Good food and going out!

Yesterday my sixth and FINAL roommate Lindsey arrived! We seriously have a full house here. But it's not too crazy for the most part except when everyone is all in one place for lunch and dinner. The kitchen isn't very big and the hallways can only fit one person moving through, so it's a little bit of a challenge to move eight people around this apartment! But mealtime is really fun. We all sit together and talk and eat for waaaay longer than we ever do in the States, which is SO nice. Yesterday we had zucchini soup-- I never would have guessed that's what it was, it tasted just like potato soup. And just now for lunch we had something kind of like a broccoli cheddar soup. PLUS Blanca bought me gluten free bread; what a sweetie. Everyone eats bread with every meal so it was nice to have my own!

Last night the majority of the students here from DePaul met up in the Plaza del Sol. Lindsey and I went together and left the house around 11 and took the train by ourselves. We had a few mishaps along the way... First when we tried to leave, we couldn't figure out how to open the door to the apartment building on the first floor. Apparently it locks even from the inside after a certain hour and even when we tried to use the key we couldn't get it open to get out onto the street. So we had to walk up five looooooong flights of stairs to ask one of our other roommates Colleen how to get out. By the time we got up there in our dresses and leggings, we were panting. Very attractive. So Colleen explained to us that we have to push a buzzer while we're unlocking it. We walked alllllll the way back down and tried again. Lindsey pushed the buzzer while I unlocked. We finally got out of the building but I'm  not quite sure how you're supposed to accomplish that feat when you're by yourself...

So then we took the Metro for the first time. Colleen gave us perfect directions but the street signs are impossible to see here. Instead of being above the traffic lights, they're just these tiny signs posted about 20 feet up on the walls of buildings. We didn't get lost, we just had to look very carefully for the right street. We made it to the train station and our route to the Plaza del Sol consisted of two trains, the red and the purple. We took 70 million escalators down, down, down (well three actually, but it felt like 70), and made it to the purple line. We took that one stop and the doors of the train opened for us automatically. But then we had to find our way to the red line, which is in the same station but in a totally different part of it. So we went back up those 70 escalators and wound our way around underground until we found it. By the way, the trains and train stations are SO MUCH NICER than the ones in Chicago. I'm going to get spoiled! We took the red line to the Plaza but instead of the doors opening automatically, we had to push this little green button. Kind of confusing.

Metro Lovin'

But the good news is that we made it! And we met up with everyone and all went out together. So much fun :) The nightlife in Madrid is LOCO, I'm not sure if I can keep up with Spain-- everyone stays out until six or seven in the morning! Lindsey and I got home around 5:00am (good thing we don't have class yet and yes, Mom, we took a cab home) and went straight to bed! It was so great to get together with everyone and we all had such a good time together!

Plaza del Sol



Dance Break!

Normal.

Today we're going to go to the park and rent little boats to sail out on the lake I told you about! Pictures to come!