So i was watching tv this morning, and came across this tv show that's called "Aprende Inglés!" which is probably the funniest/coolest thing i've ever seen.  It's this dude who just talks about random shit, but in really slow, overly-pronounced english.  When i got to the channel, he was talking about how Chinese and some languages in Africa are to.nal. lang.uage.s. so. that. when. you. say. a. word in. a. high.er. tone. it. is. diff.er.ent. than. the. same. word. in. a. low.er. tone.  oh man so great.  He also has guests that come on and chat to liven things up.  I wish we had shit like that in the US! I would watch that in Portuguese or Italian or French or German or anything! 

 

On another note, I really like this song a lot right now, even though it's totally lame.  heehee.

 

So random updates:

 

1) I went shopping yesterday at H&M and this store called Sfera.  The only bummer is that all the prices in H&M are exactly the same but in euros! so it's like 1.3 times the amount I would pay in the US.  I bought this awesome dress that was 50% off though cause i saw it full price at the H&M in Chinatown and i figured it was worth it =).  

 

2) I put 15 euros on my phone here (the program gave us one to use while in España) and i ended up with 21.16 euros as my balance! that means whoever used my phone before me obviously left some money on it! wooo yay lucky

 

3) I don't have class until 4pm on Tuesdays, so i have absolutely nothing to do before then.  Rachel and I might meet up though? She's probably not awake yet, though.

 

4) I'm still addicted to perezhilton and gofugyourself.

 

5) I am DYING for a cup of normal coffee.  All the coffee here is like espresso.  There are starbucks and dunkin donuts (although it's called dunkin coffee here for whatever reason) around, but one cup of regular black coffee costs €2.20 which is almost 3 dollars! Craziness.

 

6) Since I've been here, talking to random peeps, I have been told I have an Argentine, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Chilean accent.  These accents are all very different, and I'm not sure how one person can sound like all of these.  The conclusion I have come to is people here are not up on their latin american accents.  I was talking to one guy about how everyone says different things, and he's like "Well, in English it's like if you say someone has a Scottish or British or Australian accent....you can't tell really the difference between each of those!" and i was like "...yes, yes you can..."

 

7) I think i'm going to Bulgaria for spring break! and maybe paris for Valentine's Day! I still need to figure out when I'm going to Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Amsterdam, etc etc and if I even have enough money to go all these places (most likely not).

 

8) Pictures!

 I dont know why the last one is so small, but whatever.  The first picture is us at approximately 630 am after a night of clubbing.  That truck was coming up right behind us and we had no idea.  It honked when it was about half a foot away from us and we all nearly died of a heart attack.  The tiny picture is myself and tess breaking it down in Salamanca.  I am absolutely ecstatic for whatever reason, but yeah good times!

Salamanca! and Joy! and El tigre!

SALAMANCA

Whew. I have barely left my room all day, due to the complete exhaustion I am feeling at the moment.  Friday we left for Salamanca, which is 3 hours away by bus.  The night before some of us went out to a few clubs in Sol, and I ended up getting home around 530.  Not smart.  Nothing really eventful that night except some good dancing and my feet were TORN APART by my heels.  I think i broke my little toe on my left foot, but who knows.

Sooo anyway Friday when we left for Salamanca I was a little tired.  We got to the hotel and immediately walked over to the cathedral and some other noteworthy buildings.  Theres a really beautiful bridge that was built god knows how long ago by the Romans that we had to cross to get into the main part of the city.  It's really weird coming from the US where everything is relatively new and seeing things that are so ancient still in use.  

So we went around and did the whole touristy thing (pics are on facebook), and then went out to dinner as a group.  After dinner (and a few glasses of sangria) we walked around trying to find the Salamancan nighttime district.  Mind you, it was around 1030 at night and we're walking around and there's NOTHING.  So finally we find a club that seems to have a lot of people in it, only to realize that it's some 16 year olds birthday party!  We walked around for at least an hour until we came across this promoter for a club called Atahualpa.  It was a foreigners club or whatever so all the music was in English (bummer) but it was still fun and it only cost 3.50 to get in with an open bar until 2am! So that was nice.  There were probably around 8 of us there, and then we met some Mexicans that really wanted to go to a salsa club (named "El sabor" haha), so we all left to go there.  At this point, it's like 3:30 in the morning.  After going out alllll week I am dead tired.  Buut i decide to stay a little while in the salsa club anyway.  It was fun except I suck at dancing salsa and as such made a fool of myself.  I liked the atmosphere though and the Mexicans we met were super nice.  

Finally at 430 we went home and I crashed immediately.

The next day we got up bright and early (1030ish) and did more of the touristy thing.  We went to the top of the cathedral in town where there is an absolutely spectacular view of the city of Salamanca.  If it hadn't been so effing windy, it would have been a lot more fun, but it was still awesome.  

I really enjoyed the few days we spent in Salamanca, but a few other girls had some bad run ins with the Salamancans.  Although I did like the town a lot, I prefer Madrid and am so happy I am studying in this city.  It's slightly warmer, the neighborhood I live in is extremely safe, the city never sleeps, and the shopping is cheaper!  

SATURDAY NIGHT AKA ABSOLUTE CRAZINESS

So when we got back from Salamanca, I slept for a good 2 hours, and then met the girl that is living in Margarita's house with me.  Her name is Jamie and she's from the Washington University of St. Louis.  She's very nice, and she just left today to go to Ireland so me and Margarita are alone again in the apartment.  Anyways, we had all decided that going out on Saturday night was absolutely necessary (duh), so even though I hadn't gotten any amount of sleep in the past few days I had to suck it up and get ready to go out! Haha, my life is so hard.

We all met at 1130 at El Tigre, which is a tapas bar that is usually so full of people you can't even see your feet.  Seriously, though, it takes a good 15 minutes to get from the door to the back of the bar and it's tiny.  We were there for about an hour and then decided to go because a. everyone was really hot and sweaty b. the drinks were kind of expensive and c. there were so many of us that it was nearly impossible to have any sort of group conversation.

Our next stop was some bar near Sol whose name I seem to have forgotten.  It was a really cool atmosphere, and the music was really good (el canto - or gato ;-) - de loco-esque).  We made friends kind of with the bartender and somehow I got out of paying for my beer there, haha.  Flirting can get you far in this country ;-).

We left that bar around 2-230.  It was time to find a discoteca! We had met some nice peeps at the previous bar that told us about this one place called Joy, so we set off to find it.  Then, the best thing ever happened.  Right as we're about to get into Joy, this one girl corners me and is like..heyyy do you and your friends want to get on my guest list for Joy? You can get in free!...so i was like of course!!!  So we ended up getting into a place that would have costed each of us 15 euro absolutely free! See, mom? I am making economical choices here after all, haha.

We danced for 4 hours.

OMG leaving that place I was soaking and tired but soo happy I love dancing! And it was great with all the girls there! We met people from all over...England, New Jersey, Puerto Rico!  There are some disgustingly sweaty photos from that night, but I'm glad it was documented.  

After we left the club, we decided to get some food.  At this point it was like 630 or so. We went to some random food place which was PACKED (I swear, this city doesn't sleep! 630 isn't even a weird time to still be up!).  We were at that place til 730, met some dominicans, venezuelans, and one brazilian, and then FINALLY went home to sleep.  Today I woke up at 230 for an hour and then again at 745.  Oh man.  I haven't left the house.  But yeah much needed chill day for me.

  

P.S. in case you haven't seen it:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28753038/displaymode/1107/s/2/framenumber/10/

heh heh.

Craziest Week

Oh man, so tons has been going on, as i'm sure you could probably guess, but i am having such a great time here i dont even care that im getting like 5 hours of sleep a night!

On monday, Lena, Tess and I decided to go out and see if there was anything near our area going on at night. Randomly, we came across this Irish Pub. We got there at like 1130 and just missed the band that was playing there, which kind of sucked, but since everyone who was at the bar left with band, we got to know the manager pretty well. His name is Nico and he's from Romania. Anyways, the next night we got a bunch of other girls to go out to the same place and we went to see the band playing that night (its a pretty cool place, actually, free live music every day). There were 10 of us and that was basically the entire audience in the bar (cause honestly, who goes out on a tuesday night unless a. you go to american or b. you're abroad).

The band was fun and we were dancing like locas and everyone had a great time. The next day was not as fun. I decided to walk to school because it's only a mile and a half and that way i can get to know my surrounding area while also getting some exercise. I woke up at 745 and was absolutely dead tired, but it was the first day of classes, so yeah.

The next night we went to the SAME irish pub and at this point i feel so obvious because there's seriously NO ONE else in this entire bar and we are coming every night haha. But this night we got to meet the other bartender, who's cuban and named Jorge. The same band, Walden Uno, played again that night, and since we had told them we were coming back again, they prepared some english songs for us. So cute. After their concert we chatted with the singer for a while, who it turns out is a very nice guy named Andres and he promised us that he would take us out and show us Madrid, since none of us know a n y t h i n g about this city we're staying in. I'm so glad we met people from Madrid! Yay!

Today we went to the Prado, and saw some crazy famous pieces of art like Las Meninas and some of Goya's pieces from the Inquisition. It was fun, but i was so tired that when our tour ended i went right home to take a 3 hour nap, haha. It was much needed and now i feel muy better...ready to go out again tonight! hah. No but really, i think we're gonna go to some clubs in puerta del sol, which is a part of Madrid that has a lot of "ambiente de noche" (nightlife).

On another note, as I'm sure you all know, I was in the paper and on MSNBC! Wooo, exciting. We were watching Obama from a hotel on La Castellana - I don't remember what it was called, but it was very nice. Democrats Abroad had organized the event and there was live music and a big projector to watch everything. Fun fun. So yeah that was unexpected but pretty cool.

Oh, so I realized I didn't write anything about the actual program here, which is studying and not going out every night, haha. We had our first classes yesterday and I had "The immigrant experience" and "Spain and the EU". They both seem like they're gonna be fun...the professors are nice and in my immigrant experience class there's only four other people, so it's pretty much one on one learning.

Alright, well that's it for now!

First Days

So I´ve been in Spain for a little over 24 hours. I got in yesterday after changing flights in Copenhagen and proceeded to get lost in the airport for about an hour. That was lovely. Seriously, though...my flight left out of a different gate than the one they posted my flight to on the monitors, so Maricarmen and Elena were waiting for me somewhere else as I walked around completely lost with no money, phone, or way to contact anyone. Oh, my luck.

Anyways, after about an hour of aimless walking, they found me, and we drove to a hotel in Madrid where all of us students stayed for a night. At that point, I was pretty much a zombie (not having slept in god knows how long). After all the students got to the hotel, we went on a 2 hour walking tour of the surrounding area, followed by a 234788 course dinner (spanish tortillas, fish, bread and cheese, eclairs and flan, and mucha sangria!) that started at 9 and went till 11 or so. Needless to say, at the end of the day i was absolutely exhausted and went right to bed.

Today I met the lady I´ll be living with - Margarita. It´s a lot different than I expected...she lives alone and has like 3 or 4 students stay with her each semester, so it´s not like a homestay with a family per se, but shes really funny and nice and chill about me going out at night. this is like her third year doing this homestay thing so at this point she´s pretty much got college students figured out.

So as of now I´m just unpacking and getting settled in. Tomorrow I´ll go to the building where we´ll have our classes, and hopefully i´ll figure something out about my internship because i´m still totally in the dark regarding that.

One of these days I´ll post some pictures. i have an absolutely spectacular view of the Madrid skyline from the apartment i´m staying in. It´s on the 1oth floor, so i can see lots of buildings and parks and people and everything. As for now, I´m gonna get my room in order and try for the 500th time to connect my computer to the internet (right now i´m using margarita´s which is in her bedroom, so i kind of feel bad).


See yaaa