Royal Botanical Gardens and Relaxing

This past week was a lot more relaxed than normal because we had fewer classes. For some reason, we didn't have Biomechanics class this week, which meant that on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I only had one class! Thursday, when normally I have 10 hours of class in a 12 hour stay on campus, I would only have 8 hours of class! Classes have been continuing on normally as well. We haven't covered much material since our midterms, which is throwing me off because we have exams again in a week. I know I definitely need to start studying again because I want to do a lot better on exams this time than last time.

In Signals, we have been covering Sampling this week. On Thursday, we actually found out that class next Thursday is cancelled because our professor is out. This means we won't actually be able to practice everything we need for our exam the following Monday. Since the class couldn't decide on another day to meet up before the exam, our professor decided to spend half of lecture on recitation instead. Transport has also been going fairly well. We've been studying diffusion and random walk. It's the only class we don't have a second midterm in, which is nice because we haven't covered nearly enough material for a second exam. This week, we also had to present our projects for the semester. My group worked on the Heart so we finished preparing and held our own 50 minute lecture for the class. However, we went a little bit over time. For Instrumentation, we've already covered all the material for our second exam and we have over a week left. Instead, we've moved on to talking about microprocessors and micro-controllers. It's been super cool learning about this and I'm really enjoying the material. Even though we didn't have Biomechanics, we still had Biomechanics lab this week. This was a bit frustrating because lab was from 7 pm to 9 pm on Thursday, while class is normally from 5 pm to 7 pm. Since class was cancelled but we still had lab, I ended up having to stay on campus and wait for 2 hours instead of being able to go home early. In lab, we worked to make a finite element model of a force acting on a dental implant made of aluminum and steel. We have a project in which we must design our own dental implant to meet the loading conditions so I started researching different biomaterials and common design constraints for dental implants.

Now that school's out of the way, let's move on to the fun parts this week. I was hoping to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Reina Sofía this week, but I only ended up visiting the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid. Since Biomechanics was cancelled, and I had the entire afternoon free on Tuesday, I took advantage of that time to go to the Real Jardín Botánico. An extra benefit was that there is free admission to the gardens after 2 pm on Tuesdays. The gardens were so beautiful and relaxing. At first, there weren't many people in the gardens, but as everyone started getting off work, I started seeing more and more of the public. As soon as you step into the gardens, you don't even realize that you're still in the city. It's incredible quiet and still. You feel as if you've been transported into a small rural forest. There were tons of diversity in the plants being grown. You could find everything from large trees to small berry bushes to a vegetable garden to bonsai trees. I spent over two hours just walking through the many small paths, relaxing and clearing my head. I also took way too many photos (more than 125). I really love photos of landscapes and nature, so I think I went a bit overboard here. Don't worry, I won't post all of them here, only about 50.

The actual garden was divided into four distinct sections: Terraza de los Cuadros, Terraza de las Escuelas, Plano de la Flor, and Terraza Alta (or de los Laureles). I wasn't exactly sure why they were named in that manner, but in any case, each section was different, but beautiful. From the entrance, you immediately find yourself in Terraza de los Cuadros. This was the largest area, stretching the entire length of the gardens, and a little less than half the width. Terraza de los Cuadros contained ornamental, medicinal, and aromatic plants. The entire section was made of small rectangular areas, which contained aisles you could walk through to view all of the plants. As you made your way to the back, you pass statues of José Quer, Simón de Rojas Clemente, Mariano Lagasca, and Antonio José Cavanilles. José Quer is a famous Spanish botanist and doctor. Simón de Rojas Clemente was also a Spanish botanist, and is considered the father of Spanish ampelography, or the classification of grapevines. Mariano Lagasca, you guessed it, was a Spanish botanist, but also a writer, doctor, and a director of the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid. Antonio José Cavanilles was also a Spanish botanist. In the southern end, there was a beautiful fruit and vegetable garden. There were tons of greens, squashes, and my favorite, peppers. I saw so many different types of peppers, but my absolute favorite was the habanero.

From here, I found myself in the second section, Terraza de las Escuelas. This section was a taxonomic collection of plants. While this section was calming, like the others, none of the plants really piqued my interest. I spent my time in this section simply enjoying the sights and sounds of nature rather than taking photos. Next on my walk actually ended up being the highest section, Terraza Alta (or de los Laureles). This was one of my favorite areas! While it was the smallest section, I loved the plants and sights here. They had a full bonsai garden, with trees in so many different styles. These trees surrounded a small fountain and was absolutely beautiful.

The last section was the Plano de la Flor, which contained lots of trees and shrubs and the Villanueva Pavilion. This section was also really pretty. There were trees in so many odd shapes. I really enjoyed my walk through this zone. I was also able to see an area in which the staff was preparing plants to transfer over into the ground. They had tons of pots with different plants. Another group of staff members was also preparing the garden for Christmas, adding lights to all the plants and placing Christmas trees and ornaments! This really reminded me of Lewis Ginter in the winters. While walking through this section, I saw lots of birds and even a really fat and adorable cat! The garden was so much fun! It took the garden closing to get me to leave.

This weekend, I ended up being lazy and relaxing at home instead of going to Reina Sofía, so I'll have to get that another weekend. I would say next weekend, but next weekend is our weekend trip to Granada with ISA! I'm super excited about this trip because it'll be my last major trip out of Madrid this semester! However, since I have three exams in the two days after that trip, I'll need to study some on the trip too. My plan during the six hour bus ride is to sleep. I'll definitely need it, because we are leaving at 8:00 in the morning, and I won't be able to sleep much the night before. I get back from class late on Thursday, and being the big Colts fan I am, have to watch the Thursday night game between the Colts and Texans. This is normally at 8:30 pm EST, which for me will be 2:30 am. So my plan is to watch that all night, and sleep on the bus ride instead!

Outside of being lazy this weekend, I also cooked again! Zaida bought tofu recently, so I decided to make stir-fry and rice! It was super delicious. I dried tofu before cutting it and placing it in the oven to give it some texture. Meanwhile, I cut and sautéed red pepper, yellow pepper, red onion, and white onion. Then I started cooking the rice and made the sauce by grating fresh ginger and mixing it with lots of soy sauce, some brown sugar, and a tiny bit of cornstarch. I was also supposed to add honey, but since we only had thyme honey, I instead added some Thai Sweet Chili Sauce I found in the fridge. I mixed that into the vegetables and tofu and let it cook. I served it over rice, and it was absolutely delicious! I even got seconds!

That's all I've got for this week! The next blog will probably be a long one, because of the Granada trip, and maybe a bit later in the week because of the craziness that is exams. Stay tuned to see if I end up regretting my decision to watch the Colts game and to hear all about Granada!