Yo soy Español

Outside a Church where a wedding recently happened. Flower petals were abundant.

Last week to start off, I went to Toledo. Toledo is so popular because is it beautiful , historic, and has been a beacon of all three Abrahamic religions. It was really hot, but also really beautiful.

Inside the main gate at Toledo

 Over the weekend, I switched families (as was planned from the beginning). I like this family a lot more. They let me go to Madrid every day if I want. They are also overall much more chill- I don’t have a curfew. It is a family with two little girls who are extremely cute and fun to be around. They also really only know Spanish, so I speak to them in English first and then in Spanish ( I am there to help them learn English and to nanny). It has made me learn a lot more Spanish. On Wednesday I dropped my stuff off at their house so I could switch families and come back straight to their house on Monday morning from Barcelona.

On Thursday night I left to Barcelona for the weekend with some friends from church. Sadly, we are poor college students and the cheapest method to go is taking a bus. It took eight hours. EIGHT HOURS! We survived. We took overnight buses. So we had all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We took time at the beach, at museums, many churches, and eating a lot of gelato. I think after Barcelona I have seen almost all of Picasso’s work. He has a museum in Barcelona that has his entire pre-cubism look. It was definitely interesting. His paintings are all over, but I think I have honestly been to every museum that is famous for his work.

At a lookout point near the main art museum in Barcelona Kari.

We went to the beach Friday. It can be kind of uncomfortable. Women find it totally acceptable to just go topless (which could have been worse- some of Barcelona’s beaches are nude only). Every few minutes one of us would see someone naked. At the beginning we would acknowledge it, but by the end we realized that if we said anything we all would look no matter what. It was kind of like when we were little kids in the locker room of the pool and someone would yell “don’t look, I’m naked!” and then everyone would look. Not only women were naked, people openly change out of swimsuits on the beach. I know I have been desensitized by nursing school- but now I think my desensitization is totally complete.  In any case the beach was a good way to beat the heat.

On Saturday we saw almost as many cathedrals as possible, including the Sagrada Family Cathedral, which has been under construction for more than 100 years and isn’t expected to be finished until 2026. Maybe I’ll have enough money to come visit then? On our way back we caught some local dancing in the main square and even a wedding they allowed the public to go to.

Wedding we happened to walk into.

Dancing in town square!

In the square, there was dancing and it was really cute. People got really into it. They all wear the same shoes and some wore exercise clothes because it is pretty intense.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning and then saw more things. It rained ALL DAY LONG. It wasn’t sporadic Philly rain either. It was buckets upon buckets of rain for hour and hours. We went to the FC Barcelona stadium- Natalie tried to casually walk in and a security guard stopped her and asked “Que Pasa” (What’s up?). It turns out it costs a lot of money to go inside. We hung out there for a while and then hit up the Picasso museum. It is free on Sundays- the line to get in was 1.5 hours long- the same amount of time we spent in the museum. It was cool to see. After we were going to go see the Euro cup final Spain vs. Italy. It took us a while to leave the museum because it was so rainy and we really didn’t want to get wet. We finally just left and tried to find a pub and watch it. Spain won! I have to get on a bus back to Madrid before it ended. It was 4-0 though. Everything was crazy the next day. I got into Madrid at 7 in the morning and took the metro to get to my house. Everyone was really tired, sleeping, and had traces of red face paint or hair dye on them. I got the work just fine that morning. That night in Madrid was the official congratulatory ceremony for winning the cup. There were easily hundred of thousands of people there celebrating. It was really crowded- but amazing to see. We stood there for at least 4 hours, getting a good spot and waiting for the team to come in. It was amazing to see so much unity. It made me want to yell “Americuh” or something. There are a lot of typical songs people sing around games, a favorite it “ yo soy Español, Español, yo soy Español Español” Simply yelling, “ I AM SPANISH, I AM SPANISH” hundreds of times. Anyways, it was a really good experience. I got home really late that night because all of the metros were SO full.

Spain's team on a bus on the way into the main celebration in Madrid.

I was lucky because on Tuesday (the 3^rd) I got to go to a 4^th of July Party at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. I thought it weird that they wouldn’t have it on the 4^th- then I found out that all of the workers there get the 4^th off, so they wanted to be able to have a hangover on the day they didn’t have to go back to work. It was amazing. I wore what I thought I would normally wear on the 4^th. Bright blue pants and a shirt that had red and white on it. Turns out that people in Spain like to dress up a lot more than us Americans. I was severely underdressed. The woman in charge of my Africa trip said that on the 4^th of July she went to the embassy in Kigali, Rwanda and had a lot of fun. It sounded like it was really casual, so I thought this would also be casual. I was wrong. No one really cared that I wasn’t really dressed up. I got introduced to a lot of top names- a lot of them I had never heard of. It was really cool though! Lesson learned: Hamburgers in Madrid are not the tastiest.

To top it all off- yesterday I got a haircut. In Spanish. Risky business. I got a haircut when I was an exchange student in Germany- but it wasn’t too bad. Trying to find the correct translation for layers is really hard in any language. Anyways, I knew how to answer when the lady asked if I wanted my hair dyed and I surprisingly knew how to explain what I wanted (I brought a picture also). It was a good learning experience. Very few people have my hair color here

Now for the future! Today I bought my bus ticket to Pamplona for the running of the bulls! Look for my next post soon! I am SUPER STOKED!