travel

Spanish Family

~ mjparman ~ Leave a comment

If you are studying abroad and have the opportunity to stay with a host family, please do.

Really, everyone I know who has stayed with a family has looooooved it.
I know kids who have lived in their own apartments, kids who stayed in dorms– mixed responses.
Everyone I know who had a host family– loved it.

Stay with a host family, do it.

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(this is not my building, but someone else lives here, right?)

If you are studying abroad with International Study Abroad (ISA)  there is a personality form that you have to fill out before you set off on your adventure that asks what you’re like, and what you expect from your family. I would recommend that you take this form very seriously. I was particular in what I expected, very honest about what I am like, and up front about what I expected to do while in Spain.

I think being super honest on that form seriously helped me get placed with the host mom that I had, who was amazing beyond words. She had worked at an art magazine, traveled extensively in South America, loved to read, watch art films,and go to art openings. I want to grow up and be her.

I know there was some hesitation from other kids in my program about staying with families that speak a language they didn’t feel 100% comfortable with.
I can’t speak for all study abroad programs, but with ISA these families had hosted multiple students before me and had been carefully screened.
They were familiar with how out-of-place a student could feel, especially with the language barrier, and they worked to make the adjustment smooth.
My roommate the first three months I was in Madrid spoke significantly less Spanish than I did, so I translated for her & our mom sometimes, but over the course of her 3-month program her Spanish capabilities ~Exploded~ because she spent so much time immersed in it at home and at school. (I don’t want that to sound like I didn’t benefit from the immersion, as well, because I really, really did).

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This is Emma in Mallorca, with the biggest personal pizza ever

That’s the basis of me recommending a host family above all else, because you are being exposed to the language from every front: school, out & about, and at home.
This kind of exposure causes you to learn words you’d never have a need of in formal academic settings, thus making your language knowledge more authentic and native.
For instance: hangers are perchas, the TV remote a mando. Tape was cinta.
We ate Spanish food, which meant eating way more eggs than typical to me, and it was amazing. I had no idea I liked eggs in so many forms.

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This is chicken hammered thin, dipped in mustard, and breaded. V yum.

Our host mom was a mooovie buff. She owned literal hundreds of movies, and she organized them by country of origin. This meant Emma (roommate/ sister-in-Spain) and I watched Spanish movies, and got YET ANOTHER layer of exposure both to the language and to the culture.

I watched the news most evenings with my host mom, and from that was exposed to all kinds of newsy words, and I also got a window into a Spanish presidential election cycle. My mom was super in to politicics, as am I (hello, take that personality form seriously), so it was nice having someone informed to walk me through the fast-paced, constantly shifting world of politics in Spain.

It is so easy to interact with a host family with just a bit of effort, and the linguistic rewards are HUGE, so it is amazingly worth it. Stay with a family abroad.

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This is my room (also, please note that I severely over packed with 2 suitcases

(Also, unrealted, take more photos than you think is necessary. I didn’t take enough and constantly regret it. I was so wrapped up how great everything was while it was happening, I didn’t properly document it to share when I got home.)

**if your program doesn’t offer host families, seriously consider staying with roommates who aren’t from your home country. I had friends who were in Madrid with different programs who did this and really, really loved it. You also get the added benefit of having people to visit in other countries later on.

Toledo by morning

~ mjparman ~ Leave a comment

There it was.
The Hapsburg double-headed eagle.

I have spent most of my life enraptured in the opulence and tragedy of the story of Marie Antoinette, and as I got older and my reading options expanded I started digging through the story of her family– the Hapsburg emperors.

The Hapsburg family was so large and powerful, there ended up being two ruling branches of it- the Spanish and the Austrian.

Toledo was my first adventure outside of Madrid with my study abroad program, ISA. There was the seal of the Hapsburgs, the double headed eagle, staring back at me from everywhere.

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The city had been the royal seat and the Spanish capital under the Hapsburg dynasty, and their seal is everywhere– now the city seal, the double headed eagle regally marks where you find yourself now.

I was awed, standing ahead of my group, having unknowingly come along to a place full of a history so dear to me.

Then there was the cathedral, San Juan de los Reyes.

I was enthralled with the patio, full of citrus trees, the columns and walls carved incredibly: unicorns, dragons, centaurs hidden amongst the stone vines.

I could have stayed in that passage way for hours, just finding all the little quirky carvings. I hope to someday be able to do just that.
This was the trip where my character introduction line (like Superman’s “Its a bird, its a plane!”) was begun: “¡Mirandita, venga!”

I lulled to the back of the group. I kept quiet. I soaked in the detail, lingering over art and architecture- running my fingers over mythical figures that had been carved before even the Spanish set foot in Texas- until the last member of my group exited the room, then scurried after.

That is the overarching feeling I have in/about Spain: I just want to stop and watch. I am not a quiet person, but when my attention has been caught, oh lord, let me watch.

 

Good, good Toledo.

 

The Time I Drove

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So, one of the, like, five times I missed something from home while abroad it was driving. Where I live in the US I commute back and forth to work 30 minutes everyday, and I miss public transportation (namely the metro) All The Time.
However, in Spain I just sort of craved getting behind the wheel sometimes. Some nights waiting for my line to come just took to long, or I wanted to dart somewhere real quick without seeing anyone, or just turn up the music real high and go exploring.

So, in February on a spontaneous trip to the Shangri La that is the island of Mallorca, my roommate Emma and I rented a Fiat 500 from the most casual rental place along the beach in the Arenal part of the island, and I got to live the fantasy of being a Fiat owner for a day. That’s a dream my friend, and I got to live it.

Now, if you had Emma tell about this day (namely, my driving) it would probably be a lot less rosy than my version, but stay with me here.
We took that sweet baby car and drove it up into the mountains through some of the twistiest roads I have ever driven on. I drove faster than my counterpart may have been comfortable with. ::Coughs:: It was like the most beautiful parts of New Mexico and Colorado, but warm and beyond the mountains– not plains but blue, a wild blue, the sea.
(If you want to see the wild blue https://www.instagram.com/p/zODwIxHIlG/?taken-by=neverneutral)

09 Terraced olive tree fields
In Mallorca, along the thin line of highway, they have terraced fields full of bright colored flowers, olive trees, and many of the villages on the highway up to this big look out point have citrus trees filling their back yards, all of which were in bloom… in February.

The scent filtering in through the air vents, a feeling not unlike lust starting to make my brain swim. Before I left to study abroad, so many people told me I’d fall in love in Spain, and I did– again and again, with Spain itself.

Driving through the itty bitty little ancient streets of Sóller, that were never intended for the unfathomable automobile, weaving through residentials peeking into tiny back yards so full of citrus trees it was like something made up in a writer’s fever dream.

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Getting stuck in a circle of one-way streets when all we needed was the high way, and then driving down a TERRIFYING glorified foot path of a street with a 40 foot drop to one side into a swiftly moving creek, up a steep incline: it was great.I took a picture of that teency road just in case we lived, to prove I had done it. Survive Sóller 2015 √

(the foot path here)

We took the big, major highway home: much straighter and punctuated by a very hot toll booth worker. I’ll take it.

We’ll have to do a recap of my whole trip to Mallorca sometime, it was pretty magical. I would say my best vacation ever.

Eat, drink, be Madrid

~ mjparman ~ 1 Comment

The kebab place near my friend Oda’s old apartment is this BOMB shwarma place. Hands down my favourite we came across, and we ate at A LOT of kebab places (you’ll notice pretty quickly they’re everywhere). This place was my group’s favourite because their spicy sauce was ACTUALLY spicy. For me and my fellow Texan in the group this was, taste-wise, a little trip home!! Woooo. However, we can’t for the life of us remember the name, but its in Malasaña! On one of the streets off Fuencarral. If you find the little shop that is literally just a room with vending machines (selling some pretty questionable items) it’s up the street, on the same side of the street as that little place. (I know my directions on this blog are bullshit, I’m sorry I am not even trying to make them better.)

El Infinito a coffee place a short jaunt from the Anton Martin metro stop, a rather local place where they don’t really give a damn if you’re served in a timely or convenient manner whatsoever, especially if they sense you’re American. Really, that’s the glory of it. They have a little section of books that you can take one/leave one, which isn’t revolutionary but I like very much. Their Irish coffee is stout and delicious.

La Bicicleta was a regular haunt for my friends and I in Madrid. We got coffee here all the time, occasionally a glass of wine, and studied, OR on a night where we were out a little early for Madrid, we’d have mojitos here. The staff deals with a lot of ex pats because its in the really trendy Malasaña neighbourhood, so they’re nice enough, wink.
Somewhere in the very close vicinity is a bodega that sells American style deodorant, which got a lot of business one tipsy evening from a group of very enthused Americans abroad.

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**My favourite bar in the city closed, so here is the part of this post where I ask you all to mourn with me**

Also, there seems to be a lot of trivia nights held as a sort of intercambio opportunity in bars across the city. This is brilliant, and I love it. If you are in town for a while, or want to rub elbows with locals while beating the shit out of them with your stupidly unnecessary knowledge of international currency, its fun.
I’d say go for a bar in La Latina, but that’s just because I’m partial to that neighbourhood and it seemed like some very interesting expats frequented the bars there.

El Mercado de San Miguel

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What you need to eat when you go to El Mercado de San Miguel a mecca of tapas in Madrid.

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Its touristy, but the kind of tourist attraction locals still go to, so you know its good. Probably my fave bigger tapas market in the city, but I hear a lot of dissenting opinions. My explanations of where the stands are is going to be… awful, but this is how my mind works, so maybe my directions will gel with your though processes, too.

I’d suggest getting the octopus on crackers. The stand it’s at is adjacent from a place that has its own mini kitchen, very near the main entrance door of the market. Next door to the octopi on cracker THAT TASTES LIKE SWEET FISH BUTTER is a wine place. I hope you can find that, it is so worth it.
Seriously, the octopus tastes like butter, but with a slightly fish taste. Think of what salmon tastes like, and think butter with that flavor. It is incredibly soft in texture and the cracker its on is also very soft and melts in your mouth. This is one of the yummiest things I ate in Spain.

There are little sausages that have a name related to flutes (which I of course can’t recall now, see here: walkingontravels.com), they come in a black paper cone. The stall that sells them is near to the main door on the long side of the structure. These are one of the most expensive things I got at the mercado, so if you’re on a tight budget, maybe skip these.

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One place only sells paella, it’s just down a bit from the place that sells the sausage in black paper cones. It is facing the glass walls of the mercado. The counter’s backdrop, if you can call it that– the wall behind the counter– is red and has info about what region each of the paellas it sells are from. I HIGHLY recommend the black paella. It’s made with squid ink, and if I remember correctly, is native to Valencia. The taste is strongly salty, but with an almost lime-like after taste. I had many bowls of this over the time of my stay in Madrid.

ALSO, the place with their own mini kitchen (adjacent from the octopus place) sells great Patatas Bravas for when you’ve had a rough day. Patatas Bravas reminds me of a spicier version of fries and ketchup my mom would home make me when I was a kid, so they were a good stand in as some sort of comfort food. After one especially grueling grammar test I chowed down on a plate with a friend and drank copious amounts of yummy vermut, which you should also get a glass or two of.

The Mercado de San Miguel is also where I met two really hilarious British guys who were in Madrid for a few hours on their way to Texas, so sometimes speaking English in public in Spain isn’t such a bad thing!!

Missing Home

~ mjparman ~ Leave a comment

I am not one to miss home.
Or even really people.
I am probably a little too good at stepping away from things and not thinking about them until they’re right in front of my face again.
That having been said, I miss weird things from home in little bursts sometimes.
For instance, in my time in Madrid I missed: pancakes, driving, open land, Mexican food, and little kids (I used to be a nanny– this isn’t weird, promise).

This post is about pancakes.
I know, that is weird.
I can’t explain to you why I missed IHOP and not my mom,
but I did.

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(photo from Yelp 😄)

VIPS, my friends, is the easy answer I found.
It is, really, just like your local IHOP, but with a wall-size screen you can watch Fernando Torres score volleys on WHILE eating pancakes. They even have special seasonal flavours just like your favourite place to stumble in drunk or over-tired at 2am.

My favourite VIPS is at the Quevedo metro stop, across the street. Actually, some of my favourite little parts of the city can be found from Quevedo, but that’s another post.
There is also another VIPS on Gran Via somewhere in between Cibeles and the intersection with Calle Montera. This VIPS is quite a bit more narrow, and can get kind of awkwardly tight when its busy (and since its not a Spanish bar or tapas place, but rather a VERY Americanized riff on a diner, its neither charming nor fun).

So if you’re like me and miss weird, random shit like pancakes, there you have it: VIPS.

If anyone knows of a better pancakes place in Madrid, PLEASE I BEG OF THEE TELL ME!! This will be important information to have.

Wide Open Spaces

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I grew up in a small town in the Panhandle of Texas.
I am not sentimental about the little dirt smear that is the town I was raised in, and I fantasize about a day where nothing is left that ties me to it.
That day will probably never come, but its nice to think about.
However, I do have very tender, dear feelings for the Flatlands of the Great Plains in Texas.
Driving for hours, being able to see everything in every direction for miles, watching storms roll in all afternoon before it actually gets to you.
When I got to Madrid, I had a weird need for open land the first month I was there.
I didn’t understand why I missed pasture land so much, as I sure didn’t miss small town life.
I felt more at home within 72 hours of being in Madrid than I ever had anywhere else in my entire life– that in itself was a little terrifying, knowing my time had an expiration date– and me missing open views felt misplaced. The buildings everywhere and the limited green space I’d encountered early on were not an issue by me, but something in my subconscious took issue.
A realization swept over me after about a week and a half: I had never gone longer than 3 days in my entire life without seeing a meadow, all uninterrupted view for at least a few miles.
Even in my time spent in Houston, its only a 30 minute drive in light traffic before you can get to pastures from city center
if you’re driving west, and I lived in a Western suburb.

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And then on the 10th day I was in Spain, I was taken on a little trip to nearby Toledo (a highly recommended trip) and there they were.
Open fields.
This is a terrible picture, but it was a great feeling.
Just seeing for so far felt so free and gooooood.

I didn’t miss open fields again, but the next time I saw them in April on the way to Grenada, I loved them just the same.
I guess this is to say, you may end up homesick for random, odd, surprising things, but that’s okay. You don’t have to understand it.
Just find your uninterrupted view, whatever it may be, and let it comfort you.