¡España!: and we finally experience our first bump in the road

To say that the last 24 hours has been interesting is an understatement. Let's begin at dinner last night, a group of about 10 of us decided to go eat about 9:30 and someone suggested Italian. We get there and were seated and the waiter asked for our food orders first rather than our drink orders. I ordered a pesto pasta, which I had never had before and it was delicious! Then 3 of us girls decided to order some wine and my eyes lit up when I saw Moscato on the menu. If you are ever around me, you know that is my favorite wine. I talked the other 2 girls into getting it so we ordered a bottle and some of my other friends ordered red wine and such. The waiter then came back out and said the moscato was hot and could be chilled but he didn't want to serve it to us hot, so we decided to just order a spanish red wine. Now I am not a big red wine fan at all, but this trip is all about having adventures and trying new things so I went with the flow. He brought the wine out and it actually tasted pretty good! It wasn't to die for, but it wasn't gross or anything. My other friend decided he would wait on the moscato to chill and once he got his bottle he let me have a taste. To all my friends in Starkville who drink moscato, this one is about 10 times better than Barefoot! It was amazing! It was called Moscato DOMX, I do believe. Then our food finally came and we ate and enjoyed our wine. After dinner it was about 11:00 and some of the group wanted to change before we went out. So 3 others and I decided to go sit somewhere and just have a beer while we waited instead of going back to the hotel. The beer I chose was Cruzacampo, which was pretty good! It tasted kind of like a Coors Light. Finally at about 11:30 we met up with everyone else and decided to find some clubs to go to. Except most of the clubs don't open till 12:30 or 1:00, I started laughing at that when I heard that because in Starkville the bars close at 12 on week days and 1 on weekends, not open then ha. We roamed around Madrid and finally found a bar that no one was at and had a very good price on drinks. We walked in and they started playing techno music and had blue lights and such and we were the only ones in there. At this bar in particular, when you order a drink they give you a shot to go with it. I decided to order Desperados, which is a beer a lot like a Corona except this had tequila mixed it in. It was really good! We all were having a good time, still getting to know everyone, and finally some locals came in. These 3 men introduced themselves but thought we would be offended if they greeted us with a kiss on the cheek, but we said we wanted to learn the proper way. When you greet your friends or family you start with the right cheek and then go to the left with a little peck. One of the guys could speak English, but the other two did not know any English, it was interesting trying to communicate with my asi asi(so-so) Español. Eventually we decided to go see if there was another place we could go and just kind of see how each bar was. We found one and we walked in and everyone was dancing, two guys pulled me and my roommate to dance and we both wiggled away to go hang out with our group and the two guys like followed us to try and dance still, but the boys in our group are pretty protective of us girls and helped us out! Spanish men are very flirty and they have an impression of American girls, but we stood our ground! Finally, it was getting pretty late so we decided to head back to the hotel and go to sleep since we had to be in the lobby to leave for Toledo at 9:00. I really enjoyed going out and seeing how night life was in Madrid, pretty fun!

Here comes the fun part...(cue the sarcasm). We fell asleep and knew we had to get up and shower and eat breakfast and such so we set our alarm for 7:00 AM and I remember looking before I fell asleep that it was set. I hear the phone ringing when I wake up this morning and my roommate goes what?! it is 9:30. Oh great.... we were just woken up by our coordinator who said they couldn't wait any longer and were going to leave us if we didn't hurry up. I FLEW out of bed and threw on clothes really quick and barely got to brush my teeth, my roommate and I were just shoving our stuff into our bags and getting out as fast as we could. We get downstairs and the bus is not in front of the hotel, my heart dropped! But then we remembered when we unloaded the other day we were around the corner so we practically ran over there and low and behold the bus had waited for us! The coordinators were not too happy with us but luckily two other girls had the same problem as us. I figured I was just in such a deep sleep I turned the alarm off and fell right back asleep and I just don't remember it. If we had been left we would have taken a taxi to Toledo but our check in was not until 4:00 in the afternoon so we would have had no where to put our luggage. As for tonight, my roommate and I are setting our two battery powered clocks and my phone, we won't let that happen again! Being late to important things get me all worried and anxious so if you could only imagine what was going through my head this morning when that happened, but everything ended up being okay.

We made it to Toledo and I cannot describe how beautiful it is here! Madrid is pretty but it is also a big city and more modern, Toledo has the old architecture and the city is nestled by this river. I will post pictures below because it is something to experience, especially in person. We took a tour around the city on the bus and then got out and had a walking tour. We went to the Catholic Church that is gorgeous and had a tour guide tell us all about it, in spanish of course! Then we continued to tour a museum with another one of Greco's paintings and important buildings throughout the city. Finally at 2:00 we were released to get some lunch and roam around the town. Shopping is pretty good here! I decided not to buy anything and wait till Granada where I will be living. Now we are at the hotel, relaxing before our meeting tonight about our families and what school will be like and such. In our meeting our coordinator mentioned that we could get someone to book a plane ticket for 35 euros for a nonstop flight to Rome for the weekend, a bunch of girls and I decided we would LOVE to do that! I meet my host family tomorrow!! I am pretty excited, but just hoping my spanish is good enough for her, I guess it will be okay if I am at least trying. Will try and post a blog tomorrow night if my family has WI-FI!

ps-to all my delta gamma sisters, there is a girl in my group from California who goes to San Diego and she is a fellow sister! ITB