Art: Great Paintings & Terrible Singers

I am recounting yesterday's excursions today because it was such a full and crazy day, I fell asleep in the car on the way home.

During the summer, my host mom's kids go with her to her school (where she teaches special ed I believe) and play with all the other children of the teachers. I had been sleeping in all of this week, but my host mom invited me to come yesterday, so I went.

At 9am we arrived at the school, and I met many of the same kids who had gone to the Amusement Park with us the day before. Most of them were younger, but there were twoteenage girls who were 16 and 19. We all played, Uno, computer games, dress-up, and made crepes (well, attempted to make). I got along really, really, well with the 16 year old, Irina. She was very relaxed, fun, and not as overly glammed-up as most of the other Spanish teenagers I had seen, which I liked a lot. We bonded over our love of the TV show, Gossip Girl, and her favorite artists are Michael Jackson and Fergie. She was enthusiastic about us hanging out again sometime, as was I.

In the later afternoon, Mariah (my friend from Portland who I met on my exchange program) and I went to the Prado Museum, which is one of the most famouse museums in the world. There were works from artists such as Goya, Velazquez, Bosch, Murillo, El Greco, Rubens, Picasso. Maybe you've heard of them? The museum could have easily been re-named the Museo de Jesus. My friend Mark had warned me that it was almost all Jesus pictures, and he couldn't have been more right. Despite the fact that I don't usually enjoy museums very much, I really had a lot of fun with Mariah. Her 68yr old host father, Raymundo, came with us. Apparently he is a Spanish art enthusiast, and was eager to teach us EVERYTHING he knew about every single painting...In very hard to understand Spanish. Despite his attempts to make Mariah and I speak only Spanish, we both continued to whisper joking remarks about the paintings. I did an impression of one of the paintings by El Greco of Jesus obviously holding up a peace sign. Raymundo was not ammused.
Jesus says, "Peace out."


Mariah and I had both taken the same AP Eurpoean history class, with the same textbooks. Throughout the museum, we came accross painting we had previously studied in class. It was great! I should email my AP Euro teacher from last year; "I remembered enough of your class to recognize paintings!"


As if the day had not been eventful enough, Cristinita invited me to go to the "My Camp Rock" live finale. A mom of one of her classmates had set it up for her whole class to go. Basically, it is a TV show on Disney Channel similar to American Idol, but with kids. Apparently different countries all have their own, so all of the performers were Spanish. I was so touched that Cristinita invited me, I didn't even take a moment to consider what it might entail. Going could have easily been the worst decision I have made since I have been in Spain. Hundreds of SCREAMING kids, or rather, girls. First of all, not a single one of the performers looked a day under 30, but with hilariously teenage haircuts. If you're old enough to legally buy a case of beer, then drive home to your wife and kids, you need to get off of the Disney Channel. Not only were the songs terrible, but something went wrong with the cameras and 3 of the performers had to re-do their performances. Aye dios mio!


Oh but wait, it can get worse. In the end, they awarded the only performer who looked under 20 as the "Winner" of "My Camp Rock." When it came time for her final performance, the music started, but she turned around and shook her head to indicate that it was the wrong song. However, the music continued, WITH HER VOICE SINGING! She was obviously not singing. It was hilarious.

I'm spending the weekend at Mariah's

Love Chloe