Night out on the town

One of our friend's roommates here in Spain is in a band and also DJs. He was DJing at a club, Ocho y Medio, last night and told our friend, Ali, if she wanted to come and invite friends he could get us on the list to get in. Ben and I thought, why not? How often will we get the chance to be on "the list" to get in to a club. Before we left Ali texted us to make sure we knew to dress up and that Ben probably shouldn't wear jeans and he had to wearing something other than tennis shoes. Ben had some suit pants but didn't really want to wear them out. We hoped the tie and sports jacket would distract from the jeans. Ali said sometimes the club people can be sticklers about what  you're wearing and if they don't think you are dressed nice enough they won't let  you in.

We met up early for tapas of course. :) And by early I mean 10:30pm. If any of you know me well, you know I am not a late night person! We didn't head over to the club until about 12:30am. It was pretty fun. The club was huge and had these big TV screens everywhere with the most random images playing across the screen. The first few DJs were ok. One of them, who really just picked songs from a play list, was the winner of Spain's equivalent of the States' "Big Brother" TV show. After her, Ali's roommate finally came on. He was pretty good. We made it until 3am before deciding to go home and that's when the place was finally getting busy! These Spaniards must have caffeine IVs at home, otherwise I don't understand how they can stay out that late!

Chirimoyas

Chirimoyas is a fruit that is pretty common here. It is so good! We bought it at a market today because it looked weird and we wanted to try something new. When Ben looked it up it was called "a custard apple." It doesn't really remind me of an apple but it is custardy like. Ben said it tastes like a strawberry, banana and pineapple. They are grown in Granada, Spain. They are also grown in southern California but are in high demand so you usually have to buy them straight from the orchard. I would say it is well worth it though because it was delicious!

The seeds reminded Ben of beans. 

Baby pigs, museums and protests

Well the touristy stuff has died down a bit these last few days mainly because we have seen pretty much all the touristy stuff in Madrid. Except a bull fight. And we plan to do that Sunday. I am excited because bull fighting is a huge part of Spanish culture and it probably won't be around much longer but a little nervous because I was talking with a girl in my program who has seen a bull fight and she said when she went she saw a person get gored. The person lived but still. Gross! I am praying no one gets gored we when go.

Anyhow, baby pigs. Ben found a market called Mercardo Maravilla so we headed up north to check it out. I have never seen so many vegetables, fruits, meats, fish and cheese in one place. There was stall after stall of these products. We are planning to go back there for produce because that looked pretty good. Some of the meat, such as the pigs and skinned rabbits, eyes still intact and the huge squid not so much. If we ever decide to make Chuletitas de conjeo (rabbit ribs) from the tapas recipe book we just bought we will know where to go.

Anyone hungry?

Wednesday night we went to one of the largest museums in Madrid, Museo del Prado. They have free hours from 6-8pm every night. We thought we'd get through the museum in an hour or so and then go out for tapas. I don't think we even saw a quarter of the museum! It was huge! We did get to see a few of the masterpieces housed there. One of them being 'Las meninas' by Velazquez. We plan to take a few more additional nights to get through the whole museum.

Las meninas 

We made it through 11 rooms in 2 hours. 

Once again the people are protesting. We were in the center a couple of nights in a row. The first time I didn't have my camera but the second night I had it and was able to get a couple of pictures. When we showed up the first night, Tuesday, the police, in full riot gear, had closed off a large section of the city. Cars weren't allowed to drive down the streets and some pedestrians even had a hard time getting past. Somehow Ben and I slipped through but at one point I wasn't 100% sure we would be able to get out of the sectioned off area. 

While we were walking on one of the main streets we noticed that a bunch of cars were stuck! The protesters had blocked them in. The police had already cleared most of them out of the way but enough by standers had gathered that they had to back everyone out of the area and send them down side streets. 

The next morning we looked up local news and got the full story. The people were rioting in Plaza de Neptuno where the parliament buildings are. The people were yelling 'Shame' and 'Resign' because they are quite dissatifsfied with the 25% unemployment rate. Someone who was here with the program last year said the people were unhappy with the president of Spain and voted to re-elect a year earlier than scheduled. It looks like they are still unhappy. Some of the protesters were trying to break down metal barriers that protect the lower house of parliament. Riot police ended up charging the thousands of protesters using rubber bullets and batons down side avenues to clear the plaza. Many sat on the ground and refused to leave. Hours later, with police blocking in the plaza the people still sat there peacefully. This is about the time Ben and I showed up. Thank goodness we missed the rubber bullets! 

Picture courtesy of www.news24.com

Wednesday there was another protest going on. Thousands of people are sitting in the roads not budging. From looking at the news it looks like this protest was a bit more peaceful. There were still a lot of police around but we didn't see as many of them in riot gear. The streets were jam packed though!

That car is getting no where fast!

Power!

The electricity is fixed! An electrician came today and fixed it all. Here was the problem:

There was a bad connection and the wires heated up and melted the plastic casing around them and then started melting the box. The outlets for the washing machine and heater were fixed too. When our landlord’s brother-in-law was helping us the other day he noticed that instead of installing a second outlet for the water heater, the landlord cut the plug off, stripped the wire and then wrapped it around the washing machine’s plug in so that they could both get power. Sounds a little dangerous….

Last night it rained pretty hard.

I am holding a bag of food to put in our friend's refrigerator while we wait for ours to work again.  

The rain made the morning nice and cool. It heated up eventually but not as bad as usual. As Ben said “I haven’t been outside without sweating in three weeks!”  We walked around, did a little exploring and hung out with a few of the teachers from the program.

Rolex for 30,400 euros anyone? 

Biblioteca Nacional

Cervantes, author of Don Quijote

Christopher Columbus

This is an office building. It had a very pretty facade.

We did some laundry again too. We still haven’t figured out how to get the washing machine to spin dry the clothes. I heard our neighbors below us talking about the dripping water. One of them thought it was raining and the other said “Es el agua de la ropa.” (It is the water from the clothes.) We think  we figured out the problem though! When I was taking the clothes out today I noticed there is quite the puddle of water left in the machine so it isn’t draining correctly. Our landlord’s father told us earlier today that it is a pretty old machine. 

We also have internet at our piso now! No more Starbucks. I will miss the mini chocolate muffins. 

Food

Ben has been searching the web for some yummy Spanish food to make. We also had to bring some tapas to our Bible study. We made this delicious meal the other night. It is kind of like bangers and mash.

The tapas that we made. 

Young Life and Potential Electrical Fires

Well the last few days have been eventful, in good ways and a few not so good.

On Saturday, our friend Shaunna called and told us that she was walking by Palacio Liria (which is just a block away from us) the other day and she saw that they are opening it to the public for people to go to the top and get a view of the city. She was going and wanted to know if we wanted to tag along. It was pretty cool! We were about five stories up and had a pretty good view of the city.

That evening we attended a Young Life International meeting. The students all speak English among other languages and I believe most of them have American citizenship. It was the first Young Life we had both ever been too. The age of the kids is 11-15 years old.  We had a lot of fun and want to start participating as leaders. We started off with some tapas and then a few mixer games. From what I have gathered from talking with other leaders is that Young Life is there to meet kids where they are in their relationship with Christ. Most of the kids who attend this particular group come from Christian families but a few come because their friends go so not all of them have a Christian background. In order to make kids feel more comfortable we started off the singing portion of the night with “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus, “Firework” by Katy Perry and “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson. It was kind of funny but the kids were totally into it! We followed up later with some traditional worship songs. We had fun getting to know a few of the kids and hearing why they are in Madrid.

Later that night we were walking back towards our piso with Shaunna when she told us that another teacher in the program lived just two blocks from us. As we walked by his apartment building she was trying to point out which window was his and ended up just yelling his name really loud because she couldn’t remember exactly which was his. A couple seconds later he stuck his head out and we went up and chatted for a while. He lives right above Ben’s favorite bakery where he always wants to stop in and get “pastas”. They are little cookies for just 0.20 euros. They are pretty tasty.

This morning, (Sunday) Ben and I were finally going to get to go to church! This is only our second Sunday here but it feels like ages since we have been to church! As I was blow drying my hair, all of a sudden there has a loud popping noise and all the lights went off! We tried flipping the switch but it didn’t work. Then we started smelling a burning smell. There was another switch in there that had flipped down and when Ben tried to flip that, sparks flew! So, we knew something was seriously wrong. We called Virginia, the sister of our landlord and she said she would try and get someone over there. So we waited around a few hours and then our landlord’s brother-in-law showed up. He tried a few things but he couldn’t get it to work either. His father-in-law (who he said, with a hint of sarcasm, was the cleverest man ever) called and said to un-plug everything and try flipping the switch again. Well the only things plugged in were the washing machine and microwave and unplugging them didn’t help. They hope to get an electrician out tomorrow because he thinks there is a break in the circuit. Hopefully the electrician can fix it because in the mean time we have no lights and we can’t open the fridge or all the cold air will be let out! We are crossing fingers that our food doesn’t go bad!

In the meantime we are going out to tapas tonight with friends at a place Ben found near us. On Sundays and Wednesdays with the purchase of a drink you get to go through a tapas buffet! We will try to spend as much time there as possible so we don’t have to sit in the dark at home. Our apartment is on the inside track of the building so we don’t get a ton of street light pollution. Which normally is quite nice but a little light pollution tonight might have been nice. J

Here are some pictures from the restaurant we went to. It was a Mexican restaurant.


Jesus is looking over the wrestlers.

Notice the Corona chandelier.

El Parque Retiro

This park is probably one of the biggest and most popular parks in Madrid. We saw a lot of people on their afternoon jogs or bike rides. We even saw a few people rollerblading.  There is also a lake where you can rent row boats. The water is really dirty and gross looking though. There are lots of paths to take and smaller parks within the park. While walking around we saw a few palacios that are exhibiting the artwork of Nacho Criado. The title of the exhibition is “Collaborating Agents.” It was a little different. One piece had over a hundred wine bottles placed one after the other and in the middle were two really old TVs.  Ben didn’t really like it. I thought it was all kind of funny. There was another one that had a huge glass cage and inside was a ton of broken glass. Around the outside on pieces of cardboard was the Spanish alphabet.

While walking around we also got to see some peacocks. I have never seen peacocks this close up before. They are beautiful! After the peacocks we walked around a bit more and then headed home for a relaxing evening at home. 

Monumento a S.M. el rey D. Alfonso XII

The peacocks!

The babies were so cute!

Art from our friend Nacho Criado. His art was on display in two different palacios in the park. The first, in Palacio Velázquez

And the second in Palacio Cristal.