Our last Saturday in Madrid was a relaxing one. Tema and I decided to finally update our blogs (which took quite a long time) as well as share music with each other. It was a lovely bonding experience. We also decided to start packing so we wouldn’t have to worry about it the next day when we left for Alicante. Well, what an adventure that was. Our room looked like it had exploded with clothing, books, and all other knick-knacks. I managed to get everything to fit into my suitcase with having to expand it. Tema, on the other hand who had much more clothing than me and who had gone shopping more than me had to sit on her suitcase in order for it to close. Let’s just say our bags were very heavy.
At night Cristian wanted to try out this Cuban restaurant called “Cuando Sali de Cuba”. From its flyer, it looked promising. However, Cristian had left the flyer at home and didn’t exactly know where it was. So we wondered around Sol for about 20 minutes looking for it. Since all of us were so hungry we gave up and went to an all you could eat buffet (we decided to be American; after all it was the 4th of July). I was disappointed that we didn’t find a Cuban restaurant, and thus Cristian “tried” to make it better by saying things like “Well, it’s a buffet which means there’s a lot of food. Cubans eat a lot of food so it’s kind of like Cuban food” or “hey look they have Natta. Cubans eat Natta. They have that in Cuba” to which I finally replied with “Yeah and look, we have utensils, which they don’t have in Cuba so it’s a step up!” He just looked at me and started laughing hysterically. Yup.
After our lovely buffet dinner of four (Cristian, Tema, Guillermo and I) we hit up Gran Via where the Orgullo parade was happening. There were many half naked men (sometimes they just looked naked!) with wings or thongs or booty shorts or body glitter, and a few lesbians who were not as exciting as the gay men. There were so many people it was unbelievable. I had never seen anything like it. After taking several pictures of various “floats” and of people, we headed back to Sol to meet up with the peeps one last time in Madrid. We didn’t do anything crazy this time, we only went out for some Sangria y tinto de verano (I promise that’s all we did!). We hit up the same bar we went to the night before and sat around talking and having a good time. It was relaxing and a good way to end the night with some friends. We did, however end up with almost all Americans and thus decided to sing some patriotic songs in honor of USA’s birthday (though it was past midnight in Spain, it was technically still the 4th in America, or at least that was our excuse). Tema, Cristian, and I then got on the metro and headed home since Tema and I had to catch a train the next day. Tema and I made it home safely though we almost missed the connecting train. Cristian was not so lucky. I got various humorous text messages about how he didn’t catch the last train home, how he didn’t have enough money to make it home in a cab, and how he got lost but made it alive. It was funny, and scary, but more funny.
Sunday morning came and we finished some last minute packing, took a picture with our momma Oslidia (whom I miss already) and took a taxi to Chamartin train station to catch our train to Alicante. It was a four hour train ride for which most of I either read or passed out (I finished an awesome book called The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. You should all read it!). When we arrived, we step out of the train and are hit with a huge heat wave. It is hot as cojones here! There is way more humidity than in Madrid and they are going through a heat wave here. Either way, it was hot. Really hot. We took a taxi to our new home and met our host parents Dolores y Armando. They are a sweet couple in their 60s. They have a pretty big/sweet apartment. It had three empty rooms plus their own room. Two of the three rooms are being used up by Tema and I in one and a high school girl from Arizona named Karen. She’s really quite but hopefully she’ll open up more. I bonded with my host parents by watching the Wimbledon match of Federer vs Roddick. After about an hour of yelling at the computer screen (we were watching it online) I had enough and left with Tema to the near by Video Store/internet place. Though more expensive than the one we had in Madrid, this did have skype and I got a chance to skype with my boy Adam.
Anyway after that we headed home for dinner. Which was delicious!
Sunday night was a relaxing night for us. We decided to stay in and gain some more energy for the upcoming weeks.
Let’s see how our week in Alicante will play out.
Hasta luego chicos!
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