Katya Meets Jet-Lag and Visits Madrid's Soul

Time adjustment is going pretty weird for me right now. People eat dinner here super late (10:30pm) and young people party as late (or should I say “early”) as 6 in the morning. I think* it will be easier to manage my schedule once classes start. For now, I’m sleeping usually twice a day at awkward times**, eating at even more awkward times, finishing the novel Heather-Freaking-Awesome*** gave me for my birthday, emailing contacts, grocery shopping, getting a phone, and running other dubious errands. 

I think jet-lag intensifies my ADD-tendencies. I have moments of extreme focus and energy (like me typing away here, at like, 2:30am) and then languish in my bed (like I did at 2pm this afternoon), fuzzy-brained and petulant, knowing I have errands still to do in order to be ready for the up-coming school week. You know, sort of important errands. Like buying food. So I can eat. Anyway, this probably would not have been a proper travel blog if I did not discuss the debilitating effects of jet-lag at some point. Be satiated, oh, travel-blog fiends****.

When I do get outside, Madrid is so unique. Like a person, I’m getting to know how it is like others I have met, reconciling differences, learning weaknesses, and gaining glimpses of its beauty. I visited the center of the city today and the poetic side of me clapped with joy at the significance of the center plaza being called Puerta del Sol. 

Firstly, I know Puerta del Sol means Sun Gate*****, but it is a phonetic match for soul, and there I was at the center, the soul of Madrid, Puerta del Sol*(x6). From the exorbitantly priced smartphone store, to the free café with my buffet, the rooftop of the high-rise everything-you-could-need store to the metro station, it’s soul was bare before me. The good, the bad, and the meh. Secondly, if you did not know, Madrid is shaped in a concentric, circular pattern, with lines of streets shooting out from it's center, like rays radiating from the sun. I wonder if they named the plaza before or after the city grew in such a way. You had all better prepare yourselves right now for future poetic frippery from me. Don't say I didn't warn you.
 

For now,  I will stop my soliloquizing and merely say goodnight. I’m praying for this city and it’s people and trying to let myself love a place which I plan to leave in just 5 short weeks. But I’ve never been good at guarding my heart from loving places—or people.

Footnotes for People Who Can Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too: 

*read: "hope"
**though, here they have this thing called a siesta (observed religiously by Spanish grandmas from 3-5pm), which I could certainly get used to, and which corresponds nicely with the time when my urge to sleep on West Coast time grows strongest.
***-Mc-She-Who-Must-Not-Finish-Being-Named-Because-This-Is-A-Public-Post-And-I-Do-Not-Want-Her-To-Have-Stalkers
****I have a feeling that the only travel-blog fiend reading this post is the one and only Heather-Freaking-Awesome-Mc-She-Who-Must-Not-Finish-Being-Named-Because-This-Is-A-Public-Post-And-I-Do-Not-Want-Her-To-Have-Stalkers, but I cannot be too careful about pleasing my audience of 3. This is the interwebs, after all. Also, I apologize if at this point my asterisks are beginning to look like they are taking the place of words-which-must-not-be-named and are shocking anyone. Superscripts are out of my league right now. I'm still learning how to even edit...

*****I actually only knew sol meant sun and puerta meant door, so I got the official meaning from google. Thanks, Google.
****** (*x6): This also is a false cognate for a poem I once wrote called "Portal to a Soul". Weird, yes. But also a third reason why the name struck me.