getting around, round, round, i get around

I kind of forgot to account for the time I had to fend for myself to get from the airport to our hostel when I first got to Madrid. Thank goodness I printed out directions before I arrived. By taxi, it would've taken ~30 minutes but like 60 euros. I chose to take the metro, which took ~45 minutes (walking time included) and it was only 2 euros. 

Each time you use the metro, it's 1 euro, really cheap compared to BART's system of charging you by distance.

This is Madrid's metro system:

As confusing as it looks, it's pretty easy to navigate. Would've been EXTREMELY easy to navigate if only there were more escalators and elevators. (Trains come every 3 minutes. BART needs to take some lessons..) 

This map is definitely not drawn to scale. Sometimes, the distance between two stops (~1-2 minutes) is actually a 5-10 minute walk. Other times, it's a 20 minute walk.

My apartment mates and I use the metro to get to school every morning. 

my bible

I found this in a cabinet in my Madrid apartment. 

There's a chapter called "Ten Phrases That Make You Sound Fluent in Spanish."

¡Qué pasada!

Excursion to Segovia

On Friday, the program organized an excursion to Segovia, which is a beautiful city an hour away from Madrid.

So according to Michael, every historical city has an aqueduct, a castle, and a Cathedral. uhmm yeah pretty much it.

BUT here's a history lesson :]

Segovia's aqueduct is the tallest in the country.

There were hundreds, perhaps thousands (who knows, I'm not very good with math or estimating), of little black things flying around screeching. I thought they were bats, but it turns out they were swallows. Nobody knew why there were so many of them flying around the aqueduct, but our tour guide believed it's because of the unpolluted air there. uhm they were gone when we left. where did they come from?!

So these are buildings built outside of the fort. Behind the mountains is Madrid.

Our tour guide mentioned that in Segovia, people are very tough and hard-working, unlike Madrid, where people party, take too many siestas, and lounge around. 

I couldn't hear most of what the tour guide said because of her soft voice and long stories. She also started every sentence with, "This is very importante." She was telling us several legends explaining the woman lying down on the mountain. Can you see her face and impregnated belly?

I really like the decorations on the facades of the buildings. Each building has its own style.

(totally found a tutorial once on stumbleupon on how to make some 

of the decorations out of toilet paper rolls!)

Juan Bravo 

(Johnny Bravo)

The Jewish Living Quarters

American tourists

This Cathedral took 200 years to build! 

It's pretty magnificent to see in person. 

Gazebo in the center of Plaza Mayor

Pinwheels in the sky!

All the lions had their tongues sticking out.

It's like Sleeping Beauty's castle.

The "shoes" are pointy to kick unarmored horses.

Yeah no more pictures inside the castle because I started to get a headache. 

Queen Isabella was pretty bad-ass.

The apartment-mates minus Armine

More pictures to come once I steal them from other people's cameras...

my home away from home

I'm going to save the Paris and Amsterdam posts for later when I feel like getting to it. Instead, I think I'll share some pictures of my new apartment!

As my new roommate, Annie, described it, it's "shabby chic."

So this is the main entrance. I took the picture at night (hopefully you can see kinda how creepy it is). These are also Tina and Heesun, 2 of my apartment-mates (they're also from Berkeley). We live on the third floor. There are no elevators in this building, and the stairs are steep, rough, uneven slabs of wood. So imagine me arriving on the first day with luggage :[ BUT I haven't fallen yet :] I'm pretty sure I will have calves of steel by the end of the summer.

And this is the inside look of our apartment's door. I don't think the picture captures its intensity. 

This is the living room. The couches are quite comfy and the windows provide lots of natural sunlight :]

Surprisingly enough, I haven't tried watching tv yet :]

This is a huge mirror in the hallway.

 First hallway after entering the apartment. This place has a bunch of hallways that connect together like a lightning bolt (it's pretty creepy at night). There's also a bunch of rooms with little locks on them which we don't have access to (which also creeps me out).

This is my room, a double. My roommate, Annie, and I share a huge glass table at the other end.
Our window faces the street so I constantly hear chitchat from the streets, cars honking, the garbage truck every night, and right now there's a protest.

This is our bathroom. 1 bathroom for 5 girls. We're managing, but it's pretty difficult. 

Another long, creepy hallway leading to another double room, some more padlocked rooms,

and the kitchen!

There's not enough chairs for all 5 of us to sit together, but it's fully stocked with pots, pans, dishes, cups, ice trays, etc. etc. (and even soy sauce!)

These wooden beams are certainly an eyesore, but we believe it's to reinforce the sagging ceiling.

There's a lot of storage space in this apartment. Connected to this "pantry" room is another dark, cold room.

I don't know why there's a fake fireplace in my room (which is on the 3rd floor in this building).

We visited another apartment of some people in our program, and hot dang, it's fancier than a hotel! Kinda unfair that 5 guys get 2 bathrooms and a pink apartment...

the departure

Well I'm back in Madrid again. I figured I should type a lil somethin' somethin'
unfortunately, I can't seem to remember much :[ so let's backtrack
as many of you know about me, I am very inconsistent with the timeline in my stories.

so let's start with departure.

Even though Anjali stopped by to say goodbye with some burnt almond cake and help me with my packing, I still managed to forget a few stuff (like lotion, my nail clippers, shower sandals, to name a few).

Chi Thuyen (my cousin) volunteered to take me to SFO. It was raining on the way there, and there was an accident that slowed traffic down to a halt. Of course, I started to panic. But no worries, we got there in time :]

So from my itinerary, I knew I was supposed to fly on Continental Airlines. However, I couldn't find it at the international terminal. Turns out it's also operated by Lufthansa. This whole time, I thought FRA on my itinerary meant France not FRANKFURT, Germany. So imagine my surprise when I heard thick German accents all around me on the plane. When I went through security, this middle-aged German man behind me was being very impatient and ramming his carry-on into the back of my ankles. So I finally let him go ahead of me. When I was taking off my shoes to put into the bins, he turned to me and said "Oh, your mother?" I looked up and saw that he was pointing to an Asian woman with a young boy collecting their stuff on the other side. I was annoyed that he couldn't have made that connection when we were standing in line before he ran me over with his suitcase. But no, that lady was not my mother.

The plane trip itself wasn't too bad. I watched a bunch of movies and slept a lot. Also had a very nice conversation with the German lady next to me who was visiting her son in San Francisco. I like the little function on the tv screen where I can track where I am at that exact moment. I flew over Greenland!

My companions

For the two weeks before my summer program starts in Madrid, I am traveling with a couple of friends from Berkeley:

Stephanie (thepanie)

My mom and brother, for some reason, thinks her name is Jennifer.

She got her B.A. in Psychology, so she will be analyzing everybody's actions and facial expressions. Also, she's very culturally sensitive.

Javier

He got his B.A. in Economics. He's got everything planned out for us (thank god). He's also a very efficient leader, won't lead me astray! He just can't remember who is Steph and who is Tran.

Jose

He got his B.A. in Political Economy (aka PE). Esta loco, took an average of 22 units per semester. He is a native Spanish speaker, but he also learned French, German, and Italian.

Pero, of course, they're more than just their majors :]

reactivatioin

I realized I stopped blogging about my trip to Vietnam last year not even halfway through. Oops, my bad. I'll try to be more consistent for my own sake since I didn't bring a journal. My hand also cramps from writing :]

so for my Europe trip, the schedule's something like this:

Madrid - 5/31-6/4

Paris - 6/5-6/9

Amsterdam - 6/9-6/11

Paris - 6/11-6/14

Madrid - 6/15 - 8/5

Italy/somewhere - 8/6 - 8/??

Dusseldorf, Germany - 8/??-8/17

San Jose, CA - 8/18 :]