friday

the next day i get up at 9 am because i'm scared to sleep in. 5 hours of sleep? average for a college student? carmen gets up before diana and i escape but she does not say anything about the night before (as in, us coming home late, us being too loud - which was pretty much impossible- , etc). ...did we do it? did we appease the beast? seems so. relief goes through my entire body. maybe i can make it a semester here...

brittany and morgan have class on fridays, but diana and i are free as birds. we head out to explore the town. we head down princesa, searching for a coffee shop that is both inexpensive and wifi equipped. we end up at the palacio real de madrid.


according to wiki, the palacio real de madrid (royal palace of madrid), is the official residence of the king of spain in the city of madrid and it is only used for state ceremonies. with an area of 135000 m2, it is the biggest palace in europe. basically, the place is huge. one day we'll take a tour. why we didn't today, beyond me. next we venture on some side streets til we hit sol. sol in the daylight. a different place. we go in and out of shops, i hunt for retro sneakers. there are artists and performers in the street. as we walk down, i see a freaky puppet box playing a guitar across the street. i realize it's a man crouched inside. holy crap....that's messed up. i stop to take a picture. right after i snap a shot, the puppet stops playing the guitar, his arm stretches out and the puppet gives me the middle finger. i scream. i ask diana if she saw that. if i wasn't all the way across the street already, i would've been running. as we hurriedly walk away, i look back over my should probably 12 times. i don't know why i was so freaked out. maybe because this puppet is so messed up looking....

we come back for carmen to make us lunch (her justification for not making us dinner on saturdays). then she gives us back some of our clean laundry. i pick through and find my things. i see one sock, but not it's partner. ...where's my sock at? i look through my dirty laundry. are you in here? nope. if you don't understand why i'm so worried, it's because everything i have here- everything i brought- is a number. i have limited supply of possesions, therefore all become ten times more important. including socks. i go to carmen. "uh.. only...uno?" i say, holding the sock up. "ah, si, si," she takes me to the window and pulls back the curtain, where i can see my other sock still hanging on the line. a lone solider.. alright as long as you didn't loose it.

tonight we are going to the friday night social sponsored by slu. ...i usually don't do this kind of thing. i'm not very school spirited, i'm not really into the organized activity thing (which according to college and job applications makes me an inadequate "team player" -- hence my management degree....i'm not a team player, i'm the coach). i do my own thing. when we talk to friends who are going, i reluctantly oblige while expressing my opinion that school organized socials are for people that don't have friends. the event is going to a tapas bar- basically appetizers and drinks. i'm going for the drinks.

brittany and morgan are meeting us at the school for the social. diana and i head to school early because we want to stop and buy shoes along the way. check it >>
(next week at school, a friend will compliment my new kicks. i tell him that i'm pretty sure wearing these shoes in this culture means i'm either in junior high or a dyke. whatever. i love them.)

diana gets new boots.

we get to school an hour early. we starving already. ...what do we do? we head to the supersol to get baugettes while we wait. i head to the beer aisle. 50 cent cans of sanmiguel beer. bingo. diana and i grab two each. two beers + baguette = 1.30 euro. sitting on a bench in the entrance of supersol drinking beer and eating stale baguettes in downtown madrid for less than two euro = priceless. "i feel like we'll be doing this again, " i tell diana. as we are sitting there, a family - a young couple with a little girl around 2 - leaving the supersol passes by. the little girl comes up to us, "como se llama?" i smile. i can't help but imagine back home, a little kid coming up to you and asking "what's your name?" "me llamo nicole," i tell her. diana and i ask her name, which i forgot, and converse a little more - or try - before the family walks away. "adios!" ...i wonder what the family was thinking when their little girl walked up to two strangers drinking beer on a bench in the entrance to supersol. classy.

we meet up with the group to go to the tapas bar. there ends up being about 40 of us all together, which - according to the group leaders - is 40 more than they expected. i'm just as surprised as you are. the place we go to is pretty cool. we have to split the group up because we all won't fit at one place. renata, diana, and i - and a solemn but peculiar character - end up at one bar while brittany and morgan end up at another. our group leader orders for our entire clan: pitchers of sangria and two dishes of tapas. the first round were small fried potatoes - sort of like french fry wedges - that had a hot sauce on them. the next were slices of baguette with different toppings on each (i devoured both mushroom. yummy.). after the social, diana and i went home. segovia was in the morning.