Mama Mia!

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QUICK UPDATE--- Spain won the semi-finals game against Germany and is now going to the finals of the world cup in S. Africa for the first time in the county's history!

Hola!

Yet again, more than a week has passed since my last post--sorry! I'll try to be better. These last few weeks have been fun filled and busy. After Valladolid, i had a few days to get ready for my mom's visit to Madrid.

Madrid Barajas airport is basically it's own city in itself. So, for my first time traveling there alone to pick up my mom, I decided to allow plenty of time....and then I subtracted another hour because I'm anal!

Needless to say, I was at the gate at 8:45 am to meet my mom at 10:30. This would've been fine, but she got stuck in baggage and ended up coming out around 11:20. I made friends with the people around me...until one of them told me the name of thier hometown and i responded, "What is that?" --oops awkward silence.

In summary, we explored Madrid, were followed to an "antique store" by some sketchy S Americans, visited the (60 degree) beach of a coruna, and strolled the streets of Segovia.

We packed about 2 weeks worth of traveling into 5 days and still managed to enjoy ourselves! not bad.

Speaking of endurance...it was abour 36 degrees celcius (ion the 90's farenheit) when we were visiting and exploring in Spain. Don't get me wrong, I loooooove warm weather, but when you're walking all day it can really put a damper in your endurance. I think my mom and I stopped about 6 times in each city for a coffee/soda/icewater and to enjoy the air conditioning.

Subsequently, we also had to stop to go to the bathroom about every hour because of all that we were drinking...so, we got a really good feel for all the cafe's in the cities, possibly more than the monuments! oops!

Back to business on the internship work now for the rest of the week. I've finished the first drafts of about 10 pages of a communications plan that is all in spanish! So....I've sent it to my friend who is a native speaker to tell me what sounds wierd before I turn it into my supervisor. I can't believe i only have three weeks left here and at the internship it seems surreal.

After the excitement of last night's win against Germany, all of Spain seems to be on a natural high. Two hours after the game was over there were still cars honking (and i mean EVERY car) in the street and people screaming holding up spanish flags, I'm all about it.

I did take a souvenier from the irish pub that we went to for the match... currently, my american flag that "fell" off the broken cieling decoration is now hanging on my wall, just in case I forget that I'm not actually spanish :-p.

This weekend a few American friends and I are off to Pamplona for the running of the bulls (san Fermin festival) for one night. This should be interesting, hopefully i come back with all my parts...

don't worry, I won't be running with the bulls---I don't have the cajones/stupidity to mess with them! We're just going for the experience.

That's all for now

besos
C

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