Madrid September 7th - 14th (Kind of a long one!)

Well it has been just over a week since I last wrote, and there is a ton of new stuff to catch up on. This last week has absolutely flown by. I am sorry if it is a little bit scatter brained but as I was writing things kept coming to me and I didn’t want to leave them out so I tried to make it fit in kind of sort of where it would work! Enjoy!

The first few days of the week (September 7th – 10th or so) I spent the mornings at the university trying to get counseling on choosing my classes because I was having trouble navigating the web page that the school has so poorly built; well I guess it is actually more of a work in progress, they are updating it. Anyhow, I kept getting there earlier and earlier because they are only open for two hours and the lines were tremendous Monday and Tuesday by 11:30. Talk about sweet hours again, they are only open 12:00 – 14:00. On Wednesday I finally arrived early enough, I got there at 11:00 and was the third person in line, minus a few people that had gotten tickets the day before and told to come back on Wednesday. The Lady that helped me was quite nice she showed me how to choose classes, and told me which ones that I could choose. It appears that I will be a taking a few Economics classes, and one or two organizational, and business administration classes. I am also planning on taking a Spanish class because the three of the other classes are taught in English, and I only have one in Spanish. I will be taking, Organizational Principles, Game Theory, Macroeconomics of Monetary and Fiscal Policy (this one in Spanish), and also Business Administration of some sorts (I might drop this and take Commercial Distribution Economics instead, which is also taught in Spanish).

After being unsuccessful the first few times at getting a counselor I went to the library and spent my afternoons chasing down a flat somewhere in the city. I must have looked at 300+ ads, about 20 or so that I called on and about 6 or 7 that I went and saw. I was getting more and more nervous as the week went on. As I think I might have mentioned in earlier posts I was staying at Julein’s brother, Olivier’s apartment while I was searching for one of my own. The catch here is that Olivier was moving back to Paris on Friday early morning. As the days drew closer and closer to Thursday night I was becoming more and more stressed. Every place that I looked at was either small, had no windows, had no living room, or had strange folks living there! Finally on Wednesday night I found something that was interesting and set an appointment to go and look at the flat. Only in Spain would you set an appointment to look at apartment at 10p.m. but that’s what it was so that’s when I went! The first impression was the stair well. It is an older building, I am guessing late 1800’s early 1900’s, and it is in an older neighborhood. The stairs are all made of wood, and they are all grooved from being used so much over the years. As I walked into the apartment I met José Antonio; he is the gentleman that is renting the room and he seems to be in his late 50’s early 60’s but very nice. He showed me around and although the flat was small the room that he was renting was fair sized and had a nice veranda that looked out onto the street. I knew right away that it was the one! The apartment is a nice little place that is quite, right in the heart of the city, and close to the train station that I need to go to class. The next day I signed a lease and moved in. What a relief the day before I needed to be out of Olivier’s apartment, I found a place to live!

Today, September 14th, I had two classes. I went to Organizational Principles and Macro Econ. Both were tough, because the professor for Organizational Principles spoke very broken English, and the Macro class was taught in Spanish so it was challenging. I think I understood about 75% of what the professor said, and afterwards I went and introduced myself to him, he seemed very nice and happy to have an exchange student in class; and luckily for me, the text for the class is in English. Bueno, enough of this boring stuff, let’s get caught up on all the fun stuff that has happened over the last 8 days!

Alright, enough of this nonsense, let’s talk about all the fun things that went on this last week; there were a lot of them! Every night at Olivier’s we would all cook dinner and eat together which was real nice. On Monday we all just hung around the house and had a mellow evening. Tuesday night proved to be much more exciting. Olivier had a dinner with his co-workers before he left, so I cooked and had dinner with his roommate Alberto. After dinner there was an Erasmus (exchange student) event downtown. We all met up at a Karaoke bar and sang the night away. Well, actually the place really relatively small; there were 200+ of us and only one bar tender so the party ended up out on the street with all the students buying beer from the chinos, as they are called here, that were selling beers for 1 Euro on the street corners. It was nice to chat with a few new people and hang with some of the ones I already knew.

The next day, I met up with a few of the Dutch guys I met to play a pickup game of soccer at Parque Retiro, which is only about 10 minutes from my new place, although I wasn’t there then. It was really fun, I am not nearly as good as any of these kids that has been playing all their lives but I like to get out there, mix it up with them, and they are all just happy to play no matter what level you are at which is really cool. Wednesday night was really mellow, as I said earlier that is when I came to look at the apartment and then I just hung out trying to find classes to take.

Thursday however was extremely fun. I went to school in the morning because no one was home at Olivier’s. After returning, I gathered all my belongings which only consisted of one suitcase at the time (the other one was at a friend Marc’s house), and moved into my new apartment. After moving in, Olivier and I met up with Alberto to go out to eat for Olivier’s last night in Madrid. We went to an Indian restaurant right near my flat in a barrio called Lavapies. The food was good and we had a great time hanging out and chatting. After dinner, a few drink, and goodbyes, I was off to my next Erasmus event. Thursday night, we all met up at a club in town called Shanghai. Before going there, I met up with a few people that I met Tuesday night for a cocktail or two. The club was full of people that I had met and we all danced the night away till some ridiculous hour. I arrived home at a bit after 4:30, and the club was still full of people.

On Friday, I met up with an Erasmus student at Parque Retiro again for a picnic and to check out some of the sights. It was fun just hanging out people watching and then walking around this huge park in the downtown area. A bit later that afternoon, I went to my friend Marc’s house. Last time I as there (August 19th – 22nd) his parents were not there, but this time they were so I got to meet them. Both of his parents were extremely nice and made me feel as if I were at home with my family or any one of my closest friends family. We had a wonderful dinner out at an Argentine restaurant near their house. After dinner, his parents dropped us off at a friend’s house and it was time again for another long night of partying. We all met up at Daniel’s house around 11:30. Daniel is going to go study in Frankfurt on Wednesday, and while all sitting around before going out, we decided that it would be nice to go visit him while he is there; and what do you know Oktoberfest just happens to be coming up around the corner…Oktoberfest here we come!!! We are booking our tickets tomorrow and will spend October 1st – 4th enjoying authentic German beer, in hopefully authentic Bavarian attire!!! Enough talking about that, I am gitty every time I think about it! The night went on, we met up with some girls that Marc and Daniel know downtown for a drink before going to the club for the night, it was a nice little local place and I met some of their other friends that I hadn’t met before which is always nice because they are all locals. We went to a club called Orange Café, and again as usual danced our tails off until some ridiculous hours of the morning. This time we arrived home at just before 7 a.m. to Marc’s dad getting his day started!

I slept till about 1 in the afternoon and then decided that I probably shouldn’t waste away the rest of the day. I ended up learning how to cook some homemade Gazpacho, and Albondigas. Gazpacho, for those of you who don’t know it, it a vegetable soup that is tomato based and also has onions, bell pepper, and hmmm maybe that’s it. Albondigas on the other hand are a sort of Spanish meatball in a red sauce that is similar to marinara but it just merely covers the meatballs, not much more. After lunch we went to a movie, and then they dropped me off at the train station with my other bag of luggage to make the trip home. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour for me to get to their house on public transportation; it is in an outskirt that is very nice called Las Rozas.

Well, Saturday night was finally relatively mellow, I had dinner out with a friend at a little tapas bar and called it a night. Sunday, on the other hand was a little more exciting. I woke up late after sleeping in and again went to Parque Retiro to have a picnic, this time all the Erasmus students were there and we all brought different things to share. It was quite a nice day until it started to drizzle on us. Once the rain started coming down I left with a few other students and we went to the other side of town to the world Famous Ventas Plaza de Torros. We went to watch the Sunday evening bull fight, and let me tell you, it was quite the experience. I was not sure how I was going to like it because the kill the bulls and I heard that it was terrible, but upon review I found it to be quite the experience. I started thinking about the hundreds of years of culture, and history, and events that had taken place here and it was breathe taking. We bought the cheapest seats we could, 2.20 Euro, or about equivalent to $3.50, nearly free! We sat at the top of the stands but had an unbelievable view of the city to the west as the sun was setting in the semi-stormy sky. It was quite the experience, it s hard to put into words. The crowd was hard to please, and applauded when the Torero made suave maneuvers, and heckled him when he was not performing to their liking. Although it was a little gruesome, I found it to be a spectacular experience and will have to go back to take some pictures when I have my camera.

Alright, well sorry if this post was a little long but there was a ton to catch up on and I just can’t stop once I start for some reason. I will try to post more often so they are shorter and easier to get through. I hope this post finds everyone doing well; I am excited to see that more people are following the Blog. Please feel free to share it with others and comment as you wish (criticism of my poor writing is welcome, I can’t help it, I am a Redneck!). I hate to admit it, but I am starting to really miss everyone back home, I was hoping it wouldn’t happen till a bit later but that’s reality. Hopefully I will talk to some of you all soon, you can find me on Gmail chat (allanphil@gmail.com), windows live messenger (Oneofdabuoys), or Skype (Oneofdabuoys).

Much Love from Madrid,

Chao,

Phil