Day 17 Wednesday July 15th

Day 17
Wednesday July 15th: Today was great. We woke up, had breakfast, and headed to school. Class was about normal. Learned some cool things about indirect and direct objects along with some more comparisons. We had a short break so that we could get out in time to go to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Yeah I don’t know how to pronounce it either. We call it the Thyssen. I did some looking last night and found out that there is quite a lot in this museum. The Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza collected a bunch of paintings from the old masters including but definitely not limited to: van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, Cezanne, Rembrandt, and more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. There is a full list here: http://www.museothyssen.org/thyssen/artistas . And then his son got into modern art. There isn’t as much but he still had good taste: braque, Picasso, weber, Dali, O’Keefe, Mondrian, and more. All in all I spent probably 4 hours in the museum and only left because I needed to study. They are also having a matisse special this month, that I opted not to go into, one it cost more money, and two I wanted to see it with fresh eyes with my parents despite them telling me not to save anything for them, and I needed to study some before Carmen. I left the museum and tried to head home. I tried to use a different metro stop than I normally do and it was super sketchy. It was very poorly lit, there were no signs immediately upon entering telling you which way to go and there were probably 6 homeless people in view as I walked down the stairs. I also noticed another couple sleeping in boxes in dark corners. I think it was a wake up call to laurel who opted to walk to the stop near retiro (not a far walk at all). We got on the train and I went home. I studied for a while, took a short nap, and then got changed for Carmen. I had heard very good things about carmen before and was rather excited to go. I’m going to complain about the next few hours a little but I really enjoyed them despite me pointing out the negatives. They were minor annoyances and nothing more. I truly had a good time and enjoyed the show. We met at the metro stop and walked the two blocks to the theater where we hung out until Dr. Treber showed up and collected our tickets and handed them out. We made our way into the theater and sat down. They made the announcement about cameras and cell phones to be turned off and the show started. The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t opera. It was a recording of opera. I was slightly disappointed. I would like to see carmen in opera form some time. What was cool was that it was Flamenco dancing. They were very good, at least as far as I could tell. The next complaint is about the girl in the row in front of me and two seats over. She pulled out her camera in the middle of the show, mind you the audience is in complete darkness (only light provided is from the stage). The light from the back of her camera lit up the theater behind her for a good twenty rows, and then a light came on, on the front of her camera that lit up the rest of the rows in front of her. Super annoying! My eyes, due to lasik, gave all the dancers little glowing halos around them during some of the darker scenes, but after camera girl took her three pictures, it took my eyes a good five minutes to re-adjust. The other thing that made the experience a little less enjoyable was the guy behind me attempting to sing, clap, and tap his foot along to the music. You would think that he would have taken the hint of both nate and I half turning to look at him, but nope. He continued to tap and clap and sing through the entire show. He was tapping hard enough that I could feel it through my seat. Awesome mister. I just hope he had a good time. Overall Carmen was a good experience. I would like to see the opera version sometime with people actually singing it instead of lip-syncing. I headed home and was nervous the entire time because I had about 50 euros on me (I wasn’t sure if I was going to have to pay for my ticket or what other costs there would be and it was either a 10 or a 50. So I’m dressed well, listening to my Mp3 player on the train carrying 50 euros. I was glad to get home and I slept well that night.