More in Madrid

Hello all! The last few days have been amazing! On Wednesday all of the other students that are in my program got here, originally I thought it was just going to be the students going to Bilbao that had signed up for the Madrid tour going - but actually it's everyone in the Spain programs that signed up for the additional tour. In which case that means we're quite a houseful and the 100 of us have completely dominated our hotel. The first day, I went to exploring with a few of my new friends, we went to Plaza Mayora which is downtown as well, but is this huge beautiful sqaure with apartments above little shops on the groud level. Since I've been in Spain I have been looking for an open-air market, and we found one! It was called El Mercado de San Miguel - they have EVERYTHING! I swear it was like the strawberries were as big as my hand. The market had everything from squid to cheeses, to wine and fresh flowers. We bought a bottle of champagne and walked about for about an hour, the gentleman that sold it to us was so nice and appreciated our Spanish. I was with Matt and Michael, and while we were walking a policeman came up to me - put his fist in my back and slashed his arm across my shoulder - I turned around and he said thats what is going to happen to me if I carry my purse the way I was on my shoulder. This little drama scene freaked me out. I tried to be funny and say that I had my boys here to protect me, Matt flexed his muscles to prove his proctection - the cop blatently told him he couldn't do anything. lol - and Matt was really offended....We talked to him for a while and he bid us off on a SAFE journey. We walked all over the area surrounding our hotel, Spain has a meat market called - Museo de Jamon - Museum of Ham.....this disgusted and equally terrified me as the window was full of hooves and such. GROSS - I've considered becoming a vegetarian while I'm here....I've pretty much been one - other than of course the one bite from Pan & Co which I spit out lol. Seriously though, I've been doing a lot of reading about the harmful products that are put into meat like AMMONIA! WHATTTTT? On a light note...we were in search of a bar that would show the National Championship game for college football for us and after about 7 stops in various bars in the area and 5 awkward conversations later we found one! - Dubliners pub, we decided to hang out there for the rest of the night and made a bunch of new Spanish/Irish friends. On Thursday the group of students took a walking tour of Madrid in the rain and snow....my Fuggs (fake Uggs of course) didnt hold up - my toes were soaking wet and I was miserable! We went to the Prado Museum and saw the works of Goya, one word - AMAZING! We studied several different artists that day and had the absolute BEST tour guide- Rosa. She was so passionate about her work and enthusiastic that it really made our day! We also went to the Modern Art Museum - which is currently home to Picasso's Guernica. It was amazing to see this piece firsthand, I did a small study on it in my high school art class but learned more in the 30 minutes speaking to Rosa about it than I could've ever thought about learning in high school. The Dali exhibit was amazing as well and was our last stop after a long rainy, snowy morning. Our program director found transportation for us to walk home so that we didnt have to weather the snow which was the best news we'd heard all day. The rest of the day was free time/ nap time - so a few of us went to eat lunch together and had the best conversation about how grateful we were that Rosa was so wonderful, I was a little emotional just becuase if we would've had a bad guide or one less enthusiastic that would've completely changed the route of our day, I feel really grateful and honored to be in this program and appreciate all that they are providing. After our welcome dinner and program meeting a huge group of us ventured off to the cantinas - bars, and found this really nice tequila bar - I stayed away from the tequila and assured everyone they'd thank me later lol - anyways, the owner was wonderful and thanked each of us personally for coming and offered drinks on the house. The second best news of the day :) It was then 1am and time to venture to Dubliners to watch the game, everyone was surprised that I wasn't routing for Texas since I'm from there - I explained that I was an Aggie fan and also noted my hatred for Colt McCoy. lol - Dubliners was a BLAST there was about 30 of us from the program in there. We completely took that place over as well and everyone loved us, we turned the place into a dance/football party until they closed. After Dubliners we went to another bar and had an even better time if that was even possible. Everyone that I have met has been so wonderful and there are a few people that I know will be in my life forever! The guys have been great as well, it kind of surprising the conversations I've had, as a lot of them have just been pretty emotional and just pure honesty. Its been nice to dive into this new world together, all of us have such great attitudes about the whole experience and are beyond excited about the people we will become once our journey here is complete. I feel like Europe will provide a lot of the lessons I've been needing to learn. As far as the rest of the evening went we just danced the night away. Literally. We strolled into our hotel at 6am and were all trying to figure out how the hell we were going to get up in 45 minutes for breakfast and the trip to Segovia...