Madrid

Whew! Well, made it to Madrid. And I'm having a pretty good time! I met several people before dinner and during, and we all went out for drinks afterwards. There I had the most delicious drink I've ever had, called a tinto de verano. It's basically red wine, carbonated lemonade, ice, and lemons. It is wonderful. Super tired tonight. I'll be writing about everything tomorrow.

 

Tinto del Verano. Delicious.

Tomorrow-
Well, I'm pretty sure the people in the hotel room next to mine are throwing some sort of kegger, so now seems like the perfect time to blog about the weekend. It's after midnight, and I've got a Russian television program playing in the background, so I'm good to go.

I stand by what I said about that drink, yesterday. Overall, the jornada this weekend was pretty great. I enjoyed meeting everyone, and for that alone, the jornada was worth it. That and the food. (I've now switched to Law and Order dubbed in German). It's interesting being in a little town, because I don't know a lot of other auxiliares, and this weekend really opened my eyes to the number of different countries involved in the program. There are people from Scotland, England, Ireland, China, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Austria, Australia, France, and the United States. There were so many people speaking so many different languages, it was fascinating. And we all (or most, anyway) were united by our knowledge of Spanish. It's weird when two people can only communicate using their secondary language. I'm sure this won't be the last time this happens in Spain.

Today was filled mostly with various speeches from different departments. Some were amusing, some boring, some depressing (I'm looking at you, US Consulate. I know you had to warn us of all the dangers in Spain, but maybe you could have ended on a happier note?) We even met the Spanish secretary of state for education, so that was pretty cool! She was very interested to know how we felt about the program and what we wanted out of it. (Now it's Smallville dubbed in Spanish. Dubbed shows always sound fake to me.)

What I found quite amusing today were the speeches given by the various country's ambassadors to the program. Had I only read transcripts of each of them, I would have been able to pick the American's speech without a problem. It was very... American... I'm not sure if I can exactly describe it, but it reminded me of eagles and made me feel like chanting "USA, USA" (I did not). The guy from the UK was hilarious. He kept poking fun at France, who was about three people away.  

I met a number of people from the UK, which was awesome. On Thursday we went out to a bar together (see, tinto de verano). They asked if we could tell the difference in their accents. Happily, I shouted, yes! The years of watching BBCA have paid off. They explained that the girl in the middle had a northern accent, different from the other two, who were from Bristol.
"You know Game of Thrones?" one asked. "Well, her accent is like Jon Snow's. She's from the North."
The other woman said. "You don't know nuthin', Jon Snow."
"Yes, I totally know that," I said. "The king in the north!" And I said that with all the accent I could muster (Eileen and Anna will recall that I've made that joke a number of times.) I immediately apologized, but they thought it was funny. (And this was probably better than saying, 'all planets have a north). A little vino helped with that one. It turns out that these ladies found our accents as interesting as we found theirs. Who knew?

All in all, I sat through a lot of talks and ate a ton of food. I got two free nights in a four star hotel without bugs in Madrid. It's not a bad deal. I recommend, if you're an auxiliar, to attend the jornada. If nothing else, you get to know auxiliares in other regions that you wouldn't otherwise meet.

By the way, as a side note, beds in Spain are awful all over the place. This is a four star hotel, and the bed is as hard as a rock. The bed in my apartment is better. Additionally, all pillows in Spain are twice the length of American pillows. I think it makes pillow cases non-transferable. I suppose you could develop an adaptor, but really that seems quite pointless. Anyway, I'm drifting off into rambling, I should probably turn off Smallville and go to sleep. I've got a bus to take back to Aranda tomorrow.