Slow Weekend

I am so glad that I decided to stay in Friday night. I drank some emergen-c and tea and on Saturday I felt so much better. (It also helped that I slept for almost 11 hours) We all felt like checking something out that we hadn't seen yet, plus it was a beautiful day, so we went downtown to the Parque de Retiro. This park is absolutely massive. We walked around for maybe an hour and a half and saw just about half of it. In the middle of the park there is a lake with paddleboats (we plan on using those in the future) and a beautiful monument. In Spain, it seems as if people enjoy spending time in the parks more than in the states. There were people everywhere. People were sleeping, taking their kids everywhere, watching street performers, running, walking and everything else you could think of. That night we went back out to a pub and met up with many of the people from our program. We had a lot of fun being total "Americans" and dancing all over the place like crazy. After all that, we ended up in a little shop where we had churros and chocolate. They were divine.

Today we decided to check out El Rastro, which is a huge flea market that stretches all throughout the streets. Rastro only happens on Sundays so we pulled ourselves together to go this morning. I would have had some pictures but this is the number one spot to be pickpocketed so I was a little torn between bringing a camera or not. It was a very cool place, with so many different things to look at. Everything was pretty cheap, so I will definitely have to go back and really look at some of the stores. Today was just our trial run and we walked through, not stopping at much. Tomorrow is the first day of class so we are just laying low tonight. We are heading down to Sol (our favorite place so far) to find a bar that we can try and watch some games. I have one friend that is a Patriots fan and one that is a Chargers fan so that will be quite interesting to see. (They play each other tonight) Of course, I am hoping my Niners keep doing well. I will tell all about my classes next time.

Luke