The Search for Delicious Part I

I've eaten a lot, and I've eaten well thus far in Europe.  In terms of expenditure, I would say about 30% of my money has gone towards food and drink, 50% towards housing, 15% towards travel, and 5% towards clothes and decor.

The first thing I ate in Spain was what I later realized to be fairly shitty paella and a small glass of wine for 5 euros at El Mercado San Miguel, right by Plaza Mayor.  Despite the overall mediocrity of paella, it was a shining moment.  I was in Spain.  I was eating paella and drinking wine. At the time, that's all that mattered. Even if it was an inauspicious beginning in terms of quality, it was a beginning.  El Mercado San Miguel was also a great place to start, and I've gone back many a time for a quick snack or a drink.  They have a lot of different stalls.  Cheeses, olives, all sorts of tapas, Galician seafood, wine, San Miguel, jamón, empanadas, tarts, chips, vermouth, etc etc.  A wonderland in other words.  Here's a picture from a later visit of two tapas:  baccalao and pulpo (octopus) a la gallega:

A lot of my first few weeks in Madrid was spent walking around, gawking at the buildings and the people and the sights, and every couple hours, stopping at a restaurant or a café and having something to eat and drink.  One of the first such experiences was very simple, but very good...a bocadillo (sandwich) de calamares (fried squid) and a caña (a small glass of beer).  As seen below:

In general, the norm in Spain, at least as I've experienced it in Madrid is that you'll order a drink, whether that be a caña (or doble or jarra if you're thirsty), a glass of wine, or a cocktail, and you will get something to nibble on.  This something varies widely depending on where you are, and it is generally known here as a tapa.  Potato chips are very common, and better than your run of the mill Lays.  Also, olives, which I had never really eaten before I came, but which I now tend to enjoy.  Popcorn, some sort of dip and chips, nuts, basically anything salty or crunchy that goes well with alcohol.

The reigning king of tapas thus far for me, just in terms of sheer generosity, is an establishment known as El Tigre.  They have three locations in the Chueca neighborhood, right next door to Malasaña where I live.  They're self described as a sidrería (or cider house), but their food and cheap prices are their real calling card, their true glory.  The first time I went I was with two friends, early on in our time in Madrid.  We had heard good things about El Tigre, but didn't know much else about it.  We ordered three drinks, and received two large mugs of tinto de verano (wine with lemon soda) and a glass or copa of vino tinto (red wine) with a very solid amount of wine.  Each drink was 3,50 euros.  What happened next changed everything.

The waiter first brought out one heaping plate of food, slices of French bread topped with various sorts of jamón and tortilla (the spanish omelette/quiche hybrid).  Then he brought out a plate of chicken wings.  And then he brought out a full plate of paella, which was considerably less shitty than the paella I had at San Miguel.  So three whole plates of food.  For free.  Mind you tapas are always a little bit of food.  This was unprecedented for us.  In general, actual meals in Madrid are pretty expensive, definitely above 10 euros, especially at night.  So you tend to survive on what tapas you can scrape together and beer more or less.  So this was like the doors of heaven opening, a revelation.  I haven't been in the last few weeks, but I've been to El Tigre more than 5 times since living in Madrid (which is now almost at 2 months).  Every time and every location it's the same deal.  Lots of good food and big drinks for cheap.  The fact that they have multiple locations is a testament to their greatness.  They have overflow locations.  So when it's too packed at one location, you just go down the street to the other one.  When I went with a largish group (like 8 people), they just kept giving us food, asking us if we wanted more jamón, more croquetas (fried cheese and ham balls), more paella, and giving us the occasional free shot.  Someone told me that you can tell the quality of a tapas bar by the amount of napkins on the floor.  All the napkins here are white and say "Gracias por tu visita," thanks for your visit.  The floor of El Tigre is like it's just snowed.  This is a picture of the paella from that first fateful encounter:

As I was saying, actual meals here are pretty expensive.  I've mostly tried out various menus del día (menus of the day), which tend to be pretty reasonable for the amount and quality of food you get.  The first one I had in Madrid was at a place in Malasaña called El Rincón (the corner).  It was called bacalao a la riojana, which is codfish in the rioja style.  Rioja is one of the big wine producing regions of Spain.  It was essentially lightly fried cod topped with a tomato wine sauce, served with scalloped potatoes.  Most of the menu del día come with two plates (primero y segundo), a drink (alcoholic or not), bread, and dessert/coffee.  The median price is about 10 euros, depending on where you are and the restaurant itself.  The bacalao:

Undoubtedly one of the best meals I've had in Madrid was at a restaurant in Lavapies, one of the main immigrant neighborhoods in Madrid and a generally hip place.  It consisted of arroz negro, a variation on paella that's rice with chopped up squid and cooked in squid ink, giving it its name and its distinctive appearance:

This was delicious and had been on my list of things to try for a while.  What followed was even better:  trucha a la plancha, grilled trout.  Very simple, but so so good.  

It's also worth noting that until it got colder recently, I ate almost all of my meals outside, which always makes food taste a little bit better in my opinion.  

Continuing with the seafood line, I was perhaps most excited about the oceanic options in Spain and elsewhere.  Coming from Indiana, good seafood is in pretty small supply.  Another one of my highlights so far has been the grilled pulpo that I had at a restaurant called El Viajero (the traveller) in La Latina, a neighborhood famous for their food and tapas specifically.  Poorly prepared octopus can be chewy and generally unappetizing, but when done right it's to die for.  Especially when grilled, the flavor of the charcoal is absorbed by the meat and the crispiness combined with a slight chewiness (but when the flavor is there, you don't mind chewing a few extra chew) ends up being a wholly delightful dining experience.  

This is the beginning of a running series, under the title The Search for Delicious (taken from a song off of Panda Bear's album Person Pitch, and found below), in which I'll talk about my gastronomic experiences in Spain and elsewhere.  The next post will focus on my trips to Paris and Lisboa, both culinary gems in their own right.  Until then, buen provecho!

Search for Delicious

El colegio

It's been quite a while without a post, but I've been very busy, busy with work, busy with going out, meeting new people, busy with traveling.

So this one is going to be about my school that I work at in Madrid.  It's a colegio (an elementary/pre-school, not college) called Plácido Domingo in the Atocha neighborhood of Madrid.  Atocha is the main train station of Madrid, and it's probably about a 10 minute walk from my school to the north.  Also close by are the Parque del Retiro, Madrid's large and lovely park, the Prado art museum, and the Reina Sofia museum as well.

I first found out about my school placement when I was an hour away from the graduation ceremony for my master's degree.  I was in my cap and gown, waiting in the field house next to assembly hall, wondering exactly how everything was going to end up now that that chapter of my life was coming to a close.  My phone buzzed, and I checked my email, out of habit, and there was my placement letter.  Immediately, I googled the address and was elated to find out how close my school was to the city center.  The auxiliaries program places you by region, meaning that you can be placed anywhere in la Comunidad de Madrid, which includes Madrid, its suburbs, and the pueblos outside of the metropolitan area.

Although I was more than likely going to come to Spain regardless of where I got placed, it was definitely a clincher to know that I would be so close to everything.  Because of the metro, my placement also freed me up to live anywhere in the center.  My commute is about 30 minutes door to door, from my apartment to the school, with only a small line transfer right at the end.  I'm very very lucky.  Most of the other people I know have much longer commutes, many over an hour, with multiple types of transportation (metro to train to bus, for example).  On the other hand, I do envy those people who are placed in pueblos.  I feel like they get a double experience:  one part urban Spain, one part small town Spain.  At the same time, coming from the suburbs of Indianapolis and then the college town of Bloomington, I'm very content to be all up in the urban scene.

I work four days a week, for a total of 16 working hours.  In reality, I'm at the school 11-4 on Tuesdays, 9-4 on Wednesdays, 9-12:30 on Thursday, and 9-4 on Friday.  I have a 30 minute coffee/breakfast break from 10:30-11, and then a 2 hour lunch, which sounds extravagant, but most of the teachers have meetings and what not during this time, so it comes out to maybe a 45 minute lunch break. On some Wednesdays, we have bilingual department meetings, and on Fridays, I teach an hour long English class for two of the Spanish teachers.  They're both much older than me and don't speak much English, so it's been a lot of back and forth between Spanish and English, trying to explain rules in English in ways I have to think about on the spot for the most part, ranging from the rules of contractions to the differences in pronunciation between bear and beer.

Each class period is 45 minutes long, and on my full days, I have six different classes.  I'm primarily with first graders, so kids that are around 6 or 7 years old.  I also teach 1 second grade class and 3 third grade classes.  My colegio is a bilingual colegio, meaning that both English and Spanish are languages of instruction, with English being more predominant.  The way the curriculum is set up allows for English to be the language of instruction for every subject except for language (lengua) and math, which must be taught in Spanish.  So the kids have English class, but then they also have social science, natural science, music/art, and gym all in English as well.  My third graders for example have been learning about the solar system and the body systems, all in English.

It's really impressive, especially when compared to the foreign language education in the states, in which most people don't even start a foreign language until middle school.  In Spain, at the bilingual schools at least (and there are schools that aren't bilingual, so there is some degree of privilege that I'm not completely clear about), even the infantil (preschool) level children get at least a little taste of English, and they can be as young as three years old.  The infantiles are also adorable because they wear little smocks and when they walk through the hall or down the stairs, they all hold on to the smock of the kid in front of them, so they teeter totter around all connected.

In terms of responsibilities, I would say that I'm there for three reasons.  First, for pronunciation.  All of the teachers who teach English are Spanish speakers, and while most of their English is very good, at least some accent is unavoidable.  I'm there to be the native speaker.  Second, for cultural knowledge, which so far has mostly been centered around holidays.  There are two other auxiliares at my school, and our first big task was decorating for Halloween and constructing a haunted house for the halloween party at school.  Today, I was making a powerpoint talking about Thanksgiving.  Then we'll decorate for Xmas as well, and talk about what makes an American Xmas.  The third is simply providing assistance to the teachers, which is mostly working with the students individually or in small groups.

With this being said, it's been interesting because the kids are learning British English, which makes sense, but there have been several times when I've thought that something was wrong only to realize that it's just British.  There's also the differences in vocabulary.  During my first couple weeks, the kids were learning school supply material, and it was a little humorous to hear them call erasers rubbers, and further, to not be able to explain to 6-9 year olds why we don't call erasers rubbers in America.  The kids also have to take a sort of standardized test called the Trinities in 2nd 4th and 6th grade.  This involves each child talking to a British person, likely either from the Cambridge or Oxford organizations, one on one, which seems terrifying to imagine being a non-native speaker, and a child, speaking to an adult from a different culture.  But the pressure is pretty high, and I gather that it affects the schools funding, somewhat like standardized tests do in the US.  A lot of the work I do with the second graders is dictated by the requirements of the Trinities.

The first couple weeks weren't necessarily rough, but it was an adjustment, for all parties I think.  Each teacher has different expectations of me, and my role in each class is different.  So there was a definite feeling-out period in terms of what I was going to do.  I was also new to teaching or even being around young children, so that was an adjustment for me.  By and large, they are very sweet, although I have one class in particular that is a lot crazier than the others.  Still, to watch 7 year olds listen, speak, and understand a second language is quite an experience, no matter how squirrelly they might get.  It's better now because they've gotten to know me, and so I walk down the hall and have a lot of them greeting me Hello Tyler! or Hello Teacher!, some of them hugging me, and generally being happy to see me, which always brightens my day.  All of the teachers that I work with have been very warm and friendly as well, so overall I consider myself very lucky.  It's also been nice because we have fairly frequent holidays or what they call puentes (bridges) where you get a long weekend.  I went to Paris over Halloween weekend and was able to leave on Thursday and return on Monday.  It's a pretty sweet gig overall!

Los principios

I started studying Spanish, like a lot of people, in 7^th grade.  My teacher was pretty horrible, and she was also my 8^th grade teacher.  I entered high school with a pretty poor grasp of the language, but I was fortunate to have two wonderful teachers for my freshman and sophomore years.  Things really began to click, and my sophomore year teacher was the first one to encourage me to go abroad, a year earlier than others in the program.  It was a summer exchange program, but at the time, it was expensive and my parents were not enamored with the idea of me going that far outside of the state much less the country.  I’m an only child, so I think that’s always made things more difficult.  I also remember not being super into the idea of travelling myself for whatever reason.  It just didn’t excite me at that point in time, but that would soon change.

I continued in Spanish for the rest of high school, and I was a strong student, but I remember how advanced all of the people were who did go abroad when they returned.  Because of my context, Spanish was essentially an academic pursuit, cloistered in the classroom, but the people who went abroad could actually use the language to communicate, to make jokes.  They could live in Spanish. 

One big breakthrough for me was discovering literature written in Spanish.  Literature is one of the biggest passions of my life, a passion that bloomed towards the end of high school as well.  I participated in the International Baccalaureate program in high school, and our final Spanish project involved an oral report that I did on Federico García Lorca, whom I had discovered through my reading of Ginsberg, specifically from “A Supermarket in California:”

            What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of        husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I remember two things about this oral report.  First, I kept pronouncing poesía (po-uh-see-ah) as something like (po-Asia).  Second, I was trying to express how Lorca, especially later in his violently shortened career, saw “drama as an avenue for social change and activism.”  I blanked super hard on “avenue.” I sat there, across from my teachers for a good 5 seconds of silence, the tape player running, trying to think of what the word would be.  I ended up trying to shove the awkward English-French cognate “avenue” pronounced with my already strange Spanish accent (see po-Asia), and kept going. Afterwards, my teacher told me manera was the word I was looking for.  So it goes.

I did well on the AP Spanish test at the end of high school, so I was able to take a 300 level Spanish Literature class the first semester of freshman year.  It was definitely a challenge, and a lot of the students had been abroad and spoke much more fluently/confidently than me.  But literature is my jam, so I was able to handle it well even if it was in another language, a language in which I was gaining facility fairly quickly.  Then came another literature class and then a Spanish linguistics course, which was notable because it is so far the only time where I’ve learned about a subject in which I’ve had no prior experience in a language besides my mother tongue. 

These three classes gave me enough credits for a Spanish minor, and so the second semester of my sophomore year, I started taking French, which I would continue for the rest of my undergrad career.  I started studying philosophy and came down with a very strong case of francophilia, from which I still haven’t recovered.  In retrospect, I really regret stopping Spanish.  I ended up with three majors in undergrad, and I wish that I would have dropped one of those (probably religious studies) and finished up Spanish.  But what’s done is done.  It was around the same time when I switched to French that I thought about going abroad for the first time.  I never seriously considered going for a semester, much less a year.  None of my friends were doing anything similar, and once again it was not viable from my parents’ perspective.  I did look at summer programs, 6 week programs, first in Barcelona and then in Paris. 

I received a decent sum of money from my aunt when I was probably 11 or 12, maybe younger.  She is very enthusiastic about Ireland, and ever since she gave me the money, kept encouraging/pushing me to travel, whether through directly mentioning the money or sending me Xmas gifts like passport wallets, long before I even had a passport.  So I had some money that I wanted to spend, but even the six week programs were fairly expensive for the amount of time you would be there.  I thought it was still doable, but then right when the application deadline was coming up in my sophomore year, my dad was let go from his job, right in the midst of the recession.  Any travel plans were then immediately taken off the table.

After that, I continued in school, wanting to travel but not really knowing exactly how to go about it.  I kept taking French, overall I ended up taking 5 semesters, ending up with a French literature class.  My claim to fame is that my prof wrote excellent travail on my 2 page essay that I wrote on the poem “Élévation” by Baudelaire which reads as such:

Au-dessus des étangs, au-dessus des vallées,

Des montagnes, des bois, des nuages, des mers,

Par delà le soleil, par delà les éthers,

Par delà les confins des sphères étoilées,

Mon esprit, tu te meus avec agilité,

Et, comme un bon nageur qui se pâme dans l'onde,

Tu sillonnes gaiement l'immensité profonde

Avec une indicible et mâle volupté.

Envole-toi bien loin de ces miasmes morbides;

Va te purifier dans l'air supérieur,

Et bois, comme une pure et divine liqueur,

Le feu clair qui remplit les espaces limpides.

Derrière les ennuis et les vastes chagrins

Qui chargent de leur poids l'existence brumeuse,

Heureux celui qui peut d'une aile vigoureuse

S'élancer vers les champs lumineux et sereins;

Celui dont les pensers, comme des alouettes,

Vers les cieux le matin prennent un libre essor,

- Qui plane sur la vie, et comprend sans effort

Le langage des fleurs et des choses muettes!

I’ve always loved that last stanza, describing thoughts as larks that fly, close enough to life but separate enough from it to understand effortlessly the language of flowers and voiceless things. 

As I moved into my senior year, I didn’t really see that many options for myself.  It seemed at the time to either be a doctorate, law school, or just working a regular day job, either in a kitchen or elsewhere.  So given my proclivities, I decided to apply to PhD programs in English, which was a journey in its own right.  Applying to graduate programs is a lot more intensive than applying to colleges.  First, you have to have a solid and focused idea of what you want to do, what type of scholar you want to become.  I was not at all focused.  I hadn’t even (re)declared my English major until senior year.  I was in a theory class that semester, which I really enjoyed as a fusion between philosophy and literature, but I was still learning and absorbing new information and then trying to synthesize all of that into something coherent that would basically convince very smart people that I was also very smart and deserving of a lot of university resources.  You also have to research all of the professors at the universities to find out who you want to work with.  Ideally, you’re looking for a good “fit.”  On the other side of the fence, the department is looking for a good fit on their end, which for the most part, you have no idea what they’re thinking.  So if you’re not what they need that year, odds are that you are not going to get picked.

In the end, I wasn’t particularly convincing.  I applied to 4 programs (which if you’re doing it right you should probably apply to about 10 programs), and was rejected from all four PhD programs.  I was admitted into the University of Chicago MAPH program, which is a one year program that is interdisciplinary and the place where promising students go who aren’t quite up to snuff for the PhD.  It also costs about $55,000 for a year of school, plus living expenses in Chicago.  I was very fortunate to come out of undergrad with no debt, and I wasn’t too anxious to sink myself and my family into that sort of debt for a humanities degree, even if it is from Chicago. 

Luckily, I found out about a program through IU that was a co-terminal Master’s program, meaning that it would start during my undergraduate career and finish in one additional year, giving me a MA in English.  The English program at IU is in the top 25 in the country, and I was also able to pay in state tuition, which made it much more reasonable.  I graduated with my BA in May ’13, and I stayed in Bloomington another year and finished my MA in May ’14.  I got the tremendous opportunity to be a first year PhD student without being a first year PhD student.  I took all the same classes, got to be a part of the department, attend events, and I also participated in my first academic conference.  And yet, since it was only a year program, the “what next?” plagued me.  I knew that I didn’t want to go immediately into a PhD program.  While I made great strides in transforming myself into a viable scholar, I still wasn’t sure where I would fit best. 

Another possible future tract I saw was publishing.  I worked with the Indiana Review as an associate poetry editor during my year of graduate school, and I also worked for one of the literary magazines on campus.  The problem with publishing is that it requires you (more or less) to get an internship first, the vast majority of which are unpaid.  So while that is still my most likely option after I finish up in Spain, it’s still kind of a bummer to take an unpaid position when living in either NYC or other big cities. 

Then I found out about the auxiliares program.  I still had the travel bug, and it seemed like now was the best time to do something abroad, two degrees in hands, the majority of my friends away in other cities.  I first found out about CIEE through IU’s study abroad site.  It was listed under “Alternative Study Abroad Options.”  I had to get my passport, which involved me finding out that my birth certificate was apparently a fake, but then I was able to apply.  I was accepted, and I got my placement email as I was in the field house next to Assembly Hall, in my cap and gown, waiting to walk across the stage as a MA student.  I got my visa in mid August, quit my jobs, finished up my TEFL course practicum, got on the plane, and here I am!

¿Vale? Vale.

Leaving home was hard.  I knew it would be, but even more so than I expected.  Whether it was leaving my friends, fighting back tears, hugging my grandma and crying, driving out of her driveway with choked up “I love yous.”  And then my uncle, my mom and dad, right outside of airport security, having to go back for more Kleenaxes, getting on the plane to NYC, and then leaving the country and everything I’ve ever known behind.   

The flight to NYC was fine, but when the plane started to lean right, away from the coast, over the ocean, it started to sink in, listening to MY music as a way to deal with the fact of doing something I've never done before, the thrill and bite of independence.  I lost about a whole night in the process of the trip.  I left NYC at 5 PM and arrived in Madrid right before midnight our time, which is 6 AM CEST, and I couldn't sleep for the life of me on the plane.  Two fairly shitty meals.  Then I waited with a couple other people from my program for about 4 hours until the shuttle came.  

I had an orientation for my program for the first four days while I was here, and I was in a hotel in the southwest part of the city.  It was a posh hotel overall, a quality tropical rain type shower, nice beds, a great view of the Madrid Río.  But the wifi was shit, so that made life hard, especially searching for an apartment.  

Up to this point, there's been lots of walking around, wandering, eating, drinking, a little bit of dancing.  I feel fairly comfortable getting around, both on foot and on the metro.  In general, I find myself feeling very comfortable and at home with moments of realization that I am in a different country.  Madrid is very similar to the United States.  At the same time, the ubiquity of Spanish and other languages is a treat to be sure, but also can be sometimes disorienting.  The rhythm and pace of life is also different from what I've experienced, from Bloomington but also the few other big cities I've visited.

It's like an intense relaxation or leisure.  Everyone from young people like myself to middle aged to older folks, are always out and about, sitting at a cafe, eating, drinking, or walking somewhere else to do the same.  The nights are very long here too, for all parties.  People are still eating dinner after midnight, and proper "partying" continues until 7 or 8 in the morning.  

Overall, I find it rather agreeable. I'm excited to get into the rhythm of a schedule, however, and I'm discovering new places and people everyday.  

Last night I found this super awesome old worldy tavern type place about 70 steps from my apartment.  They serve really great sweet vermouth, along with Guinness, some Czech and German beer, along with tapas and what not.  

The Spanish beer is pretty much just pilsners and lagers, which is refreshing, but it's nice to know where to get more complex things.  We've kind of gotten whiffs of the Spanish craft beer scene, but it still seems to be in its infancy.  But when wine is as good and plentiful as it is, it's hard to complain ha.  

I ended up with an apartment with a balcony (which has been a life goal of mine for some time) in a very cool and vibrant neighborhood called Malasaña, which is where I wanted to live and is very close to the center and to my school.  I'm living with four other people, 3 guys and one girl, all of whom speak Spanish as their first language.  I haven't spent too much time in the apartment so we haven't got to know each other that well yet, but I'll be here for a while so I figure time will work things out.  

My Spanish is not quite as strong as I thought it would be, though I knew from Spanish lit last year that my speaking wasn’t the best.  But hearing Spanish all the time, everywhere, is the best for saturation, for retention, for transformation.  The other night I had an extended conversation with a Mexican guy, we understood each other, I even served as a translator for the girls he was with.

On Saturday I went to El Prado, which was really great and amazing.  All sorts of huge portraits and Catholic art works dating from the Middle Ages all the way up to about the 19th century or so.  The other great thing is that it was free!  Normally from 6-8 the permanent collection is free to view and the special collections/exhibits are half price, so we just did the permanent collection, which is still quite large.  

Got to see stuff by El Greco, knights riding out of the mist, supernatural. And Goya, who I was really looking forward to seeing in person.  Very affecting stuff.  Las pinturas negras, the darkness that appears and signals behinds itself, the symbology of flying conflict over a landscape, the defeat of a drowning dog.  Funnily enough, my first real introduction to Goya was from that big orange book that served as a coffee table book in my places in Bloomington, which originally came from the Frankfort Public Library sale!  Go figure!

Then, somewhat unintentionally, I ended up going with a different group to El Museo Reina Sofía, which is the other big art museum in Madrid.  It has more modern stuff, so I got to see Picasso paintings, including Guernica, which is huge and mind boggling.  Also got to see several Dalí paintings, which I had been looking forward to very much as well.  It was neat to see the two museums back to back that way...to see how the later artists broke from and built upon the earlier stuff.  

On Sunday night, I ended up going to go see a band play at a small venue in Madrid who was from Bloomington!  Two of the people that I worked with at Boxcar are in a band that was in the midst of a European tour, and they came through Madrid.  I had talked with the one guy, Richard, who had also been involved with the poetry readings that I did at Boxcar before I left, and he said they were coming through Madrid.  So he posted an instagram a couple of days ago, and via that and Facebook, we were able to figure out where they were playing and thanks to Google maps, I found the venue and got there right as they were about to start their set.  So that was really cool and pretty wild overall.

Today I had my government orientation for the program, and that was somewhat dull but official I guess haha (the two frequently go hand in hand I think).  I'm going out with a group of people from my program later tonight since this is pretty much our last free night before school starts on Wednesday.  I'm excited to get into the groove of my schedule.  So far it's kind of been a weird vacation, now that I've officially been here for 2 weeks.  

But I'm just getting started.