It is 7:30 AM and I am wide awake unfortunately, so I will give an update as to what I have been up to the last long while. I left for Spain wedensday morning, and arrived there at about 8 AM local time in Madrid. The Madrid airport is beautiful, extremely huge and very cool to walk through. I found my luggage and went to the waiting spot where I had to wait for a few hours until our RD Curra arrived with a bus to take us to the hotel. I was sitting alone for a long time until eventually myself and a few other people sitting around this meeting place finally asked each other if they wer also API study abroad students (they were), so we all sat by each other and introduced ourselves. After a while, we got on the bus and went to the hotel and met a few more students in the program.
Everybody is extremely nice and I am really looking forward to getting to know them better. Unfortuantely nobody is really a soccer fan EXCEPT for my house-mate, who I get along very well with and am excited to hang out with more.
We got to the hotel and then had 6 hours to go do what we wanted until a meeting at 6 PM. We decided to rendevous in the lobby in an hour, and then we walked around the streets. Our hotel is very close to a wide variety of sights, and we enjoyed just taking it all in. Madrid is a beautiful city, lots to see. There are a ton of shops and people everywhere, and the architecture is gorgeous. We eventually stopped at a tapa bar for some lunch. My food was not the greatest, but the sangria was particularily refreshing. Afterwards, some people left to the hotel to sleep (after waiting for the rain to stop), while myself and two other people went to walk around some more. We went to the Plaza Mayor, and just around some neighboring streets before heading back to the hotel.
Unfortuantely, my room mate had fallen asleep and did not wake up when I knocked on the door (there is only 1 room key to these rooms) so I was temporarily locked out. I went and found a chair in the hallway and rested there until two other API students joined me and we talked for a while until it was almost time to go to the meeting.
The meeting was good, Curra gave a presentation on some basic things about Spain which was helpful. We were all falling in and out of sleep because w were exhausted. After the meeting, my room mate and I went to our room to catch the end of the USA Germany game, but the only game showing was Portugal-Ghana (not that we missed much because USA lost, but we still moved on to round of 16 so that's great news). After the game was done, it was 8 PM and time to go to dinner, which was API's treat. I don' remember the name of the restaurant, but we went and there were absolutely no other people eating there for whatever reason. The menu was simple, we chose between salad/Gazpacho, 1 meat dish (there were a lot of options) and then we all had the same dessert.
Well.
This dinner was one of the most delicious meals I have had recently. I had the Gazpacho, which I had never had before. The owner/waiter brought out a bunch of fresh chopped vegetables that we could spoon in our soup if we wanted (onions, green bell peppers, etc) and it was extremely wonderful. Cool soup with a rich tomato flavor (but definetely very different than tomato soup) with the crunch of some fresh chopped onions/peppers, absolutely wonderful.
I then also had duck with raspberry sauce. It also did not dissappoint, the saltiness and flavor of the duck went very well with the sweet raspberry sauce and was absolutely wonderful. Then dessert, we all had this pastry-thing with some mango sorbet. The pastry was good; however, the mango sorbet was extremely wonderful. Overall a wonderful meal to end the first day. I will have to get the name of the restaurant so I can go there again.
After dinner, we were done for the day (which means we could do what we wanted) so a few people went back to the hotel, then there were two different groups of people who went to walk around Madrid in the evening. The people I was with went to the palacio royal, which was extremely cool. It was very pleasant, because it was nice and cool, and it was fun walking around these magnificant spanish buildings when there was not a ton of people around. Right next to the palacio royal is a giant church, which was very nice (love me some good architecture, columns are awesome). Walking around at night was probably my favorite part of the day, good people, good temperature, and adventuring around is always a good time.
Today will be another busy day, we are going to a museum and then the royal palace. Then there is an academic meeting, and then I am not sure what we will be up to this evening. Regardless, I am excited and I am sure it will be a wonderful time.
