Another Couple Days in my World

Hmm...where do I start, well everything is going great I am slowly but surely starting to fit in in Spain. I went to an American bar with Nerea called Maloneys. It is the size of my bedroom and the capacity is 33 people, but they usually pack aout 150-200 people in there. The only beer they have is Budwieser and everyone here has a weird obsession for it, and Maloneys is one of the only bars in Madrid that has it on tap, I just so happened to run into about 35 american exchange students mostly studying through a program from UCSD. They also serve Sangria, which is a spanish red wine that at one time had fruit soaking in it, so it tastes a lot like fruit punch. It is delicious. I really enjoyed meeting all of Nerea's friends, they are all very welcoming and fun. One thing that drives me crazy here is the smoking. Every restaurant I have been to, I eat next to a family constantly smoking throughout their meal, but this is totally normal in Spain and in most of Europe. Thankfully my host dad, nor sister smoke at all.

Every day and night I eat lunch and dinner with Nerea at the coffee table in the living room (picture above) and watch ridiculous spanish television, but it is one of my favorite times because I get to talk to Nerea.

I finally went shopping! I now don't feel super out of place wearing american attire. I took the Metro with Nerea to central Madrid, Gran Via, and went toa couple stores such as Zara(which is pronounced thara in Spain, along with all Zs and Cs), Mango and H&M. It was great, but the exchange rate...not so much.

This past weekend I attended a Rotary orrientation at a college campus about 30 min north of central Madrid. I got to meet about 50 students that are all living in Spain for the year on Rotary Youth Exchange (A picture of a few above). The cafeteria food was absolutely horrible and all of us could not wait to come back home to the food of our host families. It was a great weekend and I now have some American friends in Spain.

Today is Sunday, and it just so happens to be a big family day in Spain. I went to lunch (at 2 o clock) with my host father's best friend's family. They have a daughter that is 14 and a son that is my age. We went out to a seafood restaurant in a very nice part of Madrid. It was absolutely amazing. I had the best Paella I have had yet. (For those of you who don't know what Paella is, it is a famous dish here is Spain and it is basically rice cooked in broth with seafood and saffron.) After lunch we went back to their home and the daughter, Patti, had me help her with her english homework and told me how much I look like Hannah Montana and how she really wants to go to California. I felt like a Goddess. We all played an old famous Spanish game that consists of an iron square board with a backboard and contains a bunch of round holes and a frog with it's mouth open. You take small metal washers and throw them at the board, if you get it in the mouth its 50 points, anywhere else it is 10. It was interesting, but fun.