maravillosa madrid: sister from another mother

You probably looked at the title of this entry and thought what in the world? Well the weekend that the others went to Paris, I ended up spending a lot of time with Nery (UC Merced). First of all, she's awesome. Second of all, I love her because she's always smiling. Even when she trips and scrapes her knee, while she's saying, "Ouch, I scraped my knee, it's bleeding!" she's laughing as she says the word "bleeding." She is a very positive person and loves to laugh, so it's very uplifting to spend a day with her. We went shopping, ate lunch, did homework together, and explored Madrid.

On Friday, she had an excursion for her class, but afterward we met up at Gran Via, one of the main streets where all the shops are, and we got some frozen yogurt with fruit and granola - SO GOOD. Then we shopped for a bit (don't worry parents, I didn't buy anything) and went to Lavapies, my barrio, to get a doner kebab for 3 euro. We ended up sitting in the empty restaurant at our table in the back, and we did our homework together while a Bollywood movie played in the background. It was awesome.

At Retiro

On Saturday we wanted to go to the Museo Arqueologico Nacional, but when we got there, turns out it was under construction. We were kind of disappointed, but we decided to walk around. We ended up walking around Parque del Retiro. The only times I had been there, I was running, so this time I had a chance to actually walk around and take pictures. It is seriously HUGE. We ended up walking around the monument thing (don't know what else to call it) and sitting on the steps and looking at the lake. As we watched the people row their boats around, we had a deep conversation about our pasts (hardships, boyfriends, school, girl stuff) and talked about what we want to do in the future. It was really nice getting to know her a little better. When we were talking we realized that we had a lot in common, and that's when she called me her sister from another mother. Seriously, I love that girl.

It was about lunchtime then, so we went back to the frozen yogurt place and got another delicious snack. While we were sitting there, we met this lady who was from a university in Indiana. She was the head of the abroad program, and she was checking out Madrid and trying to see what the students can do there. She asked us for recommendations, so we told her all the hot spots in Madrid and made a list for her. It was really cool, we felt like locals!

The next day we went to El Escorial with Nic, but I'll save that for another day :) In the meantime, here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure.