I love 'MERICA.

Holaaaaaa!!! :)

SO as you can see from the title of this blog, I was/still kinda am missing the best country in the world, which we all know is the United States of AMERICA. Well obviously Monday was 4th of July and considering that means nothing to the Spaniards, I was reppin' for 'Merica. I had my American flag shirt (that I bought here) and wore it LOUDLY and PROUDLY because I love being American!!! Anywho, after wearing my American gear to class, I had to come back and work on some papers for one of my classes. However, Abby, Ali, Taylor and I decided that we were going to go shopping, so they met us at our Metro stop. We were going to go explore and shop, but we ran into a very appetizing sign: daiquiris. We decided to go in and get one.. Well afterwards we decided to get some Sangria, so 3 of us split a pitcher.. After that it was just a lost cause. Taylor went back, and Abby, Ali and I continued on to this tavern by our place. They didn't have Sangria so I got a couple glasses of wine, keeping it classy as per usual. Abby and Ali got Tinto de Verano (wine and pop) and did a shot of this Black Vodka, it actually was pretty good! While we were at the tavern we called the guys and told them to meet us at Sol and we'd go out for 4th of July! So we headed to Sol and went to this bar that we learned about in my food and culture class, pretty sure I should have gotten extra credit for it, but whateves.. I obviously ordered Sangria there :) They were playing AMERICAN music, and it was awesome. We didn't stay out till 6 am like the locals :( But overall a great night! Here's Abby, Ali and I at the bar:

Welp, the next day we had art class sooo we had to drag ourselves there, and all we did was review.. and then review some more.. For it being an art class about works of art in the Prado Museum we sure learned a lot about the history of Spain. Yes they go together, but our teacher didn't even connect them. If I knew it was going to be a history class I would have taken the other one, BUT enough of that. After class, we came back to the psycho cleaning lady, Loli. We were pretty excited for lunch because we were hoping for Paella and we were starving, what did we have you ask? The same gross, bone, mystery meat, soggy potatoes, disgusting soup thing that she tried to serve us the first week we were here!!!!!! GROSS!!!!! You bet we skipped out that and ran to Burger King. Yes more fast food. Lo siento, but I was not feeling anything Spanish after seeing and tasting that nasty thing again. When we got to BK there was a ridiculous line, and as we're watching the BK screen with BK advertisements we see it say this:

Yes that says "Gracias America." You know what BK in Spain, YOU'RE WELCOME! And thank you America for creating fast food chains like BK and placing them within 4 blocks of the place I'm staying in Spain, you really are the best country, always looking out for me :) Well after my amazing meal, we went back to Puris and I unfortunately had to work on my papers since yesterday we uhhh got distracted. Fortunately I finished the papers!! I tried to start making a study guide for my exam on Thursday.. Did not work out as planned haha

Wednesday we had Art class, obvi. It was yet more review about history and useless information. After class I came back and worked on a study guide and took a nice siesta! Always important to siesta before studying, right? Well after the siesta, Abby and I tried to study our best, on and off for awhile.... Let's just say we stayed up late, but managed to find out that Facebook now has video chat, soo yeah.. Thanks for that distraction John! I ended up staying up until 4 and then had to get up at like 7:30 because a bunch of us decided to go to Nebrija early to study.

So after we crammed and got super anxious for the exam, we finally had to take it. It was as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I gave it my best try so we'll see what grade I get. After the exam, we had a going-away dinner with our teachers, Gabriela, and Dr. Ruiz at a restaurant in Retiro Park. It was pretty delicious! Plus there was Sangria so you bet we took advantage of that!! I tried Gazpacho for the first time!!

It was pretty interesting, it was tomato and vegetable soup, but cold. Mom you'd probably like it! Anyways I ordered the "Carribean" Hamburger for dinner. It would have been really good, except I spotted a few pieces of raw meat, so I chose to not get E. Coli, and plus I was really full from the bread, sangria, gazpacho, and the spaghetti that Hope gave me. We also got dessert, it was some hazelnut cake thing, that was tasty, but I was way too full to eat it :( Afterwards, Abby, Ali, Gabriela and I went shopping!!! I love shopping!! I got some pretty cute clothes :) I will be wearing them this weekend, obvi. Believe it or not, it's my last full night in Madrid!!! We leave for Granada tomorrow at 8 AM, yes AM. We'll be there until Sunday and won't get back until Sunday night, and my flight is at 9:30 AM on Monday.

Tonight's game plan: Botellon (pregame) and then head to the opening of this place called Open Air, it's some outdoor lounge near Retiro Park, and it doesn't open until 12:30. Should be a lot of fun :) Well time to pack for Granada and get ready for tonight!

See you guys in LESS THAN ONE WEEK!! :) Love you!!

Did we really just get kicked out??

Lo siento! I've been super busy this week and haven't had time to blog!

WARNING: This is another long post.

Not much happened on Monday and Tuesday, other than me trying to get all of my purse stuff taken care of. I had to call the Barcelona Police Station and make a statement and then had to go to the Madrid police station to pick it up. Thank god for Gabriela's help, because she set everything up and helped me with everything I needed to do. Art class was pretty boring, and we all got our exams back... The Spanish grading scale is different, but our teacher graded them pretty hard. I did pretty decent, I got a 75, which is a B on the Spanish scale, so I'll take it! I've also been busy this week working on my extra credit paper for that art class because I want an A (obvi!). Anywho I had my food and culture class twice this week, and the first day we went around to a bunch of places. Keep in mind it was 100 degrees out that day and we were walking around the whole time, it was brutal! People weren't joking when they said Madrid gets hot!! One of the places we went to for class was a convent that sold cookies and whatnot. It's kind of like a lazy Susan and you never see them, BUT the cookies were delicious, pretty sure they use holy water in them haha :) For the second food and culture class we went to some museum with prehistoric stuff, we're not really sure, whoopssss! We got out of class early, soo it was sweet!

On Wednesday night after class and whatnot we went to our usual Wednesday hangout- Euro shot night at O'Neills! Abby and I each bought a bottle of 2.50 Euro white wine, best decision! It was pretty good, I mean it was 2.50, so I'll take it! Before we went to the bar, our friend Ali, Abby and I went to our shady park and drank our classy wine. A bunch of us were at O'Neills and had a great time, as per usual :) We decided to make it an early night and catch the metro home, but Ali's roommates didn't come out, so we decided to just have her sleepover. Puri had no idea hahah She snuck out in the morning at like 7:30 to go back to her place (45 minute metro ride for her) because we had class at the Prado Museum at 12:30 that day... Here's a picture of me and my friend Laura at O'Neills:

Since Abby and I were missing the greatest country in the world, we decided to hit up McDonald's for breakfast before heading to the Prado haha It was amazing. I love 'Merica! Prado was pretty boring, as usual. Incase you can't tell, I'm really quite over the school part of study abroad, I'd like to only do the abroad part, por fa!

Anyways, we had class later that day for Ana's class (the museum thing), BUT it was our friend's Ariel's birthday SO we obvi had to go out for it even though we, for some reason that nobody understands, had class again at the Prado on Friday. For Ariel's birthday we decided to go to this place called Chapandaz, which is a cave bar! Well before we met up with everyone Abby and I drank another bottle of our 2.50 Euro wine on the way there, which was good yet again! Immediately we knew what drink we would be ordering- A 30 Euro fish bowl drink, that if I remember correctly was well worth the money :) This thing was literally 4-liters and just so ridiculous!! We were there for a decent amount of time, when all of the sudden we see one of our friends, who may or may not have been blacked out, getting escorted out of the bar for trying to pee somewhere that wasn't the bathroom hahah Here's a picture of me and my friend Rachel with our ginormous drink:

Eventually we all left Chapandaz, and decided to go to some bars in Sol.. This is where the night gets even sketchier: We somehow catch the Metro to Sol and get off and end up at this bar called Burboun Cafe, which I have ended up at before! I don't know exactly where it is, but I know it's an awesome bar!! It was free sangria and beer for girls, and 5 euro for guys. Although the next day we found out that one of our friends thought he was the only one getting drinks all night. He thought he had some special cup that was getting him free drinks all night hahahah Anyways after Bourbon Cafe, we got some pizza and crepes, and somehow our friends credit card got stolen!! Spain is really coming after us!! Not exactly sure how, but I called the police for my friend and got them to come meet us, and then she told them everything that happened.. After that we decided to just go back, but again Ali's roommates were somewhere else, so Ali ended up crashing at our place again hahah She ditched us again in the morning, since we had class the next day.. Here's me and some of the girls at the cave bar:

Friday's Prado class was even worse than Thursday's! Everyone was hungover and running on like a maximum of 4 hours of sleep haha we were a good looking crowd! Since the grad student on this trip, Josh was planning on having a party on Saturday, we decided to make Friday casual and a couple of us ended up going to see Transformers 3 in 3-D!!! In ENGLISH hahah Of course, the projector was messed up so it took them like 20-25 minutes to fix the projector. Oh and they have carmel popcorn at the movie theaters here, easily best idea to buy a huge tub of it!!

Unfortunately on Saturday we had an excursion to Acala (not even sure if that's the name). We had to meet at 8:30 but it was only a 30-minute bus ride. A bunch of people just decided not to go...so jealous of those people!!! This place was pretty darn boring. Not only was it boring, but we had like 3 and a 1/2 hours of free time, during siesta time, in a town that has nothing. Needless to say, we didn't do much except play our friends' ridiculous riddle/mind games.. After sitting around doing nothing (instead we could have been doing any of our three papers due this week), we went and toured some university.. I think it was the university Cervantes (Spanish writer) went to, BUT I'm not really sure because it was way too hot, and we all just wanted to leave. Finally we got back on the bus around 5:30 or 6 and headed back to civilization! By the time we got back, I just finished writing one of my papers and then had to start getting ready to go out that night. Here's me in front of the plaza:

The plan was to: go to Josh's and pregame, go to the Ice Bar and then go to Joy and stay out until the Metro opens back up (6AM) since it was pretty much our last night in Madrid since we have homework and an exam to study for this week. BUT anyways we ended up drinking too long at Josh's because by the time we got to the Ice Bar it was gunna close in 15 minutes, so it wouldn't have been worth the 15 Euro to get in. Abby and I took this picture in the lobby of the ice bar, it was as close as we could get to getting in!

SO we headed to Joy, a discoteca. It was 15 Euro to get in, but you at least got a free drink with it.. Joy was awesome!! There were two floors, and they were playing American music, there were dancers, plenty of bars to go to! It was just overall awesome!! Being under the influence, some of my friends tried to get on stage with the dancers, but were kicked off the stage haha This was like at the beginning of the night.. Now nobody is sure of why this next part happened, but it did. Around like 4:30 we all were escorted out of the club. We kept asking why and they wouldn't give us a reason. They were just hating on us Americans or something.. Since we were planning on staying out until 6, but nobody wanted to pay cover charges anywhere we just ended up getting delicious pizza and chilling in Sol until the Metro opened! It wasn't the ideal situation, but it was still fun :) Finally when the Metro opened we all went home and passed out. It was overall a really good night though! :) I know this isn't gunna be the best picture, but hopefully you can imagine from the picture what an epic time Joy was!!

Sunday- Not sure if you all remember, but on Sunday's there is this gigantic market that goes on that sells everything called El Rastro! Abby and I went earlier in the trip, but us and a couple people decided we were gunna go to Rastro and then to this restaurant for extra credit in our food and culture class. WELL I was quite tired, so I didn't end up going to Rastro bright and early with everyone, I chose to sleep for an extra hour or two, shower and then I went and met up with them and we all went to the restaurant and took pictures for extra credit. After we got back, we ate lunch and then I wrote one of my papers and took an hour siesta because like 25 of us went to a bullfight today!! At the ring two blocks from our apartment! How was it?? Ummm people weren't kidding when they said it was gruesome.. I was horrified watching the first one die, but I don't know why it just started getting easier to watch them.. We were also front row!! We were in the splash zone.. haha Just kidding, that'd be gross if they even had that.. Here's the inside of the ring (keep in mine I didn' zoom at all):

Now this next picture is zoomed, obvi!

It was definitely an experience and I'm glad I went, but I don't think I'd want to go to another one.. I think you guys are all caught up to speed now :)

Oh and because I'm American, and I LOVE America, I will be sporting my new American flag shirt in honor of the 4th of July!! 'MERICA!!!

Miss you guys so so much!!! I'll be home in one week!... ONE WEEK?!?! See you soon! I'll try to keep this week more updated!

Love you all :)