Madrid - Halloween

Happy Halloween everybody,

Brief update from here. This was my last weekend in a row in Madrid. I'm off next weekend to Geneva to visit Sarah Robbins.

The weather is still amazing here. It's supposed to get cold and rainy tomorrow so we had to take advantage of it while we could this weekend. On Friday Nuria and Eva (the coordinators of Duke in Madrid) took a small group of us on a walking tour around central Madrid. We went around basically all morning eating, stopping in bakeries and restaurants that had been founded around the turn of the century, and also some other more unique places (i.e. A button shop and a store where they sell tradition Spanish capes to people like King Juan Carlos, Hillary Clinton, Michael Jackson) (see picture 2). Nuria and Eva also also pointed out some of the cooler tapas bars as we walked around La Latina, one of which you could have drinks on the roof. We returned there that night of course. (Picture 3) The next day (Halloween) we had a picnic in the Retiro next the statue of Felipe IV (Picutre 4). After both of these mornings of eating a returned home to a Spanish lunch (which is two courses and dessert) ... I'm not really sure how I'm losing weight over here.

Halloween in Spain is very interesting. Everyone older than our generation (our teachers, our host madres, etc.) have said that it's not really celebrated that much here. The more traditional holiday is Dia de los Muertos, the next day. Nonetheless it seems like half the people have given in and started to celebrate this non-european tradition. There were tons of people out on the streets all night and plenty in costume. The difference is there is no ultimate goal of getting candy. It's like the costume is just the official attire of the night, they picked it instead of something else in there closest to where. The other difference is most people try to stick with the scary grotesque theme of Halloween. Tons of witches and vampires, but also a lot of bloody patients and doctors, battered Disney Princesses, and costumes like that. (Pictures 5 and 6)

Two other happenings in Madrid this past week:

1. I've been trying to volunteer at a hospital or something along those lines. After three weeks of waiting for contact, I finally emailed the organization and got in touch with the man who coordinates this program. Our conversation was kind or strained over the phone, where the language barrier is always increased no matter how good you Spanish is, so he told me to come in for a meeting the next night. The meeting turned out to be a logistical meeting of people who were already volunteers. You might have heard of Spanish students speaking during class, well the same happens with older people. When the director said something they didn't like they would start whispering in a not to conspicuous fashion, and whenever he opened the floor for comments there was a least fifteen minutes of debate. Very interesting to observe (even though I was completely out of place).

2. My host family and I played a Cranium - type board game last night called "Party&Co." (party-y-co) We paired up in teams (I was with Juan) and while I had some noticeable flaws in the game (i.e. drawing skills compared to Juanjo the architect, and the entire category called "Marcas" where both partner's had to think of the same brand name of some general category (continental divide)) we still managed to win.

Brent

Spanish Lesson:

Desahogarse / desfogarse (lit. un-choke yourself / de-flame yourself): to vent etc. (as in "I'm really really angry, will you just listen to me vent for a couple minutes).

I'm mostly putting this up because I think that's how it would translate into English, but for some reason the expression doesn't sound right. Can anyone either back me up or think of a better word to use?

Hala: wow.

This is the best translation I can come up with. I've heard this word all over the place, and it's definitely an interjection. I think it expresses wonder and sometimes sarcasm.