Going to Switzerland...BRB.

I realize it has been far too long without a blog entry.  To my one million plus followers, I apologize; life has been very busy.  If you’ve sent me fan mail, please know that I have received it and am in the process of responding to everyone.  When you get such a response as I have from a blog, it is hard to keep up.  Okay, just kidding.  Coming back to the real world, here is what has really been up…

Studying.  Studying, studying, studying.  Specifically studying “Violence in Spain” and “Art, Drama, and Poetry throughout Spain’s history.”  I came into this program thinking it would be a 6-week trip to Madrid that would be relaxing and fun.  It has definitely been fun, but relaxing is definitely not the word I would use.  I guess I forgot that we are supposed to get credits for Duke while we are here.  Whoops.  My bad.

Apart from studying, I’ve been up to the typical Madrid things… Going to the Copa del Rey Final, Going out with my host family til 2 in the morning, watching my roommate get beaten up by our host mom, being miserably sick, and getting stuck in elevators.  You know… the usual.

Where to start?  I guess I will start with the sickness.  I didn’t really sleep the first week I was here, and that turned into me getting a cold, then a fever of 102.5, and a very upset stomach.  I think if you had to make a list of the top 10 worst things in the world, being sick away from home would definitely have an argument to be up there.   But I’ll do you one better… having witchcraft medicinal practices applied to you to make you feel better.  My regiment consisted of drinking cups and cups of hot milk with honey, being forced to sleep under blanket after blanket with no fan or open window after I complained that I couldn’t sleep because I was too hot (seriously?), and then being woken up at 7 am to have my temperature taken.  Somehow I got better.  We can thank the Lord.

Anyways, two of my favorite stories as of late have involved sports.  I went to the Copa del Rey Final (Attention Americans: think Football National Championship).  Never before have I seen such a sports spectacle.  From a 20 minute walk through throngs of people to the stadium from the nearest metro stop, to bon fires, to drunken cheers, and to rivalry and newly formed friendships, soccer and nothing else was king that night.  People wearing jerseys in the metros, in the streets, in the bathrooms, in restaurants, in parks.  You couldn’t get anywhere and not be engulfed in cheers and celebrations.  Sadly, I must say it put the DUKE, unc rivalry to shame.  And this wasn’t even Barca, Real Madrid.  My other sports story happened on the way to a restaurant one night.  We were riding in a cab listening to a basketball game in super-fast Spanish on the Radio, and this is what I heard (keep in mind I can comprehend Spanish decently at this point) “jflasfsjlfsfj ldsfjslf lsf ll jf!!!!!!  KYLE SINGLER ljslfjsd; lsjfls !!!! lsdjkf SINGLER!!!”  Moral of the story: we were listening to Kyle Singler play basketball for Real Madrid.  That was a cool feeling, and it made me just slightly less homesick.  Oh ya, the cab ride back played Cher ;) right up my alley.

Sorry this is so short and has no pictures.  I’m leaving for Switzerland in less than 6 hours!  Check Facebook if you’d like to see pics.  I’ll try and upload some on my next post.  Hope y’all are doing well.  I miss everyone very much.  Seriously.  I’d love to hear from you, skype, or whatever.

Some closing thoughts…

Conversation of the week (English translation)…
Host mom’s daughter: “I looked so pretty in my wedding dress!”

My roommate: “That’s really weird.”

***Awkward silence as I ask him if he meant what he said***

Host mom’s daughter: “Pedro called me ugly!  Pedro called me ugly!”

***Pedro frantically tries to correct his mistake***

***Too late!  Chelo is attacking him with a cooking book.***

Favorite Spanish food…
Gazpacho (cold, spicy-ish tomato soup… typical summer dish)

Paella (even Americans know this one)

Bible Passage that I’ve been thinking about…

Nehemiah 1:5-6 “O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel…”

*I just thought this was a cool attitude towards prayer.  If you haven’t read Nehemiah, I’d encourage you to.  It’s pretty short.  And the guy means business.

Nehemiah 13:21 “If you do this again, I will lay hands on you.”  Hahaha.  Great humor God.

Besos y Abrazos,

Chema

Off on the right foot

¿Qué tal?  The Spanish equivalent of what’s up.  And no, you can’t just answer with “nada” as I have mistakenly learned very quickly.

I’ll tell you what’s up.  Before I came to Spain I had been wondering what a typical day would look like.  And one would think that after being here for más o menos a week I would have a pretty good answer to that question.  However, as I have come to find out, it seems that there is no typical day in Spain at all.  As I learned in Sweden last summer, Europeans seem to “go with the flow” and just take things as they come without any major schedules.  Whether my host mom is staying out until 6 in the morning at a surprise birthday party, or we are having a 3-hour dinner, it seems that Madrileños don’t think that nighttime is for sleeping in the least bit.  Where the idea of a siesta after lunch around 3 or 4 used to sound like an excuse for laziness, I know see it as absolutely necessary, and I must say that I kind of like it ;).

But what have I really been up to?  Let’s see… We had our program orientation on Thursday, and there are around 40 of us “Dukies” (the people here love to use that word for some reason) here to study in Madrid for the next 5-6 weeks.  After the orientation, my hermano Pedro/Tyler and I went to a store called Corte Inglés (like a mini-mall in itself) to purchase European phones.  I don’t know if the Spaniards have a business secret or some plan that Americans have never heard of it, but purchasing a phone was one of the most difficult things I have done thus far.  There were four phone carriers at the store, and three of the vendors more or less told us not to buy from them or told us to look elsewhere because they didn’t want to deal with us (our Spanish is not that bad; I promise), so good luck making money with that business strategy… We finally settled on the company Movistar, and I am now the owner of a phone that does fewer things than the phone I had in 9^th grade.  I guess we can call it a “Dumb Phone.”  Later that night my hermano Pedro/Tyler and I went to explore downtown Madrid (we live in a peaceful, quieter barrio that is home to most of the schools in Madrid).  After taking the advice of our host mom and her sister, we found a bar off the beaten path and ate bocadillos de calamares (calamari sandwiches), and before you say that is disgusting, I’d caution you to try one and then complain. 

I spent the next two days on a trip to Segovia and Salamanca.  Segovia is the typical, quaint European town with a rolling countryside, a huge church, an impressive castle, and its own trademark- an aqueduct built by the Romans in the first century AD.  The cool thing about the aqueduct is that the stones are not held together by cement or mortar or anything at all; instead, they are held together only by the pressure of the other stones on top of and next to them.  Check the picture below.  ATTENTION PRATT STARS: You guys are always saying that you “work harder” and “have tougher classes” than Trinity kids… Figure out how to build an aqueduct that is 17 km long from the mountains, over many hills, with winding turns, that varies in height constantly, and is over 28 m tall at its peak to the center of a city using only technology from the first century, and then I might believe you.  Anyways, after a brief stay in Segovia, we took a bus trip to Salamanca, during which pretty much the entire bus took a siesta… It was glorious.  When we arrived, we explored the town for a bit (much larger than Segovia) and then left for dinner at a Spanish restaurant at 8:45.  No joke we did not leave the restaurant until midnight.  Dining in Spain is such a big deal.  The next day we explored Salamanca’s two cathedrals and the Roman bridge.  Salamanca was a gorgeous town with many attractions, but I must put in a disclaimer:  DO NOT EVER EAT AT A RESTAURANT CALLED “CUATRO GATOS.”  My friend Max ordered spaghetti for lunch.  Let’s think… spaghetti is a pretty simple dish… it’s not too difficult to make and is pretty difficult to mess up… so a pretty safe decision, right?  Wrong.  Max got spaghetti all right, but what they didn’t tell him was that their spaghetti had the flavor and pungent aroma of cigarettes.  Need I say more?  Don’t eat there.  Just don’t do it.  After lunch we left Salamanca and returned to Madrid where I watched the Champions League Final.  Soap box again… BOO CHELSEA BOO DROGBA BOO JOHN TERRY BOO FERNANDO TORRES… need I say more?  Then, I spent the next day at el Palacio Real, which is the palace for the Spanish monarchy, with some friends.  It was gorgeous as I am sure all the palaces in Europe are, and I took a couple sneaky photos (cameras weren’t allowed), so take that Madrid (you can see the product of my toil below).  Afterwards, I had my first chocolate con churros (don’t say cha-ca-let.  Say cho-co-latte), and it was incredible.  Later I went for a run throughout Madrid and found an abandoned track covered in graffiti that made for a good break from running the hills of Madrid.

That brings us up to speed to today.  We had our first day of class, and I think my conversation with Pablo (my host mom’s daughter’s fiancé) sums it up pretty well.  English translation: “How was your first day of class.”  Response: “It was class.”  Nothing special but going over the syllabus, etc.  After buying our books, we took a stroll through el Retiro (like Central Park) and then we came back to our local Metro stop (Guzmán el Bueno), and I went to a small park filled with dogs to watch the sun set and start some homework (which I should be doing now).

Moral of the story: Life in Madrid is good (well except when you have to hop the apartment fence at 2 am because your key is broken or you are followed for five minutes off the metro being asked to buy weed from someone who immediately knew you were an American…hope you didn’t read that, mom and dad).  The people here are great, and my Spanish is improving at a rate that just doesn’t happen in the classroom.  My host family is beyond amazing, and it was quite the sight to see my real family and host family interacting on Skype last night.  I recently learned that mi madre, Chelo, owned two restaurants for 15 years and has so many cooking awards that she uses them as door stops… que suerte tengo! 

I’m off to do some reading before bed, and then I will go to my second class tomorrow and see how that goes.  I miss all of y’all so much, so keep in touch and just let me know if you want to Skype or anything (dare I say google+??).

Some things I forgot and don’t want to go back and find where they go…

Favorite meal so far: Arroz milanesa

Favorite local fare: Cochinillo (warning: vegetarians don’t look this one up)

Also, we tried to get tickets for the Copa del Rey Final… they are 600 Euros for the cheapest… so much for that.  I will be watching from the city.

Like I said, I miss you guys and hope to hear from you soon!  I know this is probably too long, and you probably didn’t make it thus far, so I’ll be shorter next week!  Check the photos below.

-Cam

My Favorite Bible Verse This Week:

Psalm 9:10

“Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.”  Simple but powerful.

Arriving

Today has been an interesting day to say the least.  Disclaimer: I have been awake for going on 30 hours, so I apologize if this post doesn’t make too much sense.  It just took me about 15 minutes to even figure out how long I have been awake, which is a great testament to how exhausted I feel physically.  I’m just trying to push through til I can sleep tonight and get adjusted to Madrid time, but apparently in Madrid dinner doesn’t happen til 10 or 10:30, which means I will be pushing 40 hours of being awake…

Where to begin?  On the flight over I met two guys from the University of Iowa who were going on a similar trip to what I’m doing after Madrid, so it was nice to chat things over with them for a bit.  However, I had the misfortune of sitting next to an LSU fan for the duration of the 8 hour and 45 minute flight, but that ended up working out alright haha.  Something that didn’t end up working out alright… the whole taxi thing.  I’ve never had to actually “get” a taxi before, so the idea of waving one down in a foreign language was a daunting task.  Little did I know, that should have been the least of my worries.  I can now speak from experience that one of the most frightening things in the world is to be in a foreign country with no form of communication and nothing but an address where you are staying.  It is especially frightening when you ask the cab driver if he knows the address, and he responds, “No… Is that even in Madrid?”  I felt like I was on an episode of the Amazing Race gone wrong.  Then, my cab driver screamed into a walkie-talkie for half of the ride, laid on his horn for the other half, was going 130 km/hr in a 100 km/hr zone, got in a near accident with a larger tanker truck that had a picture of a dead fish and a dead tree on the side of it (who knows what it was carrying), and dropped me off on the street but told me he didn’t know where the actual address was.  Needless to say, I was slightly freaking out.

Things weren’t much easier as I tried to get into the apartment building, but when I finally was able to, it was wonderful to finally meet my host mom, Chelo, and her sister, Carmen.  They are awesome.  Quickly I acquired the nickname “Chema” (don’t ask me how; I have no earthly idea), and I was relieved to find out that they actually knew my name but just like Chema better.  I went grocery shopping with them for a bit, explored the city, met my roommate, and then had lunch… at 2:30… this meal timing thing is gonna kill me.  One of the first things Chelo and I talked about was how I needed to find a good Madrileña girlfriend that didn’t speak English… I’ll post updates on how that goes haha.  But for now, I’m off to take some fotos of Madrid so that I don’t fall asleep.  Only 3.5 hours til the latest dinner of my life…

Hasta luego!

Last Minute!

In typical Cameron fashion, I just created a blog for my travels to Spain/Europe this summer.  It's 12:47.  I leave in 13 minutes... I'm not done packing.  More will come soon with maybe an explanation of what I'm doing this summer, but this will have to suffice for now.

¡A España!