Thursday night after my final English lessons with the kiddies of the week (and being told I was stupid and kicked by the 3 year old because I asked him to stop hitting his sister), I met up with Rachel for a ladies night around the center of Madrid, which ended early because we were just too tired to continue... Need proof? We went to bed at 3am and didn't wake up until 2:40 on Friday afternoon.
Friday, however short, was very complete by the end of it. I picked up my materials for the race (a Reebok shirt, Reebok socks, and a BBVA [bank] string backpack, all for the 5 euro entry fee!) and went to a talk at the CaixaForum on the economy of Europe and Spain around WWI by a professor at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. Very good, but also helped hammer home that I might have ADD. I rushed from there to a LOVELY Spanish cena (dinner) with Kate from Cumberland whose PARENTS, GIO AND JIM, were in town for the weekend!! How awesome is that? We talked Cumberland, Rob Hale (high school swim coach), and life in Madrid while eating delicious traditional Spanish foods with all Kate's Madrid friends and roommates. Jamón, queso, aceitunas, pan, pimientos, y tortilla. And people wonder why I say I could live here forever...
Now onto my Saturday, when I had been planning a day trip to Ávila for the day with Rachel... We got to the train station and discovered that the machine said the only train going there for the day was going at 10:30pm... and it was 9:00am. The internet had told me there was one at 9:38, but no such luck apparently. We didn't have enough time to wait in line to talk to someone and since I am happy to go with the Spanish flow, we decided to make a free trip within the larger Metro system to a town in the zone we have passes for (Zone B3). We ended up passing through some pretty sketchy areas on the way, but when we arrived in Alcalá de Henares we found a university town that I would go so far as to call a haven. It was beautiful! We had coffees, went to the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quijote), checked out the Arqueological Museum, and wandered the old university and town streets. I also saw a dog that wouldn't stop looking and smiling at me, and I think it was the strongest connection I've ever felt with any living creature. C'est la vie, right? My soulmate happens to be a black dog that won't stop looking at me in the Plaza de Cervantes in a small Spanish town. Figures. I'll give you some pictures while you mull over my love problems:
There are HUGE birds, like storks, on the tops of all the buildings. They have huge nests and we noticed there weren't many young people... Could it be that this is where babies come from?!
I'm thinking of making a proposal to live in this place, once they get the fences down...
Or I'd like to live in this one... Could be happy with either.
That evening I laid low, watching Bridesmaids with Rachel and eating pasta to prepare for my race on Sunday!
10k, slower than ideal, but done! Running with 12,000 people? Not all that fun. Kinda crowded. But having pacers was cool, as was finishing in my favorite park in the world (Retiro). And I'm calling it my "first international competition." Unless we can call that swim meet in Canada that I choked at when I was 14 sufficient? I think I did better in the run. Not to mention that cleaning my room and mopping the floor, doing the same to the living room, washing a load of laundry, showering, running 6.2 miles, and eating 2 breakfasts by 12:30 is always a good feeling...
Had a typical Kelsey dinner of chocolate con porras and rediscovered a part of town that I really want to head back to right now to check out the absolutely precious bars... Need to make more Spanish friends who will go with me... All a work in progress, so I am going to go work on that!
Besos!
No comments:
Post a Comment