Madrid :)

This past weekend, I had a great time just enjoying the city of Madrid. After school on Thursday, my friend and I went to one of the shopping malls in Madrid. It is huge! It feels like just like a normal American mall, except the fact that it was PACKED with people on a Thursday around 2:30 p.m. (the Spanish lunch time)! :) Weekends are great in Madrid, you get to walk around the beautiful city during the day, and enjoy the extraordinary nightlife at night! There is a café right outside of my apartment where my friend and I are already considered “regulars.” It is a normal stop for us on the way home from school - to sit at their outside tables and have a tortilla de patata and a granizado de limón (lemon slushy).

Classes have been going really well so far. I really love all my classes this semester! I am taking: Changes in Social Values in Spain from 1975-present, Accounting, Latin American culture, and Business Ethics & Law. So far, these all have been my favorite classes of college! They are all really interesting, and all my professors are great. I am also chairman of the Suffolk Madrid Business Club, and we had our first event this week. We had a student debate, with 5 on each team. The winning team received 50 Euros! It was a great turn out; we had almost 50 people there!:)

Murcia :)

This last weekend, my friend and I went to Murcia. Murcia is located in the south of Spain, and is known for its beautiful beaches. It is about a 5 hour train ride down to Murcia, so it was quite a long trip. However, public transportation is amazing in Spain, and the train was very nice, roomy, and comfortable. My friend knows a spanish girl who lives in Murcia, so we stayed with her in her house this weekend. Her house was about a 15 minute walk to Mar Menor (a beautiful beach)! The weather was very hot so it was a perfect time to go to the beach! :) A lot of other tourists, and Spaniards were enjoying the last few weeks of their summer swimming in the warm, blue water of Mar Menor. We met a lot of Spanish friends, and we had a great time! The best way to practice Spanish is to spend time with Spaniards, so this weekend was a perfect opportunity! :) We arrived in Madrid at around 2 p.m. on Sunday, just enough time to rest up and finish our homework for Monday! This week classes have started to pick up; teachers have assigning more homework. However, from what I´ve seen, everyone seems to be keeping up! :)

¡Hola!

¡Hola! Once again, I am back in Madrid! :) I had a great summer back home in Montana. I was a lifeguard at the city pool, and I taught swim lessons to the little children! I was also very lucky throughout this summer and traveled to California, Florida, and Alaska to visit friends and family. (The picture by the lake is from Alaska). It was a great summer, and I loved seeing all my friends from home. However, by the end of August, I was getting restless to come back to Madrid. All of the returning students mentioned how excited they were to return, and how boring their summers were at home compared to life here in Madrid!

When I landed in the Barajas airport in Madrid, I could hardly wait to get off the plane! I then took a taxi to my new studio apartment, which is in the same building as my best friend here from last year! It was so exciting to move into my new home for the year, and explore the new neighborhood I live in, Salamanca. When I went outside and heard Spanish, saw the metro signs, and smelled tortilla de patata, I realized how much I had missed this city!

The first weekend back, all the new and returning students went on a welcome trip to Salamanca. Salamanca is a city to the northwest of Madrid, and is famous for having one of the oldest universities in the world. My friend and I missed the school bus to Salamanca (we were running a little late), but we went to the bus station in Madrid and found a bus to Salamanca that left that same hour. :) Two hours later, as the bus pulled into the station, my friend and I realized that Salamanca was exactly how we left it a year ago…gorgeous. The cathedral is beautiful, and the Plaza Mayor (at night time especially) is a view I will never forget. The school organizes day activities (such as horseback riding, long Spanish lunches, history of bullfighting, and laser tag) to meet other students and to learn more about Spain. Being a college city, Salamanca also has great nightlife…which ALL the students quickly discovered!:) It is the perfect city to get to know everyone and be introduced to Spain. :)