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.

Ladies night? Donde.

             Let's begin with saturday. It was a beautiful day so we decided to go to Puerta de Sol. This area is targeted as a "tourist" area. If you don't watch out you might be a target for someone to pick your pockets.

This is the Old Post office. It is Currently the office of the President of Madrid. The president of Madrid is the highest-ranking officer of Autonomous Community of Madrid and head of the Executive Branch.

 The Sol area looks like the spanish version of Time square in New York. We shopped around here for a bit and bought a few things. It was so nice outside we thought it'd be a good idea to go to Retiro, the huge park in Madrid. On our way to Retiro we found the Biblioteca Nacional.

I absolutely love the detail on all of the buildings. This is the National Library of Spain. We ended up looking around the Museum inside here for awhile. This library was founded by King Philip V in 1712!

After we left the library we found ourselves in the middle of thousands of people protesting against the negotiations with the terrorist group ETA. There were thousands of flags and people had signs that said Voces Contra el Terrorismo (Voices against Terrorism) and signs that read, 'No more lies, no more trap-truces' to voice their opposition to any negotiations with the armed Basque separatist group ETA. Protesters chanted "We are always on the side of the victims of terrorism." It was insane! I wish I had a picture of all of the people. We found our way out of the protest and decided we'd head home and rest before "Ladies Night"!

Ladies Night, yup that's what I said. Erasmus, the language class group holds functions for the exchange students! Now an OSU function for international students are like meetings at the Student Union or the Library or little gatherings at a coffee shop or what not. Here it's a completely different story. Erasmus invited us to Ladies Night haha. The description read Lady DJ, a female violinist, and male gogo dancers! Free entry until 1 am and free drinks for the ladies. I'm more then positive if any of the staff at OSU were to send an invitation out that said free drinks and male gogo dancer in the same invite would end up fired! Now I'm not saying the International students haven't ever been invited to a bar or the infamous "Strip" by a staff member or a student involved in clubs to aid the incoming students. However I believe it has to be done a little more under wraps then here. Erasmus also puts on tours of madrid and stuff for the new students, so it's not all about partying. 

BUT back to this Ladies Night business. Meredith and I were invited via Facebook by Erasmus. We thought it would be a good idea to go and meet some of the other students.

We're hanging around the apartment trying to stall so we don't show up to early and eventually decide it's time to leave. Unfortunately we didn't account for how long it was going to take to get there from the metro. Apparently at night the number of metro trains on the track is reduced. We haven't had to wait for a train longer then 3 minutes so far and last night the wait was 15 minutes! Oh silly American girls is exactly what we are. We finally arrived at our stop at 1:10. It's late, it's dark and we have no idea which direction our feet should be walking. We knew the street that we needed but had no idea if it was north, east, south, or west. I really should work on getting a compass. Instead of asking for directions like a normal person we picked a direction and started walking. Of course we ended up lost and decided to head back home before the metro shut down at 2 a.m.

The Metro ride home was entertainment in itself. Everyone 18+ , and i'm sure there were minors too, had a bottle of alcohol and a chaser on the train. I guess the cool thing to do is pre-party on the Metro? There was a group of kids that looked anywhere from 13 to 16 years old completely hammered drunk on the train. How did we know? One girl was crying, one threw up, and there was a love triangle between Alvaro and dos chicas going on right before our eyes. This kid was spitting mad game for being maybe 15 years old. He was flirting with the girl sitting on my left and then turned around to talk to her "friend" across from her. The girl next to me suddenly wanted to talk to her when alvaro was talking to her (I'm pretty sure every girl has used this move at some point in their life). You know what I'm talking about, the I don't really care to talk to you but I'm going to just so that the guy I like can't momentarily, yup you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. once their stop came up Alvaro grabbed the butt of the "friend". All I could think of was 1. My parents would never let me run the streets at two in the morning with my friends and 2. I hope that my friends and I NEVER looked that retarded in public, which I'm sure we did.

So for our first attempt we might have failed but we do have 5 months to get it right. Right? Meredith was disappointed because she "put lip gloss on and everything!". We really did try people!

Alright this leads me to the events of today, Sunday. Woke up and made it to El Rastro, a flea market in Madrid! I love flea markets! However this is also a good place for someone to pick your pockets. In fact I saw alot of it happen, but on the plus side neither one of us was pick pocketed.

El Rastro. I think it had like 350+ stands and thousands and thousands of people.

There was so many things I wanted to buy! We're definitely going back. This place was full of leather goods, clothes, scarfs, sun glasses, food, gypsies, street talents, soccer jerseys, house appliances, jewelry, music. It was awesome. We saw a teenage boy take some pearls from a stand, a man very slyly take something from a womans purse (but she did have it unzipped and wide open to the public). There were gypsies playing little music cart things, a man that chirpped like a bird, people playing various intruments, etc. I was so sad that it only stays open until 2 p.m. or 14:00 here.

We made our way home and fianlly saw the Media Luna place by our house was OPEN! Say what!

This place has been toying with us since we got here. It always looks open and we try to go the door is locked, or we want to go and they're not open at all. We weren't even hungry on our way home because we ate by the flea market, but we went in just out of pure excitement that it was open.  The food was so good and the people we're so nice! It looked like the whole family was there and having a sunday family gathering? I'm not quite sure but the women kept bring us things to eat from what they had brought for the gathering. I have a feeling we might have found our sunday eating place. I mean we're practically a part of the family now! haha

As for the rest of the day...

Laundry. Yup living the life of luxury! Laundromats are not popular here. Everyone hangs their clothes to dry. So we're becoming one with the culture and hanging our clothes to dry.

Taking it easy today,

Kimee Paige

"In youth we learn; in age we understand."

-Marie Ebner-Eschenbach

Friday Friday Friday!

 Hello Friday! One day closer to shopping at the flea market! So today when we were walking to class I noticed you can see the mountains from campus! For those of you that live around/by/on a mountain this may seem silly to you, but for an Oklahoma girl to see the white tops of the mountains from campus is stunning. Needless to say we have added another thing to our list....Go hiking in those mountains.

Here is a picture of what Meredith and I get to see from campus for the next 5 months.

Las montañas cerca de la escuela.  

Currently back home they're experiencing a lot of snow. What should be enough snow for a whole winter they are getting in just a week span. No lie, I kinda of wish I was there to play in the snow with all of my friends, but at the same time I'm sooo happy to be here.

We watched Pan's labyrinth today in class. It was....interesting? But hey I'm not going to complain. Over heard a boy from finland and a boy from germany talking about the super bowl today. I asked them who they were rooting for and they looked at me like I was a retard. Their response, " We only watch it for the half time show." Oopps, How was I suppose to know haha. Onto other things I don't know.... Erasmus (the name of the association that puts on the language class) has had "fiestas" every night this week after class! We had absolutely no idea until our German friend asked us why he hasn't seen us there. So I think tomorrow night we're going to try and go. I don't know how everyone else knew about this stuff and we didn't.

I recieved my first package today (from myself)! But still getting things in the mail is always exciting! I bought a microphone for my ipod so that I can record my lectures. Good idea right? Well turns out my ipod touch (the first generation) can't record stuff even after you update the software and add a recorder app. Bummer. Now I have to come up with a plan B. Any good ideas for recording my lectures? I could always just buy a new ipod touch, but I'm not sure I want to spend the money. I also saw a thing called the "Smart Pen" looked pretty cool but ,yet again, I don't know how much money to spend.

Well hopefully I can get out this weekend and be able to report back a good story or two. Something good enough to entertain all of you trapped in your homes due to the BLIZZARD of 2011!!! Ha ha got to love the Oklahoman Weather Men.

TGIF,

Kimee Paige

"If I have someone who believes in me, I can move mountains"

-Diana Ross

 

Success!

                Found a hair dryer and a flat iron! A+ for the American kids! You have no idea how excited I am. And I got them both for only 35 euros. This was such a better price then the ones at the mall. What a relief, now I don't have to wait until my hair is dry to venture outside. 

After tomorrow I officially survived a week of my language class. We're working on preterite and imperfect. I'm not sure I will ever master these two verb tenses in spanish. But i'm trying. Meredith feels like we're at Hogwarts. Which I agree. We have a bulgarian in class that looks just like Viktor Krum! Plus there are alot of prissy french girls. And if you think about it all the kids in hogwarts are all away from home for school, just like me and Meredith.

Oh cultural note! Today my language professor was talking to me in the cafeteria. And he totally bought a beer! In the CAFETERIA on campus! How crazy is that. It's completely normal to order a beer or glass of wine with any/all meals of the day. It's so normal that they serve it on UCM's campus. The cafeteria also serves martinis and some other vodka drink. Plus everyone here smokes...a lot. Which I could stand to live without the smoke being blown in my face but hey it's all a part of their culture. Now at OSU, it's a smoke free campus and I doubt they will EVER serve beer from the Student Union.

After class today we were really craving this "kebob" aka Kabob place right around the corner from our place. We tried going yesterday but they were closed and then on our walk home they were open. I'm guessing they're just opened later. Anyway, We decided tonight was the night to try it out. However we went the lights were on and the door was locked! Grr, the hours of operation around here are so different. Well it ended up that we bought a fettuccini noodle dinner package from the store around the corner. The worst part is there are a million pastry shops and they all close by the time we get out of class. So for dessert I had a bowl of sugar coaties with melted nutella on them! It was a bit of a stretch but I had a sweet tooth and we were out of milk!

Overall today was a success. I got my hair dryer and flat iron. Things I have still yet to accomplish: Get a cell phone, get an Abono, Get a bank account. All things I should do soon. I think tomorrow morning before class I'm going to try to get a bank account. I'll let you know how successful I am. I can't wait for the next week to fly by. I will have so much more to tell you guys once I can go explore some more.

Welp, I think I should get off of here and practice some spanish.

Just Rambling,

Kimee Paige

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams"

-Eleanor Roosevelt

Secador, Plancha de Pelo and Abonos...Oh my!

               Okay who knew it'd be this hard to find a hair dryer and a flat iron? Not me. We have found a place that sold a few. They were just really pricey. Who wants to spend that much money on something you can't use after 5 months? Guys are so lucky. They don't have to worry about hair dryers, flat irons, where to get your eyebrows waxed, tampons, or anything of that sort.

We did find a place to buy stamps today! Now I just have to find some postcards. As much as I hated Wal-Mart, you come to appreciate it's value when you can't just go to one place to buy everything you need. Dang it, Did I just admit to missing Wal-Mart? They do have a place called "El Corte Ingles" here,  but it's like a walmart/target/Jcpennys/a mall all in one HUGE building. It was hard to look for stuff. We even tried asking the information booth but they kept pointing us to the hair salon and the hair salon kept pointing us to the bottom floor. It was a vicious cycle.

We have made it to three different estancos ( tobacco shops) to try and purchase an Abono ( a season ticket for the Metro) and all three did not sell them. Every shop we've went to and asked has told us not this tobacco shop but there are other ones that do. WHAT OTHER ONES?!? This has been the most infamous question thus far....well along with where to buy a hair dryer.

Language Class today was pretty fun. Everyday we're meeting new people. Mer and I have talked about cooking dinner one night and inviting over people from class. It's not set in stone so don't hold me to it. Maybe we will tone it down to just inviting people to go see a movie. Making dinner for a bunch of people could get expensive, especially for two unemployed american girls.

Only two more days of class this week and then its the weekend! I think we're going to try and find the Flea market on sunday! I can't wait! This will be really good practice for my spanish.

In search for a much needed hair dryer,

Kimee Paige

"No matter how discouraged we get, God has not asked us to do the impossible"

-George Grace

Patience

            Second day of language class. Yup I need to work on my vocabulary. But my professor is nice and really really helpful.

On the way home from class we met one of our fellow classmates. He is from not from Germany, but somewhere close. I can't remember and don't even ask me to spell his name. He asked us where we were from and seemed surprised that we were both from the same place and living together. Most of the students here have three to five roommates. He seemed shocked that it was only me and Meredith. But honestly me and meredith were talking and these kids from germany and france didn't have to travel far. We on the other hand, we've had to come a long way, so I think we get a free pass on the only having one roommate.

On a cultural note: PDA, also known as public display of affection, is very very common here. They really are open to playing an intense game of tonsil hockey on the metro, walking across the street, or even in a restaurant. It will definitely take some getting use to. Also, I have been told that I need to wear a thicker coat. Which is strange only because the girls will run around in boots, a SKIRT, and a coat. I guess it's okay for your legs to be exposed just as long as you have a thick coat.

I'm trying my patience at the moment. I really wish my spanish was already where I want it to be. I know it's going to take time and that I have only been here a week, but it's just really hard to not want to be perfect at it already. But I have 5 months. After 5 months if I still feel this way then I'll know something is wrong. But I downloaded the scarlet letter in spanish and some other books. My teacher said the more input we get the better the output. So that's what I've been working on. Sorry nothing toooooo interesting today. I'll let you know when we get a chance to do some more exploring.

Trying to be patient,

Kimee Paige

P.S. Where the heck did January go? Seriously. Getting ready to get here and then finally being here. It all went by so quick.

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.
-Liberty Hyde Bailey