weightlifting on the metro, green eggs and dirty dancing

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Ater my restfull stay at the Hostel Posada, I packed my bags again and headed across town to the four star hotel in which I was being boarded courtesy of my new employers, for an induction course along with my 600 other colleagues from around the world. Still sore from lugging my bags around the day before, I gingerly picked up my 36kg and marched onwards. Three metro lines, countless metro stairs both ascending and descending, a litre of bottled water, four bruises, half an hour, and one gigantic sigh of relief later, I arrived in the lobby of the Hotel Convencion.

After checking into our rooms, and enduring one badly scheduled meeting later. We sat down to a dinner of cold mousse more or less the shape and colour of the italian flag. My friend the vegetarian (fussy buggers arent they) asked what it was. Thankful that someone else had asked the burning question, I waited for the answer. The cold green mousse turned out to be pureed vegetables, an the orange part? another vegetable, even if it did taste suspiciously like egg. Unfortunately for my vegetarian friend, when the waitress had assured us that it was ´vegetariana´either she had clearly forgotten about the fish eggs in the midle, or all vegetarians in Spain eat fish. My friend promptly excuse herself to the nearest bathroom. She had plain pasta for main course. Probably best.

After a whole day of Spanish on the Thursday. Us assistants were all pretty sick of the words ´bank account´ ´N.I.E.´and Certificado de residencia communitario´. Just some of the tasks that we had to do in order to be paid our wages in a month and a half´s time. If we didnt do these things, we were told, we would have to wait two months, or perhaps not be paid at all. So it was in our best interest to get it sorted out. What we all really wanted to know was how to find a flat, the average prices of food, phones, bills etc. Those things, it seems, we are to find out for ourselves, but with lunch a vast improvement on the preious nights dinner, things were looking up. It would however, have been improved, with a cup of tea but you cant have it all.

For the evening entertainment, us Brits were invited along to the British council HQ in Madrid, where a party was being throw in our honour. As we are all students I cannot explain how delighted we were to see a vast array of food and a plentiful selection of alcoholic drinks being past around by the waiting staff. Looking like professionals, we were perhaps discovered to be mere students when we didnt know whether our champagne was ´the good stuff´of not.

Afterwards, we headed for the Puerta del sol and my group and I enjoyed a brilliant night in Madrid´s very cool answer to a Dirty dancing club El Son. If you can ever go there I fiercely recommend it. Not only can you prop the bar up and be amazed by other peoples rhythm and flexibility, but you are more than welcome to join in. A word of caution though, if you do enter this club, dont stand still for too long, because both males and females will be asked to dance. And in this club, like everywhere else, it is normaly by offering the hand. But once you grab their hand, get ready to move! And you should move, because this is one of the best nights out Ive ever had. And im a student!

Friday we pretended like we werent completely dying from the exercise at the club, and hauled our bags to our individual destinations. My friend Steph and I headed for Toledo, and our hotel for the night. The hotel Diamantista

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