Getting into the Swing of things

Hola amigos.

Well I haven't really done that much since I last updated my blog. On saturday Miranda, Megan, Abby, Kat (Miranda's roommate) and I all went to La Sophia Reina, which is the modern art museum. I'm not a huge fan of walking around art museums for long periods of time but it was fun. It was really cool because we got to se La Guernica, which is one of Picasso's most famous paintings that depicts the suffering during the war. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures. It was still pretty cool though. We got to see some more of Picasso's work and some Dali as well. Of course there were a lot of other exhibits, some were interesting and some were just plain weird. I really liked an exhibit they had that was movies and photos, but that's because I'm more interested in photography than paintings and such. Over all it was a fun experience.

Sunday Megan and I were planning on meeting up with the same 3 as Saturday to go visit the El Prado, the other famous art museum in Madrid, but we were both super tired and lazy so we decided to do that another day. After lounging about for a good majority of the day, we ventured one metro stop over to check out the mall that they have there. It's called Principe Pio. But it was really cool that the mall was actually attached to the metro station, and it's still HUGE. We made it through about 3/4 of it though. They are having their huge after Christmas sales here in Madrid, so I definitely need to go back and buy some stuff.

Monday I had classes again. I'm starting to get into the swing of things here and establish a somewhat daily schedule. My roommates and I don't usually have a lot of homework so we have some nice bonding time at night. I am so happy with how everything with housing turned out here, I have awesome roommates and an amazing senora, who makes the most delicious food (Kelsi be ready for next year- I'm asking for recipes). I'll talk about each of my classes a little bit now that I have been going to them for a week now.

Spanish is not as bad I was afraid it would be. I don't dread going to this class and enjoy it most of the time. We have a nice class and I really like my teacher. She's really patient and very good at making sure we understand everything she's teaching us. The homework isn't too bad, although sometimes it takes me awhile to do it. We usually do some little activity and then have to write a mini speech about a certain topic that we will have to read to the class. I can already tell my speaking is getting better. The only downside is I have this class all 4 days at 10 am (and then I don't have class until 2:30 TR and 4 MW so I have annoyingly long breaks).

Theology is okay. I like my teacher, he's funny and he uses a lot of videos and articles to add onto what he is teaching us which I really like. We watched a song from the musical the Book of Mormon, and now I really want to see it. There are some things I find interesting and some things that are not so interesting. I guess it could be worse.

Theatre is turning out to be better than expected. I was a little nervous because I am awkward and self-conscious. But I realized we're all a little self-conscious so when we're all doing this goofy activity our teacher makes us do, we all look ridiculous. The class is actually way bigger than I expected as well. We have 20 students (8 are guys, which is more than the total enrollment of people last semester) so its pretty packed. But it allows for us to do a lot more interesting scenes so I'm excited. We have our first assignment, which is a very short scene (1 page back to back). I mostly have 1-3 word lines. Which I'm totally fine with to start out. I will keep you updated on how that goes.

Developmental Child Psychology is a little slow, but that's because were going over psychology basics which I have learned so many times. But I think this class will be practical in the real world and I'm interested to get deeper into the topic. Last class a guy almost fell out the window trying to close the shutters so there wouldn't be a glare on the screen. It was scary. But we will see what kinds of things I learn in this class.

Tuesday again I did a whole bunch of nothing. Yesterday (Wednesday) the Madrid Barcelona soccer game was on (which is basically the equivalent of any of the biggest rival teams playing). Megan and I wanted to go watch the game in a bar. Megan thought it started at 8 (the time we eat dinner) so we headed out after dinner. We wanted to go to the bar we went to when we went and got Sangria, but we walked there last time and we took the metro this time so we weren't exactly sure how to get there. We walked around aimlessly through the Sol area trying to find it. I took us the wrong direction (whoops). And by then it was almost 10 so we had given up seeing the game. But as we were wandering around for fun, we started walking down a random street. I saw a scantily dressed girl and I turned to Megan and said "She looks like a hooker!" and then all of a sudden we saw a similarly dressed girl about every 10 feet on both sides of the street. That's right folks, Megan and I had stumbled into Madrid's red light district. As soon as we realized where we were we turned right around and headed the opposite direction. We walked around a bit and by some miracle, I recognized where we were and figured out how to get to our bar! And by an even bigger stroke of luck, the game actually started at 10 so we missed about 10 minutes. We ordered margaritas and watched the game. It was 1-0 when we left at half time to meet up with some friends. Unfortunately, Madrid ended up losing 2-1.

We met up with our roommates and some of their friends at this place called Orange Cafe. International students got in for free and they had a free open bar for 2 hours. When we got there, we got some sangria, which pretty much just tasted like hawaiian punch and sprite. It was good and I only had 2 because I wasn't aiming to get drunk. It was a little strange going out on a school night. The lifestyle of Madrid is pretty much a 180 from my lifestyle at SLU. I never go out there. I prefer the movie nights, hanging out with friends, going out to dinner, etc. It was fun but I will probably just stick to going out on the weekends. We left at 1 so we weren't out for too long. Overall, I say our first night of going out for real was a success.

That's about it. Done with classes at 3:45 today, which is in about 2 hours. Then I have 3 days to chill. Not exactly sure what I'm going to do this weekend, but next weekend starts our traveling! We're going to Barcelona which I am excited for. Hope everyone is enjoying their new classes at school and having a good time.

Love,
Ash