Woah

Hola a todos!! So I´ve become one of those people I swore I would never be: the kind who start a blog to keep people updated, then completely fails at letting everyone know what´s going on :P

There´s a lot to update. Last week was kinda terrible because I´ve had to come to terms with the fact that my study abroad experience is NOT going to be what I expected. In my mind, I came here (and justified the expense) by telling myself that I would come away with a strongly functioning ability to speak colloquial Spanish. I now understand that if I wanted that, I should have gone someplace where people don´t speak English. SLU operates in English, and there´s a definite divide between the permanent students and the visiting students. PLUS, whenever I speak Spanish to people here, they respond in English. Not cool. Thus... in light of all this, I´m trying to reconcile my view of this experience so that I can still come away remembering it positively. I´m resolving to learn OTHER things, if I can´t learn Spanish.

My mood last week definitely improved after going to Joy last Thursday night. As I mentioned a few posts ago, Joy is a nightclub in the party section of Madrid that has a great deal for students on Thursday nights. I went with a bunch of my girlfriends, met a really cool German student, and had a blast!!! Here´s a picture of the stage that the Lady Gaga impersonator danced on last week:

And a picture of a few of my friends walking down the street in Sol (Joy is in the background):


Since the Metro doesn´t open til 6am, we stayed out until then, although we left Joy early to get churros con chocolate. Basically, its like having hot, liquidy pudding to dip fried dough in. YUUUUUMMMMMM. Here ae some pics of my first churros con chocolate experience (a few weeks ago):



Context of the picture of the man offering me flowers: there are people walking all over the downtown area at night trying to sell people flowers and other knick-knacks. This particular gent was pretty persistent, even after we all said no, thank you (in Spanish). We had decided to try drinking the chocolate (hey, we paid for it), so I had just taken a swig of burning liquid... and he offered me the flowers one last time... and the picture was taken.

I had an early meeting at SLU the next day (Friday), and afterwards I decided to expore the city on my own. I found out that the river next to Nena´s house leads right to the shopping mall we found on our second day here. From there, I wanted to go to Plaza de Espana (oooo... more on that later), but I had already been there, and the Palacio Real was right next to the mall, so I explored the grounds there instead. I even got asked for directions, so I felt happy about looking European enough to belong there, haha. I dídn´t have my camera, but I´ll be sure to go back soon to get pictures of the palace, the new cathedral, the statues of the old kings, the Moorish ruins, and more! (It´s cold and snowing today, so I´ll have to do that sometime later...)

Back to Plaza de Espana, on Wednesday morning a group of us went there to find this shady Chinese restaurant we heard about. It took us for.e.ver. to find it, but eventually we found the stairs leading underground to the Chinese restaurant, a Chinese travel agency, and a parking garage. The food was cheap, so I appreciated it! Here´s a picture of all of us outside the restaurant:



Jajajaja. Well I´m running out of time, and this post is extremely long. I´m at school, and a few of us are about to go to the Prado (famous art museum) for a few hours. It´s free in the evenings on weekdays!

I´ll have to update more on this past weekend soon. Saturday we went to Toledo, and its probably one of my favorite places ever.

Hasta luego, y amor de Madrid,

Colleen