problems with the spanish language:

no direct translation of the word "creeper"

no direct translation of the word "awkward"

seeing as i tend to have quite a few awkward situations with creepers, this has become an issue haha

another great day in spain.

chelsea doing a radio news broadcast in spanish, oral presentations in front of spaniards, train tickets to galicia, getting around in spanish, tevia and chelsea hitting up the irish bars for soccer games, mojitos gratis, international bocadillos, vueltas, vecinos, siestas, malasaña, madrid. :)

maybe ill stay here forever?

hola hola holaaaaaaaaa!!!!

madrid is wonderful. the weather is getting better. this weekend was calm since i'm getting sick (but now getting better thanks to medicine). thursday night chrissie and i had a little going out adventure that led to long convos with spaniards and at a club where literally like women dressed in flamenco dresses poor free wine down your throat- insane. friday was lovely because chrissie and i met up with Borja(!) and he took us around allllll dayyy through madrid showing us some of his favorite places and speaking in spanish all day and just enjoying life. saturday night was awesome, we spent 3 hours at one of my favorite bars in madrid called Palentino talking to these spanish guys who reminded me of Bourtzi boys :) sooooo nice and awesome, saturday was rainy but I went to a cooking class with my program and learned how to make tapas and saturday night i went out "en plan tranqui" as the spaniards would say just to a few malasaña bars. sunday i went to the RASTROOOO which is this AMAZING flee market in La Latina and ended up running into Camila and her brother Jeff who is visiting in the metro! We walked around la latina a bit cause its hoppin on sundays and then i came home and crashed cause i felt kind of sickkk.

butttttt allll is goooooood!!!! Tevia and I just booked our flights for PORTUGALLLL!! We will be there for like 10 days- to Lagos (a little beautiful surfer town on the south coast), to Madeira Island (basically heaven on earth- google it, its off the coast of Africa), and Lisbon (the capital). It will be amazing. Also, I just bought a flight to BARCELONAAAA- to visit some of my friends who are studying abroad there for March!!!! canttt waitttttttt :))))))

pues nada, chao!!!!

words can't even explain the amount of adventures/ interesting random people i meet here in spain hahahaha

i love madrid, i love malasaña, i love the fact that yesterday i spoke spanish almost the entire day and night, i love the fact that i am actually living here and not just visiting.. yay yay yay

longer blog tomorrow probably.. i need to go to bed!

chao tios :)

PS. new blog layout is a success!! the picture at the top is me in the plaza right next to my apartment, they just re-did the graffiti last weekend!!

It's Thursdayyy!!! Another week of school over and the weekend is hereeeee!!!

SCHOOL IN SPAIN:

My two direct enrollment classes are Radio Laboratory and Audiovisual Narration. Each class has both a lecture with about 75 kids and a practical class where we split up into smaller groups of about 20. Spaniards apparently don't find much use out of the lectures because I would say about 50 % or less of the kids show up and when they skip class no one seems to think its a big deal. I am pretty sure the only people that actually care about school are the americans who come here to study. Even the Erasmus students (study abroad program for Europeans) don't seem to care- we met some girls the other weekend from France and Italy that just skipped the whole past week of classes.. and yea no problem hahahaha. NO PASA NADAAA here is Spain hahaha. My radio class is my favorite!!! We are in small groups for the entire semester and with them we do all our recordings and projects. I am with Victor from the Canary Islands, Alessandro from Peru, 2 silly Spanish girls named Maria and Sarah, another quiet Spanish kid I am not sure his name, and a few other girls that show up every now and then. I love them allll!!!! They all just think its kind of funny that I don't speak perfect spanish and really just do all the work for me because honestly there is no use for me trying to get in there. On Wednesday we recorded a radio show type thing of what it would sound like if you were "hiding from your grandmother".. yea i don't know hahaha. We are in this big sound booth with microphones and all the buttons and the "on the air" light and computers and gadgets and a big sound board and its soooooo cooooooooool. The funny thing is that I am learning vocabulary that I don't even know in English about different parts of the machine. Luckily I didn't have to say anything on the recording (or grabación if you will), but we might have to do it again next week and I will have a script to act out in spanish hahahaha, so random. Right after Radio Lab we go to the lecture for Audiovisual Narration. Since everyone is all in the same classes I just hang out with those same kids all day. There is also a boy named Pablo who is in that class as well who is in our group. During lecture I sat with Sarah and Maria and we ended up talking the entire time in the back row and giggling and trying to figure out what in the world the lecture was about this time. My professor speaks really intensely and I am never sure exactly what he is going on about. And you know he speaks in spanish so that doesn't help the situation either. After lecture we go to the laboratory in Audiovisual Narration where we break up into groups again and do random things. This week class was cancelled though so I went and got lunch with Maria and Sarah!!!!!!! GOAL COMPLETE- eat with spaniards not americanssssssssssssssss :) SUCCESSSSSS!!! We exchanged numbers and hopefully I will hang out with them sometime!! This weekend the two of them and their other two friends are going to Paris for the weekend.... rough life these Europeans have.

Coloquial and regular spanish classes are great as always- learning how to speak correctly for once in my life...

interesting thing i have noticed about spanish- it seems to have much less words than english. like instead of labeling a new thing instantly they will just kind of describe it.. i will think of an example for the next blog haha

okay weekend is hereee!! tomorrow I am meeting Borja for coffee and saturday I am taking a cooking class to learn how to make Tapas!!! WAHOOOOOO

planning for spring break is also continuing! we are thinking about going to Lisbon, Lagos, and Madeira Island. Google those place- they all look like heavenn!!!!

Spain Spain Spain... lets seee hereeee....

this week was another lovely one here in Europe :)

Tuesday I met up with a kid that I met at a Tapas Bar to have coffee, speak in Spanish, and for me to learn a little bit about his country. His name is Borja and he is really intent on teaching me about Spain and sends me suggestions of things I should do and see and eat hahaha. He is super nice and I will probably see him again this week!!!

Wednesday our program organized this thing called “Speed Mixing” kind of like speed dating but like friend style where we got to go and talk to spaniards and like essentially make friends with kids here at Carlos Tercero. The whole event turned out to not be as awkward as originally assumed and I met some nice people and got to practice my spanish- I am probably meeting up with one of the kids on Wednesday to go for drinks. success!

Friday I woke up to some sad news. Mauricio, my friend from mexico who I have been spending the last few weeks with, called me to tell me that his dad had died (not sure how) and that he was returning to Mexico and wouldn’t come back and he wanted to say goodbye. It was really, really upsetting to hear him so sad and to know he had to deal with something so tragic. Also the fact that he thought to call me and let me know really struct me. So, him and Yayo flew back to Mexico this past weekend and I haven’t heard from them yet. Also, Cristian, my friend from Italy who is also very close to Mauricio had to return to Italy this weekend because he ran out of money. He won’t be back for another month. And to top it all off, Bruno, the crazy backpacker from Chile left last week for London and won’t be back. Uggggg so sad. My little group of friends from the past month has all left and I am back at square one again. But like my mom said people come and go in life and I just have to remember that it was great to have them be my friends when they were. And one day I’ll see them all again!! Understandably, I wasn’t in the best of spirits after that so Friday I just went for a run in Retiro and slept :)

Saturday was much better!!! Tevia and I got up and had ourselves a little adventure to SEGOVIAAAAAA!!! Which is like this beautiful little mountain castle ish town city about 2 hours away by bus from Madrid. It was soooooooo nice to see mountains again let me tell you!!!! Ahhhh, and the place was beautifullll. I think better than Toledo. We saw a Roman aqueduct, an amazing cathedral, and a little castle at the end of the city that apparently Walt Disney used as inspiration for all of his castles. We spend 5 euros to go up into the castle and walked up like a million stairs to the top of the tower to see this beautiful view of Segovia with the mountains in the background. Me mola muchooo!! Then we headed off to get some crepes, but before we could get very far an old spanish man sitting on a bench stopped us and started talking to us in Spanish... for the next hour. Turns out he sits on this bench everyday and stops all the foreign people that look nice and tries to learn about their culture? Awesome? So we chatted with him about various things including music and geography and good food and it was quite the random encounter but nice nonetheless. We ended the day with some cafe con leche in the plaza by the cathedral and then took the bus back to Madrid.

Saturday night Tevia and I went out with Naomi (my french-canadian friend from the Paris airport) and all of her foreign friends!! We were with Italians, Canadians, French (what do you call people from France?), and a guy from England! Every language was being spoken and we all had such a great time hopping from bar to bar in Huertas until the sun rose. And lets see- I managed to run into 2 guys that I saw in Segovia that day, the German guy from several weeks ago that I went out with, and Tevia and I ended up at our favorite pizza place with the rest of the Madrid nightlife at 7 in the morning. Yes.

oh PS: before we actually went out we got talking to the French girl about American stereotypes and she of course informed us that everyone thought we were dumb and didnt know about geography. we have noticed that almost everyone thinks that Americans don’t know where Spain is on the map... you guys all know where Spain is right???? We tried to explain to her that we really do know a little bit about the world and then she showed us a Youtube video of that show called Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader which had a woman on there that didn’t know France was a country. Apparently for an entire year France had a field day with this video and it was like all over the news and such and everyone talked about it and thus we get this stereotype of being idiots. So Tevia and I concluded that maybe America should start censoring what shows we broadcast abroad. That is how everyone imagines the US- with what they see on TV. A majority of all the shows and media here in Spain comes from the US so that is what they base their opinions on- shows like Jersey Shore and Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader. Of course we are going to look stupid!!! So America- how about we just send them episodes of Jeopardy and the history channel? ps- this is the video she showed us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqi0DwNLJdM

Sunday I slept until three (much needed) and hung out around the house all day doing homework and such. Then me, Chrissie, and Tevia went with Chrissies host mom to a little local concert at a cafe. It was awesoemeeeeee ;sjkfkgj. I think I found a new favorite band. The man singer was called Eliseo Parra and they played all these songs with like a million different instruments and it was like modern spanish folk music- or something like that. Look it up on Youtube it was a successss!!! And apparently the guy was pretty well known here in Spain. We left around 12:30 and headed to the metro to go home when of course we would run into 3 guys from London that Tevia had met Friday night at Kapital- so we talked to them for an hour in the metro about American accents and other random things when finally Tevia and I had to run before the metro closed.

It is now Monday and I am sitting in the cafeteria at schooool!!! Just to let you guys know, I have given up my attempt to look Euro and not carry a backpack. I really just need to have a backpack so for the past week I’ve taken my books to school in my huge hiking Boulder backpack. Whatever spaniards get over it. hahahha.

I am meeting up with Tevia later to start planning our Spring break trip to PORTUGALLLLL :) She is also studying Portuguese like me so we both “tener ganas de ir” ! Alsooooooo, me, chrissie, and tevia and a colombian guy I met at speedmixing are probably going to adventure down to the south coast of Spain to CADIZ for Carnavallllll at the beginning of Marchhhh!!! yes yes yes yesssssss :)

Anyways, the weather is nice and all things are well in Malasaña. There is a group of guys that hangs out outside my apartment and plays cards EVERYDAY. and every time I come and go they all stop their game and stare and say “eyyy hollaa guapaaa, rubiaaa, que tal”. I try to act serious like I can’t hear them but every time I start giggling a bit because its just so awkward. and they do it every time. dont you think they would get used to seeing me?? its nothing malicious just they are voicing their appreciation for my blond hair. as does every older man on the street when i pass, or people in cars, and at clubs, and in stores, and in the metro... guapa guapa guapaaaaaaaaa... ahhhhh; the other day a guy came up to me while i was waiting in Sol for Tevia and was like “oh hey, you are from Russia”.. no? and someone else told me that I have a mexican accent when I speak spanish. hahahhaha- random random people.

Okay.. so important spanish phrases adopted by me, chrissie, and tevia:

“ohhhhhh pasa algo”- opposite of the typical spanish “no pasa nada”

“botelloning”- making a verb of the word for basically pregaming in public

“vale, venga, bueno, pues nada”- attempts to end a conversation that will probably last for another hour

Fun Spain fact:

the floors of buildings start at level zero. So if you want to go to the first floor you will have to walk up a flight of stairs. In america floors start at one.

okayyyyy I think this is all from me at the moment!!!!! CHAOOOOO GUAPOSSSS...

me encantan las casualidades en mi vida...

so remember a few blogs ago when I wrote about my new friend named Alessandro in my Radio class?? Anyway he is from Peru and every week I have been sitting with him and talking and today I brought my laptop to class and decided to show him pictures of when I went to Peru 4 years ago with my friend Camila from Texas (who ironically is also studying abroad at this university in Madrid haha). Anyway, I was showing him pictures of Camila's cousins house and all the things we had done in Lima and then comes a photo of Cami's two cousins up close. Well turns out he knows them from elementary school!! hahaha he was like "hey wait I know that girl" hahahha, it was so randommmm and he knew her sister and everything and knew their names hahahhaha. So the two girls I was staying with in Peru went to elementary school with my one of my first class friends here in Madrid, Spain four years later? Small world. The whole experience here in Madrid I have felt like my whole life was kind of coming together in a weird way- I am living in a capital again in a city they compare to New York and Cristina plays the Strokes every morning and Camila my friend from San Antonio is here and I am also traveling and it makes me think of Greece and I don't even know hahahaha.. its good.

"Es bueno que las vidas tengan varios círculos.." - Los Amantes del Circulo Polar

one more thing.. PSSSSSSSS

for those of you who cant see my pictures on facebook here is a link to the photo album-

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2092543&id=1016283261&l=a55b57ffb3

PS!!!!

for my radio class I have to keep an "audio blog" where I upload things I had to do for homework and recordings and such... so you guys can check that out if you want.. my recent post i had to record what I thought my university sounded like and then upload it..

chelsearaubenheimer.wordpress.com

Spain spain spain :) this week was the best one yet by far...

everyday I find myself falling more and more in love with this lifestyle and this city, finding where i fit in, how to adapt, getting connected, knowing my way around, learning, loving, seeing, growing. this city has something to surprise me with everyday and i love it so much!!!!

sooo these past few days have just been so busy and insane and fun. ive gone out with new friends every night (cristian from italy, mauricio and yayo from mexico, and bruno the backpacker from chile) and also tevia and chrissie who are girls from my program. we are quite a motley crew. nights have involved bar hopping in malasana, dancing in huertas, and getting cheep beer and food from 100 monteceditos or Mueseo del Jamon, etc etc etc. this is such a great group of people.. and every day there is another adventure or story..

this blog certainly isn’t sufficient to explain all that i have been doing and learning and experiencing but i will try to relay a bit of what has been happening in the last week...

okay: first are school updates- classes are going well and im happy with my choices! coloquial spanish is sooo useful and its great when i hear words that cristian and mauricio and the kids in my class say and it makes sense and i can comment back and it keeps the convo going and makes me sound more knowledgeable of the language. my general spanish class is seriously one of the best classes ever because the teacher is fantastic and she really just tells it like it is. everyday i realize how much i dont actually speak spanish though haha, i have learned spanish all throughout school but we dont actually learn how to say normal phrases and not translate so literally and speak as they do. i feel like i am a baby learning how to speak normally all over again, and the things they say are not like english so its really about adopting a whole new way of speech and humor and normal sayings. its really interesting and amazing and great that i am doing this, but i see how far i am from actually being fluent. another thing is vocabulary.. thats really what its all about. i can talk in spanish about spanish, i can talk in spanish about myself and what i have been doing and ask you about your life and order at a restaurant and ask directions and generally make convo but when a certain topic comes up in a conversation where i just lack the vocabulary to contribute anything thats when i see the problem. like in my radio class with other spaniards- i am basically learning parts of the machine and sound booth but with spanish vocab. things i dont even know how to say in english.. hahaha. but besides that my regular classes are great and i have my little group of spanish friends in all my classes that basically tote me around and try to explain to me what in the world is going on. i truly do not know what i would do without any of their help but i feel bad sometimes in the group projects we have been doing and not being able to help out fully. but i dont think they mind too much and they have all assured me i will get better as the semester goes on. also my teachers have been just as welcoming and understanding and basically told me not to stress and just do the work when it best suits me... success? the other day i took the train back with Pablo my friend from class and it was soo nice and fun and just good. besides that i try to get out of Getafe as soon as possible when my the afternoon comes and go back to Madrid. its great being on campus and seeing other students but everyone is in school mode and Getafe isnt all that pretty and id rather be out walking around in the city..

okay lets seeee: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I went out with the group to various bars around the city, tues was chill and just talking and hanging out, wed was full of dancing and tapas, and thursday we spent at a rock n roll bar. it was all fantastic and happy and on wednesday we also went out with this spanish guy who works at kapital who gave us the 411 on what really goes down behind the scenes at that crazy night club, on thursday i met a guy from the canary islands who trained with black water and is in the spanish army... never an end the the interesting people who stumble into my life! and have i mentioned all the taxi drivers I end up having fantastic conversations with?? everytime i get in one i feel like i make a new friend and its sad when my ride is over haha. the last one and i talked about the economic crisis and how it has affected his business..

Friday was absolutely wonderful because I woke up and went to Cristina’s parents house for lunch. They are both in their 60’s and are just a jolly bunch of grandparents that I thoroughly enjoyed talking to. Her dad is so funny and quite the jokester while her mom is direct and down to earth. They made a delicious lunch for me and we had great conversation in spanish all afternoon. Cristina left for a dentist appointment, but I stayed and ended up there for several hours in lively conversation. They told me about their lives under Franco’s dictatorship, being born during the civil war, the rations they would get to take to school while American soldiers patrolled the cities, how they viewed America, we talked about politics, the problems of war, their extensive world travels, my life, why kids live with their parents so long in Spain, and basically everything under the sun. It was a real live history lesson and such a crazy thing hearing about the US from another’s point of view. Mostly not good things were said about America but hearing their reasoning made sense. The US is such a peculiar country I think and all americans abroad must do a very good job of breaking our stereotypes. anyway, the afternoon ended with them telling me I could come over anytime and eat and that one day we should visit cristinas moms parents who are 90 and in a nursing home in madrid. success.

That night I headed to La Latina where Chrissie lives to see a Flamenco show at the bar that her host mom owns. We got discounts to the show and saw another espectaculo up close and personal. flamenco is very passionate and the dancers and singers and guitarists are very very talented. we quite enjoyed ourselves and then after we headed to another rock n roll bar and then Chrissie and I began an epic bar crawl that led us from one side of the city to the other back in Malasaña where I live. We went to a rolling stones themed bar named Angie and then a funk club and then found this little hole in the wall burrito stand with the most epic burritos at 4 o clock in the morning.. it was amazinggggg!!! then chatted the night away with a hottie spanish guy and at 6 I took the 1 minute walk back to my piso.. success for life?

Saturday I got up early and headed to TOLEDO with Chrissie, Tevia, Mauricio, and Yayo. Toledo is a little romantic super old city just outside of Madrid. It used to be the capital of Spain and fun fact it was where all the swords in Lord of the Rings were made. Everything was Don Quixote themed and we are pretty sure that Cervantes was born there. Anyway, we pretty much walked 15 miles exploring the city and then i convinced the group that we need to walk another 15 miles outside the city to go see the Panoramic view from the other side of the river that I somehow knew existed. Anyways we walked and walked and walked and eventually came to an overlook of Toledo right as the sun was setting.. it was magnificent and worth every step, we were alll quite pleased and everyone fell asleep on the bus ride home :) Yay Toledo! That night I was so exhausted from the day that I didn’t go out but went straight to bed.

Sunday I got up and me and Bruno the backpacker from Chile took another epic walk around the city exploring and adventuring and eventually ending up back in La Latina with Chrissie. La Latina is the neighborhood where all the Madrileños go on Sundays for tapas and drinks and happy days in plazas and just for a good time. We got some snacks and sat in this big plaza with a bunch of other spaniards and just chatted and enjoyed the sun. We then walked over towards Atocha to see an art exhibit and then I booked it home to get ready for the Bob Marley Day concert at Sala Heinekein!!! Sala Heinekein is a huge concert hall and I went with my friend Krystal. It was sick. All these reggae bands playing bob marley songs and all the hippies of Madrid dancing for several hours. The funny thing about seeing the concert in spain was that all the talking during intermission was in spanish and everyone sang in spanish accents these english words hahah.. the whole night greatly supported my theory that bob marley is the most world wide known and appreciated artist and that goes across generations. its true- in every corner of the world people know bob marley and still regularly listen to him.

anyway, so can I say life is good??

thoughts in general: Madrid is a straight up cool city. Everyone dresses cool, acts cool, is cool. They work to live instead of live to work and everything is relaxed and people get things done when they want to. It is all about enjoying life to the fullest and taking a break every now and then to drink a coffee and catch up with friends. The experience living here has been fantastic, hard at times, but amazing nonetheless. I’ve realized that the hard part comes in when you come here and basically strip yourself of everything that has essentially defined you your whole life- your family, all your friends, your home, your language. it’s hard to explain if you have never had an experience like this but it really is about finding yourself when you have almost nothing that is familiar. coming here with no one is great, but at the beginning it was definitely lonely. now that i have met people and made better friends it has gotten worlds better!!!

another thing i have noticed is that almost everyone knows a little english here and there if anything because they always listen to american music and watch american movies- sometimes when you ask people where they learned english they almost always say from the movies. maybe i need to be watching more spanish tv? and most songs at the bars and clubs are in english so people learn how to sing in english and then learn basic phrases and such

okayyyyyyyyyyyyy, well i hope that gives you guys some idea of whats been happening here in SPAINNNNN! this beautiful place...

lots of adventures to be had :)

love you all!!!!! me encanta mi vidaaaaaaaaa :)

HASTA LUEGOOOOOOOO

ps im sitting in a cafe right now eating a croissant, drinking coffee, and doing homework. loooovoeeeee.

love love love this place. took a walk around beautiful madrid tonight with american and spanish friends and then went out with italians mexicans spaniards and americans to drink and dance. iiii lloooooooooveeee all of this. everything is happy!