lions and tigers and bears oh my!

It is really strange how long I've been living in Madrid now and as much as I love this experience, it is really making me appreciate home more.  I wouldn't say Madrid is starting to feel like home, but it definitely feels nice to come home to Carmen's cooking and a nice comfy bed all after a long weekend of traveling.  However, I am in the awkward homesick phase where as much as I wanna travel Europe and study abroad here, I wanna bring the American culture with me and my friends and family from back home.  I'm ready to live in my own house or dorm room again and not be a guest in someone else's home.  I'm ready to eat whenever I want, whatever I want.  Carmen's an awesome cook, but my real mom is better.  I want pets in my house again that actually like me and sleep with me at night.  Alexandra is an awesome sister but it's driving me crazy not being with my real sister and having her come visit me at Duke.  I'm missing basketball season.  Enough said.

But my homesick rant is over.  And I am by no means hating on Madrid.  More like loving on American and my homes there (which include Charlotte with my family and Duke).  This is only the halfway awkward homesick transition period.  I sure it is just a phase, hopefully.

Anywaysssss, this week was midterm week.  So fun.  But Friday we took a program trip to Toledo, which was actually very fun and beautiful.  The city was really cool and we did a lot of tours into Cathedrals and Temples and what not.  To me it seemed like a classic, olden days city structured just like you would imagine an old city to look like.   A beautiful river running around it, with the city life high up above the water, and mountains and hills all around.  Real pretty.  It was a nice trip with everyone.

So Pretty!

Also, yesterday I knocked quite a few cultural activities off of my Madrid list.  Brittany Cohen (my roommate next year at Duke) is visiting this weekend.  Yayyy!  Me and Charlie met up with her and her friend and went to the Madrid zoo!  Ahhhhhh I love the zooo.  It was an awesome one too, with almost every species of animal you can imagine.  We had a blast.  There were lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And pandas and owls :) and reptiles and dolphins.  It was very fun!  We also rode the Teleferico over to the zoo which is a big gondola lift that takes you over Madrid.  It's way better than taking the metro.  

After the zoo we went to Plaza Mayor where there was another strike, surprise surprise.  So we headed over to the Reina Sofia museum where we wandered around and saw the Guernica painting by Picasso.  It was really cool.  I never realized how huge the actual painting is.  It was a very very cultural day.  Knocked a lot of things off my list.

The night wasn't very cultural.  The goal was to botellon in the streets outside with everyone.  However, it was like 2 degrees outside and that plan failed.  So we went to Dubliners, the most American bar in all of Madrid.  For some reason we end up there a lot haha.  And almost every duke kid abroad is visiting this weekend so we all met up there.  It was a great time and I saw so many people.  I did not want to pay the expensive fee to get into the really cool club called Kapital so I ditched that and was able to get home a relatively early time and watched Star Wars when I got back?  Random, but I woke up and star wars was playing on my computer.  Smash makes good decisions in the late night.  

I then slept in real nice and late and now I have my first basketball game with the varsity team here in Madrid :) Wish me luck!! Should be interesting.   The coach is a nutcase, but he is great.  I'm pumped woo!

Peaceeee<3