Mucho Escribiendo

(A ceiling in the monastery of El Escorial, Spain)

This morning I got up early and managed to pump out another paragraph of my essay before I met up with Kathryn at the Tirso de Molina metro stop. We wandered around El Rastro for a couple of hours - she was looking for a belly-dancing skirt for a class she's taking at her gym. We found a small stand with a bunch of them and we were looking at the different colors, but geez - there seems to be a market for belly-dancing skirts. The stand was packed and I couldn't turn around without bumping into somebody. She ended up getting two and we kept walking. I was telling her about how Amanda and I want to go to the Real Madrid vs. Zurich fútbol game, and she said I needed to get a Real Madrid scarf. She said that everyone who goes to the fútbol games wears their team's scarf, so we went and found another stand selling these scarfs and I bought a blue and white one for Real Madrid. So now all I need is tickets.

After we wandered a bit more, (which is really hard to do at El Rastro considering how many people there are) we ended up walking to Sol, because I was still on the hunt for postcards. There was some kind of anti-garbage demonstration going on, so there were about a million people at Sol, too. I thought the demonstration's information would be helpful for my sustainability paper, so I was looking for the people who hand out flyers and such. Of course, there weren't any. The one time I'm actually looking to take something from one of those street advertisers and they're not there! How inconvenient. But we saw the huge Christmas tree (made out of lights) that is currently being assembled, found a couple good spots for postcards, and passed a bunch of street performers (one swing band and 3 of those human statues). We had a little bit of time before I had to be back to Julia's for lunch, so we stopped at La Chocolateria and ordered a plate of chocolate con porras (like churros, but supposedly bigger and better). We grabbed a table outside, and after a bit, the waiter brought us our order. But horror upon horrors, he brought us plain old churros instead of porras! We were deeply upset, but he had already scampered away and I didn't have much time left - so we just ate the churros con chocolate instead, (really not that unhappy of an ending).

I got back to Julia's and we sat down for lunch. I had garbanzo beans in sauce and beef stew, both of which were mighty good. We talked about fútbol and she said that her brother has season tickets to the Real Madrid games. He must be loaded as well, as the tickets for just the Real Madrid vs. Barcelona game are over 1,000 euros. She also mentioned that her father had an awesome library back in their old house. She said it wasn't quite large enough to be made into a museum (the thought hadn't even crossed my mind) but that it was still quite impressive. She gave me the name of a museum, El Museo de Lazaro Galdiano, which is apparently a similar style mansion to the one she grew up - or at least, I think that's what she was trying to tell me, (the owner donated all of his stuff to the state - so there is furniture, paintings, jewelry, silver, etc.).

After lunch, I worked on my paper. Ana asked for 3 pages, and right now, mine's 4.5 (I always have been a rambler). It's interesting stuff though. For example, I learned that in all of those paintings of Mary with Jesus on her lap, they are sitting on the ground or on a low cushion. This is because, in Latin, "humus" means ground, which is the root of the word, "humilitas," which means humility. Therefore, this positioning is symbolic of Mary's humility, and all of these paintings fall under the category of the Madonna of Humility. Then, I was zooming in on the painting online to see if a pattern in the background was a lily (another sign of Mary), and I noticed that the embroidery on Mary's robe was actually the words for Ave Maria. I thought all of this was very interesting and that's why my paper is now 1.5 pages too long. I do love symbolism!

Then after some thrilling economics reading, Julia and I had dinner. I asked her where she had been that afternoon, and she said she went with her sister Marta to visit Marta's nanny (I'm not sure if that's the word she was trying to say or not - she was attempting to say it in English) in the hospital. I guess she just had a knee surgery and is going to be out of commission for a while. She's actually coming to stay here on Thursday for a week (which I guess is a valid reason why Lauren and Melinda can't stay here this weekend - I don't know why she didn't explain this to me in the first place).

I also applied for my first internship today. It was listed on one of BC's career center sites, so I uploaded my resume and cover letter. The internship process has officially started and now there's a whole bunch of applications that need to be done one right after the other. I secretly enjoy it though; writing in English seems so much easier after you spend the whole day writing in Spanish!