Nebrija Orientation and The Park

[This post has many pictures, enjoy!]

My house has an excellent location as far as seeing some of the most beautiful sites in all the city.  Calle de la Villa is a side street from the main street, Calle Mayor which leads directly to the Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol...an incredibly important and enormous space for tourism, history, etc...  It is also 10-15 minutes from the Royal Palace, the royal opera house, countless numbers of very historical places, museums, and shops.  I can't get over how great a location it is! That is until I have to wake up at 6:30 in the morning in order to be ready to leave for school at 7:30 because of a 40 minute metro ride and a 20 minute walk following. That is hard.  This first day we did not actually have class.  Instead we began with a two part exam--written and spoken--which would determine our placement.  The written part was only one page front and back that required you to answer questions and eventually complete sentences.  I finished all but one part of one question on the front and then answered maybe five of the ones on the back.  I recognized in several places what they were looking for...subjunctive and other much more advanced tenses...but I didn't have the ability or the coherence to complete them.  After I finished was the spoken portion.  It involved sitting down with a professor and answering three questions: What have you done since you arrived in Spain? What advice did your parents give you before you left? and What will you like best about Madrid?  While it certainly was not a walk in the park these exams were a lot more manageable than I had anticipated.

(Here is the street leading up to Nebrija which is the building at the very end.  To the right is this great park with all kinds of activity and these fantastic trees.)

 

After our exams we were allowed to head to the cafeteria for a snack of some kind.  I had kept these small cakes called Madelinas back from breakfast.  Few words on breakfast...It was small but really good.  We had excellent coffee with warm milk, orange juice, and a piece of toast with butter and peach jam.
 The cafeteria and for that matter all of Nebrija has a lot of beautiful details. 

 

(Mosaic in the Cafeteria)

(These are more pictures right outside of the school looking into the park whose name I cannot remember.)

(Some views from the windows in Nebrija.  These are all very big and open wide allowing air to flow through and cool the building.  Classes do have small air conditioners but the open windows work better.)

At 11:30 we all headed up for an orientation to the program which included a small tour of the building...small because the school is very small, especially considering the number of people who are attending it this summer.
Then at 12 we had an orientation for living in a home stay.  It was done completely in Spanish in a packed room and went over many things that we had already been informed of by Maria Carmen and personally in discussion with Patricia.  I was becoming incredibly hungry by that point and tired once again so I allowed myself to check out a little bit.  After this orientation we were finished for the day and Amanda and I could go home for lunch at 2:30.  We had a Spanish enchilada which is very different from a Mexican enchilada--it was more like a calzone with a flaky crust filled with a medley of veggies and a little bit of tuna--with another creamy soup and a pasta, followed with banana for dessert.  Once again the meal was focused on building our household relationship over food and practicing our Spanish.  Alice and Patricia are the one's driving the conversation but Amanda and I contribute as we can.  Today the focus was on the problem of the migrants from war torn Africa trying to make it to Europe...there were no specific political opinions discussed just the topic itself. 
 And at last to close the first part of what was a fine day was a glorious 35 minute siesta!


2.  (post siesta)   El Parque de Retiro

It had been agreed amongst the group that we would meet up at 6 in the Apple store in the  Puerta del Sol and from there decide on something to do.  Unfortunately, where this store was in this very large space was only vaguely stated.  So although Amanda and I made it to the Puerta del Sol around 6 by walking we didn't find the others until 20 after or so.

Here are some pics from that walk to the apple store:

(I don't know what this is called but it was cool looking)

 

When we made it, mostly thanks to several kind strangers and a picture Megan sent us, Tanner and Megan, along with Rhiannon another student going to Nebrija this summer who Sierra had met on the plane and we had met earlier this same day, were already there. Both Sierra and Tanner were running behind on account of Sierra's host mom who has not been at all pleasant towards her. 

Once we were all together we decided to head to the Parque de Retiro, one of the most famous and beautiful parks in all of Madrid.  The following pictures are from our walk up Calle Mayor and along several side streets in search of the park (Kyle and Tanner had visited it already but were unsure of the way so we guessed)

 

(the building in the back which is hard to see is a large market filled with different vendors and bars that is very popular for tapas at night, although it is a little expensive)

It was here, at this fantastic roundabout, after walking a considerable way up several hills that we realized we were actually very far in the opposite direction from the park so we hopped on the metro....

 

The park is gorgeous!!! There are fountains and flowers and trees and statues, etc...  We walked around and sat and looked. It was a wonderful evening to be out. We walked all throughout, sat a bit and watched the people out on the boating lake paddling along.  We went into a small museum with a special minimalist exhibition and into a beautiful glass castle that was built to house botanicals.

Here are a ton of pictures and there are more on Facebook

 

(Pano...the structure is curved)

 

A museum on the grounds with an exhibition of minimalist artist Carl Andre:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There was sort of installation here, Tanner referred to it as the genie in a bottle.

 (There were a ton of turtles)

 

 

 

From here we slowly made our out of the park. There is so much to see and do there, from renting boats or bicycles to picnicking, that it is very likely that we will return another day. 

After leaving the park we went in search of food (which took a long time again).  For dinner I had a baguette with jamón serrano.  After dinner it was a sleepy subway ride back home for bed.

 

Sadly day 2 is done!

 

Much love,

Emily