Hello friends! Sorry for the long delay. I've been busy. Teaching is getting in the way of my vacation! This will be a long blog, with a week's worth of stories for you. I'm writing this while watching the first USA-Czech Republic soccer game - we are down 0-2. As you may well imagine, Spain is soccer crazy right now, and the team hasn't even played a game yet.
Last Tuesday Gloria and I took our two classes to a national television production company, Grupo Arbol. It also happens to be the channel with World Cup broadcast rights in Spain. It was a real treat to get access to one of the largest media companies in Spain. As it turns out, the owner is a Suffolk grad! But the best part of the trip was seeing Angel get star-struck during a rehearsal for one of the top-rated sit-coms, Aida, which looks a lot like Roseanne. Angel is a big fan of the show and lead star. We, of course, had no idea who this person was and most of us couldn't understand the dialogue. We also watched a rehearsal for a Spanish version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which was a UK show before the Drew Carey US version. Pictures below:
Funny story of the week: This may defy blogging, but I have to try. We have a washer in our apartment, thankfully, but no dryer. Spaniards are very careful about energy conservation it would seem - no big SUVs here! As such, you hang your clothes out to dry. Every city apartment has a laundry line outside of a window. Ours is on the fourth floor, over the roof of an adjacent building. Perhaps you see where this is going...One of us (not me! Thanks for the confidence :-) decided to dry a pair of shoes on the line. Of course one of the shoes dropped onto the roof. The hilarious part is (and maybe you had to be there) was the 40+ minutes it took to explain what happened and recover the shoe. After looking up the Spanish words for shoe, drop, roof, next door, etc...we spoke to well over a dozen people in the neighborhood. Most thought we wanted to buy shoes. Some thought we need a laundry mat. Finally, a kind, English-speaking woman understood our quest and translated, between laughter, to a building supervisor what we required. He had to get a different super with keys to the roof. Super #2 went to the roof, came back and said he saw no T-shirt! Ugh. No no, zapato (shoe). Ah yes, there was a shoe! Hallelujah.
World Cup update: 0-3. OUCH!
This past weekend Suffolk took a weekend trip to Valencia, the third largest city in Spain on the Mediterranean Sea. The weather wasn't great, overcast and light rain, which is the first rain I've seen since arriving in Spain (sorry Boston). We had to be on the bus by 7:30am, which was hard enough for those of us who actually sleep at night. Our students, still thrilled with the legal drinking age of 18, decided why go to bed when they get home from the bars at 5am anyway? At least the 4 hour ride was very quiet. That's far more than I can say for where we slept that night, a hostel. As many of you know, I trekked across Europe two years ago with the lovely Tracy O. and we stayed in hostels at least 6 days a night of the 6 week trip. I, at age 33, was a real trooper! Well, something has happened since then. I turned 35? I cherish sleep all the more? I finally realized I've worked really hard to afford myself the "finer" things in life, like a bed with real sheets and a lock on the door? My first night was absolutely awful. I may have slept about one hour despite ear plugs and an eye mask. The next morning, the day of our beach trip, my head had that fuzzy reception feeling, my body was stiff and it was raining.
Valencia is an odd city. It doesn't quite know if it is Spanish or Italian. It is clearly both, with a mishmash of gothic, baroque, Arabic and Roman styles often in the same building! The most surprising, and disappointing aspect of Valencia is the coast. I expected the shoreline to be either built-up like most boardwalk areas on the Mediterranean or preserved. Instead, it looks abandoned. The Americas Cup is here in 2007, so there was some obvious construction, but not much considering. As a result, the beach wasn't a fun place to be on an overcast day. Not much to do. I had to leave and find a bed!
But this story does have a brighter cloud ahead. Once I was moved along with the rest of the Suffolk Madrid staff to a hotel that afternoon (ah, the privileges of a PhD), I took a long nap, hot shower, watched some English-language news (I was so happy to hear Christiane Amanpour on CNN) and found a fabulous restaurant for paella! I have never eaten so much saffron in one sitting. Mmm, good! On my way to the restaurant, I stumbled upon an outdoor art exhibit by Igor Mitoraj. It consisted of 22 large bronze sculptures placed between the north and south bound lanes on The Gran Via Marques del Turia, a major road in the city that looks like Commonwealth Ave. with grass and trees down the middle.
Sunday was the best day of the trip. We went to the oceanographic park, which makes the New England Aquarium look like a mud puddle. The park has 10 buildings, each with a different climate. I took so many pictures of fish! Don't worry, I spare you most. Just a few really special ones below.
The oceanographic park is part of a futuristic development designed by Santiago Calatrava, built in a river bed. For 10 months a year, Valencia's Turia river is completely dry. In September-October it rains so much, the river floods. Valencia has re-routed the water under the existing river bed, out to sea, and built Calatrava's Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences). These building are really neat!
I forgot to mention: Friday afternoon we visited a large newspaper chain in Spain, Levante. It wasn't all that thrilling, but they did take a picture of us and apparently we will be in the newspaper Monday. Oh boy! That's all for now. I give a midterm exam on Wednesday, which means my time in Madrid is nearly half over. Wow! Today I booked a weekend trip solo (Nina needs some alone time!) to Granada! Can't wait.
posted by ninabeth @ 12:46 PM
0 comments
