Madrid

I have an interview for a volunteer position at a counseling center! It's over skype, on Wednesday, and I'm a little (okay, a lot) nervous, but also excited.

This weekend, my interest group went to Madrid. We woke up before the sun on Friday, took the Ave (the high speed train), and then toured the city. We started out at the Thyssen museum, which had a lot of great baroque and renaissance paintings. Angel was our guide, and he didn't mind my questions about why painters did something a certain way or how renaissance was different in different countries. We then moved to the Prado, where we stood in awe in front of Las Meninas by Velazquez, Goya's portrait of Carlos IV's family, and many other masterpieces. It was incredibly cool to see the paintings in person that we've studied for years in Spanish classes! I also saw many paintings that we talked about in my mythology class, which was good review for the exam! haha.

That night, we went to Avenue Q, the musical. It was really cool to see how they translated the songs into Spanish, preserving meaning, rhythm, and rhyme in a totally different language. Although the cast left something to be desired, the production was funny and kept our attention.

We woke up at 5am to our roommate coming back, hobbling through the door on crutches! Although it's her story to tell, I will share that she sprained her ankle by missing the last few stairs of an entrance to a bar.

The next morning, we were a bit tired, but excited to see more of the city. We went to the Museo del Traje, which turned out to be an interesting museum about Spanish fashion through the ages. After the museum, we went off in search of a supermarket. We purchased loaves of bread and slices of cheese, and went to sit in a park. After a somewhat confusing search, we discovered a hill filled with little daisies, the way grass looks with dandelions in the US. We ate our lunch there, enjoying the beautiful weather, then went to meet up with our group. We then visited the Reina Sofia museum, which is contemporary art. Although it's not my favorite, it was cool to see Guernica by Picasso and various paintings by Dali. We then wandered around a park for a while before grabbing dinner at a Thai restaurant! I totally spazzed out because I was so excited to get Asian food, especially white rice that was steamed, not cooked with olive oil!

This morning (Sunday), I was feeling a little under the weather, so I unfortunately missed out on seeing the Rastro, a market. Our group went to the Caixa Forum, which turned out to be another museum! (Yup, that's right... 5 in 3 days). It had all of these experimental films and also a photography exhibit, which was very cool. There was one film that had 4 "screens", and the artist had coordinated the images to all tell a story with a soundtrack. Very cool.

We then went to the train station, where, after a bit of confusion and rushing due to having one group ticket when we were at different entrances, we boarded the Ave back home.

What a whirlwind tour of the city!