Dance class, centro comercial, etc.

Well the most exciting thing on Wednesday was we had our dance class. That was fun and at least we convinced more of the guys to join instead of a class full of girls. The teacher is really good, and we're almost done with the first dance (I think there are 4). Oh and one other curious thing was that Juani was cleaning up from dinner and all of a sudden took a pot and then we heard the toilet flush...not sure about that one. Granted there is no disposal, but still....yeah. Then unfortunately I had to actually write my "what is poetry" paper but at least that is done and I don't have to worry about another paper for that class for almost a month. I definitely stayed up a little later than I should have given that I had to get up for class at 6:30am but oh well.

Yesterday we had class but then we got done early because Susana fell and apparently tore her Achille's tendon. I feel really bad for her because I know that has got to hurt so bad. But on the bright side we were finally able to get our Olympic tickets and it went through so that was exciting. We also started working on Barcelona for the end of Semana Santa. And bought our flight to England. We've spent so much money in the past week or two on trips it is insane, but oh well, I see it as a once in a lifetime thing. And I'm excited to go. I think after this weekend I have like 3 weekends left in Madrid. Crazy. I'm so excited to start travelling though and next week we will be in ITALY at this time!!!! Last night Dane, Monica and I went to the Plaza and we were going to try to find a cafe because we didn't want to go to a bar persay or go to our usual place, so then we walked around like all of Alcala and went to the train station and back to the Plaza and to Nueva Alcala. It was fun though and we saw some other Americans, which was funny, because we could totally tell they were American, even though this one girl was trying to speak Spanish. Then there were a couple other American girls we ran into who are going to the Olymipcs next weekend too, what a coincidence. I got home around midnight and then Juani and I talked a little bit and watched Big Brother Spanish style and then went to bed!

Today I had to write in my journal to catch up (even though I've been writing here) and I ended up writing like 5 pages! Long winded, I know. Then we went to the Centro Comercial, which was exciting. There were some cool stores and I tell you, if you know me you know I'm not a big shopper but there are so many shoe stores here it makes me want to buy shoes. I'm turning into my sister!! Haha. Not really though. Then we went into Alcampo, which is like Auchun in France, which made me happy. It was gigantic and they had all kinds of crap for just 1 Euro. And when I say they had all kinds of stuff for 1 Euro, they had movies, cd's, markers, coloring books, underwear, socks, you name it, it was pretty much there. I got 2 cd's of Spanish music and a kid book and truck movie for my dollar and it was a whopping 3.95 Euros, what a steal. That's about it...our "brother" Raul is coming over tonight and spending the night. We haven't met him yet so I'm excited. Then who knows for the rest of the weekend, maybe head into Madrid and hit up some museums or whatnot!

Just another couple days in Spain!

The last couple of days have been good. Like I said in the last entry, it snowed on Sunday night. Apparently it snowed a lot throughout Spain, which is pretty rare, especially here. Everyone was freaking out, and the weather/snow was all over the news. The funny thing was we didn't even have that much. On Sunday night by the time we went to bed the only snow that was left was on the cars. On Monday morning, we went to school and it was kind of slick. We had grammar class, which wasn't bad, and it was funny because our profesora, Maria Jesus, was telling us how fantastic the snow was, and how the last time it snowed in Alcala was probably 2000 or 2001. So it has definitely been awhile since these Spaniards have seen snow. Then we came home after lunch and I had to work on some things for today. I took a siesta, even though I probably shouldn't have, then we went down to the internet cafe. I tried to put some more pictures online, but the computers down there hate me, so of course it froze again. I am getting pictures online, will give the link when everything is up to date though. Came home, did a little more homework, etc. And other than that I can't really think of anything exciting that happened.

Today we went to school and 6:30am came way to early, as it tends to every Tuesday and Thursday. Our profesor in our lit class is a little too enthusiastic and animated for 8:30 in the morning, and no one really likes that class. It kind of drags on, and it is one of the ones that makes your brain hurt. Luckily though, I am really glad I took the 3 Spanish classes last semester, I feel like they really prepared me well for being here now, especially the lit and comp classes I took. I kind of have a clue what is going on because some of the stuff we have been talking about recently, I learned in my classes last semester. Then let's see, we got our new bonos for the month (transportation passes), I can't believe tomorrow is already Februrary 1st, hard to believe. We have been here almost a month, it certainly doesn't seem like it. Nothing too noteworthy happened in class today. Then we came home, I did a little bit of work, and then went to our cafe to meet Lance and Ebets to work on our "what is poetry" essay and poem analysis that is due tomorrow for, surprise, our lit class. But I think we pretty much know what to say and stuff so that is good. We also just hung out and talked for awhile. We have been researching planes, trains, etc. for all of our different trips. I cannot wait until all of the planning stage is over and we are just done with everything. I am so excited to get to Paris, I can hardly contain myself, even though it is not for almost 2 months. When I got home, Juani and I had a heart to heart, and it was really good. We were just talking about different things and she is so nice. Tomorrow we have our dance class, so that should be fun. That's pretty much it for now!

Oh, and by the way, MIAMI HOCKEY IS NUMBER ONE IN THE NATION! (had to include that! I think they are doing so well since I am not there this semester! Of course!)

Daytrip to Toledo and snow!

Well, it has been quite the weekend here in Spain. On Thursday I forgot to mention the bull video that we watched in our civilization and culture class. Let me just say that when I say the life of a bull, it was the entire life of a bull and nothing was left out, including the birth of the bull, the bulls frolicking in ponds, mating, etc. It was in English so we would understand, which probably made it worse, especially when it said stuff like “The air smells of rosemary and the lake is like a protein soup” or “The bull’s life flashes before it’s eyes”. Yeah, so I think we have to watch the rest of that on Tuesday.
On Friday, Nicole and I decided to head into Madrid for the day. We slept in a little bit which was really nice, then on the train tried to figure out where we wanted to go. She wanted to go to the Torre de Moncloa or something like that, so we finally got there, only to find out that it was actually closed until the summer. Oops. But it was ok because then we saw the Arch that Franco built I think. So we went back towards Puerta del Sur, where the Corte Inglés is. It’s like the Spanish version of Galleries Lafayette. Then after we shopped a little bit we went to the Plaza Mayor to eat our bocadillos that mamá had given us, and she had told us there was supposed to be something going on there with horses. They weren’t doing anything by the time we got there, we think they were done. We walked down some side streets and looked into some stores, and then we think we may have gotten into a shady part of time because there were a couple of sex shops and suspicious looking people. Whoops. By that time it was starting to get late, so we came home, ate dinner, then went to our café with a couple people to hang out and talk about where we want to go the rest of the semester. It was nice to just chill and stuff, especially since we left for Toledo fairly early on Saturday morning.
Saturday morning we left our house at about 8:30 since we were all meeting at the train station in Alcalá to go to Toledo. There were 8 of us that went. We got to the station, and the train was leaving in a few minutes so we rushed and got on. We got to Atocha and that was where the real adventure began. We originally wanted to take the AVE, the fast train, to Toledo since it gets you there in like 20 minutes. First we had to figure out where to get the tickets. After wandering around looking like typical dumb Americans and asking a few people, we went to the Ticket sales counter (there’s a novel concept), took a ticket for our turn, only to find out that the next train wasn’t leaving until 12:20, which was 2 ½ hours later. So we decided to just take the bus, but we didn’t know where to get it. We asked some police people or something and finally found out what station we had to get to to catch the bus. We made it to the bus station and went to buy our tickets, and the guy was like, do you want to get on the bus that is leaving RIGHT NOW? So we bought our tickets for the bus and ran downstairs, and got the last 8 seats on the bus. It was only about an hour from Madrid to get to Toledo, and the bus ride wasn’t bad, especially since they were playing a radio station that was playing American music like Backstreet Boys and Kelly Clarkson, haha. We got to Toledo before the train would have even gotten there, and it was a gorgeous day. Clear blue skies, which made it even better. Most of the day we just walked around, and we literally made a full circle around the entire town. We took tons of pictures, but it is hard to capture in words or pictures how beautiful it really was. The views were probably the best part. There was a cool bridge that we took pictures of, and went down on. Steven and Nicole both bought swords, which is part of why Toledo is famous. It was a great day and we had a lot of fun, even though we basically just walked around and stuff all day and didn’t really go in anything, except one church. El Greco’s house is there though. We watched the sunrise before heading back, which was pretty. Toledo was supposed to be really pretty at night, but we weren’t really that impressed. Maybe we weren’t in the right place. Lance really wanted to take the fast train home, so we went to the train station to see when it was leaving. The next train to Madrid was full though, and then the last one was at 9:20, another 2 ½ hours away. So we decided to just take the bus back home again. We got back into Madrid and hadn’t had any food, so we went to dinner before coming home. Half the group went to Subway, but the rest of us refused, so we went to some Spanish cafeteria restaurant. It wasn’t really a cafeteria (at least in the American sense of the word), but it was a really good little restaurant. The food was good, and it was a nice, quiet dinner. Then we still had to get the train back to Alcalá. We got back into Atocha and were heading down to the platform when we realized our train home was coming in one minute. Luckily we caught it, and then finally got back to Alcalá at midnight. The buses had stopped running, so we had to walk home, and it was really cold. We were exhausted by the time we finally got home around 12:30 after walking all day and from being gone since 8:30, and we pretty much just passed out.
This morning we slept in which felt great, did some homework, hung out most of the day. I went to our café later and met Lance and Monica and we were talking more about our trips. It is going to be crazy awesome. I am so excited for everything. It totally feels like we are just on vacation. I still cannot believe I am even here. It is wild. Our schedule is pretty much jam packed, but it is going to be amazing. I can’t wait. Talked to the family and then we realized that it was snowing outside. It was hilarious because you could see people taking pictures of the snow out their windows, and it didn’t even snow that much, maybe a half an inch if we’re lucky, not probably not even that. Supposedly last night Toledo got like an inch, so good thing we went yesterday. Nicole and I decided to go outside and look at it. We went downstairs and mamá thought we were crazy. We were catching the snowflakes on our tongues, and they were huge. After a couple minutes, Nicole said she wanted a snowcone. Then we figured we could make makeshift snowcones with her 48euro bottle of wine that she had bought in Extremadura, but didn’t like when we tried it (I liked it though). She ran upstairs and got it, and we got snow from a bench and poured a little bit of the wine on there. It was good, and she actually liked it. We decided that made the 48euros worth it. It was just hilarious. The whole time we kept seeing flashes of people taking pictures of the snow, and there were a couple kids making snow balls. When we came back upstairs, mamá asked us if we were drunk, but of course we weren’t because we only used a little bit. That’s about it for the weekend, it was a lot of fun though! Here is our tentative traveling schedule that is coming up, the Olympics are in less than 2 weeks!!!!

February 3-5 MADRID
February 10-12 ITALY/OLYMPICS!
February 17-19 CANTABRIA
February 24-26 MADRID
March 3-5 ENGLAND
March 10-12 MADRID
March 17-20 LAS FALLAS/VALENCIA
March 24-26 PARIS!!!
March 30-April 2 GALICIA OR MALLORCA
April 6-13 SEMANA SANTA PART 1: TUNISIA!
April 14-17 SEMANA SANTA PART 2: BARCELONA
April 21-23 MADRID
April 29-May 2 PORTUGAL?

Subject to change but it’s going to be awesome no matter what! Can’t wait!