Dear Andy, my love for you is unconditional.

What a week it's been!!! We started classes Monday. I have loved settling into a routine, and my classes are all very interesting. Sadly, my one class that is in English is harder to understand than all the rest because the professor's English is pretty bad. But it's ok, because the professor reminds me or Ray on Everybody loves Raymond. All of the professors are really relaxed, and we call them all by their first names, which seemed weird at first, but is very Spanish, I suppose.

This week, I've kind of figured out what normal will look like for me. I typically wake up, do not speak to anyone, sit in silence and stare into space while I eat a small breakfast. Then I will walk to school, pass by the morrocan pants I want to buy, have Spanish class from 9-10, go grab a café con leche, sit and sip, maybe do some homework or read a newspaper, have more class from 11-2, and pass by the moroccan pants again on my walk home. When I get home, I say hola to Sole, my madre, go to my room and wait for Sole to come into my room and whisper "lunch is ready" (I haven't figured out why she always whispers it...), and go back to my room and take a small siesta or maybe do some work or skype with some people. Most afternoons I don't have class, so I'll either go walk around or find a park bench or table at a café and read or something, run errands, etc. Then around 9 or so, I will usually meet up with people for either a picnic in a plaza or tapas (a Granada tradition - free food when you order a drink!!!), always followed by the daily icecream I have become accustomed to. It's so nice to have figured out the city enough to know my favorite cafés and tapas bars, my favorite parks and park benches, the best/closest grocery store, the place where they give you the most icecream for the least dinero, where I can run into other IES students if I want to, where I won't see any Americans if I don't want to, where the cheap shoes are, etc. etc. And I've noticed that instead of automatically assuming I'm an American, people have started speaking to me in Spanish, which can only mean that I'm looking more and more like a hippie each day. Mission accomplished.

I've done lots of exciting things this week that deserve recounting, such as going to the best restaurant I've been to thus far in Europe, going to a tetería (Arab tea house) and making friends with the waiter, who also happened to be the 2 time defending world champion in judo fighting, having my ATM card stolen by the machine and having some Spanish businessmen help me retrieve it, and creating my best helado combination yet: caramel and almond... delicioso! However, all of these things were overshadowed by possibly my best adventure yet...

On a what was partially a whim, partially an adreneline craving, partially wanting to have something awesome to brag about on our blogs, some friends and I decided late Friday night to take a whirlwind trip to Madrid to see if we could get tickets to see Roddick and Nadal/U.S. and Spain play in the Davis Cup. So Saturday night we took the midnight bus to Madrid, slept a little but mostly just got yelled at the whole time by the busdriver, and arrived 5 hours later at the Estación Sur de Autobuses en Madrid. Circa 5:30 Sunday morning, we started the long trek through the not-so-safe part of Madrid, all the while running through RAD moves in my head and wondering what we were going to do for 4 hours until everything opens, or at least until 7 when our guidebooks say parks start to get "safe". We wandered around the Parque del Buen Retiro in desperate search of coffee, found out that cafés don't open until about 9, and settled for some steps and the trail mix that we brought. We did some more wandering, found the Plaza del Sol and Plaza de Independencia, which weren't very exciting at 7am, and finally found a café that was open. Re-caffeinated and rejuvinated, we went to the Prado Museum. I loved getting to see just about every piece of art I've ever studied in a Spanish class, and although it was not as well-organized as other museums I've been to in Europe, it had a higher concentration of famous painters and paintings than any other I've been to yet. This was a very good thing, because anything less spectacular would not have held my attention for very long considering the amount of sleep I was running on.

Then, around 11, we took an absolutely seamless Metro ride to the Plaza de Toros, which is where the Copa Davis was to take place. The building was breathtaking.... there was a collective "WOOOOOOW!" when we stepped out of the Metro station and saw the arena. When we went to check out the ticket situation, we were very suprised to find out that there were covered seats still available for much cheaper than we had imagined! The catch was that it was raining pretty hard, and we were told that if the match got rained out, we wouldn't be able to get a refund. So, we decided to go get some lunch and wait it out a little to see if it was going to let up. After lunch, it had let up a little, but was still raining a good bit. We all decided that the bullring was cool enough, especially with the excitement of the Cup, that it would almost be worth the money just to go sit in there for an hour, so we decided to risk it. Inside, we waited on the rain for about an hour and a half, but then the clouds started breaking up and they started rolling back the tarps!! The match was so exciting, even though Roddick's tennis skills were not quite up to par. His tennis abilities, of course, are not the reason why we love him. Nadal is a huge celebrity here in Spain, so the crowd was absolutely wild. There was also a small contingent of about 20 American hooligans decked out in their Red, White, and Blue, who would start chanting "Ü-S-A" every once in a while, only to be drowned out by the boo's of the rest of the stadium... those were the moments when we tried to pretend we were not actually cheering for Roddick as well. Then we stayed and watched a bit of the Lopez-Guerry match before we explored more of Madrid and caught the bus back to Granada. Although we were exhausted and in foul moods when we got off the bus in Granada, we all agreed that the trip was an excellent life decision.

I have 3 days of class this week before I head to Morocco on Friday for 5 days with my program. I could not be more excited... I keep hearing that it's a life-changing trip. You can start waiting with anticipation/constantly refreshing your browser for an amazing post and some unbelievable photos sometime in the middle of next week!!!