I’m lagging a bit, so we’re back to the week of April 22nd for this post!
After a jam-packed 8 days, I was excited to get back to Spain and my new “normal.” To be honest, I was mostly excited to sleep in a consistent bed for the first time in about a month – from Sevilla (changing hostels every night), to camp (which I can’t complain about this because it was a great set up), to the trip (changing hotels every few days), I’d been on the go for a while, which my body isn’t used to. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be more thankful for these experiences, but ya girl needed to lay down!
I arrived back in Madrid Sunday afternoon and made my way to the train station to drop off my bags before meeting up with Juanjo and Rosa, who were visiting Madrid for the weekend. I learned a very important lesson about the Madrid public transportation system – Cercanías and the Metro are not the same thing! Cercanías is the “regional” train line and the metro is the same thing as the subway. I thought they were the same so I took the metro, which turned out to be about 20 minutes longer to the main train station than Cercanías would’ve been. Now I know for next time!
I met up with Juanjo and Rosa at one of the Corte Ingles’s and we went up to the rooftop for a coffee. It had great views of Gran Vía (the main street in Madrid) and the coffee was much needed because I got about 3 hours of sleep the night before. We relaxed a bit and then headed over to the giant Primark – four huge floors of clothes! I had about an hour to shop before we had to go back to Tordesillas, so I took advantage and picked up some summer clothes for when I get back to the States – it was so cheap and the clothes were so cute! The train home to Tordesillas was relaxing and I was pumped to go to sleep.
From top left, clockwise: Puerta del Sol, the next two are views from the Corte Ingles, and the famous Schweppes sign!
Monday, I think I got out of bed for maybe two hours during the day. I was completely wiped out and I just have to say thank god school didn’t start again until Wednesday. I did a lot of reading, writing, and unpacked everything. It was a much needed day! Then, at 10:30 pm, Juanjo said that we were leaving and I was confused because earlier in the day, we had talked about leaving at 10:30 am the next day to the Villalar festival. Turns out, I lost some things in translation (surprisingly for the first time since I got to Spain – I think my brain was just fried) and we were going to la verbena at Villalar! A verbena is a type of country fair and there’s musicians that sing songs of other musicians, in all sorts of genres and languages. We saw Paris de Noia, which is one of the best groups in Spain. It was so fun and the concert was amazing – they had all sorts of lights, lots of dancers, and they played for 3 hours without stopping!!!
Some photos from the concert!
On Tuesday, I went back to Villalar with Juanjo and his dad in the morning and the rest of the family met us later at lunch time. The fair was very interesting. There were tents set up for each left-leaning political party Spain has and none for the right, as it turns out they’re not very welcomed at the fair. Each tent had their own bar, food, and music. There was a lot of rock music played in the tents and the main stage had las jotas, which is the typical music and dance of Castilla y León. Each tent was filled with supporters of the political party and surprisingly, I didn’t see any fights or disagreements. Many people had the flag of the Republic with them (it’s red, yellow, and purple) in support of wanting the republic back and getting rid of the king. There were protesters for about every cause you can think of walking with their signs through the streets. The elections were Sunday for the president of Spain, so everyone was out in full force. It was very weird for me to see all of the politics because I’m not used to going to country fairs where there’s essentially political rallies going on. It was cool to experience something so different! I also tried a tapa called morcilla (blood sausage) that was rice in pigs blood. I can’t eat it again knowing that, but I actually really enjoyed it (surprisingly!). For further information about the festival, click here.
It started to rain and hail, so we left the fair and afterwards, I went over to Teresa and Claudia’s house to play monopoly! Teresa, Dani, Fran, Kike, and Andrea were there and we played a game of monopoly (Kike won), ate dinner, and watched the presidential debate. I hardly understood it because they kept talking over one another, but Kike tried explaining!
Thankful for these friends!! From left to right: Andrea, Teresa, Kike, and Fran 🙂
Wednesday and Thursday were pretty low key. Wednesday was the first day back to school and it was fun to see all my students again! Thursday was the premiere of Avengers: Endgame and the local theater was playing it in English, with Spanish subtitles. I was soooo pumped. I stayed with Ana María because she lives in Arroyo, which is closer to the theater since the movie was going to end close to midnight. I got my popcorn and a free movie poster came with it (!!!!). The movie was absolutely incredible. I’m not going to spoil anything here, but I laughed and I sobbed, like the bad kind where you can’t really breathe and I was trying to stay relatively quiet for the sake of everyone in the theater. It was the perfect ending to the past 11 years and 22 movies. Still pretty depressed there’s not going to be any more Avengers movies!
Friday, I went to school because I had to make up the hours I missed from Sevilla. I went to science class, which is taught in English, and taught my 3rd grade students about the benefits we get from animals. It was fun to go to a different class instead of English! On Friday night, I went out to La Bolera in Tordesillas with the gang – it’s the local dive bar we always go to – and we had a few beers before calling it a night “early” at 1 am!
On Saturday, I went to the plaza with Juanjo and Rosa to watch some groups dance las jotas because I hadn’t seen it before. The traditional dresses are beautiful and the dance was fun to watch! After the groups were done, I met up with Claudia and Teresa for a walk with Odín, Teresa’s dog. We went to the park down by the river and the weather was so nice finally, after a week of rain and cold. No one swims in the river anymore, but I was ready to jump in because it was so hot! Kike and Fran joined and we had a lovely afternoon throwing sticks for Odín. Saturday night I went to the movies with Juanjo, Rosa, and Guillermo to see Endgame again, this time totally in Spanish, no English subtitles or anything. Of course, I cried again, and I was really proud of myself because I understood almost the entire movie! Probably because I saw it in English already, but still!
To wrap up the week, on Sunday, we had lunch at Rosa’s parents house and after, I met up with Claudia for another walk with Odín, but Odín walks Claudia, not the other way around! We met up with Fran and Kike for coffee and then we went to the community center to deliver coffee to Andrea and Teresa, who were volunteering at the election tables. Sunday was Election Day! Fran taught me how they vote, which is pretty different than America. Each political party has a paper with their name and says that you intend to vote for that party. You put the paper in an envelope, seal it, and drop it in a box. No machines or anything. For senators, you tick off your top three choices on a paper, put it in an envelope, and drop it in a different box. Some people leave the envelopes blank, tear up, or write on their papers in protest. Vote counting is open to the public, so we stayed and watched Andrea and Teresa count the votes. It seemed pretty inefficient to me because they had to open every envelope and manually tick the votes on a paper, but apparently it works! On Monday, we found out that the political party almost all of my friends & host family support won the election, so it was a happy day!
And that’s it for the week! Stay tuned for last week’s adventure and then my trip to Munich!
aventuras de alyssa 