New Places, Faces and Races

As promised, my blog post that should have gone up last week! So sorry for the delay! I'll be working on pictures and a post trying to describe my indescribable 21 birthday weekend in Italy. Un beso! 

Last weekend, last week and this weekend have been some of our best here. We’ve been making big strides on branching out and finding new locales to study, eat and drink (welcome to life abroad) and we’re also meeting lots of new people! Forgive me, but I’m going to pull a fast one and bullet point the highlights of the last ten days. Hopefully the pictures will speak louder than my limited word capacity.

Places:

1. Kapital (last weekend) and Moondance (last week) – The clubs know how to do it up style in Madrid, and know how to make you stay until 6 am.  Great for Saturday nights – not so great for meeting on a bus Friday morning for a Vandy-sponsored weekend trip to Salamanca.

Kapital

Moondance 

1.     2. Santander Park and a little dog park nearby – We played cards there last weekend, and Tyler and I were going to run on the park's track on Monday. We ate an omelet and a sandwich instead. Exercise continues to evade me....

Love these goons.

3. Chocolateria San Gines – AMAZING churros con chocolate. (Great transition from my lack of exercise.) Very reminiscent of Café Dumond in New Orleans. 

Yummy! 

1.     4. A movie theater near our house – we saw Un Cuento Chino and it was hilarious. It was the perfect movie for us because it’s about a Chinese man who doesn’t speak any Spanish and an Argentinean who begrudgingly agrees to help him. There was a lot of slow pronunciation and a great scene where a cow falls from the sky. I highly recommend this one. 

Check it out! 

1.    5. Salamanca – Apparently there are great bars in this university town with lots of students. We couldn’t find any of those.

Cathedral in Salamanca

Courtyard in Salamanca

2.     6. El Escondorial – where all the royals are buried. It was wildly boring, with the exception of a wedding that literally we walked in to.

booooooring

3.    7. Museo Sorolla y La Reina Sofia – I forgot my camera at my two favorite museums that we’ve visited. I suppose I’ll just say they were amazing and leave it at that.

Insert photo here! 

4.     8. Kebab restaurants - Sinfully delicious sandwich. I think the picture says it all.

Photo cred: Mary Jordan

5.     9. El Rastro – The most overwhelming outdoor market of all time. I managed to buy two scarves, but we’re planning on returning when it gets a bit colder so there will be less people.

SO many deals, so little time

6

Faces:

1.     1. Luis and Alberto – our brothers have finally come back from summer vacation! Luis, 17, is pretty talkative and a big Atletica Madrid fan. We played a game last week with him and Ana to practice our Spanish. Alberto, 19, is the quietest of all the Llorente-Oliver kids but incredibly sweet.

2.     2. Friends from Northwestern – while wandering around our neighborhood last week, we ran into Danielle and Zach from Northwestern. We’ve been out with them a couple times, and despite a language barrier (thick Midwestern accents), we’ve become fast friends.  

3.     3. Mary Jordan’s friend Marchie – She goes to Furman; we walked around with her to some Irish pubs around Puerta de Sol the other afternoon.

4.     4. New teachers – We’ve now had two days of class and we’ve met all of our teachers for Phonology, Literature and Film, 16^th Century Spanish plays and Grammar. I think Professor Díez is my favorite thus far – we’ll be watching four movies in class over the course of the semester, so he already has an A in my book. 

Races

I’ve had countless new experiences and new people to share them with over the past two weeks, but one in particular takes the postre. Two of our group-mates, Jennifer and Drew, ran in the Madrid Por Madrid 10K race through the streets of downtown last Sunday. We went to support them with a homemade sign and when they told us that they thought we weren’t going to wake up so early to cheer them on, my little corazón was filled with delight. I knew it meant a lot to them to see us cheering them on, but I think it meant more to me that I couldn’t imagine not doing that for them. We’ve all become really close over the past month, and forming these seven relationships with my fellow Vanderbilt students has been one of, if not the most, impactful part of my trip. Even though I love meeting new people and speaking Spanish, having this Vandy family away from home has been a true comfort and I am blessed to have them here! 

Our view of the race

Our sign

The champs themselves