Vuelvo!

This morning as the plane was landing and the jet-lag was starting to settle in, my stomach flipped-with excitement! I never thought I'd be so positive about returning to Madrid.

My piso is empty because my roommates are still on vacation. It is awesome.

Traveling was smooth. Due to my penny-pinching creativity, Anna and I had the most complicated and ridiculous travel plans ever. Her amazing parents drove us to the train station at 4 in the morning. When we arrived in Chicago, our amtrak train took us right by stations we would see again soon. We took the amtrak all the way into Chicago, walked three blocks through the city, climbed three flights of stairs to the above-ground metro (remember all this is with about 100 lbs of luggage-plus whatever Anna was carrying), and rode the orange line back out of the city. Chicago is beautiful! Wow! The waits in Midway and the Atlanta airport are still blurred in my mind. Highlights? Reading OK's exclusive interview with Jamie-Lynn Spears, an amazing berry smoothie and pizza!

The flight to Madrid felt long. I had been traveling since December 28th at 5:30AM when Mom woke us up and we left Dallas. So between the 28th and the 30th, I was in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Georgia and Spain. Let me just say: I have had enough of all this sitting. It is nice to be done traveling! And I am so glad to be back in a country where I have to speak Spanish.

The reason I was homesick

I grew up in Columbia, Missouri. It was always a source of pride to me that I was born in Tacoma, Washington-it meant I was a little bit cooler than the rest of Central Missouri. But I would never tell someone I was from the Pacific Northwest anymore.

Lee Elementary school made me culturally aware to things other than the Spice Girls. Then there was a dry spell where I grew up and tried to fight off suburban white culture. I escaped and ended up back on Paquin, living behind Lee Elementary. I worked at a coffee shop and regained that pride. But now I was proud of being from Columbia. Every detail of downtown life felt cool. I refused to call it "The District." I made a point of only shopping local. My bike was my favorite possession. I relished the fact that I could have no plans on a Friday afternoon, but be at THE party by Friday night.

I left all this-a community that took me 18 years to find-for Spain. And was surprised when I didn't find a great coffee shop in four months? It will take time to have such a rich life in Madrid, and it may be that instead of having a regular bar and a predictable party, I experience life by wandering a bit.

I am glad I'm going back to Madrid because I think I can do it better than I have been. I can do it with more fervor, creativity and inquisition! But for the next week, I am enjoying how great it is to have a place where everybody knows your name.

Columbia things I am really excited about!:
1. Our beloved theater Ragtag is finally moving.
2. The amazing downtown community is once again buzzing about the True/False film festival. Columbia: Go! See a documentary! It is the best weekend of the year.
3. The Missouri Theater is expanding. I am torn-upset to lose the charming but crumbling old building, but hopeful that they will do the new place up right.
4. All of my friends seem full of ideas-most are going off to study abroad, the rest seem to be planning escapes to bigger and better lives. My heart is bursting with their excitement.
5. The fact that this still exists-and it was featured in the worst magazine in Columbia! Thanks to the J-school, my town is very well-documented, so believe me when I say this publication sucks. My friend Kyle says the articles are mostly on etiquette for Republican fondue parties and how to make your house bigger. With stories like that, a feature on MSR3000 is especially sweet. I'll leave the magazine unnamed, but you should all check out Kyle & Tony's 2AM radio show on KOPN.
6. Snow.
7. Mike the carpenter, who sits outside Ragtag everyday full of stories about growing up in the Haight-Ashbury district and hitch-hiking through Europe.

If you are bored in Columbia, please take a stroll downtown. There is life on those streets and passion in every single coffee shop on 9th St. Considering there are like 17, there's probably enough passion to go around.

Merry Christmas!

America!

On Friday night, I left Sol around 4AM, was in bed by 4:30 and then this happened: 2 hours of sleep, met Anna in the metro, a 10 hour flight, delays for rain and snow, a 1 hour flight, 3 hours in a car lost in Chicago with my huge suitcase on my lap, savored time with dear Nancy, 2 hours sleeping on her couch, a taxi that almost didn't show up, a taxi that sped just enough to get us to Union Station on time, a 5 hour train ride that lasted 7 hours, 5 hours of sleep sitting up in the train, meeting Anna's family and the best BLT of my life, sleeping in the car to Columbia, loving on my family, slightly surreal (due to lack of sleep) Artisan Xmas party.

Highlights: sleeping sitting up, meeting Nancy's family, talking in English, stealing a pack of cloves at the Artisan gift exchange.

Mostly I am jet-lagged and wondering what I am doing here in Missouri. Home feels weirder than I thought it would.

Tomorrow: Artisan, Lakota, Kaldi's, Main Squeeze. And then repeat.

José

I have only really met one of my neighbors. His name is either José or Joseph, he never introduced himself. I'm going to go with José since that is a Spanish name. So, José is older and lives by himself. Dawn has these crazy stories about him showing her the pheasants he cooks. The weirdest story she has involves him showing her his new shower. That all said, the only thing he's ever showed me is his nativity scene-he is totally harmless. He always mentions how he lives alone. Anyway, after he showed me his nativity set I thought I'd like to do something for him. He seems like a cool guy and I welcome any Spanish friend.

So, I made a ton of food the other night for John & Vincent's Christmas party. I saved back a few lemon bars and a cookie for my neighbor. Then today I made snow slugs, a Shearrer favorite. Before I left I devised exit strategies with my roommate (I have cookies in the oven!).

José invited me in and took me into his kitchen. This is where I got confused. He took a bottle of maple syrup out of his fridge and showed me how the fridge was a General Electric fridge from the USA. Then he said something about "brujas" (witches) and waved the syrup bottle around for emphasis. Then he let me leave. He was talking a mile a minute with a huge grin on his face. I really have no idea what he said. Before I left he asked me if he had shown me his nativity set and then thanked me for the cookies.

Hey, Feliz Navidad.

Revisiting the Library

Today I finally went to visit a professor during office hours. Profesora Ruiz Montejo is my favorite for two reasons.
1. I understand 90% of what she says.
2. She smiles.
She explained the final exam to me: 6 short questions over 6 slides, 10 minutes for each question. Obviously, I need to study the images, so I explained my trouble with the library. She told me to try again and that the books are organized by class.
So I gave it another shot-I had time to kill before my next class anyway. I went to the 2nd floor, to the art section, and there, to my surprise, were about 1/2 of the books on my bibliography list-all on one shelf.
The library immediately seemed a little brighter. I noticed windows letting in the ever-bright sun. There were nice long tables with individual lamps. It was quiet.
My sports-fan-like devotion to Ellis began to fade.
So maybe it is just that the geographers and the historians have one up on the Filología department, but I sat there with a book in my hands not caring where the difference lay. The photos and the font in the book were HUGE. It was in Spanish, English, French and German. I'd have to be a blind idiot not to learn something! That said, I still need to look up the meaning of "soteriological."
Besos!

P.S. The doctrine of slavation through Jesus Christ. What a word.

Mi amor: Barcelona

Highlights of the week:
1. I realized Rick Steves is not some lame dude my Grandpa swears by, he actually knows his stuff. For 15 euros a night we stayed at Hostel Malda in a huge room in what appears to be a really freaking old (and therefore sweet!) building.
2. In the midst of being lost, the metro conductor closed the doors so fast that Patrick and I got stuck on the train (Anna might say we left her at the station, this is a bold falsification). The group of Barcelona kids drinking rum and cokes out of plastic bottles behind us thought it was hilarious.
3. I woke up early one morning to explore and get breakfast alone. No one was in the streets. It was so peaceful to walk through the tiny, old, clean alleys in silence. In the States, this peacefulness only exists around 6 in the morning. It was almost 9. Maybe I can be a morning person in Spain.
4. From the ancient-feeling stone alleys of Barrio Gótico to the wide streets on the hill by Parc Güell to the colorful, narrow alleyways to the beach, there wasn't a single place I wouldn't want to live forever.
5. One word: bicycles.
6. I speak Spanish. Barcelona speaks Catalán. Therefore I must speak Catalán.
7. Washing off our feet as we left the beach, an older woman opened up to us. She cried about the power of God but never lost her composure. She opened up to us. Her favorite things in life: coffee, the beach and God.
8. Drinking the cheapest beer in Spain and watching FCB win a game!
9. Pat's pasteurized milk. I had forgotten how much I love that stuff.
10. Collecting beach glass by the water and thinking about how I get to see my Grandma in a week or so. I wasn't happy on the beach-I was content. Much better if you ask me. I wasn't excited about Barcelona like I was about Paris, but I did feel like I had found a potential home.

Possibility

I have been thinking a lot about community lately. Being the liberal peace-loving hippie I am, community means a lot to me. I left my strong community in downtown Columbia to live abroad this year and sometimes I wonder why I gave up that family. What I didn't anticipate was what my community would look like in Madrid. I knew I would have one, but I expected it to focus around a café like my community in Columbia did. I expected it to be made up of madrileños and Spanish students.

Instead I find myself in a community of Erasmus students from all over Europe and our meeting place changes every night. I went out for a drink tonight with one of the first people I got to know in Madrid. Giovanni, this Italian guy that I thought looked so cool with his Ray-Bans. He has lived in several places and told me tonight about how he has the travel bug and wants to leave Madrid.

I knew living here would change me, but I didn't anticipate finding this international community. Tonight Giovanni and I marveled over how unique it was to have a community that isn't defined by a place. In fact, the opposite: The international community is defined by travel and being in a place that is strange to you.

The verdict is still out on whether or not I will catch the travel bug and spend my years bartending in foreign languages. But it is a romantic idea. Though I could pass my years on the corner of 9th and Cherry very peacefully, I might learn Italian and French and live in Argentina photographing for a magazine or in Uganda working in an Irish pub.

Some things are the same everywhere...

...like Texas Hold'em. The game was in true Erasmus style: We played in three languages and were always a little confused, we took a long white bread and nutella break and practiced our Spanish profanity, which is probably only funny to us.

I couldn't even beat him at a staring contest.

You know that feeling you get when you realize someone you love is way cooler than you realized?

Alberto and Adam came into the bar last night and put a euro down on the foosball table. They then proceeded to kick ass. They beat the undefeated and then everyone else in the bar-twice. Then they played the first guys again and beat them about 8 times over. No one in the bar had any euros left to play my friends.

3 hours. Not a minute wasted.

Hookah fulfillment

This adventure has so far only left me feeling sane about a quarter of the time. This entire week I have been sleeping from about 5AM to 2PM instead of at night like normal people. Needless to say, I haven't gotten much done. However, Antonio is very commited to learning English and tonight he dragged me out of my safe cocoon room to a sweet Kurdish hookah bar where we studied my native language. Seriously-he brought a book. Though let me tell you, the idea that God has allowed me to make money by hanging out with a nice Italian guy at a hookah bar...is wild. I don't think I could have planned it better myself.

I also got a letter from Dylan today. He is about 6 months or so into his mission in Switzerland and being his pen pal is another great part of my life. His note was short and sweet and affirming-kind of like he is. I mean...Dylan is really kick-ass and hardcore and tough...

Anyway, despite all my breakdowns and feeling crazy, there are sweet things about this life I am living. And I will look back and remember apple tobacco, traveling friends, couchsurfers and Italian accents.

Hippie comeback

Tonight Anna and I went to a book study through an English-speaking church in Madrid called Oasis. The book: Irresistible Revolution. We showed up a half an hour late and I hadn't read any of the book. Just another day in Madrid for me, only tonight I enjoyed the lonely confusion in my own language.

The small group reminded me of Amanda's church in Santa Monica and I found myself thinking about God for the first time in a few days and it felt so good. One of the girls from the study loaned Anna and I her copy of the book. I am now 4 chapters in and very nervous that my life is about to change.

The author makes his own clothes and has dreadlocks. That's the least of it, so far, he's renounced Christian culture and made friends with lepers in Calcutta. I've got butterflies.

Una amistad hecho por los cielos

I feel like things are finally starting to calm down and even out in my life. A huge weight has been lifted by buying a ticket home for Christmas. Before I was so consumed by the limitations of money and the ridiculous idea that I had to tough it out for the year. I think part of me thought I would be giving up by going home (even if it was just for a few weeks). Then I started to think about what my sister would do and I realized that, no questions asked, she would have already bought the ticket. Sometimes I try to live by unnecessary rules I have made up for myself. It is good that I have let this one go. I feel like a weight has been lifted.

Aside from the wonderful Christmas to come, I finally have a job here. God pretty much just threw that one at me-I didn't even try. Twice every week I go out for coffee with Antonio, from Rome, and we talk for an hour and a half. He pays for my drink and gives me 12 euros. It is a sweet deal.

Thirdly, I am finally feel a sense of community here. Today I sat outside my Facultad with Jesús. I drank my mint tea and watched the wind blow the leaves off the trees (Fall finally found Madrid!). He smoked his Marlboros and played Justice for me on his MP3 player in classic Spanish style, us sharing the headphones.

Tonight I met a group of friends at Boñar de León, a bar I like for the free food, though Adam informed me the food was "de mierda". A mi, me da igual. But we sat around and finalized Christmas and New Year's party plans and drank wine and ate paella. Then John, Vincent, Anna and I hung out at my apartment listening to Simon and Garfunkle before going to El Junco where Vincent played his saxaphone and Anna and John sat in the back room. This jazz club is so...jazzy. There are black leather couches and the whole room is full of smoke. Everything about the place screams cool. Vincent and I stood watching the seven other saxaphone players take turns on stage and I realized that these songs I am learning at El Junco will forever remind me of Madrid. And I will have happy memories of this city.

Besos!

Cassidy updated her status.

I am...
elated to be going home for Christmas with my family!
about to google "jaw hurting" to see if this cold of mine is actually a foreign disease.
drinking white nectar numi tea and daydreaming about the Artisan.
blessed to have friends who will mail me puppy chow and love.
going to talk to Nancy tomorrow, finally.
wondering how to get Guillaume Canet to marry me.
wondering if I am too sick to go to El Junco and listen to Vincent play his sax.
mostly looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, in my basement, in my town, in my midwest, in my country, in my language.

Glee

It is 2:10AM and it is raining. At first I thought someone was showering in one of the apartments across the "courtyard", but it is actual rain. I ran to the front of the apartment and watched all the cars moving through it, their headlights reflecting on the wet road. The city is so much more colorful when wet! It made me think of this warm, scratchy blanket my great grandma made for my dad. It has held together rather well and has been in our living room for as long as I can remember. My favorite place to be is wrapped up in that blanket on the bench on our front porch at home in a thunderstorm. The best is if I can see the whole thing, muggy start to wet toes finish. Rain is my favorite sound.

Trying to enjoy my own damn grass.

I forced myself to get up for class today. In class I finally copied the syllabus from another student. Yea Cervantes!

I sat in the cafeteria-the only other warm part of my facultad besides the computer lab, which is closed right now. I sat in the cafeteria and read a book (in English!) on Spanish women writers. I was reading the history of women's suffrage in Spain when I realized I was actually interested in Spanish history. I am beginning to identify with Spain in some way. My apathy towards Madrid is so lame! It was refreshing to CARE about this place for once.

Just now I walked over to another building to use a computer lab, and it started to rain. I almost started crying I was so happy. It is cloudy and cold and sprinkling a bit, and honestly, I'm just glad for something different. I walked through a garden in the midst of this happiness and found a (dead for the winter) pomegrante tree. Which couldn't have been any cooler.

It is raining!!!

Amigas

I just found out that my beloved friend and sister, Amy Sharland, is going to be in France for Christmas. I feel like Cindy Lou-Who at the end of the Grinch who Stole Christmas when he gives back all the presents. I'm going to the Alps!

I am also trying to figure out how to be a better friend from across the ocean, and it kills me to know I am missing out on people's lives changing and growing. Sometimes I am homesick for my own reasons, but mostly I just wish I could be in Sarah's small group and skip class with Nancy.

If I have ever told you I love you, I still do.

-Cass

Fall wouldn't come to Madrid so I had to go find it.

Paris is humid, cold and rainy. Of course I fell in love, what other choice did I have?

The weather was different every five minutes, just like in Columbia. It seemed more modern than Madrid, but the sunken steps in Notre Dame made me fantasize about...well, honestly, being a gypsy like Esmerelda. The whole city was absolutely enchanting. I found hummus in the first grocery store I found. I lived mostly on croissants.

Favorite things I didn't expect:
-They have a seemingly sweet bike rental system on the sidewalks
-Amazing international food-ate the best Japanese food ever on the steps of the Louvre.
-Excellent espresso, best I've had since Gimme Coffee in Brooklyn.
-Huge beautiful trees on the sidewalks and plenty of rain to keep them happy

...all things to keep in mind when I decide whether or not to move there. In love.

One of the coolest things about our visit was couch surfing. Pat figured it all out, but essentially we used the website to meet up w/ these French guys and stay with them for free instead of in a hostel. The first two nights (including Pat's B-day), we stayed w/ Nicolas and Pierre in a really sweet old apartment. We didn't get to hang out with them much, but they made us coffee, gave us a futon (three on one bed...it was a challenge, but warm) and a set of keys. I was amazed by their trust and generosity. I start to believe in crazy concepts like world peace when a complete stranger from another country will invite me into his home. Pierre & Nicolas had had 35 other people stay on their couch in the last 2 months! And the second night we were there, one showed up! A girl from Hungary who had stayed with these guys before came and we got to talk to her until Pat and I went out to celebrate his 21st with a Hoegarden beer.

The last half of the weekend we stayed with Freddy & Felipe. They lived right around the corner from the Eiffel Tower, and since we were with them on Saturday and Sunday, we got to hang out with them a little more. They took us to a friends for dinner and we drank wine and watched a boxing match and then went out together. Pat bought me a crepe in the middle of the night, and I spilled jelly all down my jacket. Lame! Anyway, I thought Freddy was hilarious and he seemed to think I was too, so we pretty much laughed the entire weekend. Sunday night they took us out to a restaurant down the street. It was such a blessing to have them, the only way I know how to order food is to point and ask "How much?". I can count my French phrases on one hand, which is more than I had before I got on the plane. Freddy and Felipe walked us through how a French meal works (cheese is very important and coffee is at the end-no matter how bad Anna wants espresso).

We spent the last day revisiting places we couldn't get enough of, and taking a billion more pictures. Now I'm in bed on San Bernardo wishing I was riding a bike along the Seine river or hanging out with Freddy and hoping I can find a way to fall in love with Madrid too.

Recurring dream

I haven't had one of these since I was a kid. I have always paid attention to my dreams-since I was a kid and we would all sit around at breakfast discussing them. My dad always had the craziest ones. Anyway, I've decided I'm sick of dreaming.

Since moving to Madrid my dreams have been waking me up in panic. In the dream I realize I am about to be late for my plane, and that there is no realistic way to catch it. I.e. I am a 9 hours drive away and the plane is leaving in 8 1/2. That was the dream where I was in Texas and apparently had to drive up to STL to fly to Spain. I also had one where I was driving to WA, and turned around to try to make a flight out of Chicago. One time I had a layover in Santa Monica. Last night I was in the shower when I realized my flight to Pakistan was leaving in an hour and a half.

Anyway, all this nonsense is bound to be happening considering I'm just now leaving home for the first time. And between my psych-major friend Jaci and dreammoods.com, I think I've established that I am worried about living in Spain on my own. Whodathunkit?

The tapa thing is finally starting to work out.

Last night Anna and I had plans to meet friends in Sol (center of Madrid) to go to a jazz club. But we had two hours to kill before the show, so we took our time walking to Sol. Anna convinced me to go to a mass! The church was incredible. It was huge-with all sorts of crazy decorations and statues everywhere. It seemed a bit kitschy to me, but still way cool. The building itself was incredible. The mass was awesome. We missed about half of it (literally, verbally I missed 95% of it because I was too busy gawking at the building to try to understand the Spanish), but Anna kept explaining everything to me. I didn't go to church last week because I am tired of getting homesick everytime I go, so my heart was really read to hear some scripture. Or at least talk about peace.

Afterwards we went to this café that is known for the huge amount of free food they give out with drinks. We had wine and talked about our amazing families and friends. The café lived up to its reputation. For 9 euros worth of drinks, we got 2 pinchos (servings) of Spanish tortilla, 2 small baguettes and a huge plate of olives. When we were full, our waiter came over and asked if we wanted another dish. Dang!

Then we walked to Sol and listened to some amazing blues music, and went out for even more tapas at El Tigre! At El Tigre I think Anna and I both fell in love with all of our Erasmus friends who were with us. Adam, from the Czech Republic, knew all of my favorite American movies. Vincent, from France, was clearly only there for the tapas and kept getting everyone to order more beer so he could eat more. The other three were entertaining in their own ways. I think we're going to have a movie night together to share some cultural things. And so I can be a hostess and cook for people.

My madrileña...

is a true partner in crime
but lets me make my own mistakes
she explores this huge city with me
in a way that preserves my independence
she is excited when I'm depressed
comforting her disappointments keeps me from dwelling on my own
qué suerte that I have a friend here
who misses the same home I do

Cervantes

I'm about 3 weeks into the semester and I'm still hoping that one day I will walk into my Cervantes class and magically be able to understand my professor. It might be the 10AM class time (which means I have to get up at, gasp, 8:30AM), or his unreasonably fast speech. Either way, I'm taking comfort in the fact that my French friend's notes aren't too much better than mine.

Today I think I learned that Cervantes was captured by pirates and wrote them stories. And then he and Lope de Vega wrote some plays in Madrid. Right, it is time for an amazon.com trip. Need to hear all this en íngles.

A few more things

1. Euros are fun. I gave my wallet away, all I need is a coin purse. There are like 12 different kinds of coins and only a few bills.

2. Madrid is like LA in the sense that everyone has a dog, except Madrid dogs are the most well-trained animals I've ever seen.
They're allowed in every store because they don't go around sniffing everyone and barking. At first I thought my foreign stench was repulsing them, then I realized, they don't take interest in anyone. The down side is, Madrid has no dog parks, so there is crap all over the sidewalks.

3. Everything moves slowly...it's like hakuna matatta over here.

4. I think madrileños are more composed. Americans are always walking fast and talking to someone on the phone loudly, madrileños are always talking softly, or, more likely, not at all.

5. Beautiful men are everywhere, America is ruined for me.

Why life seems slow

An introduction: I am not as depressed as this blog makes me seem, forgive me for this has become my outlet for cultural frustrations.

I tend to be slightly pesimistic in Madrid, with the assumption that if I expect the worst, I'll usually be pleasantly surprised. So far, this attitude has helped me avoid all kinds of despair.
I'm sitting a library at my university, thankful for a silence I haven´t found anywhere else in the city. In front of me is a wonderfully old smelling book on Cervantes. It is one of the recommended books for my class on Cervantes-one of the few published in NYC.
In this library you have to request the book and the librarian hands your handwritten request to some mysterious man or woman in the back who retrieves the book for you. I requested this particular book because it is written in English and I was pretty sure I´d be able to take it home with me.
"Pretty sure" means "I hope" in Spain.
The librarian told me to wait for 15 minutes. I waited for 25, read a chapter of Harry Potter in Spanish and cried as Harry saw his parents for the first time in the mirror. Finally I realized I probably had to go up and ask about the book. The first librarian said something to me that I didn´t understand and moved on to the next patron. In this scenario, I assumed the best and threw a helpless glance to the second librarian.
She consulted the man in the back and brought me my book.
I stumbled in Spanish, asking if I could take the book home with me and then tried to use my public library card instead of my university library card, but eventually I found myself here, seated in a far corner with the book I chose to read on the life of Cervantes. It is a joy in any country to sit down quietly and open a book.
Unfortunately for me, no level of Spanish or English language proficiency will help me read a 183 page bibliography of the works of Cervantes.
God said something about finding joy in our suffering. Tomorrow I'm going to find joy in a biography on Cervantes, but for today I'm just going to read more Harry Potter.

How to freak out in a foreign country

1. Contemplate the long-lasting effects of your quick, uninformed decisions.
2. Drink lots of espresso.
3. Don't ask questions.

And always remember, you probably just screwed up.

I still say the deer plot was stupid. Oh Izzie.

Thanks to the fantastic website tvlinks, I have kept up with American TV. I have spent hours hiding from the big city in my living room watching Friends in a tiny box in the corner of my laptop. The picture is usually scrambled, and if I pause it at any point, the audio doesn't match the visual. I usually load it in segments, sometimes up to five. Tonight I watched the first two episodes of Private Practice. I have to say, I love the Santa Monica location, and I definitly was sniffling at one point, but I don't think it will last. Babies switched at birth? C'mon!
Tvlinks has movies too! I watched Superbad, which was cool except for the occasional bathroom break guy and the audience laughter. Yea for stolen cinema!
The coolest is when I watch Heroes-it usually takes a few hours to load and if I let my computer "sleep" for any portion of that loading, it stops and I have to start all over.

Fear not, tomorrow I'm going to make one of my roommates hide my computer from me and lock me out of the apartment. I'll discover Madrid yet.

First day of classes, kind of...

I am drinking the worst cup of coffee ever. I'm sitting in the basement of one of the Filología buildings on campus. I've gone to two classes and I have two hours to kill until the next one.
During the whole month of October I get to choose my classes. That's right, I have a whole month to choose. So obviously, today, all of my (potential) professors decided not to do anything except briefly summarize the syllabus.
Today has been a frustrating day. Every day in Madrid depends hugely on me-do I have the energy to explore? Do I want to speak the language? Can I get out of bed? It is so easy to hide in my comfortable apartment with my American roommates watching Friends on my laptop. The moment I do take a risk and talk to someone or even just leave my apartment, I have good experiences. Last night Anna and I found the "edge" of Madrid and a beautiful park where we sat in a slight drizzel writing letters to our best friends and loving the fact that we'd managed to stumble across something amazing (a view of the sky, a temple, a fountain) in the ever-claustrophobic & winding streets of Madrid. It's hard to convince myself to leave my apartment, because it is so hard to find places I feel comfortable in Madrid. I'm used to knowing Columbia like the back of my hand. It's like Cheers went off the air or something, I don't know anything or anyone!
Seriously! This espresso is so bitter! I'd kill for Kaldi's.
Anyway, I think I'm going to take Spanish Literature since 1975 instead of Medieval Spanish Lit. For one, the words "castellano antiguo" (old Spanish-think foreign Shakespeare) TERRIFY me. I have enough trouble with modern castellano! Reasons 2 & 3: The 1975 professor talks SO fast, but she smiles. Also, her class is in the afternoon, and we all know how I am with mornings. I couldn't even make it to my 11 o'clock class last semester.
I'm glad school is starting. I haven't had to think about anything but mochas, enchiladas and plane tickets since May. It will be nice to challenge my brain again!
At the same time, it is scary. I have a whole new set of confusing experiences coming my way. I wish someone would choose my classes for me! That said, I have been depending on my friends and roommates too much and I look forward to being more self-sufficient and curious. Current plan: Pick classes and establish schedule, get a job teaching English, spend money from job on travel.

Love, Cass
P.S. After I wrote this I met a guy from Sevilla! I love it when I get out of bed in the morning!

Three things

1. Fall is here. You can't tell by the trees, there aren't that many and the climate is so different here that I doubt they'll change that much. You can tell by the temperature and the air. It's cooler and feels like school should be starting-which it is! I sat through a 2 hour orientation today and I think I understand how to register for classes and where the library is.

2. Drullets. They are everywhere. Mohawk + dreadlocks. Don't worry Mom, I've thought this one through, pretty intensely, and I think I've decided against it. I'll post pictures (of other people) later.

3. Tomorrow I'm going to Granada. It's the super-moorish place down south. I'm not sure what the plan is, but I think I'm leaving early tomorrow morning w/ two of my Erasmus friends (Erika from Italy and Amélie from France) and Anna. Patrick & Anna and I also bought plane tickets to Paris for November two nights ago. And I think I've decided to spend Christmas in the Swiss alps. Or something...

This is the best breakfast I've ever eaten.

Without a doubt. Sorry Mom, everything you ever made me is not as good as what I'm eating right now. Sorry Uprise, Main Squeeze...you just don't cut it. Anna found bagels. Good ones. 85 euro cent bagels. Affordable. Now, that alone, would not be the best breakfast ever, that is just a good find, an affordable bread from home. However, in the same store as the bagels I found hummus.

Let's dwell on that for a moment.

I found hummus. And it doesn't suck. It's amazing. (I just stopped to take a bite)

Well, it's about 1 in the afternoon here, and considering I got home around 6AM from an amazing night, I should probably go back to bed. Last night was almost as much of a victory as finding this hummus-I was awake enough to figure out how to take the bus back home! Anna slept on my shoulder and I kept asking all the Spainards around me if I was going in the right direction. I think that's the secret of this foreign country: ask lots of questions.

HUMMUS!!

A book of one's own

After I was turned away from the tiny library in Toledo for lack of pasaporte, I found myself in tears over a bilingual book of poetry by Billy Collins in a bookstore near my apartment.

And after losing myself to my favorite poet for two blocks, I have rationalized the 11 euros I charged and I'm not going to think about how few coins I have in my pocket now.

El Rancho did me some good after all.

So last night Anna and I saw Un Corazón Invencible. It was a lot of fun to watch an American movie dubbed in Spanish, but I'll probably try to see movies in their original languages from now on. It's called A Mighty Heart in English. I really recommend it. I'm always impressed with a movie that is mostly dialogue and set in one location, but still thrilling and captivating. Afterwards we went out for Mexican. The bartender made us margaritas and we got this huge plate of nachos with amazing guac on top. I doused my chips in salsa and inhaled them. Spicy food is hard to find in Madrid for some reason. I paid about 4 euros for tabasco sauce at Corté Ingles because I miss those flavors. I guess working at El Rancho I built up a bit of stamina for habaneros. At the Mexican place I finished off the salsa with a spoon. Ha.

Then, inevitably, we went out dancing and I found myself missing Shattered pretty hardcore. Techno is just pretty lame.

Here is a happy picture of me, for the few of you I've called crying, so you can know I am not miserable or anything. Plus a view from my apartment. There are a few more on my facebook.

It's siesta time, so I'll make it short...

In usual Cassidy fashion I am living to the fullest. This morning I went to bed at 6:30 after a breakfast of chocolate y churros (fried sweet dough with hot chocolate-but it's like a melted chocolate bar...amazing) and a very full night of dancing. The metros are closed from 1:30AM to 6:00AM. I woke up at 9AM for my Spanish class. I bought a café solo (espresso) at the bar in the metro and mixed it with some cold water to make my own iced americano, and was therefore quite able to follow all the verb conjugating in class. Even with an alert brain this is a task. My teacher is about 3 inches shorter than me, skinny and loud. She looks like she's been smoking a pack a day since she was 14. Deep, raspy voice and amazing teeth. Thick black eyeliner and a lisp and Madrid accent like I've never heard before. She pronounces my name "Cachidy". I had gone out w/ an Italian guy from my class (plus my friend Anna and Giovanni's friends). So we sat there and moaned while she talked about the present tense. I made it through, and even managed to eat lunch in the cafeteria with some friends-a girl from Finland, a girl from France and two guys from England. I had tortilla, which is this lovely egg/potato omelet thing. Served cold and it's probably horribly bad for me, but it's the only thing I KNOW I like.

The last couple of days have been days of languages. I've been learning Italian from all my Italian friends, and speaking Spanish with people from all parts of Europe and then speaking English with my roommates and Anna. I've found my English grammer is totally messed up. I keep saying things like "I have thirst" because that's how you'd say it in Spanish. One of Giovanni's friends, Lydia, knows 5 languages. Holy cow right!? She's from Italy but has an Australian accent when she speaks English because that's where she learned it. So, if you find yourself in Italy and want to greet someone, you can say "¿Come stai?" Which is, "How are you?" And then they will say, "Bene, gracie, ¿eh tu?" And you will say "Bene." Or maybe "Fuerza Italia!" but probably not, because that has nothing to do with this. Most of my vocabulary is only useful at a fútbol match. Oh, I also probably spelled all of those words wrong...

That's all I've got for now. I love everyone and am trying to live in the moment instead of thinking about the things I miss about the states. Although last night, I almost started crying because I wanted Gumby's so bad. I could literally taste it in my mouth. Ha.

Jet Lag Ramble

It's almost 7PM in Madrid and I just woke up from last night's sleep. I feel like I stayed up all night at a sleepover or something. But I'm here. Finally.
I made it through a 2 hour drive to St. Louis with Mom & Ranch where I freaked out about how much luggage I packed and tried not to cry. Then Ranch & I overcame the coldest car on the train for a 27 hour train ride to Penn Station. Trains are lovely. No rules. We handed out cookies to strangers and drank hot tea. Then we were in NYC where I got steadily more anxious and excited. Excited to live in a big city, terrified to leave home. Shawn was calm and steady and took me to the airpot where I made a fool out of myself crying and had to spend the next half an hour conjugating spanish verbs to keep from breaking down again.
JFK was so calm and quiet compared to LAX. It made me feel even crazier. The lady who checked my bags couldn't read military time any better than I could and for about half an hour I thought I was going to miss my plane. I'm the worst traveler. I turn into this unreasonable sobbing mess. Anyway, by the time I got onto my Irish Aer Lingus flight and bought a glass of shiraz, I was settled again and reading and feeling so lucky to be on a plane full of funny accents and teal colored stewardesses. I'm used to flying Southwest, so Aer Lingus was freaking amazing. So much food! I got to watch Sex and the City.
Just as my eyes were drying out, I opened the first present from Dad (he labeled all these little packages for me to open at certain times on my trip-the first one said 'open halfway across the Atlantic'). I thought it would be a CD, so I had my CD player out all ready to switch over music. It turned out to be this book from my childhood called 'Jesus Loves You' or something, which I still knew all the words to. So of course I started crying again. My dad, somehow, KNOWS me. I'm tearing up right now thinking about it.
This year I need that kind of love, familiar love, God's love, Sarah & Nancy love. Leaving home was hard, and I woke up many mornings this summer wondering if I could live with myself if I backed out and didn't go. I woke up at Shawn's wondering why I even wanted to go to Madrid. But as I was leaving Columbia and NYC, everyone poured so many good wishes into me that I think I will be able to ration them and make it through the whole year.