a weekend away from home

who would have thought but finally after a month here in sevilla i feel like i can call it my home- what a great feeling! anyways, i went to madrid this weekend to visit noah, and can i just say how shocked i was to see how different these two cities are? sevilla is filled with narrow alleyways and plazas around every corner, and then i arrive in madrid to find modern buildings and two way streets. crazy stuff, i know. i'll give an abbreviated version of how my weekend went, pointing out specific highlights for your reading pleasure:

I arrived in madrid on Friday at 7:15 AM after having taken an overnight bus for 6 hours and joined my fellow jumbos for quite a speedy run through of some of the most famous paintings in madrid at El Prado. I'm not the biggest museum goer but I generally want more than 60 seconds to look at a painting- not this lady- she had an agenda and she was sticking to it! that night we decided to check out the second biggest discoteca in madrid- Joy. During our lovely botellón sesh alongside many a spaniard enjoying similar activities, a dear old italian man excitedly (and very drunkenly) approached the group wishing to bond with us over some cheap alcohol. over the course of the next five minutes he managed to: break the touch barrier that normally exists between strangers, prove his lack of mastery over the spanish language, and serenade my boyfriend in italian. the night was off to a great start. the club turned out not to be as good as we had hoped, but we got in for free, so i would still count it as a success. however, the next night i broke my standing record and stayed out until 5:30 at El Kapital dancing to house music. guess i need to bring this endurance back to sevilla...but as much as i loved madrid, visiting this past weekend made me love sevilla even more and the culture it possesses, including the forever impossible to understand andalucían accent. 

all in all, it was an incredible weekend in so many ways. I hereby commence my semester of travel: more to come from Córdoba, Amsterdam, Cádiz, Morocco, Paris, Italy, and more.

viva la vida.

that's pretty freaking cool...