For or Against the Death Penalty

Location: London, United Kingdom

Tuesday July 6, 2010

Tell me one thing. What’s the purpose of the changing of the guard and why does it still take place? Because it draws the tourist and the moolah of course! It takes place everyday, yet it is still mad crowded. Perhaps we didn’t stay long enough in the hot sun, but I don’t understand what all the hullabaloo was about. Each thing took forever to happen and no one could see what was going on inside the Buckingham gates unless you were pressed against the bars. After some fancy horses trotted by in the second round of lobsterbacks appearance, Alison and I gave up to catch communion at St. Paul’s Cathedral. On our way through St. James’s Park, we came upon a group of dressy people in what looked like a tour group. There were people in military camo gear, men in suits, and women in garden dresses and summer dress suits with large, matching summer hats. It was quite English!

We politely asked if we were too late for communion when we got to the front desk/ticket booth of St. Paul. They said of course not! And directed us to go through the main dome to join the other worshipers. Now we thought, the Eucharist is not meant for non-Catholics, it would probably have been more wrong to keep pretending to be Catholic by actually joining them. So we took advantage of our free entrance to wander around and admire the stunning architecture and gold leaves inlaid all around the interior instead. The dome’s height and magnificence was absolutely amazing. I could have sat underneath and admired it for an hour. We tried being further sleazeballs by hiking up to the dome for the view and to test the Whispering Gallery. But unfortunately, the lady who asked for tickets at the staircase up to the dome guarded the entrance like a hawk.

Instead, we took a light picnic in St. Paul’s garden. A lot of people were also enjoying the beautiful weather, especially office workers on their lunch breaks. St. Paul’s steps were actually crowded with people in suits eating sandwiches and soups, if Blair Waldorf were there, she would have totally been all over establishing some kind of hierarchy on those steps. Alison commented that she had never seen so many men in suits in her life concentrated in one area. She was quite right, many of the sights we’ve visited have been in or near the Bank and commerce area, where the sidewalk is constantly flooded with business attire. Hey, I don’t mind looking at an endless flood of handsome British men in suits and ties though…

I got my dose of touristy English history at the Tower of London. Listening to the Beefeater or formally the Yeoman Warder (prison guard) dramatically retell bloody tales to the tourist group, I thought back on the historical fiction books I read as a kid, my first English one being Elizabeth I: The Red Rose of the House of Tudor, England, 1544, the red golden-edged paged diary complete with dark red bookmark ribbon that was part of the Royal Diaries series. Do you remember those old books? The Beefeater was hilarious (telling us Americans, who constituted almost half of the group, that all this interesting history could have been ours if we had just paid our taxes) and had a flair for the dramatic, as he described in gory detail how nobles and royals alike were murdered secretly behind these very walls or publically executed up on Tower Hill, drawing loud gasps from those who were easily excitable, e.g.: Alison who cannot take grisly or scary stories.

One of the prison houses was open to the public; it had actually still been active as a prison for some gangsters who were accused of treason after the Second World War. Can you imagine such a historic site still being used for its purpose in such recent times? Yeoman Warders guarded the royal family’s political opponents (plus their families) in houses rather than Shawshank-like prison cells. Bored and claustrophobic prisoners carved their names and lines of poetry or lasting words into the stucco walls of their rooms. Now, the words are covered in glass for visitors to see. The Tower of London, on the other hand, was less exciting to see, since it was so ridiculously crowded with tourists, but it was cool to imagine how famous prisoners mysteriously died there through the years.

Alison was more interested in seeing the crown jewels, kept in the Jewel House of the Tower of London after Thomas Blood’s entertaining attempt at heisting the precious jewels valued at £100,000 then. The stream of tourists was directed into rooms where we walked by screens showing the coronation ceremonies and close ups to the crowns and the different famous jewels. It was quite a bizarre set up, since we didn’t actually see anything real for the first fifteen minutes. Then we came upon the fabulous jewels locked up tight in a display case with two conveyor belts on either side to move people along. I couldn’t believe the extravagance and the sizes of the glistening rocks inlaid in the crowns, tiaras, swords, and scepters; they had to have been costume! These crowns were worth so much but only used during coronation or other state ceremonies. I mean, the Scepter with the Cross contains the 530 carat Great Star of Africa (second largest in the world). Nbd.

After an afternoon stroll through scenic Hyde Park with its charming English gardens full of roses and bushes like the ones back home (the Princess Diana Memorial was both simple and inspirational; I can’t believe it’s been almost fourteen years), we ventured back to the London Bridge area to find an authentic English meal. We were determined to try English food despite of its obnoxious reputation. I ordered myself fish n’ chips and Alison ordered some sausages at a hip pub with a red underground eatery area. And contrary to our expectations, our meal was quite good! The fish was cooked just right, a little blander than I expected, I’ll have to admit, but good thing I like blander food. It wasn’t greasy, as people had warned me about. And my steak fries weren’t soggy (a common complaint). The only thing I found slightly disagreeable was the minty mushy peas, as much as I want my vegetables to leave me toothpaste-fresh aftertaste…

Oh! Well, This is No Mundane Detail, Naomi!

Location: London, United Kingdom

Monday July 5, 2010

Determined to finally see the Museum of London, I got there in the morning, fighting with school children to learn about London’s history. When I just got done learning about how the Thames used to be 300 m wide instead of 100 m as it is now and how the badass warrior queen Boudica destroyed the city in revolt against the Roman’s suffocating rule over her Celtic people during the first century Common Era (I wonder if she had hot lesbo love with her own cute Gabrielle, too), my Spanish mobile starting ringing. Now that’s strange. Who would be calling me in London? When I picked up, Alison’s, my travel-buddy’s for the month of July and my RB Co-Prez (i.e.: partner in crime) for fall semester, what-what???, voice on the other end of the fuzzy line said, “Hey! Where are you?” I couldn’t believe it. Aw, shit. I totally got my dates mixed up. I thought we were going to Cambridge on Tuesday not Monday (when it was actually, of course, Monday). So there I was, standing in the middle of the Museum of London, Alison was waiting at the Victoria Coach Station as I had instructed her to do so, and our coach to Cambridge had left half an hour ago. Damn it! I should have suspected something was up when I received an e-mail from Alison mad early that morning saying she was leaving Paris. I didn’t even think twice about how she would be traveling for an insanely long time if she were to arrive on Monday morning instead of Tuesday morning. I rushed out to Victoria Station to reevaluate our situation. I had half the feeling to just rush to Cambridge then and there. But of course, I didn’t have my boarding tickets for the bus on me, and we probably couldn’t have used the nonrefundable tickets for new on-the-spot tickets anyways. Stepping back, we realized that if we were to go then (if I had not messed up on some mundane detail, like the date) or go immediately after wouldn’t have worked at all, since we never got the confirmation from Yena (the girl whom we were going to visit) that she would be there to pick us up from the coach station. We wouldn’t have anywhere to go in Cambridge once we got there. So we headed back to Canada Water to drop off Alison’s shit.

With half our day gone, we went to South Bank to do some sightseeing before meeting up with Luan for dindin after he got off of work from Barclay’s. After passing Southwark Cathedral (Europe is just full of cathedrals, ein’t it?) and cool river-side restaurants lining the cobblestone walk, we came upon Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, modernized, of course, with an attached building for the Globe Café and its accompanying gift shop. Why does everything have to be deromanticized like so? We didn’t pay to take the tour of the interior of the theatre, but settled to see the impressively old-looking whitewashed building from the outside. Too bad the actual building itself is a modern reconstruction of the original Elizabethan theatre. It didn’t have the charm of, “Shakespeare stood here as he directed his plays” or “Queen Elizabeth liked sitting here when she visited the theatre.”

Farther along the river the Thames (pronounced “Temz,” as I found out two days later, embarrassing!), lied the starkly big Tate Modern housed in the former Bankside Power Station, giving the museum a very industrial, Futurist look. The museum chose to keep the large turbine hall empty. It’s just a bigbiGBIG empty space. A modern art museum WOULD take the liberty to do that. I got suckered into buying a fabu headset for the two hours I had there while Alison chose to wander around South Bank some more (because she can’t do art museums, especially modern ones, shame). It was the most high-tech audio-guide this country-bumpkin has ever used, complete with a touch screen that allowed you to choose more elaborations on certain pieces, showed comparisons with works from other notable artists, and even pinpointed and circled parts of the painting on which the curator was discussing. The Tate Modern was exactly what I picture a modern art museum to look like, with rooms of varying sizes giving enormous space to random ambiguous pieces of art, hanging from the ceiling, mounted on the walls, propped against a corner, lying in the centre with some kind of purpose.

I loved Swiss artists Peter Fischii and David Weiss’s satire on found art objects in their installation Untited (Tate). Designed to give the illusion of reality, the two sculptors painstakingly handmade everyday objects out of polyurethane and other plastics to form things that imitated everyday objects but without those objects’ function. The joke is that these things that they so carefully imitated are actually mass-produced in reality, but they chose to not use found objects in their art like Duchamp, but rather, make their own imitation of reality. The room holding the display is sometimes overlooked by visitors because Fischii and Weiss created objects and set them about as if it the installation were a construction site. So people would mistake the room as an art exhibit in the process of being constructed. But upon closer inspection, I saw that the tires’ treads were chiseled in, the labels on the containers and bottles were all painted on rather than printed, the orange peels did not have that natural glisten nor probably the lingering scent of dried orange if I had been allowed to get close enough to smell them.

Outside the busy commuter-filled entrance of the London Bridge Tube station, we surprised Luan with Alison’s early presence (well, actually right on time, but early in terms of when I told him she would arrive). Alison was pretty good at taking everything in quickly and politely accepted without a word that Luan was limping along/dragging his foot like an Asian Igor, until we explained to her that Luan had an herniated disks from trying to jump out of a car to steal fruit from a tree in Hong Kong (yes, no lie) and that the pain medication that he took for it made his foot (I guessed that he had an pinched nerve in his back that was supposed to read signals from his foot, making it feel like his foot was in intense pain) go completely numb and not easy to walk on. I declared I wanted curry or any other kind of Indian food, because if the Brits was going to keep India subjugated under British imperialization for more than 200 years, at least a little bit of culinary good should have come from it. We had a nomnomnomz meal full of delicious spices, rich sauces, slow-cooked tender meats, and soft nan at what seemed to be an authentic Indian place (good sign: only Indian people were eating there and the waiters barely spoke enough English to describe what it was that we were all amateur-ly ordering).

After our meal, we took a walk westward on South Bank as the sun set when we came upon people crowded around and on the Millennium Bridge, London’s pedestrian-only suspension steel bridge with a funny and wobbly history that connects the Tate Modern with St. Paul’s Cathedral. Special lights and cameras were set up and the traffic was halted on the bridge. A camera crew was filming some teen girls walk down the bridge as if they were on a runway, and some people sat under the bridge to watch the footage on small black and white television screens. Right as we got there, the audience clapped and the runway music stopped. We thought we had just missed all the action, since the guy-in-charge released the backed up pedestrian traffic, but we went up onto the bridge to investigate/be nosy anyways. When we got up to the top of the bridge, the manager stopped us, asking us if we could wait for a few minutes as they did some takes. We said, of course! Alright, prime front row view! Four models came out dressed in muted fall tones.

Alison remarked, “That one second from the right is mad short and old.”

I replied, “Well yeah, because that’s Twiggy! At least, I think that’s Twiggy. Does she look familiar to you?”

Some old British guy crossing the bridge from the other side came by us and told us, “Yeah, would you look at that? It’s Twiggy right over there!” and walked away. Thanks for the confirmation, old man. Haha!

I didn’t know that Twiggy was so short either. She was about a head shorter than the other models and was wearing heeled booties too. I guess I’ve only seen pictures of her alone in the prime of her career and seated during ANTM judging panel scenes (sooooo fake, btdubs). In between takes, she seemed somewhat pissed at something or someone, but managed to put on that Twiggy fierceness during filming. I thought the model on the left was particularly pretty, although she looked like she needed a sandwich (or a dozen). I loved the gold-lace embroidered shirt she was wearing. After touching up on hair and makeup, the cameras started to roll after the director yelled all quiet on the set, the choreographer would yell out “5,6,7,8!” as the music came on. The four women turned away from the camera in a ripple and strutted away from the cameras into the dusk, then on cue, they looked back at the camera over their shoulders as they walked away until the director yelled cut. They were filming a fall commercial for Marks and Spencer, a British clothing and upmarket food retailer. Luan said he would send us a video of the Millennium Bridge shoot when it came out in the fall. Noice!

When the director decided to wrap it and allow traffic across the bridge again, we crossed and continued our way westward on the North Bank, following the route I took the night before and through to Westminster Bridge where we had our stereotypical touristy evening photo shoot at the Big Ben and Parliament. The buildings looked so fabulously beautiful and lit in the evening! Crossing back to the South Bank, we caught the ferry eastward back to Canada Water. It was such a chill and scenic way to end the evening, seeing the skyline of nighttime London go by and passing under London’s famous bridges.

Where is the Arm of my Mr. Knightley to Guide Me Through the Chiswick Estate?

Location: London, United Kingdom

Sunday July 4, 2010

The stalls at Shoreditch market seemed scattered about without much order. There were vendors of electronic appliances, ropes, toiletries, makeup, and so on. Smaller sellers laid out sheets besides the stands to sell their vintage trinkets and what could only be classified as hipster junk. One old Asian man selling knickknacks ripped me off by selling me a plug-in adapter that he claimed also converted voltage (damn the UK for being inconveniently different: driving on the left side of the road, using the £ instead of the €, having different outlet size and voltage, speaking Cockney…), when it clearly did not when I tried it after I got home. Doh!

Michael told me to seek out the curry vendors at Shoreditch, because the food is as good as the people-watching in the minority neighborhood. But I must have been in the wrong part of the ‘hood, because I did not smell or see any food. I couldn’t even follow my nose. I did stumble upon a large, eclectic vintage store that looked like something you would find on Portland’s Hawthorne. It had the familiar smell of second-hand clothes and old, worn leather gloves and shoes. In the back, there was your typical thrift store collection of fabulously hideous large poufy prom dresses from the 80s. The place even had a large excited rack of jumpsuits. Surrounding the entrance of the store, a group of animal-lovers protested the use of animal fur in clothing, claiming that it was still murder even if the piece of fur was second-hand. As I went in, they yelled that I would be financing a immoral trade even if I were to buy something that did not contain fur in that store. In the furniture area, I found Haskin’s The American Government, a fitting find, seeing that it was July 4^th that day.

As I wandered around Shoreditch some more, a dodgy British-Middle-Eastern middle-aged guy caught up to me from behind and started matching my pace with a, “Hello, Love.” I nodded and smiled, picking up my pace so we wouldn’t be awkwardly walking together. He hurried along with me, laughing, “Don’t be scared. I don’t bite.” Too bad if you come any closer, I might.

Can anyone tell me why Picadilly Circus is so popular? It is far smaller than the tourist trap of Times Square, and it only offers one little fountain upon which to sit. The people-watching is mediocre, seeing that you’re bound to find yourself looking at rather uninteresting, fat, money pouch and visor-wearing tourists rather than Brits. I didn’t understand it myself as I passed by the crowded Circus on my way to the tourist centre to find myself a free map of London.

I took the Tube to catch the open picnic that was supposedly happening at the Chiswick House. My map didn’t cover that far west, so I asked some hipster Brits in plaid shirts and bright rimmed sunglasses the way to the Chiswick House, which turned out to be a bit of a walk from the underground stop. The two guys were entertained that I had an American accent, as every other person with whom I interacted would ask me about it on that trip. On my way, I passed by Hogarth’s house, which was unfortunately closed due to a fire. Nbd, just one of the best printmaker and satirical cartoonist’s house is all. I was expecting the Chiswick House to be a quaint little place with a park surrounding it. But it turned out to be a legit English estate, complete with expansive and historic gardens, a white-framed sunlit conservatory, and a magnificent neo-Palladian stone villa.

Families took advantage of the green fields to picnic. Children ran around on the grass and clambered on the trees while dogs paddled in the creek. The estate was extremely picturesque with characters in period clothing also picnicking and hanging around the villa. I could see then see why Austen’s characters so often took walks around the gardens after a lively dinner or before supper. How could you not when the gardens looked so lovely?

The weekend Tube closures were annoyingly inconvenient, because London is so spread out. I tried hurrying back into town to see the London Museum. But it turned out that three stops on the Metropolitan Line (I loved how the lines actually have names instead of logical numbers, a wee bit confusing at first but endearing after!) took an hour to speed-walk. The museum’s “You are Here.” sign funnily fitted the situation as I windlessly climbed to the front door. Walking through the sliding automatic doors, I met a large projection on the wall informing visitors what happened that day in British history. And according to the London Museum, the most important thing that took place on the fourth of July was the end of meat rationing. Huh, riveting. But before I could get far into the exhibits, the museum announced that it was closing its exhibits, thirty minutes before the actual closure of the building. Great.

Outside of the museum, a lone brown upright piano sat on the outdoor balcony walkway with large white words, “Play Me, I’m Yours” written on its front and accompanying sheet music. The piano was part of the City of London Festival, which scattered 21 specially-designed uprights all around London, each with the sheet music of one of Chopin’s 21 Nocturnes. What a cute idea, huh? It was one of the reasons why I started to fall in love with London.

Weary of trekking around the city, I jumped onto a bus at Liverpool to do a DIY city tour from the great front seat view on the second level. I found a great website that described the whole route and which city buses to take, which really was a great deal, since I purchased a 7-day travel pass with unlimited access to all transportation (except for cabs, of course) in Zone 1 and 2. The route took me through downtown to the southwest into Chelsea (I used to have a friend who lived there), another bus took me north where I caught another bus that crossed London the other way to the southeast side, ending at the Tower of London about three hours later. Screw embarrassing and expensive open bus tours when you can get a lovely DIY sightseeing experience covering almost all the historic sights in the centre like so. I’m pretty sure another couple was doing the same thing as the pair also sat in the front. The British guy was pointing out different things outside the window to his American girlfriend. Awww, so sweet. Reconciling after 234 years. It also gave me hopes to find myself a hot British boy. Jaja.

From the Tower of London, I took a walk along the North Bank all the way to the Waterloo Bridge as the sun went down and the Thames became gorgeous in the night. I came upon another one of those cute upright pianos by the London Bridge along the river walkway. I patiently watched a couple sit there and have some quality bonding time as one guy encouraged his shyer partner to practice a simple piece, which he sight read from the sheet music. I plopped down when they finished but struggled to play the Chopin Nocturne when the nonstop river wind kept flipping the pages. Finally, the shyer guy came over and asked if I wanted some help. I thanked him and was finally able to play the piece on the quaint little mistuned piano on the bank of the Thames. After, I was seriously creeped out on some parts of my walk, when entire stretches were completely deserted and silent. I half-expected to be jumped as I walked under bridges, through empty tunnels, or turned corners through dark underpasses of buildings. It’s crazy how the dark can heighten one’s paranoia. But I was still alive when I came upon the Waterloo Bridge, so all was okay.

When I got to Canada Water, a quiet residential neighborhood in the southeast Zone 2 of the city that is nicely located next to Surrey Docks on the Thames, I found that Luan had came back a day before his ETA. I quickly put away all my shit that I had haphazardly scattered around his bedroom as he finished up in the shower. What a funny way to meet, huh? But he turned out to be a way chill host. I thought I would be crashing on his couch, but he insisted on me taking his bedroom while he slept in the living room. Speaking of strange first meetings, we had an equally unexpected first conversation. Instead of your typical how old are you/Where are you from/how is your family convo, we had a therapy session for Luan, who came back from a traumatic vacation in Hong Kong where he broke up with his long-term girlfriend of five years. Yikes, I definitely had an emotional shipwreck on my hands. I gave the best advice I could to the guy who I had only known for about fifteen minutes. If only Asians liked sweets more, then maybe he would have liked my Ben and Jerry’s suggestion.

If You’re a Masochist, Then Yes, 14 Hours of Traveling is Fun

Location: Madrid, Spain, Frankfurt, Germany, and London, United Kingdom

Saturday July 3, 2010

It’s amazing how awfully tired you get when you air travel, when all you’re really doing is sitting, waiting, or sitting as you’re waiting. Here are my examples of sitting or waiting or a combination of both as I made the what’s-supposed-to-be-short journey from Madrid to London:

a. a. Stood in a mad line that successfully blocked most of the traffic in that departure terminal at MAD(I’m pretty sure it stands for an airport that will drive you MAD)-Barajas airport when trying to check in my 3.5 kg-overweight suitcase at the Lufthansa desk. But the check-in lady didn’t charge me nor ask me to embarrassingly rearrange my shit. Yay, Europe for more ‘lax rules!

b. b. Stood in another long, unmoving line at the gate. Why do some European airlines opt out of sectional seating but rather ask all their passengers to flood the gate twenty minutes before boarding, so that only the people who have the agility to rush to the front of the line and the patience to wait for a long time get enough storage space in the overhead compartments?

c. c. Fell asleep when my head hit the soft Lufthansa seats (well, any seat is soft, really, when compared to the Comfort: 1 Ryanair’s plastic seats) When I woke up, I asked the Spanish couple (the lady was in a hot pink velour tracksuit. Why, Lord, whyyy?) next to me if we had just arrived at Frankfurt (my layover). They laughed and said no, I just napped for an hour on the tarmac as the jet aimlessly did laps.

d. d. My Spanish plane arrived half an hour after my connecting flight took off. So the airline booked me another flight two hours later, sending me to another terminal, where I sat and watched Lufthansa employees struggle to control a gaggle of loud and restless Arab families flying to United Arab Emirates, who wouldn’t understand or chose to blatantly ignore the repeated announced phrase, “The plane is not yet ready to board. Please do not crowd the gate. Please take your seats.”

e. e. Shit went down in the Tube, where improvement work was taking place on the Jubilee line that weekend, which I found out when I got my ass all the way to Green Park station. Thus I had to make painful switches to another line to get to Waterloo station to find the replacement bus. Okay, a bit of a stretch on the waiting part, but I did wait until I got to London to find out about these Underground rail changes. But thank god, there were kind English men who helped me with my (remember, overweight) luggage each time I had to brave a flight of stairs.

f. f. I settled on the regular 188 bus stop outside the Waterloo station after finding out that no one at Waterloo actually knew where the replacement bus stopped and additionally wandering for thirty minutes looking for the actual 188 bus stop that had been move to an unmarked area because of poor road construction.

g g. Waited thirty minutes in the chilly London air (yayayayyyy, London!!!! Sorry, forgot to be excited, because I was caught up with all this traveling-bitching) to witness the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility firsthand. As the red double-decker 188 came barreling down the Waterloo Bridge toward us, three of us stepped up to the curb to wave down the bus. But none of us made a big enough motion, like, jump off the curb and wave our entire arm, thinking that someone else would do that. So the bus did not even slow down. My psych professor would be proud of me observing this firsthand.

h. h. The other girl, wearing only a sleeveless dress and shivering in the cold, gave up after waiting for fifteen more minutes and flagged down her £50 cab. But the other guy and I were champs and stuck it out for the hour that it took for the next bus to come. I guess that route’s service really slows down at 2 in the morning.

i. i. As I awkwardly apologized for my trunk half-blocking the front of the full bus during the forty-five minute journey to Canada Water, I eavesdropped on the conversation of two hot British cricket players (yes, people apparently still play cricket). Some happy drunkies entered and climbed over my bags. One stopped with his face uncomfortably close to mine and said, “You. Have a very big bag. I like it.” Chuckling awkwardly, I thanked him for his unconventional compliment. His friend followed with an “You show me your big bag, and I’ll show you mine.”

j. j. My shortest wait of the day: at the door of Luan’s (my mother’s childhood friend’s son, who I didn’t meet until the day after I got to London, because he was stuck in Hong Kong) apartment when Luan’s super awkward flatmate (he actually admitted to disliking human interaction... -.-“ okay…), Michael, came down to open the door at 3 am. Yayayayyy! I finally made it. *Collapse*

We’ve Come Full-Circle

Location: Madrid, Spain

Friday July 2, 2010

Some people just never learn. Exhibit A: when IES kids still refused to make definite plans in person and opted to make general ones that would later be “discussed” on Facebook when half the people in the program didn’t have Spanish mobiles/never check Facebook/don’t want to use their Spanish mobiles because they’re out of saldo (credit) even when we’ve been through the same act four million times up to our last IES-organized group lunch out (where Patrick proceeded to have a minor freak out over a “matter of principle” that IES was limiting each student to one glass of wine, even though we all could legally drink on the continent) on our final day after our Spanish grammar final. My efforts of making a concrete plan were not considered as people insisted on being vague. And so of course, in the span of two or three hours of Facebook message discussion, the entire group that was supposed to hit the streets together in a last hurrah ended up splitting into multiple small ones, each had formed their own plan because it was easier to keep in contact that way. Many of us wanted to have a final Spanish experience by botelloning up by the beautifully lit Templo de Deblod while enjoying the great view of Madrid from the hilltop. It’s too bad we couldn’t do it as a group, because only (Harvard) Alex, Valentina, and I went before going out to the bars. Did people not understand that the whole point of botelloning was to pregame the bar and club experience? You really can’t politely bring bottles of liquor/mixers and cups into bars… We really didn’t understand what some of those kids were thinking…

The Gay Pride celebration for that weekend was in full stride that night. It was not concentrated in one area, like say, on the boardwalk or something, but rather, it was huge and all over the big streets of the city. After I walked to Plaza de España (damn my abono for being expired at the turn of the month, but I got in about 140 uses for the thing in one month, hot damn!), I came upon a stage with full-blown lights/sound and a crowd standing in front in the Plaza, surrounded by more people and stands selling food, drinks and other merch. On top of the stage, a funny middle-aged lady wearing neon eighties clothes with a stage full of backup dancers was teaching a workout dance, and the crowd in front was following along. It was the cutest and most bizarre thing ever.

Alex and Valentina had already finished their peach liquor on their way over, so we didn’t have any to botellon with at the Templo. We walked to the nearest Chino (wow, I’m surprised I haven’t described Chinos, yet… They’re basically the [typical] racist Spanish nickname for small corner stores [always] owned by Asians [usually Chinese] where you can buy bread, snacks, drinks, and sometimes alcohol, and so on...) only to find that they didn’t have any hard a on their shelves. We approached the guy working the register and asked him if they sold alcohol. He quietly slipped into the backroom and brought out a bottle of hard a. He was going to charge us €20, so we asked him for some apple liquor (that was warm, yelch), which he also wanted to charge us €20 for it. Pissant. Alex wouldn’t stand having the guy rip us off for alcohol that he was selling to us illegally. So we bargained until we got it down to €15. Afterwards, Alex claimed that we were probably the first people in our program to have negotiated our purchase of illegal alcohol at a Chino. Jaja.

As we sipped the liquor that was just lightly mixed with Sprite that I brought from home sitting by the reflection pool of the Templo, we made a new discovery: campesino Lay’s® potato chips (my absolute favourite junkie food discovery in Spain, there’s nothing like the campesino flavour in the US of A, it’s like a sweeter mix of buffalo and barbeque… but better) make wonderful chasers. Thank god I had forgotten I didn’t eat dinner when I headed out of my host family’s house, and ended up buying some chips to stave the hunger until we started drinking. We def know how to keep it classy up on sacred grounds.

Shit show once again when we went to El Tigre in the Chueca area to meet up with the big group that decided to botellon in reverse. That group had also split up, meaning that everyone was scattered throughout the city, with indefinite meeting times. HaHA! I would have taunted them with an “I told you so,” but that wouldn’t have helped seeing that there really wouldn’t be another time for the kids to apply their newly learned knowledge of the importance of making definite plans. Well, at least we had a good time hanging outside of El Tigre with some of the IES girls, which was crazy crowded since everyone was flooding in from the full streets of Chueca, as we waited for some kids to show up from their different plans.

After some dramatic moments, such as Alex dramatically storming off to go to a free gay party in the depths of Chueca alone and without a word to us, because he was frustrated at everyone waiting and no one taking action and thus, wasting more time by having us wait for him to meet up again a bit after, it was already late, so we decided to spend our last hours enjoying the next best thing (actually, probably best, at the moment), the gay pride celebration on Gran Villa.

Of all the people we could have ran into in those thousands upon thousands of people who were out in the streets of Madrid, who did we run into but Joe Jonas himself? Okay, I have to admit, we used the nickname Nick Jonas last time, when we met him and his posse during the beginning of our program… but Google-imaging the Jonas brothers brings me to the conclusion that Joe Jonas is actually better doppelgänger. Seeing that familiar group and snapping a picture with Joe Jonas on our last night together cheered us all up. It was the last puzzle piece to complete our Spanish cycle.

Oh, and speaking of keeping it classy, I think one of the classiest things I definitely could have done was getting sick into that random small black plastic bag Alex sweetly found on the side of the street for me before I got on the night bus to go home. Splitting a whole handle of apple liquor in one pregame by the Templo just didn’t sit well with my stomach. ¡Que elegante!