rain, rain, go away...

The pub crawl in Madrid was pretty awesome. I absolutely love Madrid, going there will never get old. We found a sbarro for dinner so you can bet your bottom dollar I hit that up for some American 'za. Hit the spot. The first bar on the crawl was an Irish pub. It was probably the most fun out of all of them, it was awesome. The band was great and we got them to play sweet home alabama, they were loving us, and everyone else in the bar was just kind of.... staring. But I would definitely do it again! We met some Au Pairs from all over Europe who were so fun and spoke like 3-6 languages a piece! I was in awe. I wanna know 6 languages!!

Last week of classes was okay. I'm such a baby when it comes to the cold and its been freezing here recently, so being outside is pretty miserable.. unless you're wearing 35 layers and a ski mask. And to top it off its been raining non-stop since thursday morning. So, me and lp have been locked up in our attic like anne frank doing absolutely nothing for the past three days. I feel pretty worthless but walking around in the rain when its 35 degrees outside is way worse than being bored and warm inside. We found a website to watch american tv and movies, so that and a little homework has been our main source of entertainment. Being so bored has made me a little homesick so I definitely can't wait to get out of town next weekend and go to Brussels.. even though I checked the forecast and its supposed to rain all weekend there too. Great. Hoping the weather men suck here and are wrong because that would not be fun :( I never thought I'd say this but I'm kinda actually looking forward to class this week... just for some fresh air and something to do!

                                 Me and Eric on the train to Madrid!

                          Us with Jane Anne and Sara at la fontana de oro!

                                   motorcycle hanging from the ceiling?

                                  the Irish pub, the fountain of gold!

back to school, back to school..

This week was our first whole week of classes and theyre going to be pretty challenging.. I have the same teacher for 3 of my 4 classes soooo I really hope she likes me. Waking up at 7:40 every day is also going to be very challenging.. Just as I'm getting used to it, the week is over and were staying out till the sun rises. My body is all sorts of messed up, to say the least. Chris and Eric (good guy friends from AU also here) have a brother who is our age and were going to play soccer with them later today! I'm so excited! Hopefully I remember how to play, its been a while! Were going into Madrid tonight for dinner and a pub crawl. I just found out that one of my guy friends from middle school is in Madrid this semester so he might come out with us too! Hope everyone has a good weekend :)

                                                      sangria!

                              Churros! we've had farrrr too many of these.

                                                      yummy?

Algunos Fotos!

                                          walking around Madrid!

                                     La Universidad de Alcalá de Henares

                                                 a hallway in our building

a beautiful courtyard on campus!

                                                     Madrid again!

                                             my roomie! meow

                                pekas (spanish for "freckles) needs a bath asap

                                          our room on the third floor!

                                          café con leche... todos los días

                               where all of our classes are! feels like hogwarts

First weekend out!

So Thursay night was our first night out in Alcalá! and wow it is gonna take a while to get used to going out here... They are crazy! We ran into a couple girls who are studying at the same school as us, and they gave us the low down on what to do at night, which was nice so that we didn't really waste any time figuring it out. First we went to a bar at around midnight, La Gabanna, which was really fun and a cool atmosphere... but the drinks were like 5 euros... which is pretty expensive and they weren't that big, but apparently they offer free drinks before midnight since basically no one goes out till atleast 12 or 1 so well have to hit that up next time. After a couple drinks, we headed to this like "discoteca" or club type place called Can Can, which was sooo much fun! We danced with some Brazilians that we met, which were the first guys that weren't in the least bit creepy.. so that was a nice change. And we tried to request "no hands" but they weren't having it. They played a lot of American music, but mostly like the same 4 songs over and over again. We met a bunch of people from Loyola in Maryland and the University of Arizona.. They were a lot of fun; they seem to be just like us so I'm excited to have other people to hang out with! So we ended up getting home around 530 in the morning... and that was leaving the club early. Its crazy, I have no idea how people get used to this!

Three very short hours later, we had to be up for our tour of Madrid... which was a littleee difficult. LP basically dragged me there, and we were both pretty miserable on the train ride. But Madrid is beautiful so we quickly forgot how bad we were feeling and enjoyed the tour! The weather was gorgeous and we ate lunch at a cute little sandwich bar that was pretty good. Sara and Jane Anne got salads, which was the first place I've seen that serves salads yet. My whole diet here basically consists of all carbs, a little fruit, and a little meat. I don't even know the last time I ate a vegetable, which kinda sucks. I definitely miss American food... a lot. After we ate, we were all pretty tired so we just decided to head back to Alcalá so that we could get a good nights sleep.

Saturday we woke up around noon, and went to a local coffee shop/tapas bar with our madre to get a cafe con leche and some churros (sp?). Those were.... interesting. Big long pieces of fried greasy flour basically.... but I ended up really liking them once I dipped them in some sugar. We went to the mall together to get LP some more phone minutes and then went home to eat lunch. I can't remember what it was called but it was like baby pastina in a soup with garbanzo beans.. and then there was a giant platter of assorted means and potatoes in more garbanzo beans. The soup was awesome.. and I decided to stick to the meat I recognized.. the chicken. I'm soooooo glad that I did. Ended up finding out that the mystery meat on one side of the platter that resembled an uncooked white fish was actually raw pig skin. PIG SKIN. I lost my appetite just thinking about it, but she served LP some on her plate so LP took one for the team and tried it... The look on her face was enough to make me want to dart to the nearest bathroom. So yeah, needless to say, it was pretty gross... Saturday night for dinner we had nachos. I've never eaten so fast in my life, my padre was making fun of me for it haha pretty embarrassing, but they were so yummy!! Saturday night we went to our favorite little bar called casa blanca 2.. It's pretty small, but a glass of wine is only 2 euros and they were giving us free shots of some coffee tasting thing... They were so good! We met some locals there and they were loving us, so we invited them to Can Can with us and they came! It was another long walk home and almost 630 by the time we got inside! We grabbed some chips, tripped up the winding staircase atleast 2 or 3 times and went to bed. Our madre said she didn't hear us come in though so that's good. We woke up at like 130 today and ate lunch, which was spaghetti with boiled eggs, tuna, and like a sausage of some sort? very interesting/contrasting flavors.. but not too bad washed down with half a loaf of bread and lotssss of water. We went back upstairs to our cave to sleep and then for dinner we had sandwich mixtos... Which are definitely my fave. They're just grilled Spanish ham and cheese but they are sooooo goood. I've probably had atleast 10 since I've been here. Yum yum.

Our first full week of classes is this week! It should be interesting with a 745 wake up call. Definitely not used to that... Especially after this weekends festivities. But hope everyone has a good week! I'll update if anything interesting happens! Adiossss

And the journey begins!

Soo the first day we got here at about 8 in the morning (2am my time).. the flight was a little rough.. about 45 min after my large glass of wine and valium (don't worry, doctor prescribed) had finally put me to sleep, I wake up dropping and shaking due to turbulence.. the captain comes on and precedes to tell me it will be moderate turbulence for the next 30-45 minutes. I start freaking out, naturally. I hate flying enough; I definitely didn't need to be told i'd have to fear for my life for the next hour straight. Well, turns out it ended up lasting over an hour and 15 minutes... poor LP had to be awoken from her sleep to squeeze my hand and counsel me the whole time. Woops. But we landed and got our luggage pretty quick... met an auburn 08 grad while waiting.. and were off to the buses to go meet our families!

When we first met our mom, she didn't have a voice so it was a little difficult.. whispering spanish is nearly impossible to understand. Luckily, she lived in New Jersey for a little while to study english so we soon found out she was practically fluent! Our madre is awesome, she's hilarious and so easy going so we definitely got lucky. She's also an amazing cook, so that's a hugeee plus! We also have a 12 year old brother named Moises. So far I've learned he loves to play call of duty. Him and my bro would definitely get along. We bonded over Harry Potter though, and he has three of the movies so I can't wait to watch them with him!! Me and my roommate lp (lauren pollard) came straight to our room (we share a 3rd floor loft that has four twin beds in it) and slept for 5 hours... we woke up to a huge plate of freshly cooked paella by our wonderful mom and then just basically relaxed/slept all day, ate another delicious meal and went to bed. We set our alarms for 230am so that we could watch the auburn football game online, and stayed up until 7 in the morning watching us become national champions!! What a game. As much as I wish I could have been at skybar.... Spain will do. After all the excitement, I couldn't really sleep and we had to be up at 830 for the first day of orientation.... Well, that was the plan. We accidently slept through our alarm and woke up at 1030, and after trying to navigate ourselves via bus to our school for about 2 long hours (which should've taken 15-20 min), we were a littleeee late. We got off the wrong stop, had to ask a million people where to go, and had to do it all in spanish. Should've paid a little more attention last semester. It ended up being a super long day after that so it was a mini-blessing that we slept through half of it.

The second day of orientation was pretty boring, but luckily short. We were also pretty late...again.. due to the bus situation. We finally mastered it down but there is not a schedule or anything. The bus just comes when it comes, so we're definitely going to have to give ourselves a lot of extra time. Today was the first day of classes.. We decided to walk to class today so that we could count on actually making it. It's about a 30-35 minute walk through the city, but Alcala is so pretty so I really don't mind it at all! I had writing techniques and phonetics today. No english is spoken... ever. They weren't kidding when they said you will have a headache for the first 2 weeks straight. They look like they will be pretty tough, but hopefully they won't be that bad. I've been struggling sleep wise. My inner body clock is still so messed up, I'm so exhausted all the time, yet I can't sleep at night? Doesn't really make sense, but this better change soon. I came home today after class and slept for 3 hours because I was barely capable of functioning. But I think we're gonna go out tonight! Yay first night out in Spain!! We met a girl here from the U.S. who also studied here last semester and she gave us the scoop on where to go and when etc. So we'll see! But we also have a tour in Madrid tomorrow at 10am.... I'm not a fan of tours, and I don't think being hungover/tired will make it any better but I can't wait to see Madrid again! It's so beautiful! Well, off to go socialize with mi madre! Miss everyone!!!