The Three W's

Watching, walking, and waiting. That pretty accurately sums up my week.

Well, watching isn’t exactly what I meant, but “Going to museums” doesn’t start with a “w,” so I had to compromise. As part of the intensive Spanish class we get to go to various historically/culturally significant locations in Madrid to improve our understanding of the richness of the story this city has to tell. We’ve already visited “Old Madrid” (encapsulating everything from Plaza Mayor to Palacio Real) and La Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida (website in Spanish, but with some cool pictures), and this week we hit up the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Although the Prado is widely regarded as among the best museums in the world for its vast Royal collection of European - mostly Spanish - art, the Thyssen-Bornemisza was the more interesting of the two for me. Our art history “professor” guided us through the contemporary Thyssen chronologically, allowing us to see the evolution of art movements such as impressionism and cubism in a way that was truly captivating. By the end, though, I got a little lost with the modern pieces like Green and Maroon. Next week we’ll be going to see Picasso’s famous Guernica at the Reina Sofía, so there’s still a lot to look forward to!

The Thyssen

Walking. Yesterday, nine of us went on a day trip to Segovia and La Granja, which are just a little more than an hour’s drive northwest of Madrid. Segovia is famous for its aqueduct bridge, which stretches almost 3000 feet and is almost 100 feet high – all without any mortar! It was definitely an imposing and impressive view, a testament to the engineering skill of the Romans millennia ago.

The Roman Aqueducts of Segovia

Another monumental sight in Segovia was the cathedral (of course), on which work began in 1525 but did not finish until 1768. Pictures do the most justice to this ethereal building.

Inside the cathedral

Maybe the most exciting part of the day, though, was lunch, where we got a glimpse of authentic Spanish food. Since my señora already packed me a bag lunch, I just got some little samplers, but they were big in flavor. Seeing as all the foods were rather exotic, all the words for the food were pretty much incomprehensible to all of us, so we just randomly picked things from the menu in our spirit of adventure. The first thing I chose was a salad with gulas, which are basically a synthetic version of angulas (baby eels) made from Alaskan Pollack; ham shavings; and the weirdest balsamic vinaigrette I’ve ever tasted. For my dessert, I had some bizcocho (sponge cake), onto which they poured some sort of flaming alcohol. I figured this would sort of be like bananas foster and all the alcohol would go up in flames before reaching my mouth, but this sponge cake was, to say the least, a strong dessert! Although it was fun trying out these new flavors, I’m glad my señora tones it down a little for us on an everyday basis!

My flavorful salad

Anna, wondering whether blood pudding and eggs was such a good idea

Waiting. As you know from my first post, I’m a premed. And one of the many rites of passage that a premed has to undergo is the MCAT. Since I didn’t want to worry about this god awful test while abroad (who wants to think about Organic Chemistry and Physics when you could be thinking about discotheques?!), I spent all three months of summer preparing for the test to finally take it on August 14^th. Since then, I’ve been not-so-patiently waiting for my score, which was due out at 5 pm on Wednesday. Of course, being partially neurotic when it comes to such things, I plopped myself down in front of the computer starting around 1 pm and just started checking my score about every ten minutes. At 4:59 pm (no joke), the MCAT gods decided that they were going to delay the scores until Friday. Angry but without any alternative, I followed the same pattern of activity that day, too, only to be told once again (although a little more mercifully at around 3 pm) that the scores would be delayed until “early next week.” Then, in the only turn for the better in this story of waiting, they decided they would come in on Saturday to work to give us our grades since we had already waiting a month. They finally came out yesterday, which was actually this morning for me, as I set my alarm for 4 am to wake up and check… (yea, that’s how crazy I am). Luckily, I did really, really well and all my anger about waiting disappeared. Celebrations today, talking with Dr. Baum (best premed advisor EVER) tomorrow!

And for my favorite picture of the week:

Gardens at La Granja, outside Segovia