El botellón

I know, it's been a while, and for that I am sorry.  At first I wasn't writing because I wasn't doing anything because I was sick, then I got better, and still didn't write anything because I finally started going out!  But classes started on Monday, and I almost feel caught up on sleep from this weekend, so I have a few minutes to jot some notes down on here.

Basically, it's been pretty wild over here in Madrid.  This weekend I experienced this overwhelmingly exciting city on Thursday and Friday nights, then on Saturday I stayed in because on Sunday we went to Toledo!  Then, as I said above, on Monday our real classes began (real meaning classes that Spaniards take, too).

Thursday night was pretty fun, but not particularly Spanish.  Many of the Americans from our program went to a discoteca called Joy which caters primarily to international students.  Downside: I didn't get to spend time with Spaniards.  Upside: I still got to practice my Spanish with a number of remarkably attractive foreign students!  I would recommend this club to anyone looking to have a good time with good looking people, and who doesn't mind standing in line for a little bit to get in.

Friday night, however, was much more classically madrileño.  I brought all of my friends from the program (I was told to keep it small, so I only invited four/five girls, thank goodness they invited everyone else, so I could play innocent and still have all my friends there) and my Spanish friend from four years back brought all of his friends, and we spent the night out and about.

We met up around midnight at the metro stop Callao, and both groups had been botellón-ing by the time we all gathered.  I was looking down or talking to someone or something like that, when I felt a tap on my shoulder, and there was my old-time friend, D, and who should be standing next to him than another friend of mine, C, that I had not seen since she came to my hometown three years ago!  I let out a little shriek of excitement and grabbed C in a bear hug, then proceeded to attempt to introduce everyone, which quickly dissolved into my saying, besos a todos, and leaving it up to my tipsy attractive female friends and D and C's tipsy male friends.  A little bit of botellón goes a long way in people working up the nerve to speak in Spanish to Spaniards they've never met before.

Around 2:30am we finally went down into our discoteca of choice, and danced off all we'd had to drink (well, some of it at least), and, before I knew it, a couple of my American female friends had claimed some of D and C's male friends for the night.  I, however, was too busy running around with D and C's girl friends and trying to make a good impression, because it is extremely important to me to make friends in Madrid, to find a young Spaniard of my own (much to the chagrin of my señora who regularly asks me why I have not found a Spanish novio yet).

Some amount of time later, I found myself pounding the pavement across the city to make it to Moncloa, the bus stop, in time for D and C, etc. to make the bus home (I wasn't sure how to get home from the discoteca without the metro, which does not run between 1:30am and 6am, so I had decided to accept their invitation to come back to the neighborhood where I'd lived years ago), but unfortunately D and I made it just in time to see the bus pull away.  I still had some time before the metro was to re-open, and the next bus home for D, et al. wasn't until 8am, so, after I threw a little tantrum out of frustration, the four of us, D, C, D's German girlfriend, and I settled down on the grass across the street from the station and waited for the sun to rise.

Lessons from the night:
a) memorize the route home from everywhere: you never know where you'll be when you decide it's time to go home
b) sheer tops may seem like a cute idea in low lighting, but camera flashes turn your cute idea into something slightly less cute, and slightly more sheer
c) if all else fails, there are worse ways to end your night than cuddling up with old and new European friends across the street from this

Our next big event of the weekend was heading to Toledo on Sunday, something to which I had been looking forward ever since I fell ill four years ago and missed my excursion to the city that I knew as El Greco's home.  I could go on for a while about the intriguing combination of Moorish, Jewish, and Christian influences, intertwined amongst each other all throughout the city, but I will let you do your own research on that.  To me, the true highlight was seeing El entierro del Conde de Orgaz, El Greco's masterpiece, and a work of art that I had been longing to see for years.  As seems to happen to me often here in Spain, I was moved to tears to see the painting, with its cold light, elongated figures, chillingly beautiful hands, and hidden self-portrait of the artist himself.

Monday, yesterday, our classes began, and they have been pretty intimidating for us American students!  Not only are we in classes in Spanish with Spaniards, we are thrown into third year classes with students who only study their major (carrera) and so have two years of experience on any given topic we may elect.

My class that appears to be the most interesting so far is Problemas sociales II: familia y género, as I have developed an obsession with women's studies in the past year and a half.  This also appears to be my most difficult class, but as I said to my only American classmate, I am going to be so proud of myself by the end of the semester.  Already I can go to bed content as the professor had us go around the room and introduce ourselves and answer six (SIX!) questions that she asked us about ourselves and what we study, and I was able to explain in only somewhat broken Spanish (at least to my ear) that I do not study sociología but I am particularly interested in women's studies and that I was curious to study gender from a Spanish perspective.  She then asked me what I'd studied, and I stammered, "Muchas cosas...por ejemplo, el año pasado estudié el genero y el espacio social" which didn't really do justice to all I've studied, but I was quite ready for my personal question and answer session to come to a close!

I hope this has been a satisfying mix of both my intellectual pursuits and those slightly less intellectual.  I have had requests to make this blog more juicy, but, rather than terrify my family back home, I will leave it up to those who want the more exciting stories to contact me on their own (though I know I have been a massive FAIL at responding to emails/facebook messages!).  I look forward to updating you all again.

Un beso.

 

(Sorry for the creepy lack of faces, I promised myself I wouldn't put any pictures on here in which faces could be seen.)