Are you sure?

Oh, how quickly time passes! I've been here a month? Are you sure? But, when you think about it, one month isn't too long. I only have nine more.
Just want to remind everyone, I'm in Madrid, Spain as a foreign exchange student for the year with a program called AFS. Okay, good, got that down.
Some quick updates:

My Spanish is getting better. Yesterday I saw some friends of my host sister who I hadn't seen since my first few days, and they asked me if I thought my Spanish had improved. It made me realize: Well, yes. Actually, it has. I can speak with more confidence now, and I understand a lot more. I also get more of the accent, because I had been used to Spanish from South America, which is very different. Just don't count on an answer if you ask me a question. I'll probably laugh and say "Sí."

My English grammar is going down the drain. I spek...like dis..and I can't spell anymore. I'll be writing in English for no particular reason and I'll get to a word like 'surprised' or 'ticket' and I'll just stop and stare for literally a minute. What do you mean, sur-prised has an 'r' in front of the 'p?' Is it ticcet, tiket, tickit? The other day I misspelled 'chemistry' wrong about five times (I just did then, too) because in Spanish it's 'quimica' so I'm thinking that in English it's quimistry, then later than it's chememstrey. I'm scared for my grades when I get back home.

Being a foreign exchange student? Not really a big deal here. Everyone is more impressed that I'm from America than anything. Most of my friends have spent a month in England, or gone to camp in Germany or something like that. This is another of those 'maybe it's just because you're in Madrid' kind of things, because the citizens are used to foreigners on every street corner with all of the embassies and international schools. It's a pretty big city.

I can take the Metro. Alone. And walk around by myself at night. Today I walked the fifteen minutes to Sol to buy my books for school. Without the help of my parents. City Kid=Check.

Not everyone here thinks that Franco was such a bad guy. I don't really know why yet, but they seem to be in disagreement with the rest of the world's history books.

Everyone loves President Obama. I watched the first of the presidential debates on YouTube (it was on at three A.M. here,) because, yes, I know, I shouldn't be exposed to English for an hour and a half, but it's just one of those things that I had to do. I miss my campaign session TV. Until Governor Romney said in his schtick on the economy that he did not want to become as bad as Spain, no one knew who he was. Now the general public is pretty upset. All of the news papers absolutely slammed(took me four tries to spell 'absolutely' right) him in the International Section this morning. It was story after story about how much Romney messed up. If he is elected, his relationship here will not be a good one.

El Clasico was last night. For those of you who don't know, it's a soccer match between Real Madrid and Barcelona. The match, on top of being very important for fans, holds a lot of political tension because Real Madrid (my favorite team) represents the government and the crown, while Barça represents the capital of Catalonia (a district of Spain) and how Catalonia wants to separate from Spain and become its individual country. This is a big deal here, and it is very controversial for all. I watched with my very enthusiastic host family and their cousins. I think a tie (2-2) was the safest result for the stability of the country.

Returning to politics, you may have seen on TV some of the crazy protests going on throughout Spain recently. I don't pretend to fully understand everything yet, and maybe I'll post on it when I do, but I know that the Izquierda (left) party is mad at the Derecha (right) government and all of the cuts that they're making to public funding. If you have seen them, you know that La Policia beats the crap out of the protestors. I had joked with some AFSers about going to one, just because it's officially (three tries) part of the Spanish culture. I mentioned this to my host brother while we were hanging out with some of his friends in a park, and suddenly we were headed to La Plaza Neptuno to see a protest.

Now, let's clear some things up. Las Manifestaciones are not violent or dangerous until really late at night, and the news channels purposefully show the bloodiest parts. If the police is going after you, it's because you were stupid enough to provoke them. It's not a full out battle-field everyday.

Something that surprised me was that they're not organized at all. It's not like the Executive Vice-President of the Committee for the Wealth of Public Education and the Security of Democracy sent out a Facebook message and was like, "Hey, everybody! Meet up at La Plaza Neptuno on the 25th of September from five to ten. Memorize this chant and don't forget to pick up your signs at the fountain!"

It's more like "We're mad. At the Government, at the world, Romney, the economy; we heard that there are some people at this place and we think we're going to go."


There are a LOT of police as you approach the Plaza. The flashing blue lights, black padded policia, guns, everything. The plaza square was packed full of people, but we stayed on the outside of the crowd where it was safer. Basically you just stand around, chant things, take pictures, maybe climb up on some windows and tie up a sign or two. I'm glad I got to experience it, and I felt super bad-ass for being a local protester in Madrid. Enjoy.

Protest

Man, do I feel bad for the tourists staying there.

Climbin' on some windows.

Hey to Perth, Australia!