La Noche Blanca

(La Gran Vía during La Noche Blanca in Madrid, Spain)

Yesterday was a wonderful day full of sleep! After waking up at 11 am and doing some reading for Economics, I watched TV in my room, which turned into me sleeping in my chair, and then crawling back into my bed for a proper nap.

Julia woke me up to go to church at 7. The church is very popular and has a mass almost every hour, but when we arrived there was a wedding limo parked out front. Although it was fairly apparent that there was a wedding running late inside, Julia walked right in and sat down in her usual pew. I followed, somewhat meekly, and sat down next to a woman in a full-out ballgown. We watched the end of the wedding, which was complete with a flamenco band that followed the couple around, and when the couple was half-way down the aisle, the priest started the next mass. Catholicism is very efficient in Spain.

We came back to Julia's after a 25 minute mass for a dinner about which I was a tad nervous. The woman that cooks and cleans for Julia cooks all the food for the weekends on Fridays. The problem: refrigerating food doesn't seem to be as big a concern for Spaniards as it is for Americans, and our dinner, salmon fillets and potatoes, had been sitting on the counter since Friday afternoon. It was now Sunday night. The potatoes tasted a little off, but the salmon tasted like salmon, and I'm still alive, so I guess everything was all right. . .

Our dinner conversation focused on Superior Gabrielle, as I have taken to calling her. Superior Gabrielle was an exchange student Julia hosted a few years back, who among other things, "had many interests, spoke fluent Spanish, and learned French while she was here." Julia mentions Superior Gabrielle's accomplishments quite a bit.

Then I had to prepare for the night's festivities. Last night was La Noche Blanca in Madrid, a festival where there are about a hundred free performances, tours, art displays, and activities put on throughout the city all night. Lizzie and I met up outside the Santiago Bernabeu fútbol stadium to see a Cirque du Soleil show, "The Dark Side of the Earth." There was plenty of symbolism hidden in that half-an-hour, but even during the parts that were way over my head, it was fun to watch how flexible and coordinated those people are.

We were on the metro headed to La Plaza de España when we ran into two BC students, Julia and Don. They were headed for El Museo de America for a techno show, so we followed them through some creepy park (with not near enough street-lamps) to the museum only to find out that the show was full. So the four of us headed back to La Gran Vía, where a lot of the night's activities were. The line to get into the kitchens of El Palacio Real were ridiculously long, so while Julia and Don were going to try and find another performance, Lizzie and I decided to stay and enjoy Gran Vía.

We wandered through the streets and happened upon a jazz concert being given in a park. We plunked ourselves down and listened to the music while talking and people-watching. When that concert was over, we wandered some more until we found a Tupperware Orchestra, where about 50 audience members were picked and told to play a specific note at a specific time. Music and/or disaster ensued, depending on how you look at it, but it was fun to watch. We then wandered some more (passing these two gentlemen peeing on a dumpster) and found ourselves back at Sol. We stopped for ice cream at a restaurant on one of the main streets and then headed home at about 3 am. On the metro was a friendly and very plastered girl who was trying to convince us that we were in Tokyo. She then proceeded to sit down in the middle of the packed subway car and shout questions at us. But she was very well-meaning and told me to hold on to my purse as there were lots of pickpockets around. I told her to do the same.

An update on the toilet paper situation: there is none and has been none for two days now. Luckily, my mother always instructed me in the art of carrying too many tissues with me, so that has been coming in handy. This is really quite an important problem in my life right now, so I thought you should all be informed.

Today I've been trying to get ahead on my homework, seeing as Lizzie and I will be in Sevilla all next weekend and I will probably not be doing homework during that time. Today we booked our hostel and on Tuesday we are going to make ourselves some kind of itinerary. Lizzie and I, a lack of Spanish skills, and a weekend in Sevilla: what could go wrong?