My life in Madrid

Hola todos! Disculpame por no escribir en mucho tiempo...

I am having a fabulous time in Madrid :) I have done a lot in the last week and a half.. I can't believe I've been here for almost 3 weeks! Part of it feels like it has been only a couple days and part feels like it has been a couple months. I am at the point where I feel comfortable in my daily schedule, but I still feel like a tourist when I'm exploring the city. There are so many places to see in Madrid - I have a good grasp on the big things, but am still working on trying to get to know the city. The city itself is more interesting to me every day - as with any big city, it has so many little pockets to explore. Each day I try to go to a new part. Today, I explored the neighborhood that I will be moving to in March and walked through a wonderful park just a couple blocks away, with botanical gardens and a sky lift to see views of the city.

My apartment! I am living in my home stay for one more month and will move into my apartment on March 1.  The apartment is fabulous... I will be living with 5 Spanish girls who are all students and all seem so nice! I have a corner room with my own balcony, it all comes furnished, and my room is painted orange! It is only 1 block from a good metro stop and about 20 minutes from school.. It seems like a match made in heaven :) I am really happy about it, but still excited to be able to stay with my senora for the next month.

This past weekend I went to Sevilla, a 6 hour bus ride south of Madrid. I went with 11 other friends from my program, and we all stayed in an awesome hostel. Sevilla is a beautiful town and it was great to get out of Madrid to see a more stereotypical Spanish city. The streets there are even more confusing than in Madrid! We took a long walking tour of the city and saw the great Gothic cathedral (3rd largest cathedral in Europe) and lots of beautiful old buildings and palaces that had to do with Sevilla's role as the main port city in Spain's glorious days of colonialism. I also saw Ruth, my roommate from UW. Always nice to have a familiar face :)

I was matched with a spanish student, Julia, to do an "intercambio." We speak both Spanish and English to help each other learn the other language. I have hung out with her a couple times and am happy to say that she is my first Spanish friend! She is very welcoming and a lot of fun to be with... I have met some of her friends and we have plans to meet tomorrow and possibly see a movie. She is studying indigenous cultures of America, so most of her texts are in English - so I'm going to help her out with those. I'm really happy that I got matched with somebody who is so great and is interested in hanging out! Besides hanging out, I think she will be a big help with my grammar.

Today was my first day of class! I had the 3 with other Americans: one on the works of the Prado, one on Islam, and one on syntax. I am really excited about the first two and am not quite sure about syntax, haha. We will see how tomorrow goes :) I had to leave home before the sun rose this morning, but it was   refreshing walking to class so early, and needless to say, I look forward to waking up bright and early again tomorrow morning.

I am going to upload some pictures in the next couple days, and will fill in some more details then! Sending my love, Bonnie