4th Day

Once again I woke up later than I had intended.. becoming a trend I suppose but I guess I need my sleep. After I got ready I went on the computer to try to organize something to do today to no avail.. its impossible to organize a big group to do something in Madrid I realized.. especially college students in the first week of being abroad... and without really using phones because of the cost... :( I'll deal with it. After failing to coordinate plans Eugenia's daughter came over with her 3 sons Pablo, Angel, y Eventually I met up with Jeff and James at el Parque Retiro. I had never been there before.. took a lot of photos which I'll update weekly on Wednesdays from now on. This weeks photos and videos are going to be great..
Retiro is a beaatiful park in the center of Madrid and it's enormous. There is a big lake in the center (man made) but still very pretty with people on row boats around a large statue in the center. There was a random army man that didnt move for his job until you paid him.. a couple mickey mouses and a lot of venders. We then went over to The Palace of Madrid which is by the Opera House and is once again beautiful and enormous. Maybe the prettiest building in Madrid, but there are so many it's hard to judge. Europe is so different than the United States in so many ways. There isn't the hustle and bustle of a large city like NYC or even Boston although it is almost as large as NYC and definitely as many people as Chicago or even Toronto although the buildings are much shorter.
So after meeting up with Jeff and James we walked over to the Madrid Opera House which is right next to a huge palace and a beautiful courtyard. After walking around and exploring for awhile we met up with some other BC students and before we knew it, it was almost 5 and Jeff, James, Amanda, Trish and I met over at Sol to meet up with the ESN (Erasmus Student Network I think) international students and we did a huge scavanger hunt around the city which gave us a chance to see the city and get a feel for it while at the same time getting to know students from around the world. It's almost like going back to Freshmen year of college where everyone has their doors open and everyone is introducing themselves to each other. I just hope that the "doors" don't close after awhile and that people don't form cliques.. We did a whole array of different activities and we used my camera to record them thankfully.. We passed an apple around our group of 20 or so using our mouths.. not exactly sanitary but that's alright I didn't get sick. We also had to chug a bottle of champagne as a group.. Nicholas, our elected group leader from California selected 4 brave souls for the task. 5 people in the group had to stuff their mouthes with cookies and then say "Tres tristes tigres comieron trigos en un plato de trigos... i forgot the rest.." We had to do the macarena at a specific location, find a fast food place and pretend to eat hamburgers.. and lastly we also had to all pose for a picture jumping in the air and everyone all 20 or 25 of us had to be in the air at the same time.. that posed a loooot of difficulty but it all worked out in the end. We ended up getting 5th in the competition although Piero, our ESN leader, lied to us during the competition I think, saying we were almost in the lead.. it was all in good fun. Afterwards we relaxed in the famous Plaza Mayor with about 150 of us and talked. I have made a bunch of great friends from France, Germany, and Poland. There are tons of germans here.. I think it's a very common for German students to study abroad several times. It's very interesting to see the various similarities that exist between us although we are all from so far away and are all so very different. I can't wait to get to know them all better and it's sometimes very frustrating because conversation is very constrained at the moment because of all our varying and intermediate spanish levels. But soon... I hope very soon.. I'll be good enough to talk about whatever I want and hold some deeper conversations and hear all their stories and share mine, because I'm sure theirs are very very interesting and from what I can tell of their personalities.. they are going to be all very different. Tomorrow we have a picnic in Retiro and everyone is going to bring a popular food from their country.
A smaller group of us then went over to a Museo de Jamon (ham museum) to get some cheap sandwiches and some drinks.. the Spanish people are obsessed with ham.. it's kinda abnormal. Later we got some sangria and talked for awhile before they had to leave to catch their buses which stopped running at midnight. I then met up with some BC kids and went to Joy for the night.