Madrid

Hello everybody,

This is probably my last post on this blog. I have a week and two days still in Madrid, but I have exams and papers due all of the time left so I don't think you'll really want to hear about that.

Anyway I'm just going to leave you with a couple more things, and a bunch of "Spanish lessons" that I have written down that I didn't haven't told you before.

First off, in the rush to talk about Fez and Amsterdam last week I completely forgot what I had done in Madrid. Ali came to visit me for Thanksgiving not expecting anything expect a trip to Europe, but my host mom decided us a Thanksgiving dinner. We had mashed potatoes, peas, and an entire turkey with "stuff" = Spanish style stuffing, made of nuts and dried fruit soaked in brandy, very good. We had a great meal with the whole family, so Ali and I got a fun, different sort of thanksgiving.

My mom came this weekend to Madrid, and they had just turned on all the Christmas lights (Picture 1 -4) that have been hanging all over the city turned off for the past couple weeks, so we had plenty to see while we were walking around. Also this weekend in Spain there is a puente (= bridge) over the Monday because there is a holiday on Tuesday, so everyone gets Monday off. In other words Madrid was packed with people this weekend doing thing like seeing the lights and going to the Christmas markets. In Spain you can buy everything from the river of Bethlehem (Picture 5) to windmills (Picture 6) (we can't find the biblical references) for you family Nativity scene at Christmas.

We did all the Madrid things this weekend (the Prado and the Thyseen Museums) and also went to a Zarzuela show called "Los sobrinos de Capitan Grant" (= The niece and nephew of Capitan Grant.) (Picture 8) Zarzuela is kind of like a mix of an opera and a play, but not a musical (the songs are less dramatic, more operatic). The genre started in Madrid, which is the only place it is preformed in Spain, and the scenery (at least for this production) was great, so Mom was entertained even though she didn't really understand what was going on. We also got to go out with my host family a lot this weekend, and went out to lunch with all of them (picture 7) on Sunday, so Mom got to meet my whole family over hear.

I hope everyone has enjoyed my blog and I can't wait to see you all in a couple weeks.

Hasta pronto

Brent

Spanish Lesson

Majo = nice, agreeable, warm, close, etc. (all at once to describe someone)

Hacer un calvo = (literally = to make a bald) to moon someone

Llover un huevo = (literally = to rain an egg) to rain a lot

Pesado = stupid, annoying, uneducated, etc. (again all used at once to describe the same person)

Side note: in Spain they are much more willing to tell you what they think. At home if someone does something unintelligent they will right away be called pesado or pesada. People can go from criticizing to complementing each other in the same sentence.

Soso = bland (used to describe food or people)

Tío/Tía = (literally = uncle/aunt) dude/dudette, guy, etc. (a general word used to refer to someone)

Habla como un camionero = (literally = talk like a truck driver) curse a lot. I guess sailors aren't as important in Spanish culture ...

Y yo = and I. This is used when telling a story, instead of saying "And then I said," usually followed by a facial expression or curse word.

Probar = to try food vs. Intentar = to try to do something

Cola = line (one us stand in), also means tail in Spanish. I like the metaphor.

Fez

Buenos

On to Fez, but first Ali's visit. She arrived Wednesday morning, and just by chance there was a Real Madrid (soccer) game that night that they we selling tickets for 30 euros (the normal price is somewhere around 80 to 120 euros). There were also a bunch of my friends going, so perfect time to go. The game was a horrible showing (Madrid only beat Zurich by 1, 1-0, was the score), but the Zurich fans were really rowdy and Ronaldo played his first game for a month or so (he had been out for an injury), so we had a great time. (Picture 1) Ali and I somehow managed to got to the Prado the Reina Sofia and the Sorolla Musuem in the 56 hours she was in Madrid, not to mention go out with my host brother Borja, and got out to tapas in La Latina.

On Friday we flew off to Fez, Morocco. Quite the trip.

To start off we were running very late in arriving to the airport, and had to print out a ticket with Ryan Air (and anyone who's flown this airline knows this is not a good idea). After running through the airport to get onto the plane and then finally arriving (in one of the worst landings we had ever experienced), we finally made it to Morocco. The cabs that run to the airport and are just old cars with no meters, not any indication that they are cabs, except if you count trusting what the driver's calling themselves cab drivers. Surprisingly they are entirely safe and well priced, so we made it safely to our hotel.

The hotel (Riad Damia) is in the old city (Medina), part of Fez. It's in an old Arabic house/mansion and all of the architecture and furniture matched this idea. (Pictures 2, 3, 4, and 5)) The owner (very nice little man in his 50's or 60's who loved the four of us) of the hotel showed us our rooms and gave us a map. He said we could walk to a part of town with restaurants and cafes, just drawing and arrow from the hotel to a center looking area of the town. We trekked out our rooms and tried to find where he was talking about but realized the Medina is just a compilation of windy streets (much worse than Sevilla), and that his arrow just cut through these, so we had literally no idea how to get there. Another complication was Aida Deha (as spelled by someone we met, not google), a holiday were each family kills a goat as a sacrifice to Allah. In other words basically everything was closed. We walked back in the direction of the hotel feeling defeated only to see the son (or maybe just colleague) of the hotel owner driving to the new city. He offered to take us to a French restaurant that he knew was open. So we justified spending a little extra in order to eat something. (Picture 6, durhams, not euros don't worry)

We got up the next day after a great meal (dinner and the breakfast included with the hotel of pita like pancake, moroccon bread, jam, and olives (of course)) and once again got lost. Never fear though. An about 13 year old boy named Ishmael (who spoke English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Japanese) offered to take us to his family's tannery, (Picture 8)where we bought plenty of souvenirs. (Picture 9, on left, older boy's name was Hamlet) Later (with his instructions) we had a little more success navigating the city. All over there were carcasses and meet of the goats(Picture 7), and the entire city was smoking from baking these roasting these animal's heads all day.

After walking around a little further and being offered anywhere between 20 and 5 million camels for the girls with me, we decided to eat lunch. The restaurant was on the top of one of the buildings (so you could look out over Fez) and the meal we ended up getting (Tanji - meat vegetables and potatoes with a certain spice we couldn't place, along with celementines, Moroccon cookies, soup and a drink) cost 70 durhams (the currency - go duke), which is about 6 euros.

The rest of the weekend as we explored the city we were again asked into stores. Some people offered us "Morrocon Whiskey" -which is actually mint tea - and others offered us hooka. The "hospitality" can get a little excessive. Everyone on the street will offer to be your guide threw the city, especially when you don't want them to, and everyone wants you to come into their shop "for free," which usually results in you buying something, but other than a few instances, we never felt like anyone was getting to close or making us unsafe. We just learned to ignore people completely on the street. Quite an interesting experience, hope you enjoy the pictures.

Nos vemos

Brent

Spanish Lesson:

Melliza= fraternal twin ≠ Gemela = identical twin. (Important word to know)

In honor of Van Gogh here is the Spanish Linguistic color symbolism.

Verde (Green) (viejo verde, película verde, etc.) = dirty, old man; porno.

Amarillo(yellow)= celos (jealousy).

Azul (blue) = principe azul (blue prince), sangre azul (blue blood)= color of royality

Tranquilo = Don’t worry/ Cuidado = look out, heads up. For expressions like these that you would direct at someon, they don't use the verbs, but rather the adjectives. I was tempted to to say cuídate(which means "take care of yourself" as in when you live by yourself) or aclámate (which I have never heard, and don't think makes sense.)

Amsterdam

Hola,

Ali (my sister) came this Wednesday so I didn't have time to write about Amsterdam, so here are two entries about the last two weekends.

Last weekend (19th-21st of November), the majority of Duke Study Abroad in Europe went to Amsterdam. We had friends come from all over (London, Barcelona, Leon, Prague, etc.) to explore this city together. We had something like 40 people staying in our hostel and then other friends all over the city. This is how this weekend transpired:

We arrived in Amsterdam with late on Thursday evening excited about getting to this new city. Immediately we knew we had come to the right place. The people greeted us in almost perfect English and when we walked out of the train station there were lights (we assumed Christmas) all over the place. The 40 degree weather was quite a change from a standard 55 of 60 in Madrid, but we zipped up our jackets and tried to find the hostel.

Our hostel, The Flying Pig (Picture 1), gave us directions along the lines of "exit the train station, take a right and then walk down the alley and you'll find us." When we arrived we could see why. We opened were greeted by clubbing music, just loud enough that we couldn't hear the lady who wanted to check us in. Also in the lobby were a pool table and a smoking room (only in Amsterdam.) After briefly getting settled a group ventured out towards to carpe diem, eventually ending up in the red light district (for purely touristic purposes.

People's excuse for visiting Amsterdam is often something like "The city is beautiful too," which I thought might be in along the same lines of "I don't care how ugly Crocs are, they're really comfortable" (i.e. false); nevertheless, Amsterdam is actually a beautiful town that a couple of tourist commodities have been added too. The perfect example is the Red Light district, which runs right along one of the many canals in of the city. Just like the others, this canal is bordered by old Scandinavian/Dutch houses and has many bridges criss-crossing over top of the water. The only difference here is that here there are prostitutes standing in the windows calling to the passersby, not to mention the swans swimming in the middle of the steam and all of the red lights surrounding it. (Picture 10)

Some of the other highlights of the weekend were these: Going with at least three different groups to take pictures at the I amstersdam signs- see facebook for evidence (Picture 5), seeing the Anne Frank House (Pictures 3 and 4) and the Van Gogh Museum (Picture 6) - which has his paintings like Room at Arles and Sunflowers, enjoying the cuisine, like Dutch Pancakes (Picture 9) (which are like a mix or crepes and pancakes, the one I got was bacon and banana), and Febo (Picture 7) (a serve yourself fast food place where you put a coin in the slot and get anything from mozzarella sticks to hamburgers.)

In other words while it rained, we still all loved Amsterdam.

Hasta ahora

Brent

(I'm going to write the Spanish lesson in the next post)

Madrid - Toledo

Buenos Tardes,

Due to a mixture of cosmic unrest (anger at my mom for forgetting her Fodor's) and natural disasters (hurricane Ida), my mom couldn't come to Madrid this weekend. Don't worry, she rescheduled he flight for December, which means that this weekend was one of my last weekends in Madrid without exams looming or people visiting. I took advantage, don't worry.

This week, for starters, five other Duke kids and I finished an "enologia" class. We were led to believe this meant wine-tasting. Our vision was going to a restaurant with other Spanish students and sitting around a table and being educated on wine (ie: more social aim then academic). This first day we arrived, and were greeted by a sterile classroom with pens and paper blankly staring up at as. No wine in sight. We were a little disappointed when we found out that enologia actually means the art of wine making, not tasting, but the entire class experience was redeemed last Tuesday when we received an official diploma that when had finished a "curso preliminar de cata" (Picture 13, sorry I put them in backward today) in other words, after learning all about different types of wood used in barrels and the "fascinating" different ways in which you can pick grapes, we are now officially ready to take a wine tasting class (= cata). Thanks Torres.

On Thursday, a big chunk of the Duke in Mardid group went to a Flamenco concert. I enjoyed it, as I think everyone else did, but the thing that most stood out in the performance was the amount of sweat that flew from the one of performer's hair when he spun on the stage.

On Friday, we went to Toledo. A day trip about an hour away from Madrid, a really cool old city in Spain that's kind of a mixture of everything. It's been dominated by three different cultures (Jewish, Christian, and Arab), so it's kind of a mix of Andalucia and Segovia. Well known for its swords and marzipan. Pictures 12 -9 all show Toledo.

The weather in Madrid was very angst-y this weekend (Pictures 8 and 7), probably again due to the natural and supernatural phenomena that were going on elsewhere in the world. Nonetheless, I still explored some new places in Madrid. First off was the Museo Arqueologico (Picture 6), which is in a giant building, but is surprisingly small. They have kind of an eclectic mix of everything from mummies to altarpieces to prehistoric animal bones. The two nights of the weekend we explored the Huertas area, a street right next to Sol with a lot of bars and restaurants. This is probably one of the best places to go out in Madrid because it's so close to the center and there are some many options of things to do, including Penthouse, which is a bar on the roof of a five star hotel. While we were about 7 years too young to fit in there, we still had fun seeing it.

Sunday the weather finally cleared (pictures 5 and 4) and to celebrate we went to a folkloric, comic, Arragon-ic, version of Hamlet called "Jamlet (con jota). (Picture 3) This play was ridiculous. All of the characters were caricatures of the people from Hamlet. They wore clown noses and the like, and sang and danced, and while everyone died at the end, somehow they did it in a funny way. While we did not get all of the jokes, it was slapstick enough for us to be very entertained.

Monday after class I had plans to go to the other Museum in Madrid that I haven't completely seen (Museo Thyssen), only to find out that it is always closed on Monday. After coming home defeated I immediately got a call from my friend that a group was going to see the Opera. If you are under 26 and get to the theater and hour and a half before the show starts, the Teatro Real with sell you tickets for 90% of the original price. In other words, we got to see "L'italiana in Algeri" by Gioachino Rossini, for only 13 euros, which is a great price compared to the 150 euro normal entrance fee. (Pictures 2 and 1) .

Paz

Brent

Spanish Lesson

Erupción = sneeze. I like the imagery.

Por ejemplo: (literally = for example). This expression is not used at all in the same context as we use it.

Here are some ejemplos of how I've heard it used at home:

Miriam: Is the sandwich for me, Mom? Madre: Por ejemplo ( = If you'd like)

Madre (when severing food and asking how much we want) = Por ejemplo (= Tell me when)

So I'm not really sure how to define it, but there are a lot of other examples (just can't think of any right now)