This post is from last weekend but I couldn't get the video to upload at first so i postponed posting until the video was ready. Enjoy.
The past few days have been awesome. I'm really not sure where to start so I guess I'll just pretend to remember when the weekend began. It began on Thursday because that's how we roll - not to be confused with how we ride (Dirty). It was Jessica's birthday so we went out to a nice dinner and then passed out like old people. When Friday rolled around, we were ready to party, after a fair amount of pregaming, Chris, Jessica, and I went out to explore our district of the city. The funny thing about our district of the city is that it melds with the gay district (Chueca) which is a place with tons of bars and places to go. We made our first stop at a new bar/club called Mint. Here we found overpriced drinks and a group of guys jamming out to every tune that was played. We eventually tired of the people watching and set out to find free drinks at other bars. While walking, it is very common to be handed a voucher for a free drink at a random place. So this is what we did for the remainder of the night...not bad.
Saturday was a whole new ballgame. We made plans to go out on the town with our cousins Ana and Almudena. We met up and walked around for a bit, stopping every now and then to grab a beer and chat. Our final stop was a club called Morocco which turned out to be a jammin nightclub with a bit of a twist. The twist came in the form of one of the craziest dancers i have ever encountered. This guy was nutso-city. Words cannot describe him. Fortunately, they dont have to because I have ample video footage of his shenanigans:
This went on for multiple hours. Between dancing, watching this guy, and havin a good time, we stayed at Morocco until around 4 AM. We are getting closer and closer to becoming real Spaniards who stay out past 6 AM and act like thats totally normal. On the walk back from the club, I found a seemingly decent pot on the side of the rode in a pile of trash. My first, and logically correct, instinct was to pick it up and take it home. I proceeded to carry this pot all the way home through crowds of people making comments such as "look at this guy walking home with tomorrow's lunch". To this I responded by inviting them to come back and eat. The pot is actually awesome and inebriated Ryan wins again.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Last Weekend
I'll humor myself for a second and pretend that people are actually still reading this by apologizing for not posting anything last weekend. It was busy...
Last weekend my Dad came to Madrid to visit us, visit his family, and bring 2 suitcases full of goodies for our apartment. The goodies included such things as clothes hangers (which cost a small fortune in Spain - 3 euros for 4 hangers) and Ranch Dressing. With our Dad here, we spent the whole weekend with family doing family things. The big trip was an excursion to a vineyard owned by my aunt Marta and uncle Titin to a town called Penafiel, a small town well known for its vineyards. All of the grapes produced in this region, La Ribera del Duero, produce a wine with the same name. Almost the entire extended family met at the vineyard - my grandmother, her 8 children, their spouses, and their kids, along with some of my grandmothers sisters. All in all, we were missing my Mom and one cousin.
We sat around and talked for quite a while before lunch. Included in this discussion was an argument about how American beer is way better than Spanish beer. Spanish beer pretty much sucks. No dark beers, no beers with flavors. Nothing too exciting, just good old fashioned family time. It was really interesting to have all 8 of my grandmother's children present because I dont think this has happened for many years. Good times all around.
This past week was also Jessica's birthday so we had oodles of fun with that.
On Wednesday we went to an orchestra concert of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra. A good friend/townie from Princeton plays in the orchestra which was on an interational tour. The concert was absolutely amazing. While I am no musical conoseiur, the members of the orchestra (All under 30) were some of the most talented musicians I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Absolutely amazing.
Work last week was also pretty baller. We had a new assistant come to our school which meant that we had to change schedules to accomodate the new guy. This gave me the choice of which class I wanted to work with and I chose to work primarily with the 3rd years - a class full of really intelligent kids who can speak an impressive amount of English at the ripe age of 8. So now I have classes with the 3rd years and the infantiles (5 years old). Great stuff because both of the teachers for these classes are awesome, fun, young, and legit.
Last weekend my Dad came to Madrid to visit us, visit his family, and bring 2 suitcases full of goodies for our apartment. The goodies included such things as clothes hangers (which cost a small fortune in Spain - 3 euros for 4 hangers) and Ranch Dressing. With our Dad here, we spent the whole weekend with family doing family things. The big trip was an excursion to a vineyard owned by my aunt Marta and uncle Titin to a town called Penafiel, a small town well known for its vineyards. All of the grapes produced in this region, La Ribera del Duero, produce a wine with the same name. Almost the entire extended family met at the vineyard - my grandmother, her 8 children, their spouses, and their kids, along with some of my grandmothers sisters. All in all, we were missing my Mom and one cousin.
We sat around and talked for quite a while before lunch. Included in this discussion was an argument about how American beer is way better than Spanish beer. Spanish beer pretty much sucks. No dark beers, no beers with flavors. Nothing too exciting, just good old fashioned family time. It was really interesting to have all 8 of my grandmother's children present because I dont think this has happened for many years. Good times all around.This past week was also Jessica's birthday so we had oodles of fun with that.
On Wednesday we went to an orchestra concert of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra. A good friend/townie from Princeton plays in the orchestra which was on an interational tour. The concert was absolutely amazing. While I am no musical conoseiur, the members of the orchestra (All under 30) were some of the most talented musicians I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Absolutely amazing.Work last week was also pretty baller. We had a new assistant come to our school which meant that we had to change schedules to accomodate the new guy. This gave me the choice of which class I wanted to work with and I chose to work primarily with the 3rd years - a class full of really intelligent kids who can speak an impressive amount of English at the ripe age of 8. So now I have classes with the 3rd years and the infantiles (5 years old). Great stuff because both of the teachers for these classes are awesome, fun, young, and legit.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
A Big Weekend
Not really.
This weekend was very low key. We had lunch with a bunch of my Spanish family on Saturday but I was too beat after Friday night's festivities to hit the calle again. So Saturday passed uneventfully.
Unfortunately for us, Sunday was not so uneventful. We kicked
off the morning with a trip to El Rastro, a huge open air flea market. Jessica haggled with some antique dealer for a while in order to buy some semi-useless trinkets and a set of tea cups. I bought a pair of sunglasses that will undoubtedly be broken by the time you read this. In El Rastro are a bunch of crazy goods. Anything from thongs to irons, one of the thousands of stands probably sells it. To make everything even better, we encountered this crazy gypsy looking lady who was sitting in the middle of the way turning a hand crank on this gypsy-cart looking thing that made music with the turning of the crank. Chris described her as "looking like she should have a monkey on her shoulder". I belive you will agree given the picture. However, after El Rastro, it was all downhill.
The afternoon plan was to go to Ikea. BIG DAY. We were planning on going to Bed Bath and Beyond if we had time...but we didnt. Ikea is a good 50 minute metro ride and then a 15 minute walk. We spent a long time in Ikea buying cheap odds and ends for our apartment and then decided to buy desks and desk chairs. Our landlord was going to reimburse us for the desks and chairs since the apartment was supposed to be "furnished". Long story short, we get to the cashier and they tell us it will be 50 Euros to have the desks etc delivered. Well...we were scared that we wouldnt get reimbursed to we opted to carry everything all the way home. I wish we had brought the camera because it was ridiculous. I cant even begin to describe how long it took or how uncomfortable it was to lug the boxed up furniture and goodies back to the metro, through multiple metro stations, and then back to our apartment. Needless to say, no time for Bed Bath and Beyond...
This weekend was very low key. We had lunch with a bunch of my Spanish family on Saturday but I was too beat after Friday night's festivities to hit the calle again. So Saturday passed uneventfully.
Unfortunately for us, Sunday was not so uneventful. We kicked
off the morning with a trip to El Rastro, a huge open air flea market. Jessica haggled with some antique dealer for a while in order to buy some semi-useless trinkets and a set of tea cups. I bought a pair of sunglasses that will undoubtedly be broken by the time you read this. In El Rastro are a bunch of crazy goods. Anything from thongs to irons, one of the thousands of stands probably sells it. To make everything even better, we encountered this crazy gypsy looking lady who was sitting in the middle of the way turning a hand crank on this gypsy-cart looking thing that made music with the turning of the crank. Chris described her as "looking like she should have a monkey on her shoulder". I belive you will agree given the picture. However, after El Rastro, it was all downhill.
The afternoon plan was to go to Ikea. BIG DAY. We were planning on going to Bed Bath and Beyond if we had time...but we didnt. Ikea is a good 50 minute metro ride and then a 15 minute walk. We spent a long time in Ikea buying cheap odds and ends for our apartment and then decided to buy desks and desk chairs. Our landlord was going to reimburse us for the desks and chairs since the apartment was supposed to be "furnished". Long story short, we get to the cashier and they tell us it will be 50 Euros to have the desks etc delivered. Well...we were scared that we wouldnt get reimbursed to we opted to carry everything all the way home. I wish we had brought the camera because it was ridiculous. I cant even begin to describe how long it took or how uncomfortable it was to lug the boxed up furniture and goodies back to the metro, through multiple metro stations, and then back to our apartment. Needless to say, no time for Bed Bath and Beyond...
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Workin' It Out
Work started this past Wednesday. The first day was uneventful and short but the second day was a full day of classes and adorable little kids. For the most part, I will be helping to teach two age groups - Second Years (6 or 7 years old) and Third Years (7 or 8 years old). The teacher of the second years is named Inma and the teacher for the third years is named Carlos. Basically, my job is to help run activities and answer questions and play with the adorable little kids. Later on I will probably make lesson plans and stuff but for now I just do whatever the F I want. One awesome thing about my schedule is that I get Fridays off. We have to spend 14 hours per week in the classroom and another 2 hours per week teaching english to the teachers.
The bilingual program in Spain is extremely impressive. Many of the primary schools have become bilingual which means that nearly half of the classes are taught strictly in english. They have science, physical education, art, and english language all taught in english starting at the age of 4 or 5. By age 7 or 8, the kids know a LOT of english. They can read english, write english, understand a lot, and speak quite a bit too. To top it all off, these kids are taught to write in cursive before grade 2. That is just mind boggling to me. Thus far I have been extremely impressed with the school system in Madrid.
But enough about work for now. Jessica and I went out on the
town last night to check out some local night clubs in our area. We pregamed pretty hard by ourselves in our living room which led to some good times...After quite a few shots we headed out on the 5 minute walk to the club (so close!). On our way we got solicited by some dude to go to his bar and have a free drink. So we drank a little (read, a lot) more there and then went to Pachá. After paying a small fortune to get in, we discovered that the club was totally empty because, apparently, 1:30 AM is too early for Spaniards. The thing to do is to go to bars for cheaper drinks until they close at 3 pm and then go to the club until like 6 am. Pretty intense. Long story short, we were the first on the dance floor and stayed there for quite a while. Good times in one of Madrid's swankiest clubs. You should take note of the unbuttoned shirt I wore attempting to fit in with the Spaniards. It worked.
More updates about work to come soon. Maybe I can take some pictures of the little kiddies without seeming like a total creep.
The bilingual program in Spain is extremely impressive. Many of the primary schools have become bilingual which means that nearly half of the classes are taught strictly in english. They have science, physical education, art, and english language all taught in english starting at the age of 4 or 5. By age 7 or 8, the kids know a LOT of english. They can read english, write english, understand a lot, and speak quite a bit too. To top it all off, these kids are taught to write in cursive before grade 2. That is just mind boggling to me. Thus far I have been extremely impressed with the school system in Madrid.
But enough about work for now. Jessica and I went out on the
town last night to check out some local night clubs in our area. We pregamed pretty hard by ourselves in our living room which led to some good times...After quite a few shots we headed out on the 5 minute walk to the club (so close!). On our way we got solicited by some dude to go to his bar and have a free drink. So we drank a little (read, a lot) more there and then went to Pachá. After paying a small fortune to get in, we discovered that the club was totally empty because, apparently, 1:30 AM is too early for Spaniards. The thing to do is to go to bars for cheaper drinks until they close at 3 pm and then go to the club until like 6 am. Pretty intense. Long story short, we were the first on the dance floor and stayed there for quite a while. Good times in one of Madrid's swankiest clubs. You should take note of the unbuttoned shirt I wore attempting to fit in with the Spaniards. It worked.More updates about work to come soon. Maybe I can take some pictures of the little kiddies without seeming like a total creep.
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