Half a month and I'm still alive!

I've been in Madrid for fifteen days, but I've only had three days of classes.  That's frightening.  What have I been doing with my life, you ask?  Well, a lot of night roaming, and a lot of sleeping.  Probably more of the latter.  Although I don't have class Mondays and Wednesdays, I tend to meet up at the school with friends to grab lunch and do homework.  It almost makes me feel like I should just take classes on those days anyway.  But eventually I'll probably start traveling through the weekend into Monday so it will come in handy I presume.  I'm starting to get a feel for the work load now.  For every Art History class, I'll generally need to read a very wordy article and write a 2-page summary.  So far, our mechanics of solids professor has been giving us 1 problem per night.  And our Dynamics professor gave us a very lengthy, 18-problem assignment, with over a week to work on it.  The assignment is really challenging though.  We spent all day Wednesday and today working on it, and we're only halfway done.  I haven't gotten any homework in Astronomy yet, and I don't think he ever assigns any work.  Sweeeeet!  And VaST is usually just reading a chapter or so, and then taking notes on the reading.  It's a fairly manageable course load.

Now, for the exciting part of my life in Spain.  Usually we only go out on nights that we don't need to wake up early the next morning, i.e. Tuesday night, Thursday night, and sometimes Sunday night.  It's hard to coordinate though, because normal people have classes Mondays and Wednesdays. Tuesday night we explored Asuman's side of town.  We went to a place called Penelope's.  Then, on Thursday, we were supposed to go to this place called Joy, which is apparenty THE place to go, especially on Thursday nights.  I got myself and my friends onto an entry list.  But then I forgot my ID, so all my friends got in without me :(  Instead, Sam F-K and I went to another nearby bar for the night.  It was a sad, sad night.

We had two day trips this weekend: Escorial/Valle De Los Caídos, and Salamanca.  They were both very beautiful places.  I have to say, though, all these places are starting to look sort of the same, as gorgeous and as historical as they are.  I wish we could have spaced them out over the span of the semester.  I have pictures from these trips as well, and you can check them out on my facebook.

Last night, well... last night was interesting.  There's a karaoke bar near a few of my friends that they've been wanting to go to.  We looked into going last night, but it was closed.  So we tried finding other karaoke bars on google, and found one called "Karaoke Hana Bana."  We all met up, spent about 30 minutes trying to find the place, and then once we found the address, we found what appeared to be an apartment entrance.  It was just a hallway. No signs, or anything.  We were a little skeeved out so we went to a Tapas bar for a while and then tried coming back around midnight.  Then all of the sudden, the place TRANSFORMED into a karaoke bar.  They put up a huge sign and put out glowing palm trees and disco lights.  We were very confused.  So we walked inside.  It was NOT what we were expecting.  It was a tiny place, and there was no karaoke going on at all.  In fact, it was a gay bar.  There was a drag queen.  And some of us were hit on.  We later found out that we were on the outskirts of the gayest part of Madrid.  We did not stay very long, needless to say. But it was an experience. And that's what I'm here for, after all.
 
Future Updates:
So tomorrow, my first and last classes are cancelled, meaning I get an extra-short day! Yay :) I love sleeping in.  Maybe tomorrow night we'll go to the REAL karaoke bar.  Also, I'm going with seven other friends to Granada for the weekend! I cannot wait to explore!  Anna is visiting friends in London in February, and I'm trying to go with Asuman.  While there, I'm also planning on meeting up with my friend, from home, Karin.  That would be great, especially since I haven't seen her in forever! I'm not sure exactly what my other travel plans are, but Aaron wants to go to Hungary and Romania in March.  Anna and Donovan are going to the Canary Islands in March with their class, and a bunch of us are trying to go as well, but my family will be visiting then.  Maybe they'll come to the Canary Islands with me? :)  We have our Lafayette trip to Toulouse in early March, and then Morocco from the end of March into April.  March will definitely be a busy month for me.

I think it makes more sense for me to update on a weekly basis, because there's really nothing interesting to talk about until the weekend has already passed.  So I might reserve my Monday nights for updates like this one.. as long as I'm not swamped with homework!

Here's to week number three!