Let's get down to businessssss.......

Okay I have a laundry list of things to get out on the blog so I stop feeling like a neglectful person:

1. Whales.

2. (okay so the list was huge yesterday and then I went on a tangent about hiking. And now I can't remember. Typical. Did we discuss cheeseburgers yet? Let me go check.) If we didn't discuss them, Cheeseburgers are next on our list.

3. Okay this is just sad. I need to write things down as I think of them.

I suppose we'll go with whales for now, and I'll just tell you about how good my cheeseburger was for like the ninth time. (LIES I just checked and this is definitely the first time. GOOD. I love talking about cheeseburgers. Let's do this.)

Okay first you need to watch this because:

A. How perfectly correct is Dory about men?

and

B. Because I want to speak whale.

and

C. Because I say so and it applies to what I'm going to tell you next.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk3ZxmptZy8

Okay so you went and watched it, right? Okay good. Isn't Dory kind of your favorite fish ever? Whenever I'd be swimming 500 frees at meets, I'd get that stuck in my head. She pulls it off cause she's cute and blue, but after the first two hundred it gets real old, real fast.

So here's my "go green" speech:

We were in the Maritime Museum, here in Santander, last week. They have this huge skeleton of a blue whale that is hanging from the ceiling. It is super creepy looking but the kind of thing you want to touch and climb on. We all sat down under the rib cage in this circle on the floor and the museum guy who hated us started telling us about the whale. I'm going to name the whale Arnold, because I feel like that's a good name for a whale. So anyway, Arnold died. Obviously. But then he started telling us why and I had one of those super emo girl moments where I almost just started bawling. I really don't cry very often, but its usually over ridiculous things like random acts of kindess in the form of free burritos or roadkill. So Arnold and his fellow whales eat krill (SWIM AWAY!) and not clown fish or Dory fish. But they have very poor sense of sight and smell, and find krill by listening to the vibrations in the water. Here's the issue: plastic makes the exact same wave length vibrations in the water as krill. So as trash is dumped in the ocean by companies, fishing boats, fishers, people, etc whales hear it in the water and eat it, thinking: Oh yay! Some yummo krill just waiting to be munched up! And all that plastic "krill" can't be digested and fills up their stomach. The more they eat, the less room there is for actual krill. At some point, once they eat enough plastic, their stomach is too full to ingest any krill and the whales swim around and slowly starve to death, until they wash up on shore like Arnold.

As much as I want to punch every Greenpeace employee who tries to attack me on the Plaza at CSU, this was about enough for me to just put all my savings into a "Save Arnold Fund." I'm not saying ya'll need to go and put your life savings into a whale saving foundation, but I feel like things like this are just 100% ridiculous and embarrassing for humans. Kind of like the oil spill. So maybe every now and then, order a fountain drink instead of a bottle of Coke, or when you go to buy soda for a party, spend the extra buck and get the aluminum cans so you can recycle them, instead of cheaping out like we do cause we are broke and in college and getting the liter plastic bottle. Cause I really like whales, and sea turtles, and seals and sea lions and all those little watery animals. Kay? Kay.

Okay now I need to tell you a 100% opposite from healthy for the planet story called: Michelle FINALLY ate a cheeseburger. And I am ashamed to say it, but I love those Golden Arches. (However, the McDonalds here was in the straight up ghetto and had ONE golden arch.... they are Spanish, maybe they don't know that the arches are an M. For Michelle. I'll educate them.)

So we wake up Sunday after the six hour hike (I'm obsessed with parenthesis, I'm sorry. When I say we, I mean we both woke up, but I was the one who hiked and Rachael stayed home. Just saying.) So we get up and I am ready to just stay in bed all day and pretend to be dead since we made the highly educated decision to go out after the hike and so not only does my body hate me, but I am exhausted. That's what meeting random South Africans in a bar and then getting free Foster's hats and then losing them and then walking home because it is only 20 minutes and compared to six hours that sounds pretty short does to you. The whole staying in bed thing would be kind of perfect seeing as we are in Spain and it is kind of a sin to get out of your house to go anywhere other than church, but by three, my month long desire for a cheeseburger matched with Rachael's constant "OMG I want McDonalds NOW." obviously won. I mean this is me, have I ever refused a cheeseburger? No. I mean I used to require one every time I was going to swim, you know, a cheeseburger and a coke and cheetos are kind of the magic food if you want to rock at swimming, I might patent that idea and sell it to Michael Phelps. He has got the wrong magic "food" down. If only he knew that cheeseburgers are not only better than pot, but are also legal and won't make you look like a real prick... I am still holding a grudge against him for his childish/college baby behavior.

Back to the story. We Google Map McDonalds, and there are six, but none of them are in the city center or anywhere near our house, they are all out in the boonies and beyond. So we hop on the bus that looks like it goes the farthest, and decide it is a good plan to just ride the bus till we see it. It seemed all intelligence and ingenius till the bus driver stops the bus and is like "Kay bye!" and gets off in the middle of nowhere. So we obviously are totally lost and he kind of must have felt bad because he asked us where we were trying to go. So we say McDonalds and he kind of looks at us like uhm wow okay you idiots, and then instructs us to get on the opposite bus, and he asks that bus driver to tell us when to get off to get on the right bus, and sends us on our merry way. So two bus stops, two bus drivers and a cute but strange Spanish old man later we see those lovely Golden Arch(es) and are all proud of ourselves. Until we drive right past it. And until the next bus stop is literally five minutes down the highway, and through two roundabouts. To cut to the chase, thank God my heart and soul needed that burger because my body was not pleased with me as we walked back up the highway to Micky D's. Ohhhh let me tell you though, that was the best eight euro I've spent thus far. Hmmmm Hmmm Hmmmmmm I'm lovin' it.

So two things are now check off my list of what I need to write about. When I think of the other fifteen, you'll know. Because I'll WRITE IT DOWN and will stop failing at remembering the funny stories, as opposed to my food obsessed ones.

Today in Spanish class, my professor was having us practice saying things like

"It is important to study in the library so you can focus."

or

"It is difficult to understand another language."

She straight up asked me if I am obsessed with Italy and food because all mine were:

"It is difficult to go to class at eight in the morning because I am always so hungry."

"It is important to always eat lots of Italian food."

"It is exciting that I get to eat pizza and pasta and gellato for the next five days."

"It is likely that I will be fat by Monday."

I think she's kind of shocked that I am not a whale like Arnold.

Cows left, right and center.

Okay here we go on my epic Picos de Europa adventure:

Can I just preface this by saying I'm from Steamboat and am pretty unimpressed with what most people who aren't from Colorado think are mountains but let me tell YOU: these were mountains. Colorado would pee its pants if it had to compete for greatness against the Picos. The drive up is like the Poudre Canyon on steroids with a green paint job. Even the ducks are cuter here. Don't even get me started on the cows.

So we drive up there at like nine in the morning and it's a two hour drive up. Then we get to the lift and it's freezing and awesome and smells like the mountains. And I was just like, OMG I AM HOME and everyone else was like oh this is pretty, but if you aren't me and aren't obsessed with anything green or fall smelling, it probably wasn't as exciting. So we wait in line and I eat my lunch because it's like eleven so of course I am starving. Then we get in this super sketchy gondola with blue walls and go literally straight up a huge mountain cliff and across this huge ravine (is that even a word?). Then we get up there and all around you, from this balcony area, you just see air and mountains and the green valleys. Heaven much??

So Gloria had asked us of we wanted to just hang out at the top or if we wanted to hike down. In Spanish walking time (aka a light jog) it is a four to five hour hike. So in American walking time, five or six. But nobody was listening, because everyone (the boys) has an attention span of about four seconds when anyone important, tour guide related, museum related, directions related is talking. So we all voted to walk down the mountain. Which I was pumped for, minus that downhill is probably my knee's worst enemy. But how do you really say no to being out there? Being on top of the world in Spain. You don't, that's how.

So we go on this amazing hike and there are cows left, right and center and I was taking a million pictures of cows while everyone else was taking a million pictures of the mountains. We all know where my priorities lie. If only there had been ducks riding the cows or hanging out having a little duck and cow party, I'd have lost it.

We stopped and had lunch on this little hill by a stone church and watched the sheep dogs chase around their little wooley friends, and watched some insane mountain bikers bomb all over the place like crazies. The sad note was that I'd already eaten half my lunch, so I was kind of still 98% starving. But that's pretty normal between meals and then my mom stuffs me with so much food I feel like I am eight months pregnant with a baby elephant.

Anyway, back to my epic hike: I'm just obsessed with it. The only issue is that I now am walking like I got plowed down by a bus repeatedly. But, to quote the creepy plastic surgery obsessed girl with black hair who is always always at the gym at CSU: beauty through pain. Only this was nature's beauty, not plastic surgery. She should figure that out and it would save her a lot of money and would save the environment from so much plastic when she dies.

Not going to lie though, by hour five of the hike my bitching was just about to explode. The first few hours rocked, super pretty and lovely and happy and new. But by five hours of hiking down hill your legs are screaming at you and you are all hot and sweaty and it is starting to all look the same. And then we started getting yelled at by hunters (okay so here, they think that sitting on walkie talkies on the side of the hiking trail in orange and camo is hunting. So comical.) for disturbing the peace. Not to mention the ADD boys kept going off trying to pet the "wild" horses and "wild" cows. I mean, I love cows and everything, but when a super precious cow with a bell around its neck starts full on staring you down like it wants you run you through with its horns, it's probably a good idea to walk away. Fighting a cow seems like a bad choice. But that's just me.

We got down and I kind of just passed out on the bus, but then fifteen minutes later Gloria was like OKAY SURPRISE we are going to a church! Which was actually really cool minus the fact that they had this statue of Mary breast feeding little baby Jesus, which was kind of creepy. It actually got stolen in 1993 and they just found it in 2003, I'd tell you why but I was so exhausted by that point that I really only understood that before the Spanish part of my brain started laughing at me and stopped working. Sometimes, after a long day, I think my Spanish mom thinks I have been faking understanding Spanish because she'll ask me super easy questions and all I can do is sit there like WHAT ARE YOU TELLING ME?????

Moral of the story: if you ever get asked to go on a four (six) hour hike down a mountain, do it. Yes your ass will hate you and your legs will be asking you kindly to saw them off, but being able to say that you spent a day in the mountains in Spain with cows is totally worth it :)

French fries and bus fights

First of all, God really loves me. Which might sounds egotistical or something, but I´m flat out spoiled. I live two minutes from the beach. Rachael and I have our own bathroom (which is a HUGE deal here, most houses have one bathroom that everyone shares, ours has three) and we are ten minutes from school. My madre loves feeding me, and I love eating, so we get along great. And all of this is really awesome and I am really greatful, but here´s the real reason why I am positive that the Big Man Upstairs has a special eye on me:

There are french fries, of McDonald deliciousness status, in my building. And a bar. And a pizza hut.

It´s like he is saying "Okay, you are going to get sad and homesick, so here, eat your favorite food and shut up. I´ve got your back."

Did I mention I had a donut to rival Dunken´Donuts from the Lupa grocery store (oh, by the way, this is a two minute walk from my house) that were three for one euro.

On a little sadder note, I´ve yet to find the legendary AMAZING paella, or seafood. Everything thus far has been, mehh, alright. In San Sebastian, I had the best food thus far, but in Santander I haven´t had that mind blowingly delcious meal that leaves you saying "I´d move here, just to eat that every day."
One of my main goals for coming was to eat, so I feel like a bit of a slacker. I´m going to try to get to the open air market next week... I planned too this week but had to open a bank account on my two free days, so that didn´t happen. I AM going to find cheese. That is a must. Where the hell is all the famous Manchego cheese, that´s what I want to know. I´ll keep you posted though, on my cheese mission, as it is my new life goal.

Now, about the bus fight. THIS is a classic.

So it was like a week ago, and Rachael and I decided to be really motivated for a Sunday and go down to the Center. Just a note about Sundays here... if you are desperately in need of anything, you´re SOL. Everything closes down. Other than Regma ice cream, Santander looks like everyone died of the plague. By three, families start going for ¨"pasaos" for an hour, but aside from the one hour emergance from their little dens, the city is dead. D-E-A-D. So we get on the bus to go down to the Center, and join two other women who look like they just crawled from bed, to their seat in the back of the bus. We sit down by the driver, since we have no clue where on earth we are going. And then an old man gets on. He walks up to us and starts telling us to move. We figure he wants our seat, uhm, okay sure whatever, so we get up and move across to the other side. He sits down and progresses to take out this blue card thing and starts telling us something along the lines of "See this pass? Do you have this pass? My leg is hurt, I have this pass, your leg is not hurt. I need space for my leg, idiots." Following normal instructions about men and harrassment, we don´t look at him or respond and sit there trying not to laugh. Which pisses him off even more and he progresses to start yelling at us. Full on "**** you, you dumb American ***^**añlsdkjf, etlk, lwerwler lwerkwer" in other words, you should go back and walk the streets, along with some very choice vocabulary rhyming with duck and boars. Part way through his rant, he starts standing up and waving his cane, at which point the women in the back start screaming at him to leave us alone, we paid, the bus is empty, we all work, calm down, at which point the bus driver starts yelling at everyone to shut the hell up or he´ll stop the bus and kick us all off, which really pisses off the already livid old man who then starts another tirade about how he pays taxes and the bus driver can stick it somewhere.

I know enough Spanish to follow this whole absurd fight, but not enough to take part in it, so I owe it to that woman for saying what I couldn´t. Leave it to me to start a full on bus fight over a seat I didn´t know not to sit in, and then have to sit and listen and try not to laugh slash cry the whole time. I kind of wish I had a video camera, because there´s really no way to explain the total freak out of the old man on the bus, other than to say, having had more than my fare share of yelling fights with my father, this man had skills.

It's okay to be a little jealous.

The left top is my beach, down the steps from my house :) The one directly below (top right) is the view from a park near my house at sunset. The other three bottom ones are also from the park. This is where I live :) I keep waking up every day and feeling like this is a dream. How many people are blessed enough to be able to live here for a year? The reality that I won't be waking up from some drawn out dream is just starting to set in. So here is my little piece of heaven.

Wait, it's week three?

Had a little reality check today: as of tomorrow, it will be my third week in Spain. I feel like we got here yesterday. We started classes two full weeks ago, which was interesting. We started a few of our classes right off the bat, but the rest didn't start until the second week. The first "culture shock" I had was when I, being a typical uptight and planner obsessed American student, realized that they couldn't tell me when classes were, or even WHAT class I would be taking. A week through my Political Economy of the European Union class, we found out that they were switching it to The Economics of Globalization, which had been the original class until they changed it in August. Then we found out that they were adding an eight am class that I swore I would be the last person to take.... my seven am alarm is my worst enemy right now. I had the option to take either twelve or fifteen credits; most students take twelve, as that is all that is required to stay enrolled in college in America, and because our credits won't effect our GPA, there's really no point in loading on the hours. But the three classes that I need to take for my major are being offered this semester, which means that they might not be offered next semester. So I am now taking six hours of spanish, and my additional nine for my major. That's life though, I figure I'll work really hard right now, and save money and learn the language, and next semester I'll take more time to myself to go hiking, explore, etc.

The group here is really bold/weird/interesting/American sorority and frat style. Which is amusing for me, because in Steamboat, you grow up dreading the idea that you would ever know someone in a frat. We have so many strong personalities in our group, and people from every background and part of the States, so we have a really intense mix. I love the differences, but am really learning the value of being alone and having time to myself. I think Harry Potter is going to be read approximately seven times this year. Three down, four to go by the New Year. Totally likely.

I went for a run tonight, on the path that runs right along the beach and then I took the sneaky short cut up onto the outlook that Adela (my madre) showed me our first day. It runs around the cliffs of the coast, it's about an hour round trip walk out from my house to the point and back. Tonight, I jogged most of it and stopped to stretch, so it was about 45 minutes. I got to watch the sunset, and it was so clear so I could see the mountains out behind the city. It's always comforting to see mountains :)

Our first weekend after arriving in Santander we went to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and we went to San Sebastian. There was a wine festival in San Sebastian and Gloria, our director, warned everyone about riding the twisty bus after drinking wine.... boys don't listen though and a kid definitely lost his lunch on the back of the bus. Classy.

The Guggenheim was anything but what I really consider art.... there was one "work of art" that involved this:

A white wall, with the corner. A cannon pointing into the corner. Five gallon buckets of red wax.

Every hour during the week, a man walks in, and sits and reflects starting at the wax covered wall.

Then he loads the cannon with a bucket of wax, and stands staring at the wall. Then all of a sudden after like a minute he has a spaz attack and fires the cannon at the wall.

The result is this weird wall of wax. It looks like human flesh. Which is kind of cool, but it is supposed to symbolize sex, and the red wax is a woman's period (really no nice way to avoid this explanation, as it is so ridiculous) and the metaphor is supposed to be that man can't create anything unless he has sex with a woman on her period, and that women are most creative when they are, thus that creating life is the most creative act a human can have. And at the same time, while that metaphor is kind of cool, the other half is that it is a monument to ancient artists who used their blood to paint with, thus the red wax and it's extreme resemblance to flesh.

I might be able to appreciate this all a bit more if the man firing the cannon wasn't dressed in a janitor's jumpsuit, who stopped cleaning the bathroom to fire the cannon.

That's all for now :) Buenos noches de Santander! Besos.

Making a mess in Madrid, and taking on Toledo

So that night we went out in Madrid, to a famous tapas bar called.... of course now I'll forget. Well, it was famous :) You buy a beer and get a full plate of tapas with it. Which is totally the way to go because you get sooo much food. Which I am going to tell you all about, because that's really my main goal for Spain: to eat and eat and eat and eat. We had croquettes.... which are like cheesey-hammy puffs that have a bready fried outside and yummy creamy inside. We had jamon y queso, jamon on bread, jamon, jamon, jamon. (Ham, ham, ham.) Those were really the only ones I remember due to the fact that I ate almost ALL of them. OH and these delicious potatoe wedges with this spicey sauce that was reddish? and was probably the best thing invented to eat with potatoes (the Irish really need to figure that out.)

We spent the night in Madrid, dancing and drinking Sangria and Tinto Verano. The next morning we got up and took the bus to Toledo. The bus ride was pretty short, and we took a bus tour of Toledo. It is totally old style buildings in the "old town" section, which is up on a hill, that is surrounded by a river that acts as a natural moat. The new section is more modern and we didn't go there really at all. We went to a church with another of Greco's famous paintings, and went up on the hill where he painted the view of Toledo, that is a really famous painting we saw in the Prado.

Our tour guide was really funny, but we had like four hours free time in the afternoon. We were starving by that point, but couldn't find anything cheap and ended up at another one of the stupid restaurants that you pay too much for a less than yummy meal. I got fried calamari, which was such a bad plan. Then we walked around in the tiny streets and tried to figure out how to spend four hours of freetime without spending all our money.

The night in Toledo was interesting, we ended up at a club that had a fake alligator in a tank. That should just about explain how the night went.

The next morning Rachael and I were almost the girls that got left in Toledo. The hotel room phone was in the bathroom, so with the door closed we didn't hear our wakeup call. And my phone had died the night before so the seven alarms I had set to make sure I woke up obviously failed. Gloria ended up banging on our door yelling that they were leaving. I am pretty sure I leave things in EVERY hotel, so the fact that I got everything together and didn't even forget Teddy (who loves Spain) is an accomplishment. I rolled over my toe in the process, and am 100% sure that I broke it, which wasn't my smoothest move, but are we really surprised?

We took the bus six ish hours to Santander (this is Sunday now) and I slept most of it. But the last hour I was awake and watched it get greener and greener. The villages are AMAZING in the north, everything is green here with little white buildings with red or brown roofs and cows all over. I am in love with it. I wish buses were free because I'd just ride busses every weekend through the northern area, just looking at how green it is. I need to figure out a cheap way to get out there and find places to hike. I also want to go sea kayaking in the bay, but, like everything else, haven't figured that out yet.

Six hours later, we pulled into the school, which is yellow :) I take that as a very good sign.

So now begins my six months in Santander :)

A little rant from Madrid

October 1, 2010, Madrid, Spain

We arrived yesterday morning at 7:00am. The flight was hard, I had flown out of Hayden at 6:30am, so had been up with just a few “hours” of sleep on the flight. “hours” being the time I dozed off and on every other ten minutes while bored on the plane, or avoiding the awkward man from Wisconsin who kept trying to talk to me on the flight from Denver to Hayden. He was really special. I always wonder why people on planes feel the need to be your temporary best friend forever for the two hours you spend together on a plane. But then if you are the first one to put in your headphones, you are the first one to say “look, nice talking and all, but leave me the hell alone.” I am always that person. Usually I am secretly freaking out about leaving, and/or dying on the flight, and prefer to do so without having to pretend that I enjoy the company of the stranger next to me. Unless that stranger is a hot guy, in which case I’ll hate it because I always fly without putting in an ounce of effort, and then I am the creeper and he would undoubtably put in his headphones first, leaving me, as I leave weirdos, feeling like the jackass who just got shut down for as a plane BFF.

I flew into Denver and had a really stale bagel for breakfast, and then got on the flight to DC. DC is probably the ONLY airport that doesn't have free wi-fi.... so I spent a really nice five hour layover reading and debating if a pumpkin spice latte was work six dollars (it wasn't, but it was the last starbucks I was sure that would be available so...). Anyway, then I met up with Whitney in the DC airport and we boarded the plane. The flight was seven hours of nothing worth talking about, so moving onto Customs. Let me warn anyone planning to go to Spain: the airport doesn’t have escelators. So if you are like me, and are: a klutz, weak, a wimp: don’t pack anything in a carryon. (we’ll get to elevators in a bit, but escelators are under-appreciated in America.)

After my adventure trying not to fall down the stairs and get my passport stolen, I greeted the custom officer with a “Hello!!!!!!” He didn’t really appreciate my over-enthusiasm, or my English, and corrected me with a super friendly and rude “HOLA.” And then an “ADIOS.” I don’t think he even looked at my picture, he was just ready to get me out of his sight. It’s about now in this that Mrs. Conlon would ask me what “out of his sight” really means, as it is a cliché and therefore shouldn’t be used. So more specifically, was eager to stamp my passport and remove me from his line of vision.

So then we progressed to wander around wondering if the signs pointing towards customs, or exit, were for us. I think it is kind of pointless that they have customs signs AFTER you leave customs, because you just came from there, so unless you left without your passport (which I think they’d arrest you for) you would not want to go back to see our little Spanish grouching friend. At least I wouldn’t. There was a cute man working in the other line (typical) though so maybe some fabulous and beautiful American woman will return there and they’ll fall in love and get married! but that’s unlikely. After figuring that if we left and we weren’t supposed to, good for us for skipping a waste of time getting our bags searched for non-existant drugs, we attempted to find food. Which was cookies/croissant ish looking things or fruits I didn't recognize. I was kind of hoping for meat, bread, bacon, a bagel, or something of substance, but settled for a Fanta and bag of chips, since that was the only salty thing available. (by now you are probably all like, Michelle stop talking about food/weird people/nothing exciting)

We met up with our group around 9:30am, after I passed out (not literally passed out Mrs. Conlon, fell asleep) on a table after eating a bag of lays and a soda for breakfast. We had that awkward everyone is sitting in a circle not talking moment, until I thought it was a good plan to start telling stupid stories and making a really fabulous first impression. Blah blah blah more boring things happen and then we got on the bus to go to the hotel. Oh, there’s a forty ish year old man here to study in Salamanca. Totally weird/creepy, but props to him for going on a study abroad trip consisting of college kids here to speak Spanish and drink Sangria. Maybe he is here to get a wife. Who knows. So we arrive at the hotel and the driver pulls into the bus stop and starts like throwing bags out on the sidewalk. Here is where I start really impressing everyone; I have two huge 49.5lb bags, a probably 30lb carryon, and a briefcase. Pulling these three bags and my briefcase in proves to be impossible and a girl (who is married?) has to pull one for me. Then we realize that the elevator is probably big enough for one and a half obese Americans, or four tiny girls. But not for any huge suitcases. So Whitney and I, who are rooming with Hannah, try to get our bags in, which fails due to my inability to even move all my bags and then get them into the room once we get off. I am already dreading trying to move them all tomorrow. It’s going to be a disaster. I know that somehow they strap together, but I haven’t figured that out yet. I will probably try after this. So I stop looking like a retard. (Don't worry though, after the second day of struggling like a moron with my bags, I realized the tiny one clips onto the top of the big one. Nice logic, Michelle. Well planned.)

So we unload and meet a few people and then go down to walk around for the afternoon. We basically walked to the plaza, bought a few bottles of wine, drank beer, at lunch (fyi, paying 10e for eggs, nasty packaged ham and salad is a bag idea, you can find way better for way cheaper) and then drank the bottles of wine in a park. We had a meeting that I slept through, thanks to that being my like 47th hour straight without sleep and a few glasses of wine, and a warm room with a comfy chair and a boring lecture, and a bus tour that I slept through, had dinner and then bed.

Today (I am re-reading this and I think this was our first day in Mardid.... well our day that we got to sleep before, that is) we woke up and had a delicious breakfast. They had CHEESE so of course I was super stoked, and ham, other favorite. We went to the Prado Museo I think it is called. It was superbly boring. The only cool part was that Greco painted a few pictures that look 3-D cause he was so good. The rest sucked. (Sorry Mom... it just did) We went to the royal palace next, which rocked. I got a Starbucks on the way (which was worst than the airport one, but my only Starbucks thus far in Spain, so I shouldn't complain) so I was in a stellar mood. The palace was actually really great, there were crystal chandiliers all over in every single room, which I love. The Spanish king isn’t permited to move anything or redecorate because the palace belongs to the people, which I thought was pretty cool. I snuck a picture of a violin made in 1709 that is used three times per year for ceremonies. There are two violins, a cello, and a viola. The viola was made in 1678 or something. I love the group too, the guys were all really impressed with the violins and can carryon respectable conversation. We all got lunch together, which was hilarious and delicious. Then three girls and I went shopping to H&M so I could get something to go out in, since jeans and hoodies don't really fly over here, and then we stopped to get drinks and rest. We got something called Tinto, which is 2e and is wine with fresca, so basically it tastes like soda. So much better than wine.

Now I am going to take a nap and then we are going to plan something for tonight, TGI-viernes J