Madrid: I can't beleive it is already October 25th!

I spoke to one of my best friends this morning on the miracle that is Skype. For me it was 10:30 am and I was sitting on the balcony of my urban apartment in Madrid, Spain. For Sarah Wiley, my friend, it was 9:30 pm and she was sitting in her house in Dunedin, New Zealand. Twenty or even ten years ago we might have been reduced to communicating by letter and postcard for the six months that Study Abroad is separating us, but now an ingenious site on the internet makes it possible for us to talk over a live connection, sometimes even to video chat. We talked for over an hour and at some point near the end Sarah said
"Mimi, what have you been up to? You haven't posted on your blog in four or five weeks!" And I guiltily remembered that I had promised myself to write on the blog at least once every week.

So, Sarah Wiley, here is your update.

What I have been doing for the past four or five weeks:

• I spent a weekend in Barcelona. Rode a bus overnight to get there and then spent two days sight-seeing and having fun with my French flatmate Justine. The eight-hour bus ride each way was too long by six hours, but the city was absolutely wonderful.
• Classes have been picking up and I have set up an independent study for voice, which is awesome and means I got to drop a class to make time for the work I am doing. Thus I am studying more and learning a lot. Every Wednesday I get free admission to one of the two modern art museums here in Madrid and my Art History class takes place in the museum.
• My piso (my apartment) hosted two botellons (getting together to drink and eat kind of parties). One where we drank homemade sangria, and another where Justine and I cooked crepes for about ten of our guy friends.
  
• Now that everyone has started their classes the social side of things is beginning to quiet down. We still go out, but mostly on weekends, and I tend to turn in early (2 or 3 am).
• I went insane and bought this huge butternut squash at a fresh market. To use a large portion of it I made an enormous pot of butternut squash and white bean soup. By enormous I mean I had to get three or four people to help me eat it and I still had enough to save some and freeze some.
• I made applesauce for this International Dinner at the school. I shlepped it warm and steaming about a mile across central Madrid in a pot only to find that the dinner was a complete organizational mess. None of the European students wanted to approach the american table because we didn't have a sign and most of the food the other american students brought was soda, chips, and Chips Ahoy.
• I became convinced I had bedbugs for three days in a complete and utter rush of imagination.

Those are the highlights of the time since my last post.

Coming soon: the school trip to Bilbao this weekend, my trip to Segovia the weekend after, and of course the November 4th coincidence of my 21st birthday and the Presidential Election!!!