World Travelers: my Dad & my cousin Lori

My dad and my cousin Lori came to visit me at the beginning of October and it was really good to see some familiar faces. We did extremely touristy things…like take the red double-decker bus around the city like true tourists. We saw some things that I had never seen before but mostly places I had already been. The guy on top of the giant pole is Christopher Columbus and the ugly cement building is where Real Madrid play. The Arch which has two pictures, one at night and one during the day is álcala, the door into the city. The other night picture is of a beautiful building and I probably will never know the use of but it looks cool an has a gold sculpture on top. And the last picture is of my first paella in Spain…yes it took me that long to have it… it was delicious!

Scotland...a homeland (kind of)!!

I went to Edinburgh, Scotland this weekend and it was FANTASTIC!! I got to see some Pomona friends and make some new ones. I went to Rosslyn Chapel from The Di Vinci Code which was very mysterious and extremely detailed and freezing…we discovered fire a while ago how come it too so long to put heat in buildings? One of the inscriptions in the chapel was in Latin and it said: “Wine is strong. The king is stronger. Women are stronger still, but the truth conquers all.” Yet again, if women are stronger why did it take thousands of years for us to have civil rights? Anyway, enough ranting… I also saw the new parliament building which looks cool but has lots of problems, like a leaky roof! It was designed by a Spanish architect who built it more for weather in central and southern Spain…AKA, not for the rain. I saw two castles but didn’t go into them…not enough time. We went to the Whiskey Experience, like I told my mom, it’s like their n ational drink it would be like going to Spain and not having sangria or to Germany and not having a beer. Even though whiskey is an old mans drink and generally not extremely tasty I like two of the three that I tried. We went to a bar and a club on the university camps which was packed and played good-bad pop music from the US and just bad pop from Britain. The German Christmas market opened the day I got there, Thanksgiving! It was adorable and I got a mug after drinking my mulled wine, which has German written on it. I got to see Kirsty (the blond one), a Scottish girl who came to stay with us when I was in high school and I hadn’t seen her in 5 years so that was cool. She brought pictures of when she came and we both just felt really old after looking at them. I know I’m only 20 but…I was 13-14 when she came so I’d like to think I’ve grown since then. Overall, Scotland was very cool especially since Kirsty came to visit me and I’ve always wanted to see Scotland after that. And part of my family is from Scotland and my last name is Scottish but that’s the wrong side…the point is that it was fun and I’m Scottish!

Long time no blog!!! Lo Siento!! (I'm sorry)

Sorry but I had to put up this picture of Becca and I at the US Open in front of the Lexus…which was “the official car of the open” making it really sweet when we didn’t have to pay for parking because we were driving Becca’s mom’s car…a Lexus.

Back to the Madrid news…. We went to Segovia three weeks ago and it was really sweet. The town is about an hour bus ride outside of Madrid and it was a crazy mix of a Gothic church, Roman aqueducts and a Disneyland like Castle. The whole city is shaped like a boat and has a wall around it like a fortress city. There was also a church outside of the city that was round…odd for it’s period.

The girl stealing from a Madrileno was done to prove that not just Americans are susceptible to pick pockets.

We also went to a palace in a town outside of Segovia which we didn’t go into but walked around the different themed gardens for a little while. I know it’s odd, gross and random but when I went to the bathroom there was writing on the stall door and it had my name on it…it was cool for me because not many people have my name….you usually see “Sarah was here” written on walls not “Iris y Lili”.

This is a picture of a girl and a guy…Chelsea and Miguel….he is a Madrileno and we did a club/bar crawl which usually lasts until 6am here when the subways open up again. The first time I did it I thought I was going to die. I have figured out that if you leave earlier you can stay out later!! I know I’m a genius. Also, don’t be scared anyone I only had the one GIGANTIC pitcher of beer that night. It was kind of a dare thing and I couldn’t resist.

The picture with the Italian guys (the ones who have dark hair and dark eyes) are my roommates…speaking of roommates things have changed a little since my last post. The guy who I thought was British is actually from Texas and studied in Boston at a music school and plays the cello. He joined an international band here and they play crazy indy/rock/classical stuff and we’re going to see them in two weeks. The Peruvian couple was basically kicked out of the apartment because the manager decided that they couldn’t live here for free in exchange for cleaning anymore…very sad.... I really liked them and they were kind of like our pseudo-parents here. Now a French guy lives in the room…he speaks English very well but I still don’t know which he prefers to speak with me…when I speak I Spanish he answers in English and when I speak in English he answers in Spanish…. I like the international vibe in my house but there are definitely communication issues.

The picture with the other two guys is from "La noche en blanco” (the night in white). It is a festival thing in Europe that is really huge in Madrid. All the art galleries & museums are open, there are concerts and performances in the streets etc. The first thing starts at about 7pm and the last thing was supposed to start at 6am but they had some technical difficulties and that didn’t happen. The guys are friends of Miranda my new closest friend here from Middlebury they are FABULOUS and a lot of fun to hang out with and swap liberal arts college stories with.

The next pictures are of Palacio Real, the palace here in Madrid. It is unbelievably HUGE!!!! The pictures of random statues are from the sculptor garden outside of the palace. I really like the one of the currency symbols which happen to spell out “YES”…yes to what? I have no clue?!?!?

We went on a crazy crazy adventure called the “Steps of Quijote”. It was a very long day going from place to place that Quijote went in the extra long apparently national book of Spain. I didn’t know that one country could have so much pride over one book. So much so that they have whole towns basically dedicated to him. I wish on some nerdy level that I had actually read the book before we went on this adventure and it would have been a lot more exciting. Anyway, it was cool to see some old buildings with cool architecture. The bust is the quintessential image of Quijote looking ever so crazed. I thought this was hilarious…we stopped in one town that had a “jail” thing that we went down into and we also looked at a “Grand Canal”??? I guess the whole irony thing works in all languages... but this was a little ridiculous but an interesting story….I guess.

Then we went to this castle/fort thing that looked like no one had been in in about 100 years and you may not want to go into. It was next to a beautiful lake though and we took a moment to be touristy here!! The girl in the picture with me is another good friend I’ve made here, Sarah. She is from Ashland, Oregon…where my parents went to College and where my cousins live/lived. She goes to Whitman in Walawala, Washington.

The last two places we went were a waterfall which was supposedly the biggest you can see here in Spain…which is just depressing. I pretty sure us Colorandans would call it a spring at most and it is revered here as a great waterfall…most likely because of it’s association with Quijote. The other place was a cave that had something to do with the book that was a little dangerous to venture into but cool in temperature unlike the weather we had been having a couple of weeks ago.

Also, I do other things besides go to bars until early in the morning…for my theatre class which is not my favorite in the world…I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t this and I am just not liking reading things that were meant to be seen. Anyway, I went to see Hamlet in Spanish at this tiny alternative theatre and it was actually really good. It was more about presenting a spectacle than about having really good actors which they also had. They used space and sound and colors really well and it was really cool even though I could really only understand like half the words. We didn’t read Hamlet in Spanish thank goodness we just had to go see it!!

Finally, the other picture is of the central plaza of Madrid…called Sol. Tio Pepe a seemingly….because it is…..out of place .....Mexican-inspired neon sign. I was really admiring the moon!!!! The next picture is of Miranda and I the other night when we went on yet another bar crawl with Erasmus (European students) who go to school with my Italian roommates.

I love you all and I miss you!! I hope that everything is going well with everyone…send me mail either the 21^st century version (e-mail) or the 18^th century version (snail mail) my address is on the left of the blog. Speaking of any type of mail….THANKS so much to anyone who has sent me either and to those who have written comments on the blog I really love it and it makes me feel special hearing from you all!!

Dos besos,

Iris