The Rain in Spain Falls Gently on the Plain

   2 weeks ago we had Half-Term Break (like Mid-Semester/Fall Break) so I decided to fly over to Madrid, Spain to visit Jenny O'Toole, my Concordia roommate of 3 years, who is on the Fulbright Scholarship and is teaching English there for the year.  It was such an AMAZING week!  After landing around 1 am Saturday night and making the journey to her apartment in Central Madrid, we got up Sunday morning and met up with some of her friends to catch a bus to Toledo.

Holy Toledo!

  Out of the 9 friends that came with us, 2 of them spoke English.  Let's just say, I learned some Spanish rather quickly and Jenny was quite entertained by being a translator for all of us=) Toledo is such a beautiful place, we spent the day walking around in the sunshine exploring the Cathedral and all the fascinating architecture.  
   The rest of the week was filled with LOTS of adventure!  Jenny still had to work every day so while she was at school in the mornings, I got to sleep in and do some exploring on my own.  One of the first evenings she had some later classes so I ended up catching up with one of the guys that went with us to Toledo.  His name is Nestor and he spent a year as an exchange student in Canada a few years ago, so his English was great! He showed me The Palace, the Opera House, and Grand Via (the big main shopping street). In Spain, everything seems to come to life at night-it's incredible!  Although it took me a few days to get used to the 2 pm lunchtime and 10 pm dinner time, it was kinda fun having such a different schedule. Jenny and I also did a lot of walking at Parque Del Retiro, a HUGE park about 5 minutes from her place, and we took a bunch of pictures around there because the Autumn colors were so incredible!

Part of the gang at the Toledo Cathedral

   One of my highlights of the week was that it was Jenny's birthday that Thursday I was there.  We'd planned to have some of her friends over to her apartment Friday night so we spent a few hours cleaning it up.  About 5 pm she decided to lay down for a nap while I decided it was the perfect opportunity to go crazy decorating their living room.  Angelo, Jenny's new roommate(who moved in the Tuesday I was there) from Italy, offered to help me out.  The interesting bit was that he didn't speak English very well, and, well, my Spanish wasn't that great, and neither was my Italian.  However, we realized that he could understand English pretty well, it was just the speaking part that he had a hard time with. While I could understand most of the Spanish(after having been there for 5 days at this point) but could not speak it. So we decided that he would speak Spanish(slowly) and I would speak English(slowly) and we'd be just fine because we could understand most of what the other was saying. (We thought it was a pretty ingenious plan.) So Angelo and I blew up balloons, hung up a "Feliz Fiesta!" banner, and wrote "Happy Birthday Jenny!" in English, Spanish, Italian and French(their other roommate, Mattheiu, is from France) and plastered the walls with colorful paper and decorations.  Jenny was quite shocked when she woke up from her nap, and then laughed as we remembered back to when I did a similar thing when we lived in the house together Junior year at Concordia, but I went a little further and threw confetti everywhere in her room(which I was still finding in my stuff over a year later, and after moving to a new apartment).  I think we made it a pretty memorable birthday.
I fell in love with the Spanish culture.  The people just seem so relaxed and welcoming, I couldn't help but feel at home.  I think I would like to go back again sometime this year.  Maybe in March, around my birthday time because that's one thing for sure: they know how to celebrate birthdays in España. ¡Te amo España!

Parque Del Retiro