sitting by the metro station, a drunken twenty-something Spaniard came over to talk to us. She wanted to practice her English, because we would talk to her in Spanish or English and she would try to reply in English. We found that she was a nursing student at Complutense near the IES Centre. She had a big drunk craving for bocadillo de calamares from Brillantes, so she kept telling us that we should all go together to go get some, telling us to blow off the Valencia meet-up we had to rush to once the metro opened. Her group of girl friends that was just a few paces away kept going about their business and didn’t respond much when she kept yelling at them to get bocadillo de calamares. Perhaps this was just something she did every night? She came up with crazy plans to get Brillantes to open to serve her a bocadillo. One such plan was for us to cut down a branch from the large tree under which we sat and use the branch as a battling ram to force ourselves into the closed restaurant and to threaten the owners to cook us calamares. I would’ve actually been up for it if we could get the sub sandwiches within ten minutes and if I wasn’t so god damn thirsty. Bocadillo de calamares just sounded like the driest food at the moment. Lauren told her she wasn’t hungry at all and didn’t have enough money. The girl proceeded to yell at her in a friendly way, asking her why in the world would she have to pay if she was inviting us. But in the end, she let us go down into the metro without forgetting to give us a round of salutatory high-fives (another thing she kept doing during our conversation).

We finally arrived at Principé Pío at 6:30, after listening to still-drunk Spaniards sing rounds of “Row, row, row your boat” on the metro platform. Lauren and I were cutting it pretty close since our meet-up time to head over to Valencia was at 7:15. I power-walked in my printed dress and heels with Lauren at full stride (she has much longer legs) down Avenida Valladolid, making it back to my house in record time. It’s amazing what über-exaggerated arm-pumping will do to your overall speed. I threw on clothes that I had set out in preparation for the quick change and grabbed my already packed backpack. Within a few minutes, I was receiving farewell kisses from Carmen at the door (she’s a superlight sleeper, so she sweetly woke up to see me off). I even ran to catch the 46 to the IES Centre, arriving at 7:05, with ten minutes to spare.

Carmen: the Flamenco-Dancing Samantha Jones

Location: Madrid, Spain

Wednesday June 16, 2010

So I bet Lauren enjoyed me dragging her out to (almost) the end of the red/#2 line on the metro to go to Las Ventas for the Museo de Taurino at the bullfighting stadium. I just hate sitting around dully as I wait for lunch to be prepared. The museum was quite small, which was probably why the guy in the ticketing booth tried to convince us to take a tour of the actual stadium first before visiting the free museum (initial pull of me actually getting my ass over there). But we didn’t want to give him that €10 (each) to have a little jaunt around the vacant ring. Instead, we headed straight for the museum that was situated right next to the stable that had sad, small partitioned stalls for the horses to spend their day facing the wall without even the option to turn around or horse-talk to one another.

The museum that smelled of shit (at least near the entrance) had the friendliest staff ever. I loved how they were so unhappy to see us. I loved how they made Lauren put her little colourful handmade knapsack from Mexico down because she was liable for walking out with one of the gigantic taxidermic bullheads hanging up on the walls in her little bag. I loved how they ask people to leave their bags behind without offering any lockers or a desk to put the bags behind. I loved how they decided that my shoulder bag was too big after I had walked around for thirty minutes with it. Sarcasm aside, I did like the shiny matador clothing and the museum’s feature on the first kickass female matadora whose name is slipping my mind at the moment.

Our Prado class that afternoon was moved an hour earlier because of the World Cup game against Switzerland. But I guess that just built up unnecessary anticipation for the expected victory that didn’t end up happening. Man, you should have heard everyone talking about Spain’s first game the days leading up to the complete fail. I believe words like “cream,” “kill,” and “slaughter,” were used with Spain as the actor. But I guess the hunter became the hunted. The Spaniards were pretty longfaced because of the sad 1-0 score at the bar/restaurant we ran into after our Prado class. The waiter, who kept pacing here and there with only half a mind to take orders, was extremely frustrated at Spain’s constant, desperate, and poorly set-up goal attempts.

After going home to change into some fancier clothes, I met up with a group of nineteen students at Tirso de Molina for Carmen, the flamenco ballet interpretation of the popular French opera. Our fifth row seats were pretty rocking for having paid nosebleed seat price, but I still couldn’t see the tapping action of the dancer’s toes. Who would’ve thunk that the fifth row wasn’t sufficiently slanted up enough for us to see the dancers’ feet entirely. Hmm… The first ten minutes were kind of awkward, because for some reason the company was off on parts. I was worried that the other students would get angry at Sophie and me for convincing people to go to some nonlegit dance company’s performance. You know how you just feel awkward watching bad dancers perform? I’m not saying that I’m that good or anything, but I never want to feel awkward when I watch people dance… But soon the flamenco dancers got really into it and it became amazing.

I love the strong masculine dancing of the male dancers (der). There’s such power behind it. And unlike types of dances that I know, the guys did most of the turns. The show turned around for me in a good way when the soldiers danced onto the stage while snapping the beat. Such power! Because it was a dance show, the dancers had no dialogue nor singing, but there was a live flautist, guitarist, drummer, tambourinist/clapper/singer. The numerous ten-minute solos were great. It blew my mind how fast the soloists tapped/danced/made rhythms with their feet. And there were never enough time for us to applaud. I had urges to yell “GET IIIIIT!!!” during amazing solos and exciting, large group pieces but felt that it probably wouldn’t be appropriate. I also liked the feisty girl dance when they decided to come out with castanets. I’m so glad that I attended the flamenco class a couple of Mondays ago, because I loved being aware of what the dancers were doing how they were doing it.

Carmen, the character/actress and not my señora, had the teeniest waist and was quite angular. She loved her angry thrashy dancing, throwing her head this way and that in anguish. Another thing she loved were her legs. Her thin, long, glistening legs were always showing, because she always had her red dress or skirt hiked up. Forget cleavage when you have toned dancer legs that go on for kilometers (yes, we’re on the metro system now, dahling). She threw her piernas around like Samantha does with her bare chest. And man did that get her all the boys. Sexy seductress, manipulative slut, or independent woman, or whatever you think of Carmen, I think the vocal man sitting behind Lauren was right during Carmen and Don José’s passionate kiss when he said, “Ooooh, Carmen!!!”

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes…

Location: Madrid, Spain

Tuesday June 15, 2010

Who wouldn’t like a salad dressed in mayonnaise? My family and I had ensalada rusa for lunch. Think of it as an elaborate potato salad, comprised of potatoes (der), shrimp, crabmeat, carrots, peas, raisins, tuna, green beans, and egg and drenched in a thick, pink mayonnaise-based sauce. It was quite delish actually, but definitely not something the Clackers could eat to maintain their size double-zeros in the Conde Naste food court.

I think my late nights are finally catching up to me, because I kept falling asleep the whole time in my Prado class, which is pretty hard to do, seeing that we stand around the whole time. I don’t know why we don’t bring around little stools, like how classes/sections at the Yale Art Gallery do. That just makes so much more sense to me and to my lower back. It would have been an interesting class too, if I were to be conscious. We talked about the old Spanish court during Velázquez’s time, i.e.: beginning of the seventeenth century, and its habit of having little people around as entertainers, servants, and companions. The mention of this by the showcase of four portraits of these individuals (so P.C., I know! ><”) by Velázquez totally reminded me of the court dwarves carrying the queen’s train in that one medieval trivia game with the catchy tinselly minstrel background music, in which you had to navigate your way through a castle by answering a multiple-choice question in each room, that came with a CD-ROM encyclopedia. Did I just make a reference that perhaps only one person in the world would get? Yes, I believe I did.

As if we couldn’t get enough of art, Isabella and I wanted to check out a photo gallery exhibit before the Brazil vs. North Korea (oh, excuse me, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) World Cup game. PhotoEspaña, a city-wide and almost summer-long festival celebrating works of photographers from past to present, is going on right now in Madrid. There are events scattered on various days, and art galleries throughout the city are open free to the public, displaying specific photographer’s works or themed group exhibitions.

Isabella and I joined other IES kids at gallery Alcalá 31 to check out Juergen Teller’s “Calves and Thighs” exhibit. It was all very Teller: many photos with unexpected and unusually awkward composition, many both A-list and nameless models real and makeup-less, many shocking or unexpected nudes (is that an erect penis sticking out of pot of flowers? Why, yes it is. Is that middle-aged gingha really lying spread eagle on that couch? Why, yes she is.). The latter third rubbed some of the kids who joined us the wrong way. I don’t quite know what they were expecting when the exhibition’s named “Calves and Thighs.” I mean, the title already sounds like something from a bad (or good, matter of opinion) and twisted Harry Potter fanfic. One wall in the exhibit was lined with a series of fresh-faced models in their everyday street clothes, called “Go Sees.” Teller must have caught them right about to go into their auditions or right as they were exiting them. It’s quite different seeing those awkwardly, gangly girls out of their makeup and out of their element. Isabella and I also greatly enjoyed the archive of Marc Jacobs ads in an extremely long glass display case. Can you imagine shooting campaigns for a designer for a long run of eleven years? No wonder Jacobs gives Teller such freedom.

We didn’t go to a bar for the Brazil vs. North Korea game, because we figured we would go to a bar for the Spanish games, so a group of IES kids congregated at the San Augustín’s (dormitory building’s) lounge area with Complutense’s students. Lauren put it nicely by saying, “Where have all these good-looking Spanish boys been this whole time?” Apparently they all come out into the hangout area after sundown. Football-watching appeared to be a male-dominated thing in Spanish society, because we were the only girls there (there were also IES boys there, too). World Cup fans place a strong emphasis on rankings, and everyone was sure to that Brazil was going to cream North Korea. Granted, it did. But North Korea was playing a mean defense, i.e.: fighting for its life (in more ways than one, probably). And NK did get one goal in. So, good for them. I hope it made #9 feel just a bit better.

Bad Day! Bad Day! Bad Day! Bad Day!

Location: Madrid, Spain

Monday June 14, 2010

If you don’t like bitching, you should probably skip this blog entry and move on to the next one. Pretend it’s the thirteenth floor of Wayside School. Things that happened to me that day (Yes, that’s right I’m taking the passive, accidental-se style, because I take no fault for these little shitty things that happened to me on the day that I would most likely to be ran over by a car… or a train):

1) As I was waiting for the morning bus to go to the IES Centre, I found that my abono ticket was missing from my large, orange, not-awkward-at-all, plastic abono identification protection thingy. Where in the world was my 30€ pass?

2) I texted Carmen to not wash my clothes yet, because it could have been in the pockets of my jeans. She had already thrown it in the wash, so she took all the wet things out to look through the pockets after not being able to find the abono that I thought was left on top of my desk, even though I insisted her to not worry about it.

3) I was late for class, because I had to suck it up and do the 25-minute walk.

4) Midterm in art history. Okay, fine. It was easy as pie (dessert… not the body part). But it got pretty boring and tedious…

5) It was actually sunny and warm, and I had left my swimming-gear at home.

6) I came home to find that Carmen had searched throughout the house in search of the abono. I felt so bad that I had made her worry about it.

7) I searched my room and all my stuff 3 times.

8) As I was opening my window because of the bipolar weather, I squashed my pinkie.

Good: I found my abono among my old metro tickets (same size and everything, that sly little bugger…) that had slipped into a brochure. Carmen must have put it into the pile of papers I have on my desk, as she was straightening up my room after I left…

9) The front door wouldn’t close as I was running out to meet Lauren to go to royal palace’s gardens, because another surprise deadlock was projecting out.

10) When I finally figured out the door and got all the way down to the lobby, I couldn’t remember whether or not I had set the alarm, so I had to go all the way back up, pulling a schadenfreude moment when I didn’t let some yelling lady into the closing elevator. The alarm was on.

11) I went tried going up an escalator that was going the wrong way during our metro line change… don’t know what possessed me. It turned out, I streak loudly when I’m surprised when the ground isn’t moving an unexpected way.

12) The garden was muddy and puddly swamp due to the monsoon earlier that day. My thin-soled sandals loved the all the mud.

At least the day finished well, because I got to watch Howl’s Moving Castle for the first time with Lauren and Jade. I really do love Miyazaki’s films. Something about them just touches the heart. And he knows how to make things extremely cute without making you want to barf in your mouth. We decided that we needed sweet turnip-headed scarecrows and boyfriends who can conjure up and give us portals to private, gay, florally places, and who can turn into giant-ass birds to protect us from bomb-shooting zeppelins.

Barefoot, Because Leather Isn’t Environmental

Location: Madrid, Spain

Sunday June 13, 2010

Lauren and I accidentally ran into Mark (a rising junior Yalie) on the metro as we were heading to El Rastro. You know, the über-big Sunday market that I visited earlier in June that puts the Portland Saturday Market to shame. And I think I will have to go another time before the program ends, because I did buy things… things that I really liked when I happened upon them… things I wouldn’t be able to part with as gifts to my friends… I always end up with this dilemma! I bet Mark had fun following us two girls around to all the jewelry and dress stalls. There was this scary stall with 3€ sundresses piled chaotically on a big table. Mad middle-aged ladies were diving arm-deep into the pile and throwing rejects this way and that. It was quite an intimidating sight. I managed to get a deep-V, cap-sleeved floral cotton sundress that hits right above the knee that doesn’t have lining underneath, so I’ll have to wear nylons (or “panty” as they call it here) or shorts with it or look like a slut. It’d also make a good swimming suit cover-up. I think the act of finding it was more fun than actually having the dress. It was a genuine war out there. Plus I had to put it on over my outfit and trust Lauren and Mark’s fashion opinion. Jaja.

After lunch, Lauren and I had ourselves a fun little photoshoot for the midterm of my art history class. The professor asked us to bring in a portrait of ourselves, the image we wish to present to the world, like the oh-so-riveting portraits of the royals we’ve been studying in the Prado. (The Prado holds the collection the Spanish monarchy had accumulated through the years, many of which are, unsurprisingly, portraits of the royal family members. Carly Simon wouldn’t like that, would she?) I decided to go with the nature/environmentalism route instead of trying to fit a lot of little things in the portrait, so we took a few photos in the park. With my boots off, I had to walk around barefoot in the park, I’m certain I got looks of disapproval from some old ladies sitting on a bench nearby. Barefoot is traditionally a big no-no here. Spanish children don’t usually get the callused summer feet of American children who spend their hot summer days and nights running around, flying kites, climbing trees, eating at cookouts barefoot. I’m just glad my family’s pretty modern and doesn’t care that I walk slipper-less around the house like the way Celia does.

Lauren trying to look down my shirt:

Actual shot:

Around midnight, I went across the street from my apartment to meet up with Lauren and Jade at the San Antonio Festival. It was the saint’s day and the last day of the 4-day party. There had been waves of people going in and out of the festival and church for fun and services all day. There were so many grown women in the Spanish traditional garb. And the old people in traditional-wear partner dancing together was the cutest thing ever. A guy band that wasn’t actually that bad played on the concert stage, while a teenage crowd bopped to the music. It was too bad their last song got cut off by the midnight fireworks. People moved en masse into the park, searching for the clearing from where we could have a good view of the fireworks that went off directly right above us, IMAX-style. I was impressed at how big the fireworks were and how long they lasted (15 minutes) for being a neighborhood party. My fav: the sparkly deep-golden weeping willow kind. ><”

Photo credit: Lauren Drawdy