El fin de semana
Friday night, Sandra and I went out with some other students from App. The night life here is crazy. I think there are more people walking around after dinner than there are during the day. The bars usually open around 7 or 8am and don´t close until sometime between 4 and 6am. We definitely didn´t stay out that late. Our host family keeps telling us that we need to go out and experience Madrid´s night life. Apparently coming in at 2:30am is too early. We tried explaining to them that we need more sleep than they seem to need. Our family goes to bed around 1 or 2am and gets up around 7am.
Something that is very different here than in the states is alcohol. Like I mentioned earlie, bars open early in the morning. It´s perfectly normal to see people here having a beer at 10:00 in the morning.
Satuday, we slept until lunchtime (about 11 or 12 hours). It felt good to get a lot of sleep. After lunch, we went to this huge park in the southern part of the city, el Parque del Retiro. It´s beautiful. There were street performers there and people biking, roller blading, running, etc. I think we´re going to make the park a part of our daily schedule.
This morning, we got up early and went to El Rastro. It´s this huge flea market downtown. It´s a big touristy place.
This afternoon was very interesting and overwhelming. Coco´s daughter, Luisa, turned 15 today and a lot of extended family came over for lunch. It wouldn´t have been so bad if they had been speaking English. There were about 20 new faces speaking a language that I barely know. Sandra and I stayed off to the side. We explained to Rocio and Coco that it was overwhelming and they seemed to understand. We didn´t want them to think that we were being rude.
This last week has been very frustrating. Some days, I understand and can speak a lot, other days, I feel like I´ve never taken a Spanish class before in my life. I´m enjoying learning about the culture and seeing knew things though.
PS- There aren´t any pictures posted because I haven´t figured out how to post them and I don´t feel like trying to figure it out in Spanish. I´ll post them when I get home or later in the month when I know more Spanish. Sorry guys, you´ll have to use your imaginations for now. :)
Something that is very different here than in the states is alcohol. Like I mentioned earlie, bars open early in the morning. It´s perfectly normal to see people here having a beer at 10:00 in the morning.
Satuday, we slept until lunchtime (about 11 or 12 hours). It felt good to get a lot of sleep. After lunch, we went to this huge park in the southern part of the city, el Parque del Retiro. It´s beautiful. There were street performers there and people biking, roller blading, running, etc. I think we´re going to make the park a part of our daily schedule.
This morning, we got up early and went to El Rastro. It´s this huge flea market downtown. It´s a big touristy place.
This afternoon was very interesting and overwhelming. Coco´s daughter, Luisa, turned 15 today and a lot of extended family came over for lunch. It wouldn´t have been so bad if they had been speaking English. There were about 20 new faces speaking a language that I barely know. Sandra and I stayed off to the side. We explained to Rocio and Coco that it was overwhelming and they seemed to understand. We didn´t want them to think that we were being rude.
This last week has been very frustrating. Some days, I understand and can speak a lot, other days, I feel like I´ve never taken a Spanish class before in my life. I´m enjoying learning about the culture and seeing knew things though.
PS- There aren´t any pictures posted because I haven´t figured out how to post them and I don´t feel like trying to figure it out in Spanish. I´ll post them when I get home or later in the month when I know more Spanish. Sorry guys, you´ll have to use your imaginations for now. :)
posted by Rachel @ 12:30 PM
1 Comments:
At 4:06 PM,
Anonymous said…
I was just giving you a hard time about posting photos. You are doing a great job of painting verbal pictures :) With the night life and schedule of people in Spain, when do they ever get any work done?
The language will come - that's why you are there. We're keeping you in our prayers.
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