Snow Day, Back to Work

I came in early last Thursday evening, after all but one and half of my potential 7 hours of classes had been cancelled for the day. Fortunately, it was my last class who had remained, a group of soon to be doctors who like to treat me to tapas and drinks after class. I don't complain. The metro went slower that night. I didn't walk through the door to my apartment until nearly 2am. My roommate Peter was lying on the couch.

"Is it snowing?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Just cold."

It seemed like a strange question to ask, especially at 2 am in our living room, which has window that takes up practically the entire wall and overlooks a park. My morning classes had been cancelled as well. I got into bed and turned off my alarm.

I woke up the next day to the normal grey light of my interior room. Without bothering to check the clock, or put on pants, I left my room with the intention of cooking some breakfast and was instantly shocked to see snow, heavy snow, coming down outside my window. There's something mystical about the snow. Eager to capture the moment, I rushed to get my camera. I snapped the first few shots hanging out of my window, still pants-less and shirtless (but not underwareless, I thought I should say).

One of the first things I noticed was the silence. M-30, the main highway surrounding Madrid, had almost no traffic, just a slow moving car every now and then. I think of many things when I think of Madrid. Quiet is generally not one of them. The second thing I noticed were the people in the park. They seemed a bit perplexed by the whole thing, their animals too. The shining torch of their confusion? Their umbrellas.

Sadly, my snow day was cut short by an ill-timed migraine. I tried to run it off at the gym, but this one got the better of me and I had to waste precious snow time sleeping off the pain. Still, I didn't miss out on the evening news reports, one of which interviewed several people from youngest to oldest, each insisting that a progressively longer time ago had been the last time they had seen a snow like this one. There was also a man explaining how to put chains on a car, though I'm not sure where in Madrid one could hope to find them, or anything to use them on, for that matter.

Amazingly, after the three days the snow is still here, albeit in patches. Madrid has proven itself tough enough to survive a real winter storm, except of course that today when I went grocery shopping they didn't have any carrots, or salad, or chicken, or bread. A couple more days of snow, we might not have made it.

Los Reyes

I'm fortunate to live in a country that thoroughly appreciates celebration. Being a traditionally Catholic country (they even more or less escaped that pesky Reformation) Christmas is celebrated and no one works. However, and I think they did this just because of their profound appreciation of celebrations, they also celebrate Los Reyes on the 6th of January, and again no one works and everyone celebrates. This is the day in Spain when families exchange gifts, although now some families also exchange gifts on Christmas as well. One might be inclined to think that it might be smart to space one's holidays out a little more so as to not have too high of a concentration, but don't worry, their are plenty to go around.

The city holds several parades in honor of Los Reyes, one of which I was lucky enough to be a part of. I headed to Canillas metro stop, which is about 10 stops East and North of me. That's really saying something, as I consider myself located very far East. Of course, I went with a Spanish invitation, without which I would never have known such a parade existed.

And exist it does, and with style. As I watched, I couldn't help but thinking how good these parade-goers had it. Specifically, the kids. Their job, the ones who participated in the parade, was to throw a near unlimited supply of candy to, or sometimes at, the crowd. Almost all of the candy was the same, small, round, colored hard candy wrapped in clear plastic. However, one of the boys on the floats who appeared to be a little older than the others, maybe 12, apparently brought some of his own. His candy was much bigger, and as I watched from several feet back, he cocked back with what appeared to be a Twix-sized object and heaved it directly into the forehead of the woman standing in front of me. For a moment I didn't know how to react, but after a nice me cago en la leche! the woman seemed to be fine.

But I started with how good the parade-goers had it, and I didn't mean to suggest that I think throwing large pieces of candy at people's faces was something that I enjoy or would enjoy. I meant that as a kid, it doesn't get much better than having an important job to do in a cool costume on the top of a giant slow-moving object.

Also interesting to watch were the candy collectors. People of all ages were there, but it seemed that the most aggressive participants were either between the ages of 3 and 6 or 75 and 129. I thought it was a little strange that the 75+ crowd would have such a serious need to get their free candy fix, but later Bea explained to me that her grandmother used to give her all the candy she found at the Reyes parade.

Like the Midwest but with Castles

December 28

8:00 in the morning didn't used to seem so early. That was before I moved here, where things happen later and I have become, somehow, even paler. Granted, I have to get up early for work sometimes. But as they say, you don't work on vacation. And that's what this is. Three whole weeks of it. However, this day I had to get up. At a quarter to 8 the phone rang and we shuffled downstairs and into the street where a car was waiting to pick us up. Bea and her Dad, Jose, were there to get us, and we had to hurry if we wanted to see everything.

The drive was about an hour and a half into the heart of Castilla-La Mancha. We stopped about half way to eat some breakfast where I foolishly ordered a tortilla and a coffee; I even had to get help finishing the tortilla. It was a little chilly outside, freezing, if you're from Madrid. I couldn't have been happier to have finally seen a view without a building.

Our first stop was Segobriga, a well-preserved Roman ruin that used to serve as the center of a large communication network in the region. This info is thanks to a pamphlet, which I took in Spanish and Jose took in English, to practice.

Next came a little more driving. The first castle we drove to required some off-roading to get to, and unfortunately our little get-up just wouldn't have been able to make it. So I took pictures from far away. We could have walked, but the Madrid and California representatives were looking very comfortable in the nice warm car. The second castle, which is small but has an enormous wall extending from it into the surrounding town, was closed for repairs. So I took pictures of that one far away as well.

The last thing to see before the long day of eating ahead of us were the windmills of his home town, Mota del Cuervo. Mota del Cuervo is the biggest town in the area, as Bea's grandmother loved to constantly point out, and has, among other things, a pool and a doctor. Surely it has more than this, it has 6000 people, double the size of my old town of Watonga, which had more than one doctor and two pools to boot.