Spring, por fin.

The weather is finally changing around here, more sun, less rain, and goodbye winter coat! This, of course makes my students even more lazy...and classes have been slow. Retiro is blooming and beautiful and I might even have a little bit of a tan/sunburn from last weekend! I have this entire week off (starting from midday last Thursday!) for Semana Santa--holy week.
Nothing else particularly interesting is going on...but today i'm catching a plane to Toulouse, France for my spring break, i guess! After Spending a couple of days in Toulouse, I'm catching a very early flight to Paris on Friday and will be there through Monday (that's right, classes don't resume until Tuesday the 6th). My first trip to France, and I'm very excited!
Hopefully the weather is as nice up there, and the people, too? It seems no one has anything nice to say about the "gente" of France. i guess we'll see!

Valencia y mas

The second weekend of Nina's visit, we took a trip to Valencia, Spain, on the mediterranean coast. famous for paella and a spring festival known as Las Fallas, which we missed by a day. I'm ok with that, because what las fallas involves is a lot of things blowing up and a lot of noise. Also, busy, crowded streets and expensive food. Am I turning into an old lady or what? On Thursday night, we slept in the Madrid airport because we had a flight out at 630 am. We arrived sleep deprived, but tried to make it through the day by re-energizing with chocolate and churros. We then walked around ,where we discovered many of the streets were already full of the floats for Las Fallas. These thing are giant, and very interesting artistically, also unfortunately, the things that are blown up at the end of the week long festival. One of my students told me that you often see the artests and workers crying when their float is blown up. We also checked out the old center of valencia filled with the cathedrals and monuments of a typical spanish city. Valencia also had this really great market filled with all sorts of produce and fresh food. it was right across from our hostel, so we went for that every day.
We finally had to crash at the hostel for a long nap, and woke up for some late night tapas.
Saturday, the highlight of the trip for me, we rented bikes and rode them from the old part of town through Valencia's beautiful park all the way to the beach and then down the board walk. it was a sunny day, so a beautiful ride! The beach was a little chilly, but still enjoyable to sit and walk around in the sun before riding the bikes back.

In other news, we saw an American band, yeasayer, in Madrid on Wednesday, a very fun show. I think pretty much the entire crowd was Americans or other English speakers. I guess there are a lot of us here...
And last night, Carrie's flatmate, who is in a Spanish band, had a concert so we went out to that as well.
Nothing much else going on around here, enjoying the finally spring weather as much as i can. It's time to start preparing for my Semana santa (holy week) trip to toulouse, france and PARIS. we get the whole week off work so i am leaving a week from wednesday for Toulouse and then will spend Friday-Monday in Paris.

Besos,

Megan

Oslo, Norway

A quick update about last weekend's trip to Oslo! Nina arrived last week, we spent a couple of days enjoying Madrid (and me working, of course) then on Friday afternoon we headed north! The flight was 3 hours, the longest i think i've been on since being here! I was sort of skeptical, i must admit, but it ended up being an AMAZING weekend. The weather was beautiful---very very very cold, of course, but sunny. We both lacked proper footwear for all the snow, but we stayed warm enough. We even got adventurous--we did a 2km tobaggen run in the mountains above oslo and attempted cross country skiing! the first was terrifying , the second very difficult. First time in my life on skis...so i fell a lot (actually...walking around the city in my not-made-for-snow boots was treacherous enough). the city was beautiful, we visited the art museum which has a huge collection of edward munch, including "the scream" and the frogerparker (or something like that) park which is the most famous attraction in norway...a huge park filled with sculptures of all varieties of naked people!
thats it for now, time for class, this weekend off to valencia!

no rain!

Some crazy weather all over the world this year...In Madrid's case, that has meant TONS of rain...i might as well be in Indy! it's rained every day for weeks, but yesterday, at last, we had some sun! Sundays are already the best days in Madrid anyway, everyone out, at the sunday market, in retiro, in the shops, and cafes, but yesterday, the first day of sun in a couple of weeks, was amazing! We went to the Rastro, bought sandwiches and sat in the middle of plaza mayor with them along with everyone else in the city and watched the street performers and listened to musicians come through. such a nice way to spend the afternoon! the sun felt great! all the stores have put out their spring stuff and its very exciting, i have my eye on a great pair of sandals!

a busy work week, nina is coming on wednesday,so we will be busy catching up and enjoying madrid and friday we are headed to Oslo, Norway, where we will be very very cold.