day four and much to say

What a wonderful ride we've been having!
We are in our first hostel because we have been riding overnight trains. It is really grose and that is coming from two girls who can stomach a lot. They are fixing the shower now, but I took my first shower in three days in a moldy stall behind an unlocked door with a curtain hanging from two loops (one after I tried to pull it closed) and no hot water. We had a good laugh and now understood why this was the cheapest we could find. The people here are very nice, and as humanity passifies the greatest of agonies, we will be just fine.
I have not been having deep pensive moments because we are moving fast and laughing a lot. Not to mention, I am carying all of my belonging from the past 4 months on my back and behind me. It is histerical to see us trying to maneuver through some narrow bends, but there are generally elevators and storage places.
Today we arrived in Rome and saw the Vatican City along with Treve Fountain. We are going to bed early tonight so we can wake early and see the Coluseum. I am very excited, but do not know if I will sleep well tonight. Luckily, if I do not get to see everything in Rome, I tossed my coin into the fountain ensuring my return! And I do hope to return, this is a very special place, with or without showers.
I think this could be my only internet time, so this may be the last update, so sleep soundly knowing my face still smiles abroad. However, a place to lay my head in comfort without a man from border control waking my sleep at 3 am, is greatly anticipated!

In the constant twilight of Sweden.

Again change stares me in the face as the upcoming adventure of inter railing.  Early tomorrow morning we head from Eskilstuna to Stockholm and it all begins.  I am excited as well as little anxious.  Mrs. Rogers has done two month long inter rail trips and her tales sound wonderful.  It makes me excited to build my own.  There is so much to see in such a short time, yet we will pause for four days in Rome.  

Writing these entries and looking over them, none of it seems totally real.  To say I will be in Denmark tomorrow or that I have just been to the Louvre sounds obsurd, but while it happens it is believeable.  It is difficult to express such strong yet cliche phrases.  

I must prepare myself for my trip by finishing 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown.  Everyone has been recommending it and finally I started reading it to get ready for Rome.  It is indeed, 'a breathless, real time adventure, exciting, fast pace' read.  I have already learned more about church history and the Vatican City than I knew before and will be thrilled to relive the adventure in the city itself.  Lucky me.  So will they find the antimatter?  I will find out soon.  

Now, I bid farewell to Sweden.  Hey do (that means goodbye). 

Greetings yet again, from Sweden.  Although it is Christmas day, the Christmas festivities are through and we are snacking on left overs, playing with new toys, chewing new candy.  Terriffic. 

Presents leaked across all open carpet space and flooded the entire living room as the tree stood  looking smaller than before.  Christmas had brought expected and unexpected surprises to each one of us.  A new furry vest or a fashionable bag.  The Rogers kindly included me and bought me some Swedish trinkets, small enough to fit in my bag home.  It was beyond what I had expected, but the Christmas cheer is indeed quite contagious to whoemever sits by the tree, so the foreigner along with great grandma were included.  

Snow fell through the morning enough to blanket our surroundings.  We children ( I spent a semester convincing myself I am nearly an adult, but on Christmas I opened gits earliest and sat at the kid table) woke as the sun was rising and quietly opened stockings as the parents slept and prepared the porridge.  It was a scene Dickens would have been proud of and lavished with sentimental adjectives.  I am so glad to be here and the Rogers have included me so graciously.  

We watched the Christmas favorite 'Mamma Mia'  at night and it felt right to watch it in Sweden.  They were proud of the Abba hits and told me lots of trivia about Abba and Swedish celebrities.  I was the only one who couldn't sing along.  

It is unusual to be at a different house during Christmas, but it does not feel very strange, because nothing is normal right now.  New things are ocurring all the time and it is a great experience. 

God Jul

Merry Christmas!

The tree is lit and the family is out finishing Christmas shopping as Alex (Victoria's younger brother) has an old SNL show on in the background and I am using their internet.  It is nice and quiet.  We have decorated ginger cookies, tasted Glögg, tasted Jul Must, and are going to begin baking tomorrow.  Not to mention, we watched their family favorite "Jingle all the Way" with Arnold Schwarzenegger last night.  I can't say that I liked it (the juxtaposition of a governor and a father desperately searching for toys in a hyperbolic Christmas slapstick rather confuses my hopes in humanity), but their enthusiasm was nice.  The Rogers have certainly shown me lots of Swedish foods and activities. 

The first day here Victoria and I walked around the lake that their neighborhood is built around.  Things looked just as she had explained them and shown me pictures of in high school.  I am not sure what to compare the terrain to.  There are mostly birch trees with lots of little birds.  The sun is not out very long here, it rises around 8:30 and starts to set at 3!  It has made the days feel very short, and right now at 5 it is pitch black.  The neighborhoods are very modest, small homes that are close together and well kept.  Because it is Christmas time, the windows are lined with candleholders that look like manorahs but are typical Swedish decorations.  There is a cozy feel to the neighborhood and the town too.  Today, Victoria took me around the town.  Just about everything is within a long walk or biking distance, so we circled the town quickly.  It is hard to describe without using the adjective Scandenavian.  My hair has been growing recklessly, so I ventured to get a hair cut when Victoria had to go to work.  Almost every Swede speaks English fluently so it is not hard, just a little embarassing to break the flow of Swedish converstaion with a hesitant, 'Hello, I do not speak Swedish'.  It worked out well and now I feel a bit more presentable.  

Then, I took the bus home which was perhaps my greatest accomplishment of the day.   Something about navigating a foreign city fills me with a sense of invincibility.  There was a group of little girls in front of me, and I figured if they can do it, I certainly can.   It seems to be an expected quality to understand foreign transit, so no one is as impressed as I am.  Therefore, I am bragging to my fellow unsavy public transit riding American friends.  I hope that is not insulting.  

I am not sure what we are doing tonight, maybe another Christmas movie, but the 24th is when all of the festivities happen.  Christmas day, is a time for sleeping in and going to the movies while Christmas eve is a full day of activities.  From morning to night, they say.  We are going to have quite the feast.  

I have finished yet another book that was supposed to keep me until the end of the trip, and the English section of the book store had mostly Nora Roberts and crime thrillers, so I picked up To Kill a Mocking Bird from Victoria's shelf.  I think I'll give it a second read tonight.  Victoria and I are trying to store up on rest before we depart for a wide eyed 9 days!

my bags are packed, i´m ready to go

On some hard days on this trip all I could wish for was my own bed in an English speaking town, but now I am feeling sentimentally attached to my neighborhood here in Madrid. I have packed my bags and went to the computer lab one last time to check up on things before I head to Sweden and now I am feeling sad! I do want to leave and continue on with life, but it is hard to conclude such an experience.
So here I am ready to go, filled with these new lessons and experiences, but for some reason I feel like I need to sit and cry for a while. It is a sad sight to see my closet empty and the bright blue room just as I entered it. I have come and gone as many other students. Hopefully I will have myself together by the time I get to Sweden.
Carmen bough some Sidra for dinner tonight so we can have a toast. That should be lovely. So farewell Madrid, it has been a great time.

In two days, it will all change again.

Just as expected, the end is in sight. Even, as I was fully engaged in each moment I have still been surprised by the work of time. I have, as is my favorite hobby, been reflecting about this trip and feel like I am far different from the same girl who nervously got on her first international flight three and a half months ago. It is hard to sum up change while it is still occurring, so perhaps I will spend the rest of my life chasing after that ability. I know that my grammar and vocabulary skills have improved very little (my pre evaluation and post were only a few marks different) but that was hardly the entire purpose of the trip.

I was reminded that grammar was not the entire purpose of the trip the other day in class. My grammar professor had mentioned to us that there had been confusion with the administration and he was not going to get paid for teaching our class. Nonetheless, he stuck out the whole semester coming early in the morning three times a week to correct our ‘el’s’ and ‘la’s’. We organized to bring in gifts to show our appreciation, because our grammatically incorrect words were certainly not going to be enough- it could have even been insulting. So as we sat to take the exam, we gave him the gift basket filled with sweets from our respective countries. His face flushed and tears filled his normally sarcastic eyes and he kept saying, muchas gracias de mi corazon. He opened some of the cookies and snacks to share as we took the exam, and I think I did terribly on the test because I was so distracted and excited. But perhaps it is better to remember such a circumstance than whether Juan was expressing confusion or anger to Maria.

I still have to study tonight for one last exam. Four are finished with one more tomorrow afternoon. Never have I crammed in the fashion I did these past few days. I have received back very good grades so far, but the style of studying was out of character for me. Attention towards 16^th century Spanish literature fades quickly at the lure of almost anything else. It seems that my language skills are the least improved while I have learned so much in my other classes. An interesting circumstance- to be able to pass Spanish philosophy and art history but struggle in grammar. I know the terms for flying buttresses and stoicism but forget when to use subjunctive.

I have been exchanging numbers and addresses with my new friends and classmates as they begin to dwindle down to just a handful. Soon I will fit right back into the places that were waiting for me, but it will not be the same. That is okay, maybe even better. I look forward to a new challenge of re-assimilating. In the meantime, I have a short adventure to embark upon. I have heard that my stocking in Sweden is already hung along side the Rodgers’ normal five. Never could I have imagined the things I am doing these days and the ones to come. I am very appreciative and am doing the best of my ability to appropriately embrace it all. Though I am small, my ability to embrace is increasing along with my new and rich experiences.

Tomorrow to celebrate, my classmates and I are going to have one last “Madrid night”, rolling in around 6 or 7 as custom. I may have to get ready by going to bed early tonight, I don’t know how the madrileños manage to make that a normal schedule. Maybe I will learn the secret when I master grammar. Además, probaré.

Starting at the top....

The first two photos are from the gardens. They were a lovely mix of Arab architecture and flowers which I´m sure looked nice in the spring. They were not in bloom when I was there, but there was plenty of color from the oranges.

The next two are photos from atop the Giralda. It is a tower which was used for the Muslim people to pray in five times a day. It is very tall and consits of a ramp rather than stairs. That is because the people would use horses to climb the tower, and aparently that is much easier to do via ramp than stairs. We could see the city clear through the horizons. It was an experience different from the Eifel Tower, for there appeared more clutter from the heights of the Giralda.

I ate my sandwich by the river in the next photo. The sun was warm there and I liked the colorful sight.

The following two photos are from the streets. The street sign says Vida which means Life. The second photo is a perfect example of the narrow winding streets cluttered with apartments. Philly row homes seem spacious in comparison.

The final two photos were taken by the Alcazar. It was a Palace built with many influences and a mixture of cultures. Very beautiful indeed, not to mention the addition of classical guitar serenading the walking tour.

Sevilla

This weekend I am sending my friends all around the world. One to Prague, one to Milan, one to Paris, one to Dublin, one to Granada, and one to Berlin. I have waved farewell and will keep an eye on Madrid for them in their absences. This is quite an unusual time of life. I have planned for myself, endless exhibitions and activities around Madrid for I have only two weekends left. Leaving Madrid doesn´t worry me for I feel ready to work hard in school again and see my friends and family. I am sure I will be out of shape for the busy north east. No siestas or coffee breaks in between classes. My host mother always encourages me to take a nap. I am forming the habits of a 65 year old woman at the age of 20. Yes, I think I will be out of shape for the north east.

Last weekend I took a trip to Sevilla. I was glad it was my last trip with API because travelling with 30+ young, foreigners is not fun. But, Sevilla was beautiful. It is in southern Spain and therefore has a heavy Arab influence in the architecture and culture. Despite the cold weather, the terrain looked tropical and exotic. Orange trees lined the narrow streets packed with houses and shops. Oranges fell like autumn leaves on to the street, into the gutters, onto cafe table tops- it was the most distinct part of the scenery. Like the fear of birds flying overhead, I was sure that an orange would fall on my head at some point, but it never did. I ate two but they were as sour as lemons, unfortunate because my first thought when I saw them was that I wouldn’t have to pay for meals during the visit.

One of the best meals I had was at a tappas bar. Some say that tappa´s originated in Sevilla, but others say they did not, so it depends where you ask. However, we ate dinner one night at the oldest tappas bar in Spain. It was opened in the 1670’s and the ambiance was very fun. The tables were large barrels turned upright with boards across the top. They looked almost like a giant spools of thread. The counter tops were used to keep the bill tabs with chalk and legs of cured ham were (as usual) dangling from every free space on the ceiling. At first, the waiter was frustrated with our indecisiveness and poor Spanish because Spaniards seemingly know what they want before they walk in the door and ordering is a fast process. Soon though he warmed up and suggested his favorite drinks and tappas. Espinaca y garbanzas was my favorite which is a stewed mix of spinach and chick peas eaten with bread or crackers.

The next day we went on a walking tour for Sevilla is not very large and saw The Alcazar, The Cathedral, which is the third largest Gothic cathedral in the world, and the Giralda. The tour felt like a whirlwind of centuries and styles. We walked through five centuries, three religions, and three regional influences. It is hard to process so much so quickly, but it was beautiful. Again, this was prime practice for my art history class. I really enjoyed seeing the reality of what I had learned in class. The trip was excellent and I hold many precious memories from it. I will post more photos when I have a better internet connection. The computer uploads pictures very slowly and I have run out of time.

As usual, I told Carmen all that I saw and did with an excitement that disregards verb tenses and articles. When I told Carmen how much I liked espinaca y garbanzas, she cooked it for dinner the next day! She is a great cook and I have been eating well, which I can’t say for all my friends staying with host families. She and I had coffee this morning chatting about this and that. She told me the other day that I was the tidiest student she has ever had and that she has not met any Americans like me. What a nice compliment, especially because she has been hosting students for over ten years. She still gets frustrated at me when I forget to lock the door or shut off the lights, but we are getting along well, perhaps because our habits are melding.

I am off to the Archeological Museum. I’ve heard it has artifacts that will help me study for my history exam which is one week away. I am shocked that it is already time for finals, but I feel like I have learned a lot. However, I am in a full year program for only one semester, so I will know everything about Spain up until the Catholic Kings. Spain does not stop there, but I do. I find that very funny.