Finally getting around to updating again..I have been meaning to for awhile but I think as I have slowed down and lacked updates, people have also stopped reading so I don't have a whole lot of motivation for it.  Although, I guess in the end this will be a nice way to look back over my year abroad (or first of many...).

The other performers

Flamenco dancer

So what is new...Tara came to visit me for about a week and a half.  I met her in Madrid on July 3rd where we stayed until July 6th/MY BIRTHDAY and then we flew to Lisbon for the rest of the week before coming back to my house.  Madrid was nice, I think there are nicer cities in Spain I would like to see but at least the weather was much nicer than here.  In fact, it was kind of unbearably hot most of the time we were walking around.  It was crazy to have a friend from home travel with me in Europe but really nice to show her what it has been like for me the past year when I would travel for a bit.  Our hostel we had our own room and bathroom which was AWESOME and way too nice for Tara's first hostel experience haha...The first night we were there was the same night as a cheap flamenco performance was going on.  A bunch of hostels have joint events they put on each night so we decided to go on that.  It was in the basement of this little hole in the wall restaurant and everyone was really close sitting on stools.  The performers had a question and answer session which was nice since I don't think any other flamenco show allows that.  Flamenco was a lot different then what I had expected but still really cool; the girls shoes were so LOUD every time she stomped the floor.

Christiano Ronaldo

After the flamenco show we headed out for dinner which was at a normal Spanish hour...11 or so I think.  We had our first meal of paella and got a pitcher of sangria!  Both were very delicious.  It was funny to be in a country where neither of us spoke much of the language...we both took French in high school so the extent of our Spanish is just what we have picked up from other friends or hearing it around.  For some reason people in Madrid seemed to rarely speak English unless they were younger and even then they didn't speak a lot of it.  We decided to wander and try to find somewhere to go out afterwards and we ended up having some Spanish guy who was promoting his bar/club bring us down some side street and in we went.  Since it was still somewhat early to be going out it was mostly just Spanish people and later on some tourists started to come in but still wasn't that great of a bar.  We started talking to a Christiano Ronaldo look alike who spoke NO english whatsoever and somehow got him to understand we wanted to go elsewhere and so he took us to another bar.  He was really nice and communicating with him was quite entertaining.  I knew more Spanish than Tara but it was still full of half sentences, stuttering and lots of hand signals from both sides.  We spent most of our night with him before meeting some other Spanish people who actually spoke English and took us to a cool club with them.

Tara in the Plaza Mayor

Us in front of the park

The next day we wandered around and walked A LOT.  We saw the Plaza Mayor, Plaza del Sol and one of the big parks and a bunch of other things along the way.  It didn't seem like Madrid had as many sights to see as other cities I have visited.  It was still a cool city and certainly Spain is much different from all the other countries I've been to.  Sometime during the day we met some other American guys in our hostel from New York and we all decided we were going to go on the pub crawl that night.  Later on we saw them again when everyone met up for the pub crawl which ended up being huge when the other hostels were added in.  Lots of hot Australian boys too of course :) Can't complain about that!  One of the guides was also American and he was cool.  We spent most of the night hanging out with the guys from our hostel who the next day we ended up going to the Prado museum and walking around with them again and then going out together also.  At midnight it was my birthday so we had birthday shots and I got to celebrate my birthday with a whole bunch of new friends in a new city!  I even somehow met a guy that went to UConn.  It was so random, he and his friends were all from Connecticut and he had on the Jim Calhoun student section shirt from the year before!  We had the brilliant idea as well to just stay out all night until our flight to Lisbon which was at 7:30 am.  The metros opened at 6 am and we just barely made it with no time to spare to our flight.  It was a stressful morning to say the least seeing as how I was a bit tipsy still and we had had no sleep whatsoever.  We both zonked out on the flight.

Still to come...Lisbon post, Tara in Rotterdam/Amsterdam and life in general.

PS TREVOR COMES IN 2 DAYS!!!!!