means: the little things.
despite sometimes getting overwhelmed, missing home, understanding very little, and, well i've covered most of my downfalls, i realize every so often all the miniscule things i've picked up already. for example:
- i take the bus to school. those who know me, well you understand the severity. don't know me? i'm partial to avoiding all forms of mass public transportation. i take the metro in d.c., yes. love the metro. hence i'll use the metro here. granted i've been using the metro and bus mostly because it's all paid for by my program. but nonetheless, lets just say my friends call me dora. i've become so good at navigating metro, bus systems, and any map in general it's uncanny. but anyway, i'm proud of myself for taking the bus.
- i have four keys which will ultimately lead me to my room/computer. the second of which is a little finicky, but i've mastered it. see, you have to put the key in, and then pull it out ever so slightly, to where it's just about to pull out over the first "click" i guess, or key bump (sorry i don't know the terminology of keys), and it works like a charm. i've also had to master the simple art of just pushing the door open after unlocking in said fashion. i've pinched my finger twice. but don't ask me to explain how, it's borderline impossible. you'd have to see the door to understand.
- i keep my room clean (yes mom, that's right). granted, my socks are on the floor right now, along with my umbrella, and i have an empty plastic bag hanging from the chair which currently houses my laptop. and my bedside tabletops are a little disorganized. but my drawers are neat. the floor gets a little messy with school stuff and clothes at night, but every morning it gets cleaned before i go to school. i'm going to assume this is mostly because i'm scared of what my senora would think of me. now what about what my mother and roommates think of me you say? it's got to do with: she's thinking about me in spanish - and i don't understand it... so it's worse. whatev. i clean my room, oh... get this... i make my bed. every day. yah.
- i saw a nemo today on the streets. nemo is my car from home. unfortunately, he's passed away. call it an anuerism if you will, but the engine lost compression so he died. we call him nemo (and yes his name is officially nemo, one of the coolest presents i've ever gotten is the license plates mom got me that say "NEEMMO" with the chesapeake bay background, and crabs. haha) because the right side mirror is mas o menos (more or less, one of my favorite spanish sayings) half the size of the left = gimpy fin. haha.
- i have no excuse not to run and be in shape until at least the summer. there's a gorgeous park 4 minutes walking distance from my house. living on the 7th floor i can even see the darn thing from my window. i've only gone three times since i've been here, but twice have been within the last week, all including running 3+ miles. i'm gonna pass that fit test.
- i've been here for exactly a month today. we arrived february 3rd. already i've been to barcelona, cordoba, sevilla, and the mountains (explain that later). travelling is one of the best things about this trip - just getting to see everything i've read about, seen on tv, or never knew existed. canary islands are penned in the planner and paris is pending. just when i was starting to get a little tired of madrid (ya know, thinking i've done everything there is to do) i remembered how much more i want to see before i leave here. for instance, there's an amusement park lol. 4.50 euros to get in and 1.50 per ride. hello?! there are like 5 more amazing museums i still have yet to see, including the house of joaquin sorolla who is one of my personal favorites. bull fighting - that's already worked into the schedule with my school program though. the zoo. come on. segovia, but guess what. going there on friday with my geography class. baller. and i still haven't been inside palacio real, but that's easy enough to sort out. there are so many other things i want to do but i've been taking for granted the things i've already done and the simplicity of actually doing some of the small ones. ie plane tickets aren't necessary. hence i'm only flying twice while here.
- i think in spanish. today on the bus home i was daydreaming about paris, and how i was gonna want to brush up on my french. i sat there trying to tranlsate "i should study french before i go" to spanish, just so i could think in spanish about wanting to study my french before i went. lol what the. whatever, i haven't dreamt in spanish yet so that's good.
- i found out that cold rooms make you dream more. lately it's been warmer so i haven't had as many weird dreams, but when i first got here i had some about my mom dying and about my boyfriend cheating on me with my sister (NOT COOL). rather interesting to know though.
- i eat two sirvings of fruit every day. one with lunch and one with dinner. see sweets are a little underrated here, but they have fruit for dessert. so it's usually a mandarin or orange at lunch and an apple for dinner. add that to my running program and i'm lookin gooood. but i'll leave that to an outsiders judgement.
- i can wear just about anything here. well except for flip flops (get on it spain, they're rockin). the real rabbit fur bomber hat that my sister got me has made several appearances, despite the fact that i feel like a poacher of bunnies when i wear it.
- talking to family is also underrated. having limited ability to call my mom, i realize how much i love being able to talk to her every day. we talked yesterday for like 20 minutes (well worth however much it would cost me). lately she's been busy with work so we wouldn't have talked much anyway even if i were home, but she's in florida for the weekend and was bummin around with my grampa, and we got to have one of our usual make each other laugh convos. i miss those so much :) like i said before, she's a pretty awesome lady and our humor only amplifies when we're together haha. (no i'm not just writing nice things cos i realize now she actually does read this, before it was expected but not certain).
- i miss chocolate. and butter. and english muffins. and peanut butter.
- i'm a lot braver than i give myself credit for. on thursday i went to this place called cafe madrid for an "intercambio" night. this one guy (antione, he's french, and awesome) started this thing where people in madrid, either from madrid or other places, who speak different languages come to this place to find others who speak the same so you can meet those with such common denominator, or just to meet random people and better your language skills. so i was supposed to go with friends, but they took forever getting ready to head out so i decided to go a little early (which turned out to be a lot early - okay not necessarily early but they were wayyyy late). but so by a lot i mean an hour and a half i spent there alone. when i first got there i did a little lap to see if i knew anyone from school, walked outside, called ali, and nearly left. i had nooo idea what to do. so i grew some cojones and ordered myself a coke and stood against the wall and just about chugged it. eventually an older looking man with a really short chin, chin hair, a mustache, and a pot belly came up and started talking to me. it was interesting but he wanted to work on his english so it was easy enough for me. i kept my arms crossed however in hopes to attract someones attention to the fact that i was uncomfortable talking to him about how i didn't look like a soccer player. eventually antione came by. he has an uncanny ability to recognize new faces, so he intrudced himself, the other guy buggered off, and introduced me to gonzalo. he was interesting and more my age so we talked for a while, varying english and spanish. he went on a tangent about how my boyfriend and i wouldn't last, and giving himself points for being tall (he wasn't) and being a doctor (over someone who works for a professional soccer team... no thanks). but he was funny none the less and i relaxed a little bit. he introduced me to the character they call "el profesor." he's an extremely tall old guy (who by the way met his wife in a park when she was dating someone else - that gave gonzalo some hope) but he's extremely interesting and profound (as far as i can tell from my spanish perceptions). eventually my friends showed up, by that time there weren't many people left. but we sat around and chatted for another hour or so with gonzalo and antione. antione's originally french, but speaks so many different languages it's absurd. he's also hilarious. so even though it started a little rough, en fin, i couldn't believe i'd actually stayed there the whole time and just what had come of it. i do intend to go more often, time and travel permitting.
- as much as i would love for andrew to come visit i can't help but put my emotions aside and be happy for him and want him to stay at home. he's just gotten a new job with d.c. united (long overdue) and won't be able to take time away from building a store from scratch basically to visit. it sucks, but he's finally got a full time job (i say finally because it took so long, but not without effort. that kid is so qualified for so many other things he applied for and just happened to get the short straw every time. and although this may not be his dream job he works so hard and definitely deserves the break) and is getting to explore the options of moving out. after college he moved back home, but didn't quite move in you could say. in the spare bedroom he kept all his most-used clothes and accessories packed neatly in a suitcase, so he'd be prepared to get out of there. haha. but so, i'm proud of him and it almost makes it okay that i won't get to see him for 3 more months. it's a weird thing to be unselfish. haha. totally joking.
- phone calls to friends. i called tater yesterday for her birthday. and although i'd told her "happy birthday" about 8 times (great number huh?) already it was nice to just be able to talk. we don't talk much on the phone really, we're more texting or just hanging out kinda people. but aside from the fact that she's become my best friend in just 6 months, being able to hear friendly voices from home makes my world go round. i wish i could have been there for her birthday :(
so i think that wraps up my observations so far. as for the mountains, well ali's never seen snow so we took a rather cheap day trip to los cotos, a place in the penalara (or something, don't remember) mountains. two train rides and a hike up a hill later, we were sitting at the top, eating lunch, staring at a snow covered mountain with blue skies and little purple flowers peeking out of the grass. it was gorgeous and well received. a day to just relax, take in fresh air, be a little active, and to let someone experience something for the first time was awesome. haha on the train there were around 20 little kids i guess on a school trip. but so as we're on the second leg of the journey up the mountain, we went through a tunnel (worried having not seen a hint of snow yet) and upon emerging out the other side, the kids broke out clapping and yelling "nieveeee!!!" haha means snow. ali got sooo excited lol. i got attacked by a killer bee when we started walking after the train ride, spanish personel laughed at me screaming. so after lunch (sorry for skipping around a bit) we went on a little hike up the trails of the mountain (it's like a national park thing). there's a map that showed about a 1 hour 15 minute hike to a lake but we weren't quite prepared for anything that serious so we only made a little dent in it, quite leisurely at that. but i have every intention to go up there another day to spend some time seeing that lake :)
i suppose that wraps it up for my recent adventures. we've got two weeks left of school until spring break and i can't wait. the money situation's doing better (my mom's awesome, and yes it's a loan, not just getting spoiled by my mom, even though i totally am), so i'm a little more at ease. lunch time. so what are your little things?
