Blackout.

My palms are sweaty, my heart is racing, and my vision is getting blurry. I feel like my mind is shutting down. I'm lost, confused, and trying to comprehend what is happening. "Kemburrrly, Kemburrrly.... Entiendes?", calls my professor.

Quick say something, anything! You can do this brain just think. Nothing. I got nothing. Okay breath, calm down, think...I've got it! So I kick back to reality and open my mouth to answer, but the professor has given up and moved on....ugh.

In every class all I do is sit there, listen, and pray that I am invisible. Where is that dang invisibility cloak when you need it, huh?

Classes are so hard, but on the up side my spanish IS, in fact, getting better. Except for the few times I am called on in class, that's when I blackout and my mind draws a blank. Not only do I have trouble thinking of an answer in spanish; I can't even come up with a witty answer in english! I get so nervous. I hate it. All i can think about now is the students that are studying abroad at OSU. I have put myself in their shoes and I now understand how completely vulnerable they are.

This is where I spend all day being utterly lost and confused.

I'm constantly trying to improve though. I study every morning and every night. Listening to one lecture over again twice and scribbling in a notebook vocabulary I don't understand. No one said this was easy...Gosh they were right. Looking back I took all of my classes as OSU for granted. Complaining and whining about things I understood, but was to lazy to comprehend. It was so much easier and all I did was whine because I wanted to be out with my friends instead. Now I'm in this amazing place and all I do is study! haha. Funny how that works.

I'm meeting new people everyday. The number one question here is, "how many languages do you speak?"...my not so impressive answer, "one and a half?!" I'm so jealous of these other students. Most speak at a minimum three languages. Yes, three! For some it's more then that. Why do the American school systems have to be uncultured and cheap!? Could you imagine if our country integrated different languages from the start of kindergarten. Americans think we're powerful, but imagine if only we were a little more well rounded. We could accomplish so much! I hate answering that dreaded question. It makes me feel so small, smaller then I already am, and uneducated. If languages were a sport and Spain was a playground, I definitely would be the last kid picked. The loser, bench warmer, waterboy (girl in my case), the poor kid that's shagging the soccer balls for the team. Yup, that's me.

It's a struggle not to feel incompetent compared to all of these other students. I just have to keep reminding myself I will come out on top, eventually. Patience is a virtue?...I'm still not so sure. haha.

Trying to play along with the big kids in Spain,

Kimee Paige

Here is my attempt at a Vlog. I don't know which is worse, my writing or a vlog haha.

"Fall seven times, stand up eight." -Japanese Proverb

El Escorial!

8:40 am (early for a saturday) got up and jumped on a bus to San Lorenzo to see El Escorial. San Lorenzo is about an hour bus ride from Madrid. To be honest I had never heard of El Escorial until Meredith mentioned going to visit there. I love that Rick Steves' is her bible because she knows exactly where to visit! I'm much to tired to come up with anything quirky tonight. So instead I'm going to share with you the short video clips and pictures I took from today.

Video and photography were not allowed inside El Escorial. Sad day....

The history behind El Escorial is impressive. I wish I could of taken photos of everything I saw. Since I couldn't (and wanted to share) I knew who would have everything I didn't....Rick, Rick Steves'! He really is awesome. Here is his video on El Escorial which is much more impressive then mine. However he (Rick) does not sing beauty and the beast, top that RICK! haha

The royal tombs are housed in El Escorial and there is even a rotting room!

Here is another video on the royal tombs, paintings, etc that are housed here.

Okay that is all I have from today.

And to catch you up from the last blog. The milk doesn't taste bad, just different. But if you use the milk for chocolate nutella filled cereal you can't taste a difference at all!

Traveling Spain,

Kimee Paige

"Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have."

-Unknown

Milk, Peanut butter, Brownie Mix, Laundry, etc, etc.

The weather here reminds me a lot of Oklahoma, except maybe not quite as extreme. 

This is the view from my balcony.

One minute it is warm and the sun is out; the next minute it's cold and rainy. Hey at least there hasn't been any snow! I do miss thunder and lightning....When it rains here it is just rain. I have yet to hear a thunderous crackle from the sky or see an electric beam of light shoot out from a cloud. I miss it.

Amoung other things I miss [slash] trying to get use to....Milk, Peanut Butter, Brownie Mix, PDA, Movie Theaters, Siestas, and laundry. Let me elaborate.

Milk: We had the hardest time finding milk in the supermarket. Naturally you walk to the refrigerated area to search for milk, right? Well that is not the case here, except for in a few stores. Milk is not refrigerated! We were very sceptical to purchase milk that shared a shelf with bread and toilet paper. Our initial thought was milk HAS to be refrigerated! Otherwise wouldn't it spoil? Well I did some research online and apparently their milk is ultra-pasteurized causing it to have a longer shelf life. We "cowboy upped" and bought a liter of milk that was on a shelf today. I'll let you know if it tastes any different. Definitely something I will have to get use to.

Peanut Butter: Soooo hard to find! We have to make a special trip to the one store we have seen that sold it or dig in our pockets and purchase it at the Cake House.

Brownie Mix: We have recently become friends with the philopino women that run the Cake House. Their establishment is the ONLY place we have found a brownie mix box and honey mustard. Both were very expensive. Back home it's what 88 cents for a pillsbury brownie mix box? At the cake house it's 5 euros! I guess it is strategy if you think about. They are the Cake House. Why would they want to sell a box at 88 cents that would make a whole panful of brownies, when you could buy one brownie there for 1 euro.

PDA (Public Display of Affection): Call me conservative, innocent, prude or whatever... I just don't think this is something I will ever get use to! I wonder how many babies are named after the metro stop they were conceived at? Ok, I'm exaggerating. It isn't quite to that extreme. Still why can't people just wait until they get home and then get after it. I don't want to see you slobbering/sucking face all over eachother.

Movie theaters: The ticket stub for your movie tells you where to sit. We have been to the theater twice now and both times I don't think we sat in the right spot. Luckly the movie was not sold out. Otherwise we might of had a few anger spaniards telling us to get out of their seat. Pros to this system: They don't sell more tickets then seats. Ever had that happen to you? I have it was a terrible experience. Cons: Making people get up so that you can get to your seat with your hands full with popcorn and coke...and trying to find your seat in the dark is also a challenge.

Siestas: I think my dad would absolutely love it here for the sole fact that everything shuts down for a few hours at lunch. This is spanish "nap time". If you need to get your errands done around 2 to 4 (sometimes 6 depending on the place) then you can forget about it.

Laundry: Hanging your clothes out to dry is a chore. Mostly because we only brought a limited amount of clothing items for six months. It might not be as bad if I had my whole closet of things to wear, but when you've only have X amont of undies you have to think about the weather and how long things take to hang dry. Especially with the weather as rainy as it has been lately. Our clothes have been strung all throughout the apartment this week trying to get them to dry. I'd also like to add that underwear and jeans just doesn't wear the same when they have been hung out to dry...

Well that's all for now. I'm going to continue to look for classes to enroll in.

Later Gator,

Kimee Paige

Oh I almost forgot! The italian girl we couldn't find the first time we went to see a movie, went with us the second time. However this time instead of trying to meet at a certain point we met her at her metro stop and then went to the movie together.

Proof

Proof we also roller skated in the park!

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one."

-Elbert Hubbard

Upset....

What do you do when you're upset? Eat? Cry? Yell? Vent to a friend/family member? etc...

There are many different outlets to releave stress and frustrations. For me, I like to go shopping and buy myself something pretty.

Yup, We bought Roller Skates! I have been so frustrated this week with trying to enroll that me and Meredith thought that roller skates were a good idea. We have seen numerous amounts of people roller blading/ skating in Retiro Park, so why can't we?

I felt like I had made progress by the end of this week trying to find classes. BUT! and there is always a but...

OSU has told me that I have to enroll in only classes within the spanish department here at UCM to receive finacial aid. (If you take class that are not needed for your degree they do not want to give you money, which is understandable. It helps prevent people from taking a bunch of silly classes). But I'm not trying to take classes I don't need! Example: I need spanish civilization credits for my major, I cannot go take a class in the History department about the history of spain for my civilization credits! Ahhh! Just when I thought I was getting things figured out. The hardest part is the Spanish department here consists of all literature courses. You might be wondering, Why not just enroll in all literature courses? You can do it!...Wrong. Every spanish literature class, here at least, want you to read 10 to 12 spanish books per class. I can't even read that much for one class in ENGLISH, let alone spanish. Plus, I swear, all of the professors in the spanish department talked like they had a mouthful of peanut butter. Very very very hard to understand them.

Failing is not in my vocabulary, it's not something I am very accepting of, nor is it what I want to do. But I have to keep reminding myself that all I can do is try. I'm going to record my lectures so hopefully that will help. So, do I go ahead and enroll in classes that I feel like will be challenging but I can pass and not receive finacial aid for? Or do I enroll in the classes I need for my major that require A LOT of reading and receive finacial aid from OSU but I will more then likely fail?

Either way I need to not worry. School is only but a small fraction of my study abroad experience.

Roller skating machine,

Kimee Paige

"Sometimes by being brave we can even surprise ourselves." -My Mom

Connected with the World.

We finally bought a go phone today. You'd think by now, with the rapid growth of technology, that a go phone would be the first generation iPhone. I mean those things are soooo out dated that they should be a go phone by now, right?! ha ha. But it's okay I'm not complaining, nor do I need/care about how "cool" my phone is or anything of that sort. Anybody want to make a bet on how many of these phones I go through? You know me, I drop them, misplace them with a dead battery which means I will never retrieve it again, or manage to throw it into the only puddle around. My bet for a 5 months stay... 3 phones. Hopefully not but who knows.

Classes...how are they going? Long, confusing, depressing, frightening...scratch that...terrifying...pick one that you desire. They all apply.

However, Today we went to a shakespeare lit. course. I know at first glance it seems like we're cheating BUT the professor teaches it IN spanish. Plus this particular professor was intelligible! This is a huge positive for me because so far the professors have sounded like an auctioneer speaking at about 300-400 wpm, and in a language that I am still trying to learn.Terrifying, I know. When we went to class there was a debate going on within a group of girls sitting a row in front of us. One girl thought that native english speakers, like me and meredith, should not be allowed in these types of classes, but another girl pointed out that it isn't any different then one of them attending a spanish literature course. Thank you! At least someone understands. If anything I think they still have the advantage because it's all being taught in their native tongue, no matter what class you take....even something as english as Shakespeare...it's still taught in Spanish. Which is a good thing because that's what I came here to do, to improve my spanish. I honestly don't care at this point what the topic of the class is, so long as the professor is intelligible and teaching the matter in spanish... then that's all I need.

Agenda for tomorrow. Attend as many classes as possible, again. A few on the list...a class on Velazquez, Picasso, Geography of Spain, Museology, and a few others.

Keeping you posted,

Kimee Paige

P.s.- Hangout was a failure. The weather has been terribly rainy and we hadn't bought cell phones yet, and had no idea where the meet up was....needless to say we didn't make it. But now that we have our fancy phones, I'm sure meeting up with people will be easier. How did anyone ever have friends before cell phones?

P.p.s- I sent out some post cards today! YAY! If you would like to recieve a post card/letter/drawing or any other random assorted things I can think of sending, then please facebook or e-mail me your address.

"Learn a new language and get a new soul"  ~Czech Proverb

I guess it's called Valentines day...

You say Happy Valentines Day, I say Happy shallow fake love day.... /potayto/ /potahto/ right?

But really I hate this holiday. Why does there have to be a specific day to show someone how much they mean to you? I would hate to be a guy on this awful holiday. Women (not ALL but a good amount) put way to much pressure on this one specific day for ANY man to ever reach their expectations. Unless you (the male species) have cooked a surprise breakfast, sent flowers and chocolates to her work with a quirky meaningless poem and then ended the night with a hot air balloon ride and a bottle of wine... you (the male species) WILL never win. And it's not because girls want these things to feel loved. Some may think this is the case, but no. Girls want this holiday to be "special" so that they can compete with other girls on how special their valentines day was compared to other girls. If their day was more "special" then that specific girl "wins" over the other girl, that's where they get this sense of "love" by competeing to see who's boyfriend seems to care more. It's a vicious circle.

V-Day....yes, it is even in Spain. Pastry shops have cute heart cookies, at school (in every building) someone was selling roses to give to your sweetheart, and at the Mall there was a kissing stand to get your picture taken (which everyone in Spain has no problem engaging in a steamy kiss in front ot thousands of people).

However, Today I was much to distracted with classes to notice any Valentines day PDA(public display of affection) nonsense going on around me. The enrollment process is insane for exchange students. We were told to attend as many classes as we could this week in order to decide which ones we liked/ which ones the professors would allow us to be in. We arrived on campus around 10 this morning and left around 6 this evening. You would think that after attending four classes in one day I would feel good about at least one of them. But sadly you are mistaken. The more classes I went to, the more I felt completely lost. The professors talk SOOO fast! It's ok though. I have hope that I will eventually understand it all. Practice makes perfect right? Plus I have until friday to have a complete break down. After I attend all possible classes if I still feel lost then the meltdown will commence.

Enough with the boring stuff. My weekend was awesome! Guess where I went saturday...

Back to Retiro...Ha ha... But we had to go. The weather was going to be cold and rainy this week so Saturday was our last day until who knows when!

look at how many people were out at the park!

This is Casita Pescador. It was built by King Ferdinand VII as part of a private garden.

This was in the Palacio de Cristal. Neat huh! It was made out of random plastic items.

And here is a Cathedral right outside of Retiro....

We met a very nice older gentleman Ferrnado walking his two huskys in the park, sat and watched the people pass by, took pictures for some tourists, listened to a man playing his saxophone, and watched an interesting man rollerdancing (he was dancing while on rollerblades. Times like that is when I wished I had a video camera).

Sunday we thought it'd be a good idea to invite our new friends to a movie. Good idea right?! Wrong. We don't have cell phones yet (we plan on getting them soon). So we were suppose to meet up a very sweet italian girl at a metro stop right outside of the mall and ,of course, we couldn't find her! We felt terrible. I'm sure this girl was looking for us and we were looking for her and just couldn't find her. So it just ended up being me and meredith but it was fun. We watched "Enredados" which is the new disney movie "Tangled" about Rapunzel. It was in 3D in spanish. It was so good!

So we are going to get cell phones sometime in between the madness of attending all the possible classes we can. After we achieve this goal then we shall tryout our attempts to hanging out with people again!

Feeling Emotional,

Kimee Paige

"Cupid is Stupid"-single people everywhere.




UPDATE!!!! We have been invited to hangout with some people! When? Tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

These are the days of my life...

               Two week language class is almost over! Can you believe it!? Because I don't. I feel like at any moment I could wake up and it'd all be a dream. The coolest part though is it's not! I am here and it is real.

So we were allowed to miss only two days of the language class and we hadn't missed a day up until wednesday. Let me set the scene for you...

It was a beautiful day on wednesday. The sun was out, the birds were chirping and it was around 60 degrees (not trying to rub it in). We had just succesfully located the nearest post office and retrieved a package that was sent to Meredith. This has been our regular routine so far. We go before class to accomplish one thing off of our list and then head to class. Well on this particular day, wednesday, we successfully located the post office and headed towards our metro. We were walking down the stairs into the Metro stop and it clicked. We haven't missed a class AND it's a wednesday! We more then likely weren't going to miss anything to important on a wednesday that we couldn't get caught up on the next day! Yup we ditched. We turned right back around. The feeling was liberating. We turned and looked at eachother, "What do we do now!?" We have the whole day to do whatever we want. What did we do first? We went and bought peanut butter (another item on our list of things to accomplish).

Oh peanut butter how I miss thee. Peanut butter is not very popular here. It makes me sad because I LOVE peanut butter. We found some at a supermarket and it was 4 euros and yes we bought it. That jar could of been 10 euros and we would of still bought it!

After the very successful purchase we headed to Retiro Park. For those of you that are just now tuning in to my blog...Retiro is the equivalent to Central Park in New York. I haven't ever been to central park but I imagine Retiro is much much prettier. Okay I might be biased so I'll let you judge for yourself....

The sky is blue, the sun is bright, and everything is beautiful...what a life.

I wish I had better photography skills. The pictures I take are no where near how beautiful everything actually is.

This was a huge empty glass building. It glistened ever so brightly in the sun. It's called the Glass Palace, go figure. 

This was a random art exhibit in the park. It was in the Crystal Palace. Meredith took this picture.

Another picture of the park....The park is by far my favorite place to be.

Once the sun started to retire we headed towards the Prado Museum.

(I borrowed this picture from google.)

The Prado Museum’s permanent collection is one of the largest in the world. It consists of about 9,000 paintings, 5,000 drawings, 2,000 prints, 1,000 coins and medals, and approximately 2,000 decorative objects.

(Another picture borrowed from google. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the museum, but obviously someone was sneaky enough to take this picture.)

This museum houses some of the most famous artists in the world. Just to name a few off the top of my head there was Greco,Velazquez, Goya, Murillo, Ruben, Bosch, Raphael, Durer, and Titian. 

Today was back to reality. I'm here in spain for school. We had our usual routine today of checking something off the list and finishing the day with class. We found the Sal y Ven office and got the key to our apartment mailbox and away to class we went. Today our professor informed meredith and me that our spanish were very good (her spanish is alot better then mine), however the class we were thinking of enrolling in we might not be able to. The professors may tell us that the class is way to over our heads because we don't speak spanish at the same level as a native speaker. SAY WHAT?! My heart sank. How are we going to get enrolled in 12 hours worth of classes and the classes still be to the standard of what OSU telling us take!? OSU says we have to take such and such classes for our degrees/majors but Complutense is saying those classes might be to advanced and that we will not be allowed to enroll in!!! Ugh, this is frustrating.

We ran home after class put two pizzas in the oven and e-mailed as many people for help as we could. I personally have just consumed a whole pizza and 5 cookies topped with nutella! Stress eating, yup, this is exactly what I'm doing. I know in the back of my mind that everything will work out in the end, but it's the uncertainty that is killing me.

Tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities and the ability to find out more information. Our college is having a meeting about how to get enrolled and things of this nature. Hopefully we will get some answers.

Eating everything in sight,

Kimee Paige

Is everything as urgent as your stress would imply?  ~Carrie Latet

Stress is an ignorant state.  It believes that everything is an emergency.  ~Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

These have helped me find some peace...Maybe they will help you too.