Madrid Madness – New City. New Friends. New Memories!

After lugging my bags into the bus and meeting some of the new API students on the way over to the hotel, I felt relieved, a little nervous, but very excited to be there! [FYI: I'm studying in Salamanca, but we were in Madrid for 3 nights] Making new friends is always a little awkward, but my orientation/tourguide/rush experience has totally helped me in this situation. “Where you from? Where do you go to school? What’s your major? Are you in a homestay or residencia?” etc. etc. They might have thought I was a little over the top with all my questions, but hey, I’m not going to just sit there and figure it all out on my own! Everyone turned out to be sooooo legit as now we’re probably the tightest program out of them all. And the difference, is that we all are so determined to speak Spanish that we even talk to one another in Spanish/Spanglish as best we can even though we’re Americans. The other American groups I’m sure think we’re totally wack, but hey, I only have 4.5 months to learn this language and I’m not wasting my parents money… right?
So back to Madrid: The Hotel Regina was the bomb. I got roomed with Kat Bredeman, one of the coolest chica’s around. She’s an art major from Virginia at James Madison. She’s so quay (cool) & so were the others that we met from the bunch. The 3 boys are from Texas, Minnesota, and Colorado. Most of the girls are from California and the north east. I’m the only “southerner”! I’ve never even felt southern until this trip and they laugh at my "YALL" all the time! It’s so nice to finally meet people from different parts of the country because at Clemson we’re mainly from SC or Jersey/Georgia/Virginia/Maryland and such. And, of course guess who I run into on my hall of the hotel?? 2 girls from CLEMSON! They are from a different program going to Alicante, but all I gotta say is REPRESENT!

A large group of us went to get tapas right away, and that night after eating at this Japanese place (ironic for our first night in Spain), we got Sangria and a group of us went to explore the city life! It was a Thursday and not as many people were out as on other nights, but we had such a fun time going into an out of 4 or 5 bars and landing on a discoteca. Ahhh, you have to come experience it! I heard La Capital is a really interesting club with 7 rooms all playing different music in each, but the cover charge is a bit extensive. However, I’m going to go back and check it out. I’ll keep you posted! Another favorite part was ordering food and tapas which thank you Loren Brooks (a California girl born of a Spanish mother) was able to help us in what to order! The weird thing about eating food though was that I was never too hungry because I was so excited! Thus, I loved the light tapas instead of the oversized American meals. But I did like me some PAELLA (which chicken of course).

The history of the city is so interesting as well and we got to explore the Prado Museum with lots of Goya, other famous painters. I was excited to see the painting La Maja with clothes and without because I did a presentation on it in my Freshman year Spanish class. We were originally planned to go to the Palacio Real, but the King and Queen had a scheduled visit which cancelled our plans. I took a fiesta after visiting the museum, but I am so jealous of those who didn’t and ran into the King and Queen while exploring the city! How cool is that?
During our time in Madrid, we took a day trip to Toledo and then visited El Escorial on the way home. See the following posts!