Que Tal Madrid!

The Chocolate Man

2009-01-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

I am really starting to see more and more reasons why my project on media stereotypes the reception of which is so important in Spain....

One day my roomates were sitting in the living room and had the television on, but weren't really watching it, because to be honest Spanish TV is horrible. It really is. then something caught my eye on the television. There was a commercial featuring a black man doing interpretive dance. Since seeing black people in commercials here is not a common occurance, I continued watching. The man continued dancing and moving against a black background. Then he started spinning and swirled into a cup of hot chocolate. After which a Spanish woman proceeded to drink him all up.

Thats what people of color are here in Spain. Hot chocolate.

Another instance occured while I was spending time at the mall across the street from my house. They were putting on a magic show for children but something was oddly different about one of the performers. He had on a mask that was supposed to represent someone of Asian descent with stretched eyes and and a black wig. he proceeded to dance around as if in a modern minstral show. And the people just laughed.

One thing I have gotten in my conversations with Spanish and Spanish minorities is that the concept of racism and stereotypical images has take on a different conotation in Spain. Whereas, for any person the previous two occurances would and should have been offensive, I've been told that because I'm American, I'm too concerned with being politically correct. Racism doesn't exsist in Spain because they can make fun of their differences. Rigggght thats also the reason why the Police can stop me in the street and ask for my papers with no reprecussion, its because they are racially sensitive.

This month i am going to begin interviews with young people about what they see on tv and how it affects them...I am also going to be spending a lotttttt more time at the library in Spain so i can get some more of this research off the ground.

Well Im back from Morocco now, and I had a bevy of experiences there...the Morocco diaries are next!

until,

Sydney

And an extra tidbit.. here are some pictures of my students and I and a video of our attempt to sing the Twelve Days of Christmas

The Holidays are the hardest....

2008-12-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

Its finally hitting me that I am not going home for Christmas....

In 22 years this is the very first Christmas that i wont spend on Hornsby Drive and im suffering.

Thanksgiving wasn;t really hard. You cook and eat some food, say what your thankful for, and keep it moving.

Christmas is different. This is the first Christmas I am without my mom and grandmother. My family is gradually getting smaller, and I realize that spending time with them is so much more important than trying to firgure out how stereotypes affect us.

I have a dinky little Christmas tree that we bought from the chinos for 3 euro and some little ornaments. yes we are making the best out of what we have, but it seems so little.

This is the first Christmas I probably wont rush to wake up to open presents because well...theres not going to be much under our little tree.

I am thankful that I have two extraordinarily wonderful roomates to share the holidays with, and my sister and friend are coming to spend the day with me...but its just not the same. i keep telling myself...HEY you are going to Morocco as a present to yourself, but that really doesnt beat being at home around my family. Shoot, I cant even wake up late for church this Christmas because i dont have a church home out here.

have fun this Christmas and remember the true meaning of the season.

Besos y abrazos,

Sydney

here are some pics from my Thanksgiving...and yes, i did cook half of the meal along with my "sister"/ "cousin'/ "african sister" lol Nicole My friend Bea (Madrid) graced us with some Flamenco with dessert.

Estereotipos

2008-12-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

I FINALLY got underway with my project with my students on stereotypes by holding an open class forum on discussing some main stereotypes of prominent nationalities and seeing what the students thought. i put the names American and British on the board and had my students call otu what they thought of these groups before they met me.

American

Blond
Blue eyes
Baggy clothes
Baseball Caps
Basketball Jerseys
Fast food
Talk rapidly
polite
McDonalds
Chicken
Move fast
Talkative

British

Quiet
Posh
chic dressers (they said this)
very closed off
not very nice
red hair
blond hair
blue and green eyes

Then I wrote Spanish on the board and talked about and had them comment of some stereotypes that "typical" Americans have of the Spanish

Spanish

Hispanic ( I told them a story of how a friend requested that I bring them back a quesadilla from Spain, to which I promptly responded that I was In SPAIN not LATIN AMERICA)
Bull fights ( they said only old Spaniards watch bullfights)
Flamenco
Maracas (these are also Mexican)
paella
ham
Matadors
skirts and fans (they couldnt believe this one at all)

Then we went through and dissected each of these stereotypes and I asked them about how movies and tvs had influenced where each of theses stereotypes came from.

To lighten the mood we ended with stereotypes of Teachers and students. This is what they had to say:

Teachers
cruel
strict
always want silence
not too young (their other teacher was in the room and they were really afraid of offending her lol)
Don't do anything other than teach
glasses
skirts and suits (essentially bad dressers)
Not fun
and the list goes on :)

Besos,
Sydney

School System support....

2008-12-16T06:45:00.000-08:00

So I have been following the recent debates over funding for the Memphis, school system and how it has a lack of funds for books, supplies, and other student support services. We in Getafe are experiencing a similar financial downfall in the schools. My school is in a very working class town so many of the basic amenenties that American students are used to are luxuries to my students.
For one, the students must buy their own textbooks for school, and they only have one. That is their literacy book. Everything else we make loads of copies to give to the students. i think my school uses at least 50 trees a day in paper. One of my main jobs is to take half of the class ,its called dosdoble, in science to the computer lab each day and do a lesson on the computers with them. The problem is that most of the time the computers are broken down, the internet doesnt work, or there is always some conflict with the lab. Even worse, last friday during the middle of the day at school, the power went out and now the copy machine and computer printers dont work which put us at a TOTAL disadvantage and I have been reacking my brains out trying to work around these problems to effectively teach the students.
Now we are finally getting under way with our Model United nations program but we were cut funding for the program this year by Merril Lynch and the University of St. Louis. Now All of the bilingual schools in the Madrid area, only have 15,000 euros collectively to establish the Model UN program at the school and to put on the conference in less than two months. Guess who is in charge of the program for her school, none other than yours truely. So now I have to spend my winter break researching and setting up the model UN program for my school so that as soon as school starts again, I can start prepping the students. This year the conference will focus on infectious diseases and I think my school got the last pics when it came to country choices. I will keep the blog updated on my progress with that.

I also am planning on spending some significant time at the national library to work on my stereotype project which I have finally begun witht the students...more on that later...

Until, Besos

Sydney

El Mike and American Rap

2008-12-09T06:37:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to share this story for a while.

Every Sunday I go to the Afro Hispano center to take African dance classes from a Senagalese man named Pap. At the center there are dozens of people there on any given evening and usually you can strike up a pretty good conversation there. Well two Sundays ago I was headed home from class and one of the kids named Sergio who hangs out at the center ran into me as I was walking to the metro. he saw me with my ipod on and he asked " What kind of music are you listening to? American rap? Heep Hop?". I told him yes and let him see some of the songs that were in my ipod playlist. he got so excited and started asking me if I liked 50 cent, what I thought about TI and JayZ and the like.

Then he pulled out his mp3 and said listen to this, this is my rap song. i am a famous rapper in my country, In a year I will be famous all over Spain. Of course I scffed at him, he's a nice kid but he exaggerates a lot. So I listened to his song. We really have no idea how much our media infiltrates the minds of young kids everywhere. Sergio or EL Mike if you are calling him by his rap name, does not speak English, yet he was rapping in Spanish, English, and French. Now of course most of the curse words were in English and other words were in Spanish and French, but it is amazig how our media and images have taken over every other country. Spanish movies and music are hard to come by sometimes but you can be sure that the lastest American releases are in the movie theatres and dubbed as well as the lastest single from Rhianna, Miley Cyrus or Jayz.

We Americans do not understand the depth to which our culture has become imperialistic, but we also dont realize how bad our image and stereotypes are becoming because of it.
Another example is that while discussing the IRA in English class with my students, we watched the early 90's Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt movie "The Devil's Own". One of the first scenes on the movie is of a black youth running down the streets of New York with the police in hot pursuit of him. The boy ended up not having really done anything wrong, but my students automatically assumed that was typical New York. They even asked me "Is violent crime as bad as it really looks in movies in the US? Do all of you carry guns and knives?" Keep in mind that violent crime here is mostly reserved to the terrorist groups and when it does occur it is not to the levels we are used to in the US. We must be more responsible in our media because if we continue as it is, my students will be too afraid to cross the waters over into the US.

Paris: deux

2008-12-09T06:31:00.000-08:00

More about my trip.....

After walking for more hours around the city and trying to remember my phrase je ne com pron pa frances (I don't speak french)... we finally landed at the mothership, the Sephora flagship store!! I thoroughly enjoyed myself there. We then headed to MonteMatre which is a neighborhood of Paris situtated in the hills and sat down to a fabulous french meal. I dined on filet migon (of pork...I didnt know that when I ordered) and we devoured (I must use that term) desserts of creme brulee and a tarte. We ended the night at the Moulin Rouge and in the Red Light District of Paris..I must sya it has nothing on the Red Light district of Amsterdam, but I did get to see Folies Paris where Josephine Baker used to perform.
Our very last day as we tried to find ways to waste time before our flight, we went to a famous Parisian Tea Shop and I bought mountain loads of tea for a few lucky people. Thast about it on Paris...now back to work until Brussels.

un abrazo,
Sydney

Paris and Parisians

2008-12-09T01:58:00.001-08:00

This past weekend was a puente weekend in Madrid- meaning a long weekend for a holiday- so my roomate and I decided to find some cheap discount tickets to some place in europe. To my great luck, we ended up going to Paris and now I am enamored. If you have ever been to Paris you would know why. This city is the complete epicenter of any and everything European, chic, and artsy.

We arrived to our hotel/hostal digs on Thursday night but we had forgotten one critical thing in Madrid- we don't speak French. Nicole tried to cram my head with simple French as we were on the bus to the city, but french is not easy to cram. We had the hardest time a) finding food on the first night and b) trying to order what we wanted. Nicole had taken French classes and could understand french perfectly, while I on the other hand just smiled and nodded because I had NO CLUE WHATSOEVER. We walked into a restaurant the first night and basically she had to act as my interpreter and speak for me because it was that hard. SO we decided the next day before we did anything we need to go to a bookstore and get a Paris guidebook and a French phrase book.

The first day was amazing. We walked the entire city on both sides of the Seine River although it was freezing cold, windy and rainy the entire day. First we went to the Champ Elysee whcih is one of the poshest and expensive streets in the world. Then we went to see the Oblesik that Nicole kept reminding me that they STOLE it from Egypt. Next on our agenda was th Louvre Museum. It really is as incredible as it seems. I was convinced that I wanted to do the route of The Da Vinci Code so thats how we attempted to see the museum. One thing that was very surprising was that you were allowed to take pictures of the artwork inside of the museum. Even the Mona Lisa (which is a teeny tiny portrait). It seemed like we were damaging the integrity of the artwork, but I took pictures anyway.

After the Louvre we suffered our way through wind and rain to Notre Dame. Though we never were able to go up to the roof, the Cathedral was amazing and had a spectacular nativity scene. Then we decided after all of our hard work we needed to reward ourselves with coffee and some amazing french onion soup. As we defrosted, we realized...maybe it was about time to get that French phrasebook. Paris has sooooo many bookstores, it was not hard finding one with the books that we needed. At this point I must make a sidenote... Parisians are absolutely the MOST stylish and chic people I have ever scene. Especially black Parisians. unlike many of the Black Spainards I have encountered here, Black Parisians are much more integrated into society and are not really looked upon as much as outsiders and interlopers. Oh and btw they are GORGEOUS and have some of the best beautyshops on this side of the Atlantic.
Back to my trip, after getting the guidebook, we finished the day with some shopping and went back to the Champ Elysee (im talking Louis Vuitton Flagship store expensive) and took pictures of the Arc de Triomph at night.

The next day we met up with my friend Hammd and got some crepes (best thing in France), and went to the Eiffel Tower. I was trying to catch someone getting engaged there because they say at least 2-3 proposals happen every hour. The rest of the day we ate, walked, and went to every single quater of the city!! mORE TO COME LATER.....

Obama en Espanol

2008-11-04T16:37:00.000-08:00

It is now election night here in Madrid and we are waiting on the results...

One thing that I have seen for certain here is that Obama has the support of Spainards. Everytime I am speaking with someone and they find out that I am American, they say "Obama, si???" and I always respond with "Por supuesto! Hay un otro??" (Of course, is there another?). It seems that Obama's impact and inspiration has taken on the world and Americans are the only one blind to the change that he poses to give the United States and the international community. At my school everyday it seems the Spanish teachers are more anxious and excited for an Obama win than I am.

Three stories of how Obama affects CHANGE in Spain:

1. I was in the teacher's workroom one day using the computers with the other Spanish teachers and they were reading the paper as always. Then one teacher who is an adamant obama supporter came into the workroom, saw me and said "OBAMA is going to win!! Did you vote?? You have to Vote! Obama!" I as usual nodded yes but then all of the teachers in the workroom erupted into an Obama chant. They promised to have a party at the school the day after he wins.

2. Today, election day, I was reading the newspaper on the way to school. They were polling various europeans living in Spain about who they think will win the elections. Nearly all but one said Obama, but the most striking quote came from a man who said, he believed Obama was the best and most inteligent choice to win, but AMERICANS are too racist to see that.

3. I, along with my roommate was on my way home form an election night soiree hosted by the American embassy in Spain. i noticed that a few people on the metro were staring at us, but I assumed it was for the usual reason that we were speaking english. As we stood to exit the train one man looked up at us, raised his fist and said "OBAMA, CAMBIO" (Obama, Change). he had seen our buttons and felt compelled to let us know that he supported the change that is Obama.

I was also interviewd by two Spanish newstations tonight (in Spanish eek!!) about the elections in the U.S. and why I supported Obama. I am going to sleep now and tomorrow I will awake like it is Christmas. I will open my computer or turn on the t.v. and hope that I get the present I wished for...the first black President...the intelligent, thoughtful, forward thinking candidate that is Obama for President.

Besos, paz,

Sydney

Cumbre Flamenco ( Im back!)

2008-10-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

This blog thing is a lot harder than I imagined....

Cumbre Flamenco-

Every year the Madrid Metro System hosts a Flamenco Show in one of the metro stations. This year it was held in one of the larger stations Chamartin. The shows are always free, you just have to get there a couple of hours early to get tickets. I attached some video and pictures of the show. The night that I went Diego Carrasco was singing and La Talegona was dancing. Diego is more of a fusion rock/pop flamenco artist which is interesting because he was one of the oldest artists on the playbill for the week. La Talegona was beautiful, she danced with so much passion! I am really becoming more and more interested in Flamenco now because of her performance.

Diego Carrasco

So you think you know English?

2008-09-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

Are you smarter than a Spanish 9th grader?

Chances are, you aren't. I began teaching at my school last week and already it is a challenge. The Spanish school system is very, very, very lax. The teahcers don't even have their class schedules until two days before the school year starts, and even then they don't have schedules. Also to add confusion to it, preparing lesson plans are not like it is in the U.S. The teachers follow a guideline book for the bilingual course students and pick lessons as they go along.

Safe to say, my first week has been extremely confusing and tiring. There is one bright spot though, the students that I am working with are very intelligent and many seem to have a good grasp on the english language. Although there are some good language speaks, a grand majority of the students do not understand most of what is being taught in the classroom. I have been working with the 1,2,3, and 4 level students in the bilingual program of Laguna de Joaztel secondary school. Due to the fact that it is the bilingual program, all classes of english literacy, science and history are taught in English.
Some of the students do have a handle on language. I have one young man in my 1 st year class who speaks very fluent english (turns out he lived in Miami for 5 years), but on the other hand most students in his class know very little english. Whats the problem then...well I have to teach all of the lessons completely in english, so it can be more than difficult for the students to follow along and understand the excercises we are doing in class.

The first two days of class were pretty easy. I along with the other auxilary, Veronica, went around to every class introducing ourselves and telling the students a little bit about our backgrounds, where we were from in the states, and about our hometowns. The 1-3 grades enjoyed the lessons eyt when talking about TN they had NO idea who Arethea Franklin was. My 4th level students on the other hand knew more about the US because they have had American auxiliaries for 4 years so they were harder to entertain. Most of the classes though were interested in the elections and who we wanted to vote for.

Seems easy right? Well...the next day i was assisting in class and the teacher asked me to explain prepositions to the students such as the differences between over and above, and in front of and opposite. Thats when it hit me....I speak English, but I have totally forgotten the grammatical things we learned in high school. It took a while for me to catch my bearings and explain to the group the differences, as best I could. (keep in mind that their english vocabulary is also limited, so my explanations had to be extremely simple).

After that debacle I thought I was in the clear....WRONG!! While discussing the parts of plays and dialogues in the 2nd level class we were using the play version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Then the teacher announced that I would give a summary of the book that the students would have to listen to and copy down as a part of a listening excercise. The one problem was, I hadn't read the book since the 4th grade!!!! So I improvised and Wikipedia'd the summary on the break.

Tomorrow we do the Cantabury tales....wish me luck!

Besos,
Sydney

Sambos, Mammies, and Spanish Media

2008-09-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

Interesting title, huh?

As a part of being a Fulbright English teaching Assistant, I also must participate in a side research or activity project to enrich my experience. I chose to focus on the Spanish media forces and how they depict people of the African Diaspora. I wanted to focus on the sterotypes depicted and also I wanted to focus on how this affects the sterotypes of Spanish youth. After gaining this understanding, I plan to host workshops for Spanish youths on media sterotypes.

Well in order to understand current media trends in depicting those of the African diaspora I am examining some of the history and treatment of this group throughout Spain. I plan on studying some Spanish art (through El Prado) to observe historical trends, through today's magazines,books and newspapers. What I have found so far in just my daily travels throughout Madrid has started to give me some groundwork. The Mammy, the Sambo, figures that have long disappeared in advertisements in the United States (at least when attempting to be politically correct) are still very prominent figures used in advertisements to describe people of the diaspora.

For instance.... the first picture above is a part of the marquee for a stage chow entitled "Como El Cubano". This image and others similar to it are plastered on billboards, busses, and metro stations around this city advertising the show. I am arranging to attend the show and to see what it is about, and the purpose for the use of this particular figure.

Even tonight while casually walking the city after visitng the Prado, the figures can not be escaped. The second picture is of a billboard advertising a Spanish restaurant. Hopefully throughout my investigations I can find out why this figure is so prominent and help seperate fact from fiction about the history of these caricatures to my Spanish students.

Until Next time....

besos

Lavapies

2008-09-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

Yes... i really do plan on updating this thing...

So Because it has been so long since my last update I have decided to update it in sections of my life

Lavapies

Lavapies is a neighborhood a little south of Puerta del Sol in Madrid. It is mostly filled with immigrants from African and South America. Its really beautiful, old world Spanish area with winding narrow streets and beutiful architecture. It is also THE HOOD!! Lavapies is full of African immigrants, especially men, who despite what time of day it is, they are always outside in droves just sitting around shooting the breeze. Last week my roommate Nicole, who is doing a documentary on African immigration and I went to the Pan African center in Lavapies to talk to the director. So many funny things happened to us along that trip. When you first enter Lavapies, one of the main streets has a strip of Indian restuarants and a store that sells Bollywood movies. As we were walking we A) ran into a beauty supply store/ beauty shop/ barber shop and B) we got followed down the street by this man who tried to tell us how beautiful we were in three languages. When we didn't respond to him when he spoke to us in English, he tried it in Spanish AND French.

The Pan African Center was amazing. We sat and spoke with the director for almost an hour about Blacks and the African Diaspora in Spain and he gave us some really good ideas, especially for my project. When one observes the Spanish media lately and even international media, it appears that african immigration in Spain is a recent phenonmenon. SPainards don't know how to react to blacks because they have not had such a large population of this ethnic group in the country ever. What the director of the center said is this is a lie. In the 1500's the Spanish population was so mixed with black Africans and Moors, that in Southern Spain 1 in 4 people would be black. Also Spain has tried to do an ethinc cleansing of its history by removing any color from its background. one of the first black poets was not Phyllis Wheatly, but a black Spanish woman. He opened our eyes to a lot of the historicall ethnic cleansing that Spain has participated in. He also explained how there is a rift between Africans from Africa negra (what we describe as Sub Saharran Africa), Afro Colombians, North Africans (Morrocans in particular) and other countries which have large afro populations that have immigrated to Spain.

The next day we went to this AMAZING Senagalese restaurant in the neighborhood. The guy that introduced to the restaurant is named Maxim and he is Senegalese and helping my roommate with her documentary. One thing that Maxim showed me is that as Americans, we are behind the rest of the world. Maxim is Senagalese born, a regular guy like you and me, yet speaks almost SIX languages. He speaks Wolof, French, Spanish, English...you know what I can't even remember all the languages he speaks!! We are so behind as students and as a nation.

We also had lunch with an Afro Colombian woman who definitely was welcoming and inviting to us. One thing I can say about those of the African Diaspora in Spain, we look out for our people!

...back to Lavapies.... the area is also a hotbed for immigrant civil rights work and many immigrant youth are standing up against an oppression by Spain. I am attaching a video by a Spanish Hip Hop group named No Limit in which their first single is called "Lavapies", and they rap about the political situation in the neighborhood.

here is the link to their video

http://http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8Frk00x5E

Ok one area and post down....many to go...until tomorrow!

besos

My Life abroad finally begins

2008-09-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

I am now official a Spainard!! Well, almost of course. The last week has been a blur of non stop running around Madrid trying to get my life together. We had Fulbright orientation where I was able to meet all the other Spain Fulbrighters. We are an interesting group to say the least.... I was so tired at the end of the week because I had to apply for my residency card, which is bo easy feat, open a Spanish bank account so I could start getting paid (and of course they wont do it without the residency card :( ), and get prepared for work at my school. I also discovered during the week that my little oasis in Leganes was definitely not condusive as a central location. Therefore to add to my stress I had to start searching for a new place to live that was actually in the city of Madrid.
On Thursday I met with coordinator of the school I would be working with and got to visit the school that Friday. The students don't arrive until September 22, but she showed us around and introduced us to the entire staff. So far, from what I can tell the whole staff is very open and helpful. They were extremely excited to see us, not as much for the student's sake, but they were excited that we could also help them with learning English. Everyone kept going on and on about last years FLA (Foreign Language assistant, saying ETA really doesn't go over well here in Spain ) so hopefully we will have the same impact. Not only will we be helping teachers with subhects such as Science (biology uhhh ), History, Geography, and English...we also help set up and run the Model United Nations program.
A little bit about the Spanish school system that I have learned so far. They really are not very structured. The teachers had yet to set some kind of schedule or lesson plan for the first few weeks of school, and many still didnt know what subject they were teaching. This isn't to say that that is a bad thing, they just a much more relaxed than our school system. I also am going to be teaching an afterschool english program for Teachers to help them learn english and imporve their skills. We'll see how well that goes, but I get paid extra for that so Im not really complaining!!
Let's see the only other standout moments of this week were...we got to meet the American ambassador to Spain. Guess what state he is from ( just think about our current presidential administration and where he is most like to post his croonies in the Foreign Service). Thats Right! He's from Texas y'all!! He opened up his speech with a big ole "Howdy!" at our closing reception. No I am not kidding.... At first I began to have mental flashbacks of reading the Ugly American, but I decided to give the ambassador the benefit of the doubt. He is a political appointee and good friend of the Bush family. When we asked what he did before becoming the ambassador, he said he worked in banking in Texas...yeahhhhhhhh. Also this week was La Noche en Blanco. It is basically this big night in Madrid where they shut off all the main streets from 9 pm - 7am and people just wander the streets. They have different activities such as castellers, tight rope walkers, concerts and such, and all of the museums are open all night long for free. I went with my two new roommates, Nicole and Mike (fulbrighters), but we were pretty tired because we had been running around all day trying to sign our lease so we didnt really stay that long.
I also finally had a eureka moment as to what I wanted to do to incorporate my side project focusing on media sterotypes of foreigners with my students. I am going to try to establish an intercambio (exchange) between my Model UN group and one in the states to not only communicate about the project but to serve as a gateway to my workshop on verbal exhange rather than media. We'll see how well that goes. I already found a group here in Spain that focuses on American- Spain student intercambio, so I am going to try to integrate my project within.

I think that is all for this week....time to get ready to go to be because I have work tommorrow. I am still working on the picture situation so please be patient.

My address here is now also

Sydney Taylor
Calle Florencio Garcia 13
3-I
28027 Madrid, Spain

Hasta luego!

Arrival!

2008-09-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

Hello All!

if you haven't heard already, I have made it safe and sound to my new home for the next year. I must say that I had one of the most enjoyable international flights ever and that is saying a lot. I finally arrived at my apartment in Leganes (Madrid), Spain around 9:30 last Thursday morning. My place is quite nice, but not exactly in the main part of Madrid. It's a suburb a little bit outside of the city. I describe it as this, If Madrid is New York City, then I live in Brooklyn. It took me a while to finally start up this blog because I have been basically comatose from jet lag for the past few days. The Friday after I got into to town, I went into Madrid to get used to my new surrondings. I took the train into Sol, which is the main city center and shopping district and then walked the length of gran Via which has all the shops, theaters, tourists...etc.
Its funny but I have not been worried nor homesick since I've gotten here. The only thing that I have been worried about is being pick pocket. You should see how close I hold my purse to me while Im out in public. I think my knuckles turned white, I was clutching it so closely. Well, while in Sol and walking around the area I saw soooo many black people. No, not African American and not african. Black Spainards. I think I see way more here than I did in Barcelona. There is even a street in Sol where there are nothing but shops that do hair and braids. It's funny but you can get your hair done, nose pierced and get tatted up all in the same shop! But of course with the influx of people of color I saw ALL of the prostitutes. You can walk along the street and they line the street like wall paper. I was afraid to stand still for too long for fear of being mistaken for one. Then again, thats one of the reasons I brought my project to Spain, so hopefully i'll get some more understanding of that "industry" and reasons for it while I am here. My main project other than being an ETA, though will focus on media stereotypes of people of color in Spain. I.E. think the Olympic scandal when the Spanish basketball team thought it would be a good idea to pose with their hands pulling their eyes.
This week marks my orientation into Fulbright so i am staying at a University in the city. I have plenty of pictures already and I will post them soon to go with the blog post. Keep looking back for updates on me, my life and my project!

Besos,

Sydney