Day 16

Saturday

So since I was up until 7am this morning I slept in until about 2pm. I was a tired lady. I got up and took a shower and made myself some food. I decided I had some time to do whatever so I cleaned up my room and repainted my toenails. We had planned on meeting today at 8:45pm (which is early) for dinner at a place that our teacher recommended that has some of the best paella in town. We decided to all go out because it was Emily’s birthday. It was actually a different Emily (not the girl from Germany) but a girl from England who is also in our class (we have 3 Emilys in our class). So I threw some clothes in the washer and basically did nothing but just hang out for a while. I didn’t have time to do much because it was already pretty late. So once 8:45 rolled around I was waiting at the metro stop (Anton Martin) for everyone. I actually met up with Emily and Eva (a girl from Germany in our class) on the way to the metro stop. We 3 arrived and shortly after so did Emily (the German girl) and her 2 friends that are visiting (Henrich and Fabian-both German). Then Marina (from Brazil) arrived as well as Linda (from Drake) and Claudia (from Germany) and some of her friends. Emily (British) also had her boyfriend visiting this week so he came too. We were a very large group. So we all headed to the restaurant and it was a great time! We were in a section in the “back” that looks like a garden but it’s indoors. It was very pretty. So Paella is a dish that Spain is very famous for. It is rice with usually vegetables, chorizo (sausage), pollo (chicken), and mariscos (seafood). It also has a spice in it which I can’t remember the name of. It is the most expensive spice there is and it makes it a yellow-orange color. If anyone remembers write me a comment and tell me. Anyway, in Spain they make HUGE amounts of Paella (at nicer restaurants) and then people just split the dish. For instance, at the restaurant we went to it was 13euro each for 2 to 4 people to split a paella. So since there were about 12 of us we got 3 different kinds of paella. We got mixta (the kind I talked about including drumsticks of chicken not just pieces of chicken, mussels and calamari), vegetal (only veggies-some artichokes in there), and chicken (similar to mixta without the mariscos). The pans were ENORMOUS. I will see if I have a picture of them. They were each about 3 feet in diameter!!! We also got a few pitchers of sangria, a pitcher of beer, and a bottle of mineral water (they wouldn’t give us tap) and it only ended up being almost 17euro each. 4euro each for our drinks wasn’t bad because the paella was 13each. I tried a little of everything, even the mussels. It was very interesting because all of the different rices tasted different because of the different ingredients. So after the paella we all went to a little shop to get coffee. Since I don’t like coffee I thought I’d get something with amaretto or something it. I got carajillo (I think that’s what it was called). It had café (coffee), A. Moreno (we thought it was maybe amaretto but I just looked it up and it means “dark” so maybe a dark liquor?), and bourbon. You have to always remember in Spain a coffee is like an espresso and an espresso is like I don’t even know what. LoL To say the least it was VERY strong but I added lots of sugar and it wasn’t too bad. I always try to try something new. After that some of the people we were with went to Emily’s (German) to wait for her friends that were arriving and I and a few others went to find another place to get a drink. Well it didn’t take us long because we were back on Calle de Huertas which is filled with bars and discos. In Spain, especially right in the middle of Madrid (Sol) people are always trying to get you to enter their bars and they usually give out coupons to get in for free and stuff but if you’re smart like us, you ask for Una copa gratis (a free drink) and they usually give it to you to get you to come it. It’s nice to be a girl because this isn’t how it is for guys. They very often have to pay. So we knew we wanted to try to go to a bar/club that we went to last night called Villa Rosa (we didn’t know what it was called until later) so we headed that way. Unfortunately we just kept getting bombarded with free drink offers so it took us a while to get there. Hehe J It’s interesting to see a bunch of different places and kind of nice because you might find another place that you really like. So after a few different places we finally go to the Villa Rosa which was great and we stayed there dancing for quite a while. I forgot to mention that I met a girl named Monica and a girl named Sarah from the US and a girl named Kaisa (Kai-za) from Finland. So we all eventually left the Villa Rosa and actually met some guys that the girls knew that were all from Brazil and we all went to another club called Joy which is quite a big place. We danced there for a while and then headed on home. I got home at about 5am so it wasn’t too late. It was a funny thing all night, Monica and I discussed the fact that our accents are changing and we sounded a lot like Germans when we spoke English because of all the German people we were around. We also speak more slowly and clearly and use conjunctions much less because we are used to having to speak to people whose first language is not English. It was quite a fun and interesting night and it was great to make some new friends. And it was also great to finally go to bed!!! Love you all!!!