March 07, 2020
¡Hola de España! If you haven’t seen it, we made it safely. We spent our first hours recovering from jet lag and exploring and discovering la ciudad maravillosa de Madrid.
We have visited El Museo Nacional de Reina Sofía y el Museo Prado, and discovered the artistic side of España. We had the experience of seeing La Guernica, Las Meninas, and many other artworks by the likes of Dali, Picasso, El Greco, Velazquez, and many others. It was interesting to see in real life the paintings we saw in our textbooks last year in Profe O’Connell’s Spanish Literature class. We got to explore Madrid and la vida cotidiana de la ciudad. Muchas gracias a Marta, (we have met lots of Martas) our museum guide, who really helped us understand the beautiful art we were looking at. We finally got a grasp on Cubism; which is, as Marta put it, when an artist “analyzes an object into oblivion, and then paints all the views and sides of the 3-D object on the 2-D canvas.”
We have visited El Museo Nacional de Reina Sofía y el Museo Prado, and discovered the artistic side of España. We had the experience of seeing La Guernica, Las Meninas, and many other artworks by the likes of Dali, Picasso, El Greco, Velazquez, and many others. It was interesting to see in real life the paintings we saw in our textbooks last year in Profe O’Connell’s Spanish Literature class. We got to explore Madrid and la vida cotidiana de la ciudad. Muchas gracias a Marta, (we have met lots of Martas) our museum guide, who really helped us understand the beautiful art we were looking at. We finally got a grasp on Cubism; which is, as Marta put it, when an artist “analyzes an object into oblivion, and then paints all the views and sides of the 3-D object on the 2-D canvas.”
Daily life in Spain seems much different than in America. We learned that shops close from about 2 p.m. to about 5 p.m. so that everyone can eat lunch with their families. Nobody eats on the go, and life seems generally more laid back. People are up very late in Spain, and dinner is usually at 8 p.m. It has been a little hard adjusting to La Vida Española, but…at Taberna de Ramales, where we had lunch our second day in Madrid, we had un surtido de tapas, que incluye Tortilla Española, Bacalao, Salchichón, Atún, Anchoas, y Sepia. ¡Todos fueron maravillosos! Those that had the paella originally thought the rabbit legs were chicken wings and were surprised to find a whole shrimp (yes, head and all) in their lunch.
Even with an 8-hour jet lag, we are eager to learn and explore.
Hasta Luego.
