First Weekend in Madrid

my apartment from the sky...thanks Dad for sending me this!
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After a nice buffet-style breakfast at the hotel with the other study abroad students, it was time to meet our host families!!!

Ashley and I ended up in the same family, as we had requested.  Our host mom or señora is named Esther, a very friendly woman.  We live with her husband (whose name we still don´t know) and her two kids, Emilio and Natalia.  Emilio is 14 years old, a hockey player, and adorable and funny, always smiling and joking around.  Natalia is 21 years old and works in una discoteca on the weekends, so she stays out all night and sleeps all day.  At first I could barely understand a word of what the family was saying and felt pretty intimidated whenever I tried to talk, since I knew my spanish was so bad that they could barely understand me.  They talk very fast and with accents that I am not used to, since I am used to hearing Latin American Spanish.  They also have different expressions and exclamations that I am not used to.

it was time to meet our host families

front of my apartment building
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This weekend we mainly just hung out with the family, got to know them, ate and watched TV with them.  They watch a lot of TV, even while they´re eating, and they eat a lot of oily foods.  For lunch she often gives us a bowl of salad with about an inch or two of olive oil pooled at the bottom and every lettuce leaf drenched in oil.  I guess olive oil is good for you, but I prefer a little less.  She also feeds us a ton of food at every meal and there´s no way we can possibly eat that much.

el parque
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The house is actually a big apartment, on the 3rd floor of an apartment building.  All of us have our own rooms, so it´s a 5 bedroom apartment.  It looks out on a gorgeous courtyard.  It is right across the street from El Parque del Buen Retiro, a humongous and gorgeous park with fountains, rose gardens, statues and cool buildings all over the place and a huge lake in the middle with rowboats.  It´ll be a great place to run.  Also we live right next to two bus stops, one that takes us directly to the metro/train station that we take to class, and another that takes us to Sol, or the center of Madrid.  The public transportation system here is quite extensive and easy to use.

yo en el parque en la nieva
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On Sunday, I woke up extremely early (due to the jet lag) and it was raining.  But a little while later, I looked out again and it was snowing!  It only snows occasionally in Madrid and the snow melts pretty fast.  Ashley and I went out to el Parque del Retiro to explore.  On our way out we saw Emilio walking the dog Rita, and we had a snowball fight!  The park was gorgeous, even in the snow and rain.  We did a lot of exploring and even got lost, but only explored a fraction of it since it´s so huge.  I heard the place is normally packed with people on weekends but not today since it was snowing.

mi cuarto
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The rest of the time, we hung out in the apartment, took siestas and watched spanish television with the family.  I figured it would help me with my comprehension.  We saw Nadal (from Spain) win the tennis championships and we also watched part of Las Goya, the spanish Oscars.  We couldn´t watch the superbowl though because it wasn´t on anywhere :(

We gave the family our host gifts Sunday night and they loved them.  Esther looked through Ashley´s Texas book and seemed very interested, and the whole family liked the chocolate footballs and were very curious as to what Peanut Brittle was, but they tried it and liked it a lot.