Un día increíble

Buenos Dias!!

I know I am very behind, but I want to tell you about my day today and then I will get caught up on everything else!!

Today was Daylight savings so I lost an hour of sleep last night and am very tired! I woke up and caught the 9:30 (actually 8:30) bus to Madrid to meet mi familia! They spent the weekend there and invited me to come hang out with them on Sunday (today). It was a lot of fun J

First, we went to a very famous place to get churros and boy was it packed!! We ate churros with chocolate and had coffee.

 Marta was in a class all day for wedding planning, so I was with the two boys, Jorge and Emily, a girl who lives in Madrid and was a student of Jorge and Marta’s a few years ago.  It was really fun because she and Jorge together were able to show me a lot of things in Madrid that I did not see when I went there with the group.

After that we went to El Rastro, which is a humongous open air flea market that is only open on Sundays. It had everything you could imagine. After walking around for a while we got in the car and toured some areas further from the central part of Madrid. I saw where Jorge went to college and grew up.  Also, we went to an American Store!! It was soo fun to see all the American food and things.  Of course the first thing I saw was cinnamon toast crunch….when I looked at the price though i immediately put it back! It was 9 euros for a small box of cereal!! But Jorge ended up buying me that as well as a small thing of peanut butter J 

We also stopped by the Sushi shop and Jorge picked up our dinner, which I am anxiously awaiting right now !!! While we waited in the car for Jorge to come back with the food, I witnessed a boy getting chased by 4 police…it was absolutely crazy!

We met Marta for lunch at VIPS. I had a club sandwhich with chocolate cake and mango ice cream for dessert that I split with Jorge.  When lunch was over we got back in the car and drove to the suburbs of Madrid.  We saw where certain girls “work”. It was very weird to see them in the middle of the day on a Sunday. On the way to the suburbs we went through a tunnel that was enormous…I even got a little claustrophobic.  But it was really cool because instead of having roads above, they put a huge park and all the cars pass underneath. I told them that in the US, or maybe its just my family, we hold our breath and make wishes in tunnels. The boys and I tried to do it on the way home, but we were in the tunnel for about 10 minutes (we breathed through our noses....its a trick ;) ) 

The weather today was not very good. It was very cloudy and rainy but at one point while we were in the car there was some sun and we saw a huge arco iris (RAINBOW!) I tried to take a picture but it did not work to well!

We wanted to go to a movie but everywhere we tried was sold out!!

Marta (mi madre) with the sea creatures!

Oh my goodness we just had a huge dinner full of seafood! We had another one of those huge boxes, called the black box, of a mixture of sushi…all amazing! Then, Carmiña brought us back some seafood from Galicia. Galicia is known for its sea food since it is in the northern part of spain on the atlantic.  Marta and Jorge said I was very lucky to have the opportunity to eat these creatures, and that people die to get them! They also explained that they are very expensive…so I tried to eat them as well as I could, but it was really hard because they all had heads and legs and tenticle things. there were also some eggs, hairs and eyeballs on a few. It tasted very good, but it was hard to get over the appearance. After eating them I went upstairs and looked up the English words of what I was actually eating. I guess I ate spider crab… which I had to remind myself has nothing to do with actual spiders…. Ah. I also ate some really good shrimp (marta says it is the best shrimp there is) and crawfish/crayfish.

Today has definitely been one of my most memorable days in Spain because I was able to spend a lot of time with the family, enjoy the culture and learn a lot! It was intimidating to be with Emily because she looks and talks like a Spaniard, but she is from Wisconsin…. However it was very fun because I learned a lot from just listening to her talk and also the dialogues between her and the kids, as well as her and Jorge. 

I am sad because I didn't get any pictures with the family today and it would have been a great time to do it! But we spent a lot of time in the car or eating and it was raining when we were outside, hopefully next weekend!! 

“El mundo es un panuelo”- I learned this phrase tonight at dinner. It means the same as "it’s a small world" basically. (a panuelo is like a handkerchief or small scarf)

Hasta luego