because i know you're curious about spanish hair styles....

So on monday I went out with my intercambio Mercedes, who is SUPER cool (like the use of super there??. She took me to the Museo de Jamon, which is not in fact a museum, unfortunately, but a tapas bar...still, good times. i'm sure you can imagine what types of tapas we got at the ham museum....

anyways, we got talking about spanish fashion, and Mercedes confirmed to me that not all spaniards are fond of the hammer pants (although she didn't know who MC Hammer was) and that she too thinks that rat tails are ugly. Then I asked her about bangs, which the Spanish chicas seem to have a thing for. this is the explanation I got:

it's because of Nelly Furtado. She's really popular here and she has bangs, so now everyone has them.

well there you have it! Out of the 80's and into the early 2000s, at least as far as hair goes.

Spanish Stranger Saturday

spaniard: hector, my EU professor.

Sure, by this point in the semester he might not be a stranger, but hector wins this week's award for 2 reasons:

1. he insisted on wearing a bright yellow belt to class. 2 class meetings in a row. (not like a yellow karate belt that's in the photo. and no, hector looks nothing like the ninja in the photo)
2. we got to class and he asked if we liked barcelona. everyone said yes and someone shouted that we got to go to a barca game. hector asked who we cheered for, so we said barca. he proceeded to take his pen from the table and stab himself violently in the chest over and over for a good minute.

best convo ever:

background: we had been talking about books. paloma was saying how she didn't read a lot of Shakespeare(pronounced shake es pee are eh)but liked the movie Shakespeare in Love.
P-paloma, H-hayley, L-lola

P: ...and then there's Quijote
H: well i never read Quijote in spanish, but that's another book that has a show after it
P&L: WHAT?!?!
H: man of la mancha?
P&L: you mean the book?
H: no, the play
P&L: there's a play?
H: yes, man of la mancha is the name of a play. it's a musical
P: Typical Americans. they turn everything into musicals

lessons from barca...la sagrada familia

it's a cathedral. they started working on it over 100 years ago. it will have 18 towers when it's all finished. in the 100 years that have passed, they've completed 8. (18-8=10 left) The tour guide told me in all seriousness that it should be finished in 2020.


im sorry barcelona, but i just don't believe you. youre gonna have to pick up the pace on this one. i was there on a friday afternoon and NO ONE was building anything. there were cranes just chillin there, not doing anything. if you're gonna pretend that you can finish this thing in 11 years, at least make an attempt.

SS3: Barca advertisements

No answers. A lot of questions.

SSS2: Hammer Pants

You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this

My, my, my music hits me so hard
Makes me say "Oh my Lord"
Thank you for blessing me
With a mind to rhyme and two hype feet
It feels good, when you know you're down
A super dope homeboy from the Oaktown
And I'm known as such
And this is a beat, uh, you can't touch

I told you homeboy (You can't touch this)
Yeah, that's how we living and you know (You can't touch this)
Look at my eyes, man (You can't touch this)
Yo, let me bust the funky lyrics (You can't touch this)

Fresh new kicks, advance
You gotta like that, now you know you wanna dance
So move, outta your seat
And get a fly girl and catch this beat
While it's rolling, hold on
Pump a little bit and let 'em know it's going on
Like that, like that
Cold on a mission so fall them back
Let 'em know, that you're too much
And this is a beat, uh, you can't touch

Yo, I told you (You can't touch this)
Why you standing there, man? (You can't touch this)
Yo, sound the bell, school is in, sucka (You can't touch this)

Give me a song, or rhythm
Make 'em sweat, that's what I'm giving 'em
Now, they know
You talking about the Hammer you talking about a show
That's hype, and tight
Singers are sweating so pass them a wipe
Or a tape, to learn
What's it gonna take in the 90's to burn
The charts? Legit
Either work hard or you might as well quit

That's word because you know...

You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this

Break it down! (Music breaks down) Stop, Hammer time!

Go with the funk, it is said
That if you can't groove to this then you probably are dead
So wave your hands in the air
Bust a few moves, fun your fingers through your hair
This is it, for a winner
Dance to this and you're gonna get thinner
Move, slide your rump
Just for a minute let's all do the bump, bump, bump

Yeah... (You can't touch this)
Look, man (You can't touch this)
You better get hype, boy, because you know (You can't touch this)
Ring the bell, school's back in (You can't touch this)

Break it down!Stop, Hammer time!
You can't touch this )
You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this


Break it down! (Nice pants, Hammer) Stop, Hammer time!

Every time you see me
The Hammer's just so hype
I'm dope on the floor and I'm magic on the mic
Now why would I ever stop doing this?
With others making records that just don't hit
I've toured around the world, from London to the Bay
It's "Hammer, go Hammer, MC Hammer, yo Hammer"
And the rest can go and play

You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this
You can't touch this

SSS1: the dread mullet

oh the horror! spain! what gave you the idea that this was a good idea???????

final thoughts for the week

so my next blog entry won't be until monday night or tuesday b/c we're going on a trip to barcelona. in the mean time, if you haven't noticed i'm adding to the blog the list of random topics i've discussed with my host mom. i realize now that a lot of them center around food. i can't even tell you how many times oprah has come up in conversation though :-P

also, i went shopping today and saw mchammer style SHORTS!!! first pants and now shorts....mc hammer for every season!

spanish stranger saturday/ french style

i loved this! in spain we just get accordion players, every now and then a clarinetist. but this! genius!!!

it's a guy who turned the polls in the metro into a mock puppet stage and he had the puppets dance to Wooly Bully. the whole metro applauded at the end. fabuloso!

thanks paris

i was confused. i didnt know where the eiffel tower was. luckily paris street signs were there to help. i can't even stress how close this sign was to the eiffel tower.


sign_______tower

the louvre museum

this little old man was standing by the pyramid part of the famous museum we saw. he just kept his hand between the pyramids. no one was taking his photo or anything. he just stood there, for minutes....

???

what is this sheep doing??????

photo taken in versailles

Creeper 1

this guy's a winner. we were sitting on a ledge of a bridge (underneath us were the weird fish) and this guy wanted me to take his photo. fine. i took it, it came out amazing, as i'm an expert photographer....anyway, he wasnt happy with it. it didnt have enough river (lie) too much sky (lies) and it wasn't far enough to the right (more lies). i took the photo again. he said thanks and left. i kept seeing him all over versailles. he kept glaring angrily.

The Fish

apparently these guys live in the royal palace grounds too. obviously the french have a thing for creepy fish.

Paris story #1 The Rug

So day 1 of my parisian adventure we went to versailles. it's a palace. it's cool, im sure you don't care to hear about the boring history of france and the palace's significance ...so anyways, there were these 4 middle aged women from South Carolina. Loud as can be with their thick southern accent. they commented on EVERYTHING! and for some odd reason we kept running into them. at one point we were at Marie Antoinette's estate, when one of them said "OH MY GOSH THAT RUG! EVERYONE NEEDS ONE OF THOSE IN THEIR HOUSE!"

i took a photo of part of the rug so you can see exactly what piece of beauty we all "need".

my promises

I am so excited to share my Spanish Stranger Saturdays post with you, mainly b/c it's the French edition. Some Saturdays i'm scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with a suitable stranger, but this saturday i was overwhelmed by how amazingly ridiculous french strangers can be. so it's going to be multiple stories. i promise. by tomorrow i will have photos up and everything. come back and look.

rat tails

they're really popular. i've seen a lot of them. my tally so far (since yesterday):

Rat tails: II
Rat tails w/dreadlock: I

total: III

almond trees

today i got to go see the almond blossoms with my host mom lola. she insisted on taking a rather awkward picture of me by one of the trees, to which i said that i needed one of both of us. lola looked around to see who to ask to take our photo, and i said that there was a woman with three dogs over by a different tree who could do it. not only did lola ask the woman to take our photo, she said that we should also get one of the dogs in it (all small white curly coated dogs). so now i have this woman offering up her finest of the spanish pups to be in the photo, which i passed on, but thinking back it wouldve made for a great photo for this blog....it was just weird.

another weird thing...there were green parrots eating the flowers. lola said this was not normal. i just don't understand spain some times

spanish stranger SUNDAY?

i know, im a day off, but sunday starts with an S and i took the photo on Saturday, so it still counts...

we went to segovia on saturday to see the aqueduct, cathedral, and castle that they claim inspired disney to model cinderella's castle after...

anyways, then we were walking around plaza mayor and i saw this street musician (and you know my love of metro musicians? well street musicians can sometimes be even better!)

so we have this guy standing in this ultra important square just jammin away on his saxaphone. it was awful! worst music ive ever heard in my life! i thought people's ears were going to bleed out. to make it worse, this guy had a tiny squeaky sounding dog at his feet singing along. i'm pretty sure the dog was possibly begging his owner to throw away the saxaphone and pick a new career path. then the guy finally stopped playing (thank god!) and started singing and dancing! if the sax part was bad, the song/dance routine was worse. you can't say the guy didn't try to earn his euros, but geez!

dear spaniards, you're fat. love madrid metro <3 <3 <3

just another one of the many reasons i love the madrid metro system....

twice a week i go to my internship which requires taking the metro and changing lines. at the transfer station it takes forever to get to the other line because the station is soo huge! they have tons of escalators that you need to take up and down, and it even has a moving sidewalk inside.

of course, madrid metro doesn't actually want you to use their precious escalators and moving sidewalks.

they have signs everywhere, including the floor, and near the railings of the escalators/sidewalk saying "if you don't use me (the escalator/moving sidewalk) you will get exercise and will feel better all day long".

That's right, you'll feel better all day if you take the stairs instead.

now, i've been using this metro transfer station for a few weeks, and i have to say, i have never seen anyone not use the moving sidewalk, nor have i ever seen anyone taking the actual steps instead of the escalator (metro even has footprints painted on the steps to point you in the right direction).

the trip to el escorial

so today we took a bus to see the monastery of san lorenzo del escorial....it was cool but also really kind of creepy b/c it's where they bury all the royalty, so we saw the tombs of kings, queens, princes, princess..everyone. they also had these unmarked coffins (covered in marble and gold) waiting for the parents of king juan carlos. the parents are already dead, they just haven't rotted enough to go into the marble coffin.

well that was a pleasant story. hope you enjoyed!

lots of things to say...

so once again i am sorry for not being able to post more often...some weeks give me more free time than others...BUT that doesn't mean that i am lacking in stories :) here they are in no particular order:

THE STORY OF THE JUDGMENTAL LITTLE GIRL IN THE METRO
so i was on the metro, and having failed at breaking in my boots the day before, i had a nice sized blister on my foot....because of that i was wearing flip flops. it is also, in my opinion, prime flip-flop-wearing-season, and any excuse to wear them is a good enough reason in my mind. Not so, said the little four year old spanish fashionista(i'm not upset that she hated my cheep flip flops...no, not at all....). the girl looks at my shoes and says to her daddy "what's wrong with that girl's shoes??? you can see her feet! why isn't she wearing boots? they only have a strap between her toes! why would you wear something like that???" this went on for 20 minutes, this girl ripping me apart for wearing flip flops.

THE STORY OF THE CARNIVAL
99% of the carnival story cannot be told, or rather, typed. ask me about it and i will share. what you should know is that i saw my favorite tv show characters as costumes in carnival (the ants from that amazing tv show "ant hill"

THE STORY OF CARNIVAL DURING THE DAY SLASH MY SPANISH STRANGER FROM SATURDAY
yes, carnival was on saturday, and yes i saw plenty of spaniards that were spanish-stranger blog worthy. this one was my fav. he was dressed as a bull fighter and had an all out bull fight (everything from taunting the bull to chasing it to having it walk under the red cloth) right in the center of the city. ppl were cheering! what made it even better was that the "bull" was actually a five inch battery operated bull.

THE STORY OF PORTUGAL AND INDIA
so we went to portugal and had this really nice tourguide and all, but judging by her word choice, it's safe to assume that portugal is still a little bitter that they're so tiny. she went on and on about how w/o portugal brazil would be nothing. then she spoke about that awful time in history when "we lost india". that was in the 16th century. they just can't let it go.

THE STORY OF BEING HOME ALONE
lola wasn't gonna be home when i got back from my group trip. she showed me where all these things are in the house. she lectured me on how to open the freezer door and look inside if i was hungry and had eaten all the food. i reassured her that i'd be fine. she left for granada, i left for andalucia and portugal. i came back, and couldnt find a thing. not even olive oil. and the spaniards lovvveeee olive oil so i knew we had it. i found it 30 min later in this drawer that i never knew existed. i didnt know where the olive oil was b/c ive never had to add my own dressing to salad here before...just goes to show you that my host mom does EVERYTHING for me :-P

THE STORY OF THE MEAL PLAN
this is an ongoing discussion at my host home. we talk about housing on campus and eating on campus all the time. i said that i wasn't getting a meal plan next semester bc i barely used it in the fall. lola's concerned. she's worried i will starve.