Madrid's street performers and buskers

As any tourist/capital city, Madrid is full of street performers and buskers and it has to be said that it does make wanders around the city more entertaining!

When I first arrived I was baffled when I saw a man hovering above another in Puerta del Sol but soon learned that this is a very popular act at the moment as you see them everywhere. I really want to know how they do it though! The trick must be to see them setting up...

Whenever you go to Puerta del Sol you are almost guaranteed to see people dressed up as Disney characters, Smurfs or Simpsons. I haven't got as many photos of them as usually as soon as they see you take a photo, they pester you for money and they're actually quite scary! Someone told me that they saw a fight between a couple of them once which must have been quite amusing.

Mickey and Minnie Mouse meeting

Didn't know Bart Simpson was friends with the Smurfs!

There are also some more traditional street performers dotted around as well, covered in paint or pretending not to have a head. I wonder how much money they actually earn as it's the kind of act everyone's already seen before.

Chilling in the Sabatini gardens

I wonder how he sees where he's going!

I do quite like the tree lady

In Retiro park one day I also saw a guy doing a balancing and juggling act which was pretty impressive.

This guy has probably one of the craziest acts I've seen though. Been fortunate enough to witness him performing twice on pedestrian crossings around Alonso Martinez. 

I'm not sure which I prefer out of the street performers and buskers as there are some good musicians out there!

I've seen some good classical musicians, a string quartet in Retiro and a violinist outside the cathedral/Palacio Real.

He picked a nice busking spot!

String quartet playing on the last day of the book fair in Retiro park

Accordions seem to be very popular here too, there's one accordionist who always plays the music from Amelie in Retiro park which I have always loved. Does make you feel like you should be in Paris though!

Taking advantage of the long queue of tourists waiting to get into the palace for free

I've also seen some less usual instruments being played around Madrid...

Playing the glasses

No idea what this instrument is

My favourites are probably this group of three guys though who are always in the same spot on Calle Fuencarral. The two guys on the right are twins and were my friend Maria Jesús' neighbours back in Leon! They always make me smile. 

Madrid does have a beach!

I've been here for over 7 weeks now and feel like I'm starting to know the city quite well, gradually turning into a madrileña, but the city never ceases to amaze. A common thing for people to say is "Madrid's got everything but it needs a beach" so on Sunday I met up with a friend who took me to one. I had no idea where he was taking me but at the door there was this sign...

... to which I didn't think much - "Oh, it must be a beach-themed bar". It did help prepare me for when we walked in and the whole floor was covered in sand though! The bar's called Areia and is near Alonso Martinez metro station if anyone fancies going along. They do do really good cocktails and it's quite surreal to be walking in sand inside a bar miles and miles away from the sea. 

Loads of comfy cushions lower down to the floor too!

We also went to San Antón market round the corner where there's a rooftop terrace with a bar. This is also a very nice place made even more entertaining by the drunken Irish girls we ended up talking to!

Roof terrace bar

Not really sure what the coloured pigs were for!

It was nice to go along to these places and relax after a busy Saturday. I have recently made friends with the other au pairs in the complex as well as a babysitter and an au pair in another area of Madrid so we all met up for a wander around the city on Saturday. It was so nice to not be doing solo sightseeing for once and I felt so knowledgeable taking them to places they'd never been before like inside the cathedral and the Campo del Moro gardens. Because of being with people, there were probably more photos taken of me on Saturday than the rest of my time in Madrid! In the evening we went to intercambio, as I'd been raving about it so much, before heading onto an "Irish" pub/club for the rest of the night and dancing to reggaeton (yes, definitely Irish). 

My friend Maryn and I in front of the cathedral

Maryn and I in front of the Madrid bear (taken with Maryn's phone)

Me, Dyanna and Lavinia in front of the Royal Palace in El Campo del Moro (taken with Dyanna's camera)

Maria Jesus, me, Dyanna, Sarah and Lavinia in Star Studio 54 (taken with Dyanna's camera)

Semana seis

I haven't posted in a while as I've either been busy playing with the girls or going out exploring Madrid. So, here's a little bit about what I've been up to. On Monday, completely oblivious to the fact I'd got an email telling me that both my place and scholarship had been confirmed for China (see last post), I had a wander around Parque Juan Carlos I while the family went out for a friend's birthday party. It's a modern park in the northeast of the city, on the way to the airport, full of modern sculptures, exercise parks, playgrounds, playing fields and trees with the river running through the middle. Every time I go to a park here I'm reminded that the Spanish like to keep themselves fit by all the joggers, walkers, skateboarders, rollerbladers and people exercising in the specially designed areas. I don't go to parks that often in the UK but I'm pretty sure it's not the same, we don't have the exercise areas for a start!

A pyramid covered in solar panels which power the park's vehicles which are kept inside. Reminded me of the Stockport pyramid a bit!

View from the top of the park. A golf course with buildings in the distance.

On Tuesday I finally checked my emails and found out about China. I celebrated by going out to meet one of my Spanish friends, María Jesús, for a walk/tour round the centre followed by a few drinks and tapas.

Wednesday and Thursday were both intercambio nights as usual but on Thursday afternoon the girls went to their friends' houses so I had a free afternoon in which I went to the Jardín Botánico before meeting up with María Jesús again and going together to intercambio. I quite liked the Jardín Botánico although it may have been a better idea to go there later on because of the heat. You have to pay to go in (3 euros) but if you present your student card, as I did, it's on 1.50. There's a huge selection of plants there including bonsais, cacti and sunflowers so it was nice to have a little wander around. There were also a couple of photography exhibitions on as part of PhotoEspaña, a photography festival in Madrid this summer, so I had a little look round those as well.

Archways

Some of the many bonsais in front of a pool

Never seen so many cacti!

View of the building where the photo exhibitions were held

On Friday and Saturday I met up with a friend from intercambio before doing some more sightseeing on Sunday. I went to the Rastro flea market which takes place on Sundays 9am - 3pm. Having had a Sunday morning lie-in, I didn't get there until 2pm but thankfully it wasn't too crowded. I hadn't been expecting much, as the family don't seem to like it very much, but I was pleasantly surprised by the size and variety of products. I didn't buy anything but it was definitely worth a look. There were a group of African drummers, dancers and singers parading their way up the street whilst the market was taking place so they were interesting to watch.

El Rastro. Market selling souvenirs, furniture, clothes,...

The African drummers, dancers and singers

I had a walk down the Puerta de Toledo as it wasn't far from the market

Later on I went to the Plaza Mayor. Never seen it so busy! There was some kind of concert going on as well as a hunger strike.

Finally, yesterday I attempted to go on a bike ride with one of the family's folding bikes. Before this I thought that my own bike was bad. It's a mountain bike from Toys 'r' us that I've had since I was 10 years old. I took it to Portswood Cycles to get my brakes fixed and the guys in there laughed at how bad it was! I don't use it very much, only to get me round Southampton, so it doesn't really matter. However, I soon realised that my bike wasn't that bad afterall. I managed to go about 15 mins down the cycle track (where I'd taken India the dog a few weeks ago) before deciding to go back, half walking, as the bike was just too difficult to ride. 

One of the family's folding bikes

I've now only got three weeks left here. Where has the time gone?!

I'm not just going to China, I'm going to China for free! (well, almost)

Those of you who have me as a friend on Facebook may have seen that I've  not only finally got confirmation of my place at Xiamen University but have also found out that I am one of the Confucius Institute scholarship winners! As I was going to go to Xiamen as part of the Xiamen-Southampton exchange scheme anyway, I already didn't have to pay tuition. The scholarship will pay for my accommodation, insurance and give me an allowance (not sure how much) each month. Not bad! It won't pay for my flights there and back but it will be free once I'm there. 

I applied for the scholarship back in April when I suddenly realised I only had two days until the deadline. They were probably some of the most stressful two days of my life. There was so much to do in order to apply! I needed to scan a copy of my passport, a passport photo, my A-level certificates, reference, proof of study at Southampton, proof of study at Confucius Institute and write an 800 Chinese character "study plan" (bit like a personal statement). This required borrowing my lovely housemate Jack's scanner, asking my mum to find, scan and email me my A-level certificates, asking Fanjie Meng (one of the Confucius Institute teachers) to write me a reference, going to the Humanities office to get proof of study at Southampton and waiting for the Confucius Institute to write me something similar. Then there was just the small matter of writing 800 characters... The most I'd written before was probably around 600 so this was quite a lot to write. I made sure I did plenty of sucking up though "I think that learning Chinese is very important because China is becoming more powerful", "Xiamen University has the most beautiful campus in China", "China is one of my favourite countries",... etc. We then weren't sure exactly what they meant when they said the deadline was 25th April. What time on the 25th April? Chinese time or British time (7 hour time difference)? To make absolutely sure, Seb and I rushed to submit our applications on the evening of the 24th, just after midnight in China on the 25th, but even then we weren't sure we'd get it and had no idea when we'd find out. It seems to have all been worth it in the end though as I've been granted the scholarship!

My main concern was about whether I'd actually got a place at Xiamen in the first place. If you've seen my last post about China, it's been quite stressful applying to the university as we were told about it when it was impossible for us to make the deadline. I prepared all my application materials as quickly as I could and sent them off to China before flying out to Spain. I then kept anxiously checking the Post Office's track & trace website to see whether or not it at had arrived. It took about 5 days for it to reach China but it didn't get to Xiamen until two weeks after I'd posted it! I emailed to ask if they'd received it but didn't get a response. A couple of weeks later I emailed to see if they could tell me anything about my application. Again, no response. I'd got tired of checking my emails every day so decided to have a day of not checking them on Monday. Of course that was the day when the all-important email was sent! At 1:54am on Monday I received this:

Dear Imogen,

We posted the admissions documents for you to the address below by express mail. You will receive it in a few days.
IMOGEN SOPHIA MORLEY POSFORD   (home address and phone number)

By the way, in the documents the column of financial supports was wrong due to a mistake made when typing in data into our system. Don't worry about it since you can see your name in our CIS winner list:
http://oec.xmu.edu.cn/shownews.aspx?news_id=2531
http://english.xmuoec.com/shownews.aspx?language=en&news_id=73

Yours,
Eric Jiang

Such a relief! I checked my emails yesterday just before I was going to go out to meet a friend and couldn't believe it when I saw. Needless to say, when I met up with her we had a few beers to celebrate! (3 euros for a bucket of 5 beers, such a bargain!)

When I get back to the UK in August I'll be busy with preparations. I need to apply for my student visa and get health checks done in the three weeks I'm home before going on holiday with my family. Leaving everything a bit tight! 

Santander

Just got back to a boiling hot Madrid (the car said 38 degrees when we arrived) from a lovely few days away with the family in Santander. 

On Wednesday we had a bit of drama at lunchtime. The girls were arguing and fighting, as they often do, but Mónica still had her knife and fork in her hands and her fork somehow managed to end up deep inside Carlota's arm. This was followed by lots of screaming from both girls before the fork was taken out and I became first-aider cleaning up blood and putting ice on the four holes in Carlota's arm! The girls then tried to stir up more panic by ringing their mother saying "Mama, don't get angry. Where are you? Get back here as quick as you can!" without telling her what had happened. After I encouraged her, Carlota did eventually tell her mum what was up, imagine what she would have been thinking otherwise?! Thankfully, despite Carlota complaining that her hand (not her arm) hurt and that she needed to go to hospital, we decided that the injury wasn't too serious and that we could proceed with our plan to go to Santander that evening.

We left at about 5.30pm in the end and, after getting lost (they don't seem to own a sat-nav) and stopping off to eat sandwiches outside a church in a tiny little town, we arrived at our destination at about 10pm. When I was told that we were going to stay in Uncle Toño's house in Santander, I wasn't expecting much. I thought it would be a little holiday home with maybe a couple of bedrooms and one of us sleeping on the sofa. However, I was wrong. The Santander house was, of course, a flat as because so many people live in flats here they call them houses. The flat wasn't small either - three bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen and large lounge/dining area in a complex with swimming pool, playground and padel-tennis court - it was about the same size as the flat in Madrid! Uncle Toño must have quite a bit of money.

We spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday on the beach so there was lots of sandcastles, football, catch, paddling in the freezing cold sea, sunbathing... etc. We were fairly lucky with the weather in that it was sunny the whole time we were there. Unfortunately, the first couple of days were quite windy so not so warm! I managed to burn quite a bit though whilst the family tanned with their Spanish skin. On Friday night we went to La Magdalena, a peninsula where there's a royal palace, as there was a horse show-jumping event on. We watched the horses for a bit before the girls went off to play in a playground and I had a drink with the parents. We then went to see the seals and old boats on one part of the peninsula. 

Thursday's beach: El Sardinero

El Sardinero's other beach

Horseys

Seals. Got confused when they were going on about focas before we went so had to look it up!

The beach we went to on Friday and Saturday

Beach on La Magdalena

This morning the plan had been to spend a last couple of hours on the beach but Carlota changed them by falling off her skateboard at the park yesterday and getting some nasty friction burns on her hand, elbow and side. Instead, we went into the centre of Santander as we hadn't been there yet. I was glad that we had a chance to go as I was curious to have a little wander round after seeing a big banner saying that it had one of the most beautiful bays in the world (according to who?). From what little I saw of it, it seemed like a very nice place and, admittedly, the bay is stunning. It's a shame I couldn't stay there for a bit longer!

Banco de Santander

Santander bay

Tourist boat in Santander bay

Santander's port. The Plymouth - Santander ferry probably gets in there somewhere. Didn't see that many brits though

Santander bay

Statues of poor people who used to jump/dive for coins that were thrown at them