Mi Familia

Last week my family was here--which you probably only care about if you're my family. We had great time though, and I think they enjoyed coming and seeing my life in Spain that they've read about here on my blog. My host mom invited them over for paella, we had a Mexican fiesta at my teacher's house, we ate a ton of churros, we took a trip to the Archeology Museum and saw pictures of a "perfectly preserved" 5,000-year-old man they found in a glacier (I put that in quotes because he was quite gooey), we walked around Alcala, and that was all before the weekend.


Friday was my day trip to see the castles, and to my surprise, my family was allowed to come with! That made it way more entertaining, with me having to translate everything (like I had done at luch with my host mom... saying everything twice between stuffing food in your mouth is fun!) and with my sister taking pictures everywhere with the pink pony (I'm not explaining, ask her if you're curious). Anyway, we went to Manzanares, which just makes me think of apples because manzana is apple in Spanish, and saw an impressive castle there. We also saw an impressive rainbow:



Next stop was Segovia, only this time we didn't have to walk 2 hours from the train station in the middle of nowhere! We had 2 hours free for lunch though, so we sat in the cold, trying to shield ourselves from the wind, and ate our sandwiches on the ground like a bunch of hobos. Then we went in the castle, and we got to go all the way to the top as well and look out over Segovia. It was about 150 stairs and they were all part of a spiral staircase that actually makes you dizzy coming down. This is us on top of the castle:



Saturday we spent 3 1/2 hours in the Prado Museum, with me giving a mini-tour of the paintings I had studied in class (hey look, art history DOES come in handy!). And then on Sunday we went to el Rastro, the big flea market in Madrid, and the Royal Palace, which is just ridiculously ornate on the inside. There's even an entire room made of porcelain. But we could only take pictures from the outside:


We also frequented three places throughout the week: Balcones de Alcala, which is the bar/restaurant that has the best sangria in my opinion, another restaurant where we became amigos with the friendly waiter, and of course la Media Pinta, the Irish pub. It was quite an eventful week, and I had a blast seeing my family!

I have a feeling these next 5 weeks are going to blow right by because I've got quite the lineup of trips in store... so keep checking back to see all the exciting places I'll be going! This weekend I'm heading south with the Butler group, where we will see a mosque, a cathedral, and some flamenco dancing!