¿Dónde está el jubilee?: My life has finally reached the point of To Do Lists

While the first month of Spain has been super relaxing and restful, things are finally starting to pick up. I keep finding gum wrappers with scribbled and smudged To Do Lists in all of my pockets. It has been over a week since I last posted, and for that, I am sorry.

This past weekend was spent in Madrid, on an excursion planned through our program. These pre-planned trips are completely out of our hands, and everything is taken care of and already paid for, so all we have to do is show up. On Friday morning, at 7 AM, out bus left Salamanca en route to Madrid, the capital of Spain. Two and a half hours later, we made our first stop at el Prado Museo, one of the most famous art museums. There, we saw many works by Greco, Goya, Velazquez, and many more. Of course the only thing I like to do after a good art museum, is go to another art museum. We hit up the Thyssen museum, where we saw more art. Hurrah. My brain is so full of art, that all the museums we went to are blurred together. All I remember about this one is that it had a lot more modern art-- lots of Picasso.

Later that night, we went and saw a life changing, most amzing and fantastical show called Mayumana Momentum. I would describe it as a combination between The Blue Man Group and Stomp. After the show was over, all the performers slowly left the theater out the main exit door, each banging on their respective instruments. On their way out, the remained in the entry way of the theater, and continued performing for about 20 more minutes amongst the crowd of audience members. It was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. I left a changed person.

On Saturday, we woke up bright and early and headed to the Palacio Real, the historic palace where the King and Queen of Spain use to reside. It has 3000 rooms. Enough said. We took a tour of the inside, walking through each of the rooms, examining each and every ornately decorated square inch. And of course we then had another art museum to tour. SO MUCH ART. We took the bus to the Reina Sofia Museum, where we saw many works by Picasso (including Guernica) and Salvador Dali.

The evening was left open to do whatever we liked, so we just walked all over the city. We ended up in the middle of a massive park/garden place comparable to Central Park of NYC. It really reminded me of the quad at JMU, with tons of people sitting out on the grass, enjoying the beautiful afternoon and the company of great friends. The only difference being that here in Spain, everyone sitting in the park carries their own bottle of liquor. Thats one thing you wouldn't see on the quad in the middle of the afternoon.