Saul and Chelsia: Over the Moon and Back: Bienvenidos a Madrid

We are finally in Madrid! Hurray!

(Note: Okay... I know this is a little late, but I wrote this on September 14th which was the day before our first day of classes here in Spain.)

We have been here for about a week now and are settling into our new home for the next couple of months. We have basically been taking the past week to get a basic familiarization with the city and acclimate to the new time zone. We have had some pretty terrible jet lag since we got here, and I think part of it has to do with the horrible flight it took to get here where we got almost no sleep. For the record, do not fly Iberia when going to Spain, or anywhere else for that matter. Choose another airline and save yourself some trouble.

We are going to start Spanish Immersion Courses tomorrow. We were supposed to start last Monday, but thankfully they didn’t have our course level available. Since our time here was pretty flexible, we told them that we would prefer to have the week off and start the following Monday instead of sticking with a class that we didn’t feel we would get much out of. That was actually a blessing in disguise, and has given us the opportunity to sleep in and try to ditch this jet lag while at the same time getting to see some of the sights that Madrid has to offer.

We are trying to take it slow since we are going to be here for so long. There is such a huge difference in the amount of things to do here compared to last year in American Samoa. We have to remind ourselves to take it easy and not try to do too much in one day since we have so much time here. While in Samoa, the options were so limited that we were forced to spend a lot of time at home just relaxing and keeping ourselves busy. Here, we have been forcing ourselves to take time to relax so we don't burn out. Although we are excited that we are in this amazing new country, we have to remind ourselves that we are actually standing still for the longest period of time since we were in Samoa right now, and that we have time to take in the sights and the culture at a less frenetic pace.

We started our explorations by taking a walking tour to see what the tour guides recommend seeing. After getting a brief intro through the tour, we just started walking around and exploring on our own.

So far, we have explored most of the first floor of the Prado Museum (all but one room because they kicked us out a couple of minutes before closing time). We plan on returning soon to finish off the rest of the museum. There are a ton of other museums that we have to check out as well, but the Prado is the most famous and also one of the only ones that is free.

We have taken a stroll through Retiro Park, and plan to go there many more times once our classes start. We have visited a few of the major sights, including the Templo de Debod, the Palace of Madrid, and the Plaza de Espana. We have also hit up some of the busiest shopping streets in the city and tried some delicious food (not to mention our first hot chocolate and churros of the trip).

Our favorite spots so far have been Plaza Mayor, Opera Square, and Puerta del Sol. There is a great place called the Mercado de San Miguel with tapas and some bomb paella just outside of Plaza Mayor, a great little café that serves 8 fried cheese balls for one euro just near the opera square, and our absolute favorite spot to snack so far is in Puerta del Sol. It is a boba shop called Wowble. They only take cash, and for a little under four euros you can get a large deluxe smoothie or milk tea with any kind of boba you want. The Wow!reo flavor with strawberry boba is the best one we have had yet. You know we love our food!

We have plenty more to see and do here and school starts tomorrow. We have optional cultural experiences everyday after class, so we know we are going to get to see more of the city every day. No first day jitters here. We are ready to get started, improve our Spanish, and get to know more of this beautiful city.

-S