Defeating Winter

Chris and Me

The "Lodge"

Well, I'm hestitant to say it, but...I think Spring in Spain may be on it's way. I really lucked out and happened to come to Spain on the coldest, wettest, and rainiest year they've had in a long time. The Madrid-Barajas international airport had to be shut down for the first time ever and a while back I saw on TV that a major highway closed and people had to find a place to stay for the night, I think they were delayed 40 hours.

For a while this is what I would wear to school:

- Running tights or long johns under my jeans

- A t-shirt under a fleece jacket under a sweatshirt under a coat

Sometimes I wouldn't take my coat off all day because my classroom is always cold. I think it's the coldest one in the school (it also didn't help that someone left a window partway open over a weekend a while back).

The cold hasn't been all bad...with cold there's snow (well most years theres just cold)! This past Saturday a friend from Texas, Chris, and I went up to the snow to get out of the big city atmosphere for a while. We went into an abondoned "lodge" and looked around. (I use quotation marks because it's a lodge made out of stone and cement). After that we rolled down a hill and then climbed up a mountain, the snow up to our waists in some places. Things were actually a little scary because tree limbs were falling. We saw a fairly big limb fall and there were some massive ones that had fallen recently, if you look at the picture of the lodge you can see one of the branches that fell just in front of it.

But, even with all the fun of snow, sniffly noses, and wearing four layers of clothes to school I'm glad the sun is finally here. We'll see if it stays this way, the last time I thought Spring was on its way...well...it wasn't.

Fresh Baked Sword Fish

Christmas Eve I had a very fancy dinner with my host mom, one of her daughters, and her daughters husband. They cooked all day, we ate, we watched a movie, and they all fell asleep 15 minutes into the movie. Christmas morning I went to an American couples house in a neighboring town and then in the afternoon I went to an American/British household in another town. It was kind of nice to speak English, but it actually seemed a little strange! The 6th of January is called Dia de Los Reyes Magos (Day of the Three Wise Men). It's actually bigger than Christmas. All the kids are taught that the Kings will come in the night and deliever presents, just like Santa Claus. The morning of the 6th I ate Roscon with my host mom. Roscon is the typical pastry shaped like a very large donut. It's cut in half and in between the top and botton halves there is whipped cream and in the whipped cream there is a little figurine. If you get the little figurine you'll have luck for the whole year (I got the figurine, and elephant with it's trunk pointing up which means extra luck!).

"Sword Fish", "Fresh Baked", these are a couple of the crazier logos I've seen here in Spain. I don't think most Americans realize how big of an impact we have on the rest of the world, and I'm not just talking about politics. I've hardly seen any article of clothing with writing in Spanish (except for maybe camp T-shirts or stuff like that...but even those have English). Almost all of the clothes here have writing in English even if it's a saying as crazy as, "I love winter, wrap a blanket around you, sit in front of the fire, drink hot chocolate, cold days are great." (This I saw in a rather popular, trendy store). Sometimes when I walk down the street I feel like I'm in America because lots of the advertisements and store names are in English!

Some of you may be wondering how my Spanish is doing. I can say almost whatever I want to say, and I can understand the majority of what I hear. It really depends on who I'm talking with. I can spend an entire day with friends and only have to ask them how to say something or what something means a few times. However, in my history class I hardly understand a thing. On Monday I finished a 200 page book (in Spanish) that I recieved as a gift the Monday before; I understood the whole thing (minus a few words here and there)!

Hope you all had a great Christmas season and feliz ano nuevo!

Rio de Los Manzanares and the Catedral de La Almudena

Cercedilla Pueblo
My friend Fernando lives en Cercedilla and they got about 5" of snow, my little pueblo got about 1".

PASSWORD

Hola Everybody!

After three months of living in Spain the Spanish TV networks finally realized I was here and asked me to be on one of their TV shows. Actually out of the blue our language teacher announced that, if we wanted to, our class could be on a game show called PASSWORD.

The game show is played as follows:
There are two celebrities. Each celebrity is paired with a student from one of the schools around Madrid. The celebrity says a clue and the student guesses what the verb/noun/adjective is that the celebrity is reading off of a TV screen; if the student guesses what is on the screen then a new word appears on the screen, the student who guesses the most number of words can win up to 25,000 Euros for their school. There are three clues per word and 30 seconds per round.

There are more rules and different rounds with some slight twists but that is basically how the game is played. Our class got 2nd place because the celebrity couldn't guess a word which was, in my and the the rest of the students opinions, pretty easy. We did end up winning 2,500 Euros, but the 25,000 would have been nice :)

We arrived at the studio at ~7:50 PM and had to wait in a small trailer with 30 students until 10:30 PM. The game show was interesting, but the celebrities seemed so fake (I did get a Santa hat that says PASSWORD). The celebrities were a comedian from a TV program called Siete Vidas (Seven Lives) who was pretty funny as well as a TV anchorman. I think the host of the show is also an anchorwoman. Our teacher told us we'd get home around 10:00 PM but when we got to the studio we found out we'd probably get home after midnight. Oh well, I skipped the first two classes the next morning so that was ok.

Thanksgiving

I had Thanksgiving at the home of the pastor of my church. The pastor has been a missionary here for ~25 years and they always invite all the Americans to have Thanksgiving. It was quite different than my normal Thanksgiving. Actually not too different; just that everything was very fancy. Wine, candles, etc. The company was great as well. There was a girl who lived in Sisters last year so we had a good time talking about Central Oregon. Here are some random fun facts I learned from the group:

- Some homeless people have wi-fi under a bridge in Madrid and are quite tidy. No it's not pronounced "wy-fy", in Spanish it's "wee-fee".

- The pastor's son, Ryan, said that one time he ran away from the ticket taker on the train just to see what he would do. The ticket taker finally caught up to him a few train cars down and Ryan showed him his ticket. The guy asked/yelled, "Why did you run?" and Ryan replied, "Why did you run?"

- One time our worship leader, Kenny, was (literally) running late to catch a train and didn't have time to buy a ticket. He asked a security guard who was boarding at the same time if he could pay on the train; the man said yes. When the train's doors closed the security guard fined him for not having a ticket. After a few moments of confusion Kenny started egging the man on and finally the security guard called him a bad name. After that Kenny took down his name and information. The train company dropped the fine after Kenny wrote to them saying he felt: insulted, ashamed to ride on their trains and was going to sue.

- Last year there was a strike by the parking enforcement because sometimes people would beat them up when they got a ticket. The parking enforcement wanted a security guard accompanying them. Everybody supported the strike. It was the best two weeks of parking in Madrid.

Segovia: Land of History and Funny Train Stories

A couple weekends ago some friends invited me to go to to Segovia, a city in a neighboring region. My friend Raquel and I were supposed to meet in Villalba, board the train together, and then meet up with our friend, Fernando, in another train station on the way to Segovia. However, I missed the early train and had to get on the train heading to Segovia. This wouldn't be so bad, but Segovia is about an hour away, the train only comes every hour, and my friend wasn't answering her phone...oh yeah, I also didn't have a ticket because in my little train station you can only buy tickets for the Madrid region. Fortunately we all met up fine. However, I still didn't have a ticket, I was planning to buy it in Segovia it would be morally ok or maybe pay for a different ticket that costs less because the train system fined me a different time even though I had a ticket (long story).

Fernando assured me everything would be okay; I asked what would happen if somebody came around checking tickets and he told me everything would be fine, there probably wouldn't be anybody checking tickets and even if there was it would be okay. You can probably guess what happened...yes! there did happen to be a ticket-checker lady (I have know idea what you call them) on the train. When we saw her Fernando got a little worried look in his eyes. We devised a plan where I would act like the innocent American tourist and try to communicate in very broken Spanish while my friends would explain to me in broken English what was going. In the end we were able to avoid the 15 Euro fine and were allowed to pay for the ticket on the train.

Segovia is known for it's cathedral, castle, but most importantly for it's massive aqueduct. The aqueduct was built by the Romans without using any type of cement. Everything is still intact, stretching more than 2700 ft and standing almost 100ft high. The cathedral was massive, ceilings 70 ft high...also kind of creepy. I can imagine people singing goulish hymns and a priest condemning everybody.

The temperature probably dropped below freezing and the slight wind didn't help very much. We spent a fair amount of time next to the radiators in the visitors center.

What I've Done the Past Couple Weeks:
- Climbed the highest mountain in La Cordillera Central (Central Mountain Range). It actually wasn't that high (~2,400 meters) and was just an easy hike up, but it was pretty cool. I'd rate this mountain about a 0 out of 10 for solitude. There were about 40 people at the summit, not counting the people still hiking up.
- Didn't go/have many classes this past week due to a teacher not showing up, setting my alarm clock wrong, not needing to take a test, and sleeping in because I stayed up late watching the elections.
- Got invited to go to Madrid to drink and party on Halloween. I ended up teaching some friends how to make pumpkin pie and caramel apples.
- Didn't embarrass myself too much during a volleyball practice
- Ate Kebap (Turkish food) and watched a movie with some friends from church.

Interesting Things I've Noticed:
- The Spanish people are very proud of their country. Someone mentioned that the greatest bullfighter in the world is from a neighboring town. I can't think of another country where people have bullfights except maybe Mexico.
- A jar of about two cups of peanut butter costs ~$6 and Nutella is about half the price!
- Lots of people use trekking poles to hike. It's kinda funny because it seems like it'd be more of a hindrance than actually helpful for the trails I've seen people using the poles on.
- Students here care a ton about school. However, I don't think they care too much about learning, only passing the exams at the end of the year.
- Spain has the craziest billboards. One said, "They Eat Meat", and had a picture of two very fit looking people. The vegetarians are abused here.
- Music from America is way, way more popular than music from Spain.
- A friend asked me the other day what are the white things that people roast over the fire in the American movies (s'mores), nobody here knows what they are! She thought maybe it was meat.
- They don't eat peanut butter!!!

Be sure to check out my pics. The link is at the bottom of the page. (I've got a few albums so you can choose which one to look at on the left side of the page)