Thanksgiving Skype

I talked to my family tonight over skype!

Remember, you too can skype me! Look me up!

Who am I fooling?

I'm not going to blog about anything worthwhile until December at least.

I've got a backlog of weekend excursions to tell you about, but the only thing I can think about until it's over is NaNoWriMo. So, if you want to hear about that?

I went to my first write-in tonight! Spain is a sparsely populated NaNo region, but there are a few of us in Madrid. Unfortunately, they meet up on Saturdays, which isn't itself a problem, except that I was out of town last week (Salamanca) and will be next as well (Granada) which is especially unfortunate, as it's the last few days of the month. But!

Yesterday I wrote >5000 words, and tonight I wrote >3000, so now I'm at 40,360 - more than two days ahead!

So... write-in. It was at Starbucks on C/ Las Infantas, and it was the first time I've been to Starbucks in Spain (really I don't think I've been in like 6 months, but I'm just as happy with café con leche) Anyway, we were 5 writers, taking up the couches in one corner of the lower level lounge with laptops (see what I did there?) except Excalibor had this spiffy ancient-looking typing machine. So... they were all really nice, and we had a great time racing our word counts in ~hour-long spurts from 5-9 pm. And I got 3,703 words written and crossed the 40,000 word line, which was more than my goal for the day. And I got to witness Excalibor win! That was also very cool.

The only things that would have made it better - mint mochas, and not having the gay guys making out to distract me from my last 300 words. That was awkward and disturbing and I'll stop talking about it.

'K then! Hope you don't mind my absence too much. Why should you? I've been sending postcards every other week or so and I have recieved 2 pieces of mail in almost three months. Seems a tad disproportionate... </rantito>

Hasta luego, un beso,

-Ganchi <3

(short for ganchillo, spanish for crochet, short for crochetgrl, my u/n = it makes sense)

What I've been up to the last few weeks.

Since I last posted on my blog, which I know was quite some time ago, I have in fact been doing some things. In general, weeks are spent at school and I haven't had a free weekend in five weeks.

So, first, a list of where I've been since Alcalá:

• Avila
• Valsaín and Segovia
• Zaragoza
• Fatima

Don't worry. I'll get to each, along with pictures, soon.

Other than that, and what's been taking the majority of my time, is NaNoWriMo. If you've never heard of it, click the link to get more info. But in a nutshell, you write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. If you've been following my twitter feed at all over the last week or so, you'll have noticed that It's been coming along nicely and that I'm really enjoying it. I'm on schedule so far with more 16,845 words! And, yes, I do plan to edit and publish (in some form) my book if I finish it. But for now, there's an excerpt on my NaNo profile page. Click the widget in the sidebar.

That's sort of it for now. Soon I will post about some of my weekend adventures. Until then,

-Rebekah

Actual Pictures of Madrid!

Meet Meryl. She's a friend of Brittany's from school. Today was the third consecutive weekend that the three of us have hung out. Either I tag along with the two of them, or she tags along with the two of us. But anyway, she's really funny and a lot of fun. This photo was taken two weeks ago, right after we went to the Museo Reina Sofia (the modern art museum, with, among others, Picasso and Dalí) Yes, we went to MickyD's. It was kinda fun! We rounded off the day with a trip to the cine to see a pretty bad movie. Good times!

This photo is of last week, when we all went shopping in Sol. I was looking for shoes, so naturally, I'm the only one who didn't buy a pair. We finished off the day with a trip to an incredible chocolatería and some terrible self-photography.

This is pretty much unrelated. Conchi, last (Sunday?) made us a huge brunch. This kind of thing is unheardof in Spain, but that didn't make it any less delicious!

There! Two photo posts!

But I'm not done yet! I'm going to Segovia tomorrow, and I still have last week's Ávila pictures. So look forward to more fun blogging excitement hitting your feed-readers everywhere soon!

Alcalá

Two weeks ago, I went to Alcalá with Brittany.

This small town, located only 30 minutes from Madrid, is the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes and the deathplace of San Diego. We took the Cercanías train, which is covered by my B3 abono, so I didn't have to pay. 

We had a lot of fun hanging out, checking out a few histori

cal sites, and generally soaking in the atmosphere.

Here are a few pictures of our day...

This is an old arabic-style building we passed on the way through the city. I don't remember what it is now, but it's absolutely gorgeous!

This is some museum that was closed when we got to Alcalá and which we were having too much fun to go back to see. But it's beautiful from the outside, no?

There was some sort of Cervantes festival going on. It seems it was a few weeks long. Not sure of all the particulars, but there was a huge rennaicance fair-type event spanning the whole historical area. This is the crêpe I got - chocolate y almendras! It was as delicious as it looks all over my face.

Have you met Brittany? Cervantes is pretty much her heroe because she loves novels so much. Here she is (leaning against the hand of) Don Quijote.

And I got a photo op with Sancho Panza!

As per norm, photos were not allowed inside the tourist sites, etc. But we visited the Casa Natal de Cervantes, the archeological museum, and the Corral de Comedias (an historical theater).

A grand time was had by all, though I'll never wear those boots on an excursion again!