Spain!: Hola From Spain!

Hola a todo! Bienvenidos a mi blog! I will be using this blog as a place to share my travels and observations while in Spain and traveling around Europe. This is especially for those of you who aren't on Facebook and want to know what is going on here. I hope you enjoy it!

For the first 4 days of my journey I was in Madrid. I decided to go to Spain a few days early to:

- get over jet lag

- get used to spanish culture

- get used to spanish language

- have something to do because I was bored at home and everyone else was in school already

I accomplished none of these things while I was in Madrid. I did very little sight seeing until the last day there. I also only got about 4 hours of sleep each night due to jet lag and limited my siestas (in vain) in hopes of sleeping through the night. Needless to say I didn't really enjoy my time in Madrid because I was jet lagged, lonely, and homesick. My hotels were right in between Plaza Mayor

and Plaza del Sol.

Both of which were very beautiful. I spent some time walking around both of those. I also go to spend some time in El Corte Ingles which is a big department store (it seriously has everything) because my computer cord stopped working. Eek! Fortunately, they had ones that worked for which I was very grateful.

The day I went out sightseeing I took the Metro (only 1 Euro per ride and so much nicer than BART!) to El Retiro which is this big park (think Central Park) that one of the Kings built.

I walked around for about 2 hours mostly people watching. There were lots of street performer type things going on as well as a ton of cute kids, dogs, and old people.

My people watching observations in El Retiro:

-Full length fur coats are a must for any mature woman

-Not pants are just as popular here as they are in the US

-People do but should not wear multiple articles of leather clothing that are touching each other.

ex. pants + boots = malo

jacket + boots = bueno

pants + jacket + boots + gloves + purse = too intense

-All of the super cute kids clothes are put to good use here (on super cute kids)

-If you have 2+ children who are close in age it is fashionable to dress them the same. (also applicable for dogs.)

-People touch each other a lot.

So during my not quite so fun stay in Madrid, I hopped on a train to Cordoba. The train played Slumdog Millionaire en Espanol! We had our orientation in a hotel in Cordoba and then our host families picked us up. I am very lucky and I get to live right next to La Mezquita which is a Mosque turned Cathedral after the Moors got kicked out of Spain. It is very beautiful.

Here are a few other funny pictures from Madrid such as

El Museo Jamon