Más, más, y más

The last two days have been busy! I went back to the airport on Friday to meet with the group and go to Alcalá de Henares to be picked up by my host family. I got to be introduced and try and make conversation in Spanish with my Senñora, Mariola. I used the phrases "repeta, por favor¨ and ¨¿pardón?" a whole lot. After eating lunch and spending a few hours unpacking, the group met at Plaza de Cervantes and did a little walking tour of down town Alcalá de Henares. An elderly man from Malaga stopped to ask where our group was from, because he thought the women were beautiful. Then he recited a poem to us (ahh, now we know he wanted a chance to show off). It was something about how to treat beautiful women. But all I caught was ¨Mujeres," "Malaga," and some thing about shaking hands (or maybe it was not shaking hands).

We walked by many cute little shops, panderias, an internet cafe and places with much cooler dresses than you can find in the US. But the items were that were supposed to be of interest were probably the Plaza de las Inglaterras, the house of Cervantes, a cathedral magistral (one of two in Europe, it is this because it was integrated with the university, I think), the Universidad Antigua, etc... I did think that all this things were pretty darn cool too. After that, more attempts at Spanish conversation at home. Luckily Mariola´s husband asked a lot of the same questions as she had earlier in the day, so it was a little bit like getting a retake on a quiz.

Today was the first real day in Madrid. Again, we did sort a sort of walk by introduction with the group. There was a lot of beautiful baroque government buildings, museums, the park retiro, etc... We actually did get to go to the national archeology museum. Though it was small compared to other museums I have been to, it had an excellent representative artifacts from major periods of history. It wasn´t "pre-history" archeology so it went from arrow heads to baroque sarcophagus.

After that it was off to the botanical gardens with a small group for a picnic lunch. Then we headed for el Museo de Reina Sophia, the modern art museum in Madrid. I got to see Picasso´s Guernica. It´s BIG and very popular. In the room all to it´s self there is a constant group jostling to be able to see over each other´s shoulders. Text book picture don´t do it justice. I´m a little embarrassed to say, I was mildly surprised that it really is in gray colors and that wasn´t just because my textbook publishers were cheap.

I can´t say that I really appreciated the museum though, even if Guernica was awesome. I need to go relearn the significance of the modern art movements and painters. Then on a Saturday when Marty is here (Saturdays are free) I´ll go back. There are, however, some things I just don´t want to appreciate. I was interested to see Dalí´s work, as he is probably the most famous surrealist and the only one I know by name. But in the BYU humanities class they failed to mention that some of his works were far beyond a pg-13 rating. This wasn´t the violent Guernica sort of content. I´m sure he has a great point, but I don´t really want to know what it was any more. I´ll spend that time on one of the other floors.

My little group headed back to the train station so we could head home for the evening. As we were waiting on a bench, one of the girls realized that the train behind us was going to the same place we wanted to be. So she called to get up and run on. She did this as the train was beeping. We realized, as we looked at her through the windows of the closed doors, that the beeping means something. It means you should have ran faster. She had a few minutes of panic and we had a brief moment of sympathy. We caught a train a few minutes later and she didn´t have to wait long. Which is good, because she thought she needed the group ticket that we had to get out of the station (turns out you don´t but none of us knew that at the time).

After that I had a little adventure with Carrefour (Spain´s Walmart) and a misunderstading with the bus system. But that´s ok. Walking is good for your health, right?

The disadvantage was that by the time I got home I didn´t really have time or energy to shower and go to the city festival to meet up with some othr girls. So I wrote on my blog instead!

P.S. I did find my house/familia, Mom. They are very nice. They have wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee here) and don´t mind if I use their computer (fantastic!). They are both members, which is helpful (and not because it means I don´t have to take the bus to church. Church is only a block away). Tomorrow I go to the Spanish ward and on Monday we go to see the fountains at Granja Palace.