Seasoned Vets

[Written Sunday, May 18]

Well, I think the term that Webster uses for feelings like these is ¨wow.¨

My fellow pond-hopper and roommate is named Aaron, he is exceptional. We met playing soccer and I talked him into the trip to Espana with me. As some of you may know, we are dominating life in the Apartment (more on that later, promise!).

As many of you know, I had the opportunity to live in China for a while during my senior year of high school. If you want to learn how to travel, go to Asia. I continue to use my well-learned travel skills (I NEVER got lost in Asia, ok, maybe I did, but my mom is reading this and their is no reason to alarm her!) today and Aaron and I decided to go on an excursion...

Aaron and I decided that since we had the day off on Sunday that we would be adventurous and figure out how to get to Madrid. Since neither of us were at orientation, this proved that it would be a challenge, but hey, we have pseudo college degrees and wear sunglasses so what is the big deal?

We left our Apartment and headed for the train station and made a ground-breaking discovery: the automatic ticket machines have an English option! After a short celebration we looked at a map (which was in Spanish, I said a celebration, not a party) and figured out that we needed to get off a Atocha. Tickets, check. Seats, check. Correct stop, check. Wow, we are really, really smart. Una problema, we were in a train station that was attached to the Metro station (that is a subway if you don´t habla español). Never fear, we were told by MaMa that we needed to get to ¨Sol¨, which is the center of downtown Madrid. So, with DaVinci Code-like grace, we deciphered the map and rode the subway to Sol. Check, check.

The city was brilliant. It was fascinating how the old architecture (we are talking 1600-1800) was mixed with the modern, one of our many observations [top ten list of differences is drafted and on the way...]. After many pictures and endless adventrues down alleys and tunnels, we made our way back to Sol.

We plan on revisiting Madrid multiple times before our tenure is up, why waste our truly amazing discovery of the Train (renfe) and the Subway (metro).