2 months in

Madrid

¡hola todos!

so I've been in spain for nearly 2 weeks now, and so far its amazing! I don't even know where to start!

The first two weeks has just been kind of exploring and sussing things out I guess. The club has been really really good to us and we are in a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment in quite a nice area of Madrid. It's strange to be somewhere where there are no houses, only massive apartment buildings. Everywhere you go, everything is like, 8 stories high, virtually all the parking around town is underground, there is even a stretch of the motorway (11km) that goes underground. I think it's a great use of space, who wants roads and car parks using up space anyone can see?! It does make you think though, everything is underground, even the metro, so it's a wonder it can all fit together. Must be some pretty awesome engineers I would guess.

We've seen a few sights, the Plaza Mayor (above), this awesome little square thing. If anyone has seen vantage point, that's where it was based. It's pretty cool even if there wasn't a movie filmed there. We also stumbled upon the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) the other day, huge! And it's so great there's like a garden kind of in front of it, and it's full of statues of all the old kings – well, not all of them. Some are on the top of the palace overlooking the city, but I think maybe the oldest ones are in the garden. We've also hung out in Retiro – this awesome park with a man made lake in it. It's like a 20min walk from our house, it's huge and so beautiful so many old statues and cool little kiosks/cafes, and the weather is still fantastic clear blue skies low 20s every day. I'm quite possibly the whitest person in Madrid, but not much can be done about that I suppose!

Despite not knowing virtually any Spanish upon arrival, I feel as though I've picked up a huge amount even since being here, I think having a decent grasp on French really helps, a couple of the girls on the team also speak French so that helps too. When my strange spanglish creole isn't working, we can convert to that. However, trying to keep up in a language you really don't know much of can prove difficult, and some days I find I can't form words in Spanish, French or English. I'm hoping we'll get used to it : ) we start Spanish classes on Monday, which I'm really looking forward to – I want to say we're going to pick it up really quickly. Hopefully we'll pick it up really quickly.

The girls are all really friendly and so much fun, we learnt all the really important words like whore and bitch on the first day, haha. And even though they don't really speak English and we don't really speak Spanish, we manage. We had a practice game last night against the u16 boys from our club, it was a bit of a disaster because we were practicing this drop that we haven't done together yet. I was trying really hard to yell in Spanish when I was at centre-back to tell everyone when to press and when to come back etc, I don't know if my Spanish was useless or people just didn't hear me, haha. But no one really reacted haha. We'll get there. A couple have taken us out for Tapas after training (we train 8-10pm every night), and one took us looking for big shoes around the city because people here are quite short and have rather small feet! They're so friendly and happy for us to be here, which makes things really happy for everyone involved really. I'm really glad they're so welcoming.

We have established our locals – we have a tapas bar downstairs from our apartment (2 actually!), a great little restaurant where we can go for lunch (the owner is a friend of our club presidents), and there's a market just down the road, where the fruit lady always gives us there yummy yellow Spanish plum things whenever we go there, and we have a butcher and a chicken man. And yesterday I learnt the word for mince – carne picada : ) There's a huge 'hypermarket' (kind of like walmart/supermarket put together) a couple of blocks away and we have invested in a trolley so that we don't have to carry heavy bags home from all over the place – you know the kind old ladies have. But it's not checkered, it's just balck and it has a grey lid type thing. But I love it, it has great wheels and a good handle – not he kind that makes your hand sore, and it is the perfect height for me : ) everyone is so patient and friendly with us. We stand out like huge freaks, but no one is rude and everyone is happy to help us, despite the fact that we so obviously don't fit in. haha, I keep joking that we are already madrileñas (the name for people from Madrid) but until someone points out that we just look like freaks.

The club has been really hospitable to us, the club president has taken us out for lunch a few times, and the other day we went out for Tapas with the president and also the athletic director of the club. It's always an adventure, and really not that formal between us all which makes things a lot easier. I'm always really nervous about what's appropriate and what you're supposed to say/do etc but it's all pretty casual. The word for centre forward is 'boya' and the word for penis is 'poya' and I guess I got them mixed up when I was talking about Emily and the president just cracked up laughing and then proceeded to educated us on all the nuances of the word 'poya' – we learnt that if someone 'estar un poya' (is a penis) it's like calling them the man. So it's a big compliment. It's such a great ifestyle here, I think I'm going to struggle to go back to normal life after only being here 2 weeks haha! You can work the normal work day I think until 5, or you can knock off at 3 for a few hours and then go back from like 5-7/8 I think. So people have tapas a few times a week. So you go to a bar and order a drink and they give you some food with it, and it's great food. And you usually get a few different dishes and end up very full and drinking a lot. Although no one is really drunk because you're eating the whole time. I have discovered vermouth, they have it on tap in most places, and you start drinking it when you don't want any more beer. Being a girl I prefer to have vermouth con sel – which is when it's watered down a wee bit with like, soda water or something. It's quite nice : ) still am yet to try sangria, but we'll get to that I'm sure.

Anyways, that is enough for today. I feel like this city is serenading me. I really really like it. I hope I play really well so they're just as happy for me to be here as I am!

 

"courage is the accumulation of small steps"

catch up

i just moved to spain to play water polo. to live the dream as such. but this is my photo diary leading up to that, please bear in mind it's like a couple of months of photos squashed in here so there will be a bit missed out. not in any particular order either.

a few scenes

from the same week, a few weeks ago...but i remembered today that i said that i would put weekely photos up...yea. oh well.

Copied Idea

OK so since i've been home been in a bit of a funk. not a cool funk like the music, like a dead end thats not a dead end but can't be called anything else because there doesn't really seem to be anything else. i really dont' know what to do with my life. Lots of options and not really sure about where to go or how to back myself. Normal i suppose but frustrating never the less.
So, because the job hunt was going nowhere and the polo in europe pursual took a lot longer than expected to pluck up the courage for, i succumbed to temping. So am now answering phones and stufing envelopes in order to pay of credit card and raise funds enough to get to europe. despite the face that europe seems ever more elusive.

anyways, in the last few days 4 things have happened to make me decide to start living again. not that i've been dead by any means, just kind of going along like grayness. anyways,

1.watched mama mia. despite my inability to deal very well with musicals, and the main character being really quite annoying to me with her over excitement, i found myself smiling and quite enjoying the movie and being reinvigorated by abbas classics and the colours of the greek isles.

2. watched welcome to the sticks. french film, went with alex (c's hubb) after my date (my sis) decided she wasn't that into it and coralee had to go to netball. excellent movie, haven't laughed that hard for the longest time. plus it had this amazing documation short before it. = animated documentary. it was radical. and the movie, about someone who is forced to move somewhere he really doesn't want to go and ends up loving it, had a good message in it for me i think. i'm not usually one for going to movies as a way of hanging out, but if it's anything but blockbuster, all of a sudden i can't think of a better way to pass my time and bond with people.

3. chatted with my most lovely friend emma from hawaii, who kept asking me what was new with my life, and i had nothing much to say. which is because i've been choosing to do nothing most of the time when i've had a choice. no i thought to myself, maybe i should start doing stuff so i have something to talk about. seems quite silly but a good point when you think about it.

4. alex is doing an image a day thing on his blog. i dont think i have the dedication for a photo a day specifically, but maybe i could make the effort to do a week in pictures type thing. we'll give it a go anyway. might be pretty boring to start with since i have to find a new muse having left hawaii and my model mats, i will just have to find the inspiration from inside or something like that i suppose...

yup.

almost done

i can't believe last week was my last week of school ever and that this semester, year, my time here is pretty much over and done.

i feel like since my last update so much has happened, so many dramas and highs and lows that i couldn't possibly try to fit everything in but i'll chuck in some photos and life lessons because i'm procrastinating any my brain is well and truly fried from too much working on the same paper/thesis. it's funny, i seem to be the "type" of person to go to grad school, but i wonder if it will ever happen...right now it's not on the cards thats for sure! foreword: i dont think the photos have much/any correlation to the life lessons but they are just a few that i like...

Life Lesson 1: Sometimes people don't make sense.

Sometimes no matter how hard you try, or how good your intentions are, relationships fall apart. Many people say they forgive, but they dont. And there comes a point where you can only do what you can do. When people are try to humiliate you, sometimes it's better to let them rather than to retaliate. Most of the time, you're not as humiliated as you feel like you are, and the other person looks like a fool. It's better to keep your conscience clear, revenge really doesn't satisfy. only in forgiveness can we be set free from those who have hurt us.

Life Lesson 2: Things are always uncertain. always.

I've been freaking out for the last year and a half, every time someone has asked me how i was or where i was at, i would always say, things are really uncertain. Things are always going to be uncertain. nothing at all is promised to us, not even today. i think i'm at the point where i'm about to step into the unknown, and i dont think it's ever going to stop. when you get comfortable with that, you can get rid of a lot of stress.

Life Lesson 3: Relationships really are the most important things in life.

I made a decision at the beginning of this year based around the idea that relationships are more important than most other things in life when push comes to shove. That decision kind of threw me into living that out. I made a sacrifice for a friend, which was a normal and logical choice for me, but it also made me realise how much i had taken my other friendships for granted. without water polo as a focus or goal, i was forced to be vulnerable with my friends and a really raw and painful way. I don't know how many of them actually realised it, but i felt completely stripped bare for all to judge and draw conclusions about, and i was moved to tears so many times when they covered me, they took the ugly with the beautiful and embraced all of it. Not just observe it from a distance, but embrace all of it. there were others that rejected all of it too, which had their own tears. and that forced me to assess where i was at, and really think hard about the person i am, and the person i want to be, and it also forced me to become ok with myself as a person, not a water polo player.

Life Lesson 4: Don't let fear of falling stop you from jumping...if that makes sense

Honestly i just really wanted to put some pictures of my skydiving adventure on here but it kind of makes sense. i was so terrified coming back this semester, but have had such an amazing journey. definitely not easy a lot of the time, but amazing never the less. i've discovered in myself a resilience that i didn't realise i had. i never even called myself an athlete until a month before i finished playing polo at UH. it turns out i'm a little bit free spirited and actually really enjoy adventure, i think i allowed what i thought other people's opinions of me put me in a bit of a box before. anyways, if you ever get the chance to jump out of a plane at 13,000 ft with a parachute on i fully recommend it!

So this is me, at the edge of the big cliff called life, a vague idea of where i want to go but knowing that there is a big likelihood of it not going the way i want it to, nervous and excited and terrified at the same time, but hopefully ready nevertheless!

stop the traffik

changes

today began my last semester of university. in a few short months, my under graduate degree will be finished and i will leave the world of academia indefinitely. yay! it's been such a long time coming!

in other recent news, Coralee and Alex were married on saturday, and the saturday before that was Michelle & AJ. two Amazing days of celebration. i had such a great time at home. it's scary coming back, i'm no longer on the water polo team, because being in Coralee's bridal party required me coming back to training a week late, which my coach was not willing to accomodate and so i made the decision to accept the consequences and go to the wedding. It has been really hard to accept, terrifying and heartbreaking to choose to walk away from the thing that has taken most of my time and energy over the last 10 years, the thing that has brought me the most delight and the thing that i have cried most about. But there comes a point, i guess where i'm at now, where some things are more important. and so i chose my friends, and i will never regret the decision. i can't. it's scary and hard and sad, but i know i'm in the right place, i have more peace than i've had in a really long time, and it will probably good for me to get to know who i am outside water polo. i don't know what's coming, but i'm ok with that. which is a huge step for me! don't get me wrong i've been grieving like no tomorrow. and every time someone brings it up i struggle to keep it together, but i will be ok.

anyways, here are some photos. i'm sorry i still haven't figured out how to arrange them nicely so they'll be all over the place but bear with me k? ta