So this was the room I stayed in at my homestay. I stayed with a lovely woman named Victoria and her maid (of like 40 years?) Fermina. The bedrooms I was in was unbelievable. As you can tell, there's room for a desk, loveseat, chair, 2 bookshelves, AND a queen sized bed. This is the biggest room I have ever lived in. Also, yes, you are right, that is a balcony in my bedroom. Sadly I moved out :(
There's not much of a story here. This is a thing near a main plaza in Barcelona. I just thought it was embarrassing and therefore funny how long it took me to figure out this is a thermometer. I would love to have that outside my room.
One of the stranger things to happen to me in Madrid. One of the first nights I went out on the town I went to this bar called Teatro Joy Eslava. The bar itself is pretty sweet because they took an old theatre and renovated it into a night club. Anyway, the night was going great, yadda yadda. I come back from the bathroom to see a full-on lingerie show going on in the middle of this club. Here you can see one of the least risque photos that were taken, as well as how every square inch of stage space was taken by a guy oogling. Interesting twist: there were rumors these models were actually cross-dressing.
So this is my friend Nate. What's more important is the hat he is wearing. I was at a tapas bar with a few friends and a magician walks up to us, and we said, "oh no we don't really have the money to pay you". But he responded, "no no, I will do my act then you give me what you want and if it is nothing that is fine". This dude was one of the best goddamn magicians I have ever seen!! It was incredible! I obviously can't describe his jokes, but this Moroccan magician (alliteration amirite?) was talented with cards, chains, toy balls, and that hat.
This was a really cool thing I did while abroad. In Madrid, they just opened a temporary exhibit on the Titanic. It is really well done with a lot of original artifacts, compelling storytelling, and stellar depictions. Quick aside: I listened to the audio tour in Spanish and whenever there was a little info piece about an interesting passenger on the boat, the narrator would always end with something along the lines of "but his dreams sunk with the boat" or something else just as heartless. ANYWAY, that pictures is of those two handprints on the ice. In the exhibit, they had a machine you could put your hands on to feel what the water in the Atlantic felt like to those passengers who were not on lifeboats when they sank. My friend and I tried to compete with each other for who could keep their hand on it the longest. Needless to say I won. But even I only lasted at most around 5 minutes. Which is absolutely insane considering it was only my hand and only for 5 minutes. The machine gave me an appreciation for the harshness of the titanic and sympathy for its victims.
One of the first weekends in Madrid, a bunch of us took a commuter train out to the suburbs and went hiking in the mountains out there. It was an absolute blast. As a hiker, I hate to stick to the pre-marked trail, so I convinced a few of us to go off the trail and try to scale the mountain. I am really happy to say I did successfully summit the one I climbed. In addition, we had fun going up and finding bigger rocks to climb up and take pictures on. As we got higher up the mountain, fewer people wanted to keep going. By the end, it was only me and the girl from the Titanic hands. I saw this humongous rock in the distance and I said to her, "I'm calling my shot, that's my rock". And even took a picture to prove I wasn't lying. And as you can see from the second picture, I followed through.
Through a connection of my dad, I was introduced to a man who works in Madrid organizing youth tournaments for some of the best teams around the world. Recently, I was lucky to be invited to come watch one of these tournaments where Atlético Madrid, Rayo Vallecano (another Madrid team), a select team from Japan, NYC FC, and more all had academic teams playing. It was amazing to watch high caliber soccer even at such a young age. I think these 14-year-olds were better than 20-year-old me. It was incredible. BUT this picture is not about them. The tournament was held at the Spanish National Team training facility. It was unbelievably cool to see their pitch (and even walk on it) as well as check out the hotel the players stay at and the other amenities in the area.
COPENHAGEN HAS CUSTOMER FEEDBACK SURVEYS IN THE BATHROOM. I REPEAT. COPENHAGEN HAS CUSTOMER FEEDBACK SURVEYS IN THE BATHROOM. That is absolutely how you get to be one of the happiest countries in the world. I felt like my needs were completely attended to and they cared about my satisfaction. Take notes Bern.
Maybe a little cliché, but I did meet my girlfriend - Courtney, who is also studying abroad - in Paris for Valentine's day. The weekend was incredibly romantic, and the Eiffel Tower lived up to its hype. A couple of interesting things here. One, I got an opportunity to use my Spanish outside of Spain when I spoke to a Mexican family (I think, based on their dialect) and we took pictures for each other (they took this one). Two, as we got closer there were an insane amount of trinkets for sale. One of the guys had a giant light up Eiffel Tower and he was like "50 cents" so I stopped him. Turns out he was only selling the little keyrings for 50 cents, the other thing was 30 euro. I still ended up getting the trinket AND 2 keychains for 5 euros. Finally, as Courtney and I were enjoying a romantic evening with each other, there were other salespeople trying to sell roses and would stop at nothing to try to make a sale. Literally multiple guys tapped me on my shoulder as we were kissing. Another guy put the rose in her hand and was like "take it take it", so we walked away and then he came back and said, "please give me a little". I was annoyed so I gave him 50 cents then he was like this isn't enough so I just left. OHH, and I told her I love her ;)
Finally, I will round out some photos with Carnival in Cadiz, a city in Southern Spain. I went on this trip through DMM to celebrate the festival (like Mardi Gras) in Cadiz. Psssst... that wasn't exactly water in that super soaker. Anyway, it was an absolutely incredible experience to see Spaniards of all ages decked out in costume. The atmosphere was incredible and the people I met were really lovely. Plus the music was amazing. To top it all off I had to run around the city for 30 minutes to find toilet paper because I realized too late the public bathroom was missing it.
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