My first month in Spain!

HEY EVERYONE!!!!

Sorry I am barely writing to everyone, but I have been super busy! I will try and catch everyone up on my amazing experiences I have had thus far. Well…I am alive and well and living in Spain!!! I love it so much here, and everyday I have come to love and appreciate it even more. There definitely is a special and unique vibe that is here, and I don’t know that I will ever be sick of this place. Madrid is such a lively place and people are always in a hurry, or though it seems. I live just outside of Madrid in a little city called Alkala. It’s like Mesa is to Phoenix so we are not far at all from the crazy city, Madrid!! I love this town that I am in, and I love the atmosphere of it. I have found that there are lots of old people here! It is so funny, because when they get ready to go out, they are decked out from head to toe in heels, big fur coats, and bling that you may mistake as the sun shining when you look at it!haha But seriously, even there hair and makeup is perfect. They dress like this just to go to the store! It is crazy, but I love it, and want to be just like that when I am old.;)


In Madrid at the Puerta del Sol. I love this Plaza!


Mariachi band in Spain??...I though that was a Mexican thing?haha


Parque Buen Retiro...this park is HUGE and absolutley amazing!!!!


Just hanging from a tree at the Parque buen Retiro in Madrid!:)


At mi casa en Alcala...sometimes our dinners are very interesting...


The Metro in Madrid!

Always great entertainment on the streets of Madrid!



My friend Alex and I live with a wonderful lady named Luisa. She is so sweet, and does everything for us. She cooks for us, cleans, and even washes all of our clothes! It has been great! My mom already told me not to get to use to this life style.haha Luisa is married to a man named Raphael, but we hardly ever see him. They have three sons that live just below our apartment/condo. All three boys are really cute and are here usually for every meal. They are 26, 22, and 19; Luisa seriously does everything for them as well. Like I said she is wonderful, and we definitely got lucky to have her as our “Madre” in Spain.

The nightlife is what it is all about here. It is still weird to me to be out at about at 11:00p.m and see families taking a stroll in the Plaza, or just around town. Even our dinners are super late. We usually don’t have dinner till about 10:00 at night! Oh, and everyday there is a siesta (nap) that happens right after lunch. Everything, and I mean everything closes down for this time in the day. A few times Alex and I went over to the school after lunch to get some HW done, and everything seriously looked like a ghost town! Don’t worry though, because at 11:00pm or later things are always hoppin.:) The Discotecs are so much fun here! Those usually don’t get started till about 2:00 or three in the morning, and then they close at about 7:00am!!! The Spaniards really know how to party!! We have gone dancing numerous times since we’ve been here. My favorite thing is when the natives hit on me at the Discotecs. I have found that they know three phrases in English. They are… “What is your name”, “You are very beautiful”, and my favorite, “Kiss me”.haha It is so funny! When I tell them no, they try to explain how it is very common in Spain to let them kiss you. Now don’t get me wrong, when a super attractive one comes up to me and asks me to kiss him I’ll be all for it!haha;)

Anyways, classes are going good and my teachers are very entertaining. My Spanish teacher’s name is Jesus, and my conversation teacher’s name is Angelica. I swear that Jesus thinks that our whole class is full of idiots. The first day of class he was speaking in Spanish so fast and then stopped and asked if everyone understood him. All of us just looked at him blankly not responding. He started laughing and then started to speak much slower. It has been a struggle trying to learn Spanish when I hardly understand what the instructor is teaching/saying to me. It is rough, but I have noticed that I understand a little more everyday. My conversation teacher Angelica is so sassy and is super fun. She likes to yell out “ojo classe!”…and point at her eye to get all of our attention. It makes me laugh every time.haha

This is part of the University where we go to school!

One of the first things we went and saw when we got here was the Prado Museum, which is the most famous museum in the world. It was amazing and there was so much to see! We obviously didn’t get through it just in that one trip, but we plan on making many more trips to finish the entire museum.


We also went on one of our first small trips to Toledo. Toledo is AMAZING!!!! There was something so calm and peaceful about it. It is def. not like Madrid, but has it’s own unique fun and enchanting feel to it. We took the bullet train there, which was really neat, because it only took us 30min to get to Toledo from Madrid. Once we got there, we walked up to the city from the train station. The walk was so pretty, and approaching Toledo was even more beautiful. Toledo is all on a hill and is actually pretty small. You could def. see pretty much all of it in one day. All the buildings are so old and the atmosphere is so soothing. I loved all of the little walkways, and the amazing views we were able to see. The Toledo Cathedral put me in awe…so so beautiful! It is so amazing and unfathomable to me how something like this was put together so long ago without all of the machines and technology we have today. Absolutely incredible are about the only way to describe this Cathedral. All the detail in the gold, wood, floor, ceilings, paintings, architecture, just so incredible! Me and a few other kids from the group were able to attend mass in the amazing Cathedral, which was a way cool experience. The rest of the day we just wandered the streets of Toledo. We meet an old man at a little park we stopped at. He was seriously the cutest thing ever! Alex(my roommate) and Kyndall(friend) were sitting on the bench where he came and sat down, and Cali(friend) and I were swinging. When he was talking to Alex, he asked her if we were her daughters!!haha It was so funny!!!!! Later in the evening we went out to dinner, and we ended up paying way too much money for crappy service, and not so good food that ended up being too expensive! I hate how in Europe they refuse to give you a glass of water, because they want to charge you for a bottle of water! Anyways, bad experience with the Spanish food in Toledo!:( After dinner we stopped at a little corner market, and bought some candy and little goodies. A group of us were standing right outside the store and a van was flying through the streets! All of a sudden I heard a scream come from Alex, and a huge thud as the van passed quickly past us. Then, I hear Cali yell “OMG!....I just got hit by a car!!”haha I started to laugh so hard!!...She was fine, but we all laughed about it for a while! She got whacked in the back by the sidecar mirror. The Europeans are crazy drivers, and have no patience at all!



This was the old man that we met in Toledo and became good friends with us. He was the one that asked Alex if we were her daughters!haha










Something really cool that we did this past week was we were able to go to the temple and perform baptisms for the dead. It was one of the best experiences that I have had in awhile. The Madrid Temple is so beautiful and I loved the way I felt inside. There is definetly nothing like the way I feel when I am in the House of the Lord. It was really neat, because this was my first time doing baptisms in Spanish and Portuguese. It was quite an amazing experience, and I can’t wait to go back.:)





There is a little pastry shop that we have discovered in Madrid “La Mallorquina”, and it’s becoming deadly to us. We eat at least two a day! They are seriously a bit of heaven. So moist, flaky, and perfectly sweet…YUM!!!! I honestly have never tasted something so wonderful!

Yesterday we woke up and went out on a hike with a few other kids from the group. It was so much fun. At first it took us awhile to find the trail, but we ended up kind of making our own up the mountain. We ended up having to take off our sox and shoes and crossing this pretty large river. It was seriously the longest walk of my life, and not to mention nasty water and slimy river ground. I was scared that I was going to slip while going across and falling in the freezing/nasty water. The hike it self was pretty tough and I was really tired once we got to the top. It was strait incline to the top…pretty intense! It was beautiful at the top, and we could see everything. It was way cool, and we ended up eating our lunches up on top, and taking a nap. It was great!:)

This was the long/FREEZING ice river we had to cross!!





This weekend and the rest of the week has been Carnival here. There have been lots of fun Parades around town, and the people here are all dressed up in costumes. The Madrid streets are much more crowded and a little more crazy than usual because of all the fun events that are going on. Carnival is not nearly as crazy here as it is in Brazil or other parts of the world. Well anyways, I just wanted to share with everyone a little bit of what I have been doing here this past month in Spain!!! I will be much better at keeping this thing updated. We go one our first big trip on Tuesday to Andalucia. I am super excited! We will head first to Mérida, see the ruins and the museum, and then we will head on to Seville that night. We spend two nights in Seville, and then head to Córdoba for a night, then to Granada for a night. I will tell everyone all about it when I get back!!:)