the day of the cafes

I've half-written a post about Salamanca to finish out my thoughts on our trip from the weekend, but it's not quite ready to be posted. Instead I give you a slightly more random collection of thoughts and mini-excursions through the city from today.

Despite the fact that most of us had slept only about 4 hours during our stay in Salamanca (more on that adventure to be featured later in the aforementioned partially finished post), much of the group of 10-12 out of the 40 on our program that I've spent most of my time with so far decided to explore the discotecas of Madrid. That's all fun and whatnot, but neither Caitlin or I could quite bring ourselves to rally last night. As we've gotten more comfortable and better acquainted with our surroundings, we've come to realize that our area is populated, for the most part, by people about the age of our grandparents. Por eso when we want to go out and whatnot, especially at night, we're taking care to make sure that we know when the different lines of transportation stop running, where all of the different stops and stations are, and that we have enough money for a cab back if need be. Somewhat along the same lines, as we've passed more time here in our homestay, it's become apparent that whatever communication barriers exist between us and our hostparents have less to do with language and more to do with the generation gap between us and them. This is not a complaint, but more of an observation. Talking with the hostparents is a lot like talking to one's grandparents - you have to look them directly in the eye and articulate super clearly even though it sounds more or less like they eat their words (a trait of a slightly more southern dialect of Spanish, I believe). There's a lot of repetition of certain parts of the conversation and whatnot. Interesting observations and whatnot, I think.

And our hostmom is definitely a mother - we tried to leave this morning without eating a full breakfast but she stopped us at the door and insisted that we sit and at least eat toast and fruit and unas galletas del desayuno and drink a glass of juice as well as a cup of coffee. Having stayed in last night, we decided to get up early this morning to pay homage to El Rastro, a trip we'd been told by some friends who participated in DiS last year that we had to do while in Madrid. El Rastro was, essentially, an enormous flea market that's open every Sunday from about 9a to 3p. We walked the 30 minutes or so it took to get to this 4 block market. Though I didn't buy anything today, there was much to be admired - jewelry, artsy clothes, second hand clothes, old records, antiques, random pieces of art, trinkets - I know where I'm going to have to go back to for gifts later.

I'd promised my friend Taylor (un amigo mio del centro catolico de Duke - a friend of mine from my involvement in Duke's Catholic Center) that I'd go to Mass with him in the afternoon, but when Caitlin and I had had about enough of El Rastro (it's been a gray day and at that point clouds had begun to spit at us), I had about an hour and a half to kill so we wandered around a bit and ultimately found ourselves sitting in a quaint, brightly lit cafe called Cafe y Te, fitting right? Coffee in Spain is something of an art, and it seems that everyone drinks it, and they do so ALL the time (but hey, after last semester so do I - I guess that puts me one step closer to fitting in?). Granted, here it's served in smaller portions, but still one with breakfast, one late in the morning, lo quieres despues del almuerzo?, o despues de la cena?. It's crazy. So as we sat and practiced our Spanish in the cafe we decided to try some of the more artsy coffee options. I ordered un cafe bombon, two shots of espresso with a bit of condensed milk. It came in a small clear mug, which further gave it a sophisticated sort of feel as the layers of coffee and the milk were clearly visible. Though simple, it was rich, filling and warm - definitely an idea to bring back to the states in place of a latte. Perhaps as memorable as my first experience with cafe bombon were the people we met in the little cafe. A young family with two little boys that were fascinated with our accents, our short Filipino waiter (to me, our encounter with him epitomized the magic of communication - while neither of our primary languages were Spanish, the Spanish language was where we could meet to understand each other), un madrileno (a born and bred citizen of Madrid) who yapped our ears off for about ten minutes about everything from the weather to the different universities in Madrid to the various things he thought we needed to do during our six weeks here.

La Misa was an incredible experience in and of itself, though it wasn't without a few mistakes. Taylor had gotten the information from his host mom that the last Mass in La Catedral Almudena would begin at 1:30p. The cathedral is situated next to the palace and therefore it's in a very busy area. We met a few minutes early and quietly entered the cathedral, but how surprised we were to discover a service underway! We slipped into a back row in what I hope was a reverent fashion and tried to piece together what was going on. Were we late? Had we mistaken the time? Were we just plain wrong? We couldn't quite understand the priest and there were about 15 or 20 white-robed people (men and women), and after 20 minutes everybody left. Confused and in awe of the cathedral, we walked around a bit and ultimately ended up wandering down to the La cripta neo-romanica where, at last, we found the Mass. It was about halfway in and we had to argue a bit with the guard at the entrance to convince him that yes, we wanted to attend the service and no, we weren't going to take pictures and yes, we really were Catholic Americans. The service, or at least what we saw of it was incredibly interesting. It was a little bit difficult to understand as it was mostly in older style Spanish and there were muchas palabras desconocidas, but having attended Mass almost every Sunday for as long as I can remember I could at least follow what was supposed to be happening and piece together which prayers were which. Perhaps most interesting was the fact that, though the words differed, with parts like the Nicene Creed, the Our Father and various responses, the tone used to utter them was exactly the same, with the same intonation and the same number of syllables.

I titled this post "the day of the cafes" because, to be honest it was full of coffee (if you hadn't gotten the picture already). I had planned to start writing less about the food, but today's lunch doesn't deserve to go unnoticed. Upon my return from the cathedral I found that my hostmom had prepared us a feast: una paella de mariscos that she'd made completely from scratch, great helpings of una ensalada fria and a tower of apple and kiwi slices. I'm surprised I had room for dinner tonight. After lunch me descanse un rato, though I still haven't quite been able to bring myself to fully partake in la cultura de la siesta, before enjoying a small cup of coffee with my hostparents. We've started a Facebook group for the DiS program to better coordinate and not waste money on texting and whatnot as we try to meet up across the city and so it was decided that we would trek over to el barrio que se llama La Cueca in a quaint cafe that was highly recommended as "un lugar muy chill" (verbatim, I promise you) by former DiS participants. It was a little pricy and I think the size of our group more than slightly annoyed el mesero as we obnoxiously crowded eight of us around three tv-tray-sized tables. Coffee was the last thing I wanted, but to be honest around 5p is when it is common to gozar de una bebida so Caitlin and I decided to try the tinto de la casa (a move that I think improved our standing with el mesero) again, so sophisticated, right?

A full adventure for a day with nothing planned, if I do say so myself, but we had one more little event worth noting before I sign off for now. So....se ha roto la cerredura de la entrada de nuestro edificio, that is to say, we broke the lock on the door of our building....now, don't freak out like we did because apparently this happens two or three times a year because the door is made of iron, which renders the size of the lock fixed and very small, but according to our hostdad because the more than 100 people living in the building go in and out multiple times a day, the small lock doesn't last long. Now, the truly funny part of this situation is that we got not one but both of our keys stuck in the lock as we used the second to try to jimmy out the first. Although they keep telling us its not a big deal, let's call it la mala suerte de las americanas.