Protest and Graduation

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So this is my second update this week. I wanted to have just one completely separate one for Paris so this is for what has been happening in Madrid while I was not in Paris.

The Sunday before we left for Paris (the 15th) Lidia and I were going to the city center to meet a friend for dinner on her last night in Madrid. When we got to the center we were greeted by crowds of people protesting. There were at least 5,000 people there, and they were protesting the government and the financial crisis. That day also happened to be the day of Madrid's patron saint, San Isidro, and there was a huge festival going on in the area we lived in. So we had waited 20 minutes just to get inside the metro station and then had to ride the crowded metro to the center.

So we went to dinner at an Italian place and I had some delicious pizza. We were in the restaurant for maybe an hour, hour and a half tops, but when we came out the protest had taken a turn for the worse. We saw a group of girls running away from the center laughing and then 4 police vans pull up, and about 20 cops jump out and start beating this one guy with their batons. He got away and all of the police cars starting chasing him. We were so startled and scared we just started going towards the main plaza. When we got there however, the huge crowd from before was scattering before our eyes. Apparently while we were at dinner a fight had broken out and there were police and ambulances everywhere. We knew someone who lived close so we went to his apartment but we had to walk all the around from the complete opposite end of the street cause they had some of the streets closed off. The police had huge rifles and were shooting rubber bullets into the air to disperse the crowd.

The next day I was reading about what happened in the newspaper and it said that 24 people were arrested and 7 people were hurt, 5 of them being police. It was one of the scariest things that has happened to me since I have been in Madrid.

After that we went to Paris and you guys either already read about that or can go to my other posts and read about it.

Then this week we had a spanish oral on Tuesday and then graduation Thursday. The graduation was only the international students, with some of our professors there, the president of the university, the heads of the business department and the head of the international relations office. It was interesting to see how much I could understand of the different people since it was all in Spanish. I understood most of what was being said but it was a little easier to understand some students who got up and gave speeches than the professors. That night our university rented out a club and we all met there and danced the night away. It was a lot of fun!

Next week I have exams so I won't be doing too much except studying but our friend Nia, the one we visited in Paris, is coming to Madrid! Only three exams until summer!

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Photos

Graduation!
Melissa, Carol, Martyna, Lidia, Agata and me

Comments

[Sarah]

Ahhh that's crazy! Why haven't I heard this story? Should have gotten some pictures. ;-)