London Bound

At this point I have thirty minutes before I say adios to my laptop for 3 days. This is going to be difficult. I have gotten way too used to being able to while away the hours watching shows online and now that is just not going to happen for a while...or maybe ever again if host mother does not have wifi. I'll find that out soon I suppose. More importantly I have 30 minutes to chronicle the past couple days before I forget what happened during them. Two days ago I got to spend time with Mardee from my program again which was great. We were planning on going back to Parque del retiro which we did but we also had someone else with us. It is getting really exciting to have people showing up from the program like every day now. So I met with Niki and Mardee and they decided it was time for me to ride the metro. It wasn't bad. The DC metro is a whole lot worse and more expensive. So we got to the park and had a good time. Bought some nice and gawdy fans to keep us cooler and spent a lovely afternoon people watching. They also picked a great lace to eat dinner so I was quite the happy camper. After that got to see Niki's apartment which is quite nice - really hoping my room is as good as hers :) . At that point it was getting later and Mardee helped me metro back to the hostal. I'm excited that Niki is going to live fairly close to me.

Yesterday was not too bad either. Went to class and had a great time as usual though I was a bit tired. Afterwards I looked a little nuts when I went into a bank and asked them to exchange 300 euros that I had gotten from the atm into smaller bills. It had given me all 50's and those are not conducive to getting around easily. The guy was great and just did it. Yay! By the time I got back towards my hostal I was hungry and stopped into a little restaurant. The prices are a little cheaper if one eats at the bar instead of a table so I sat at the bar and ordered a tortilla espanola which was quite delicious -and it even came with a piece of bread. I was feeling cheap and didn't order anything to drink since I could go to my hostal and get water from my room. It ended up costing only 2 euros which is cheaper than the 3 euros it was supposed to cost in the menu. I questioned the price and he repeated 2 so I decided to be happy about it being less. Got a quick skype session in with Jeffery and thought I'd take a siesta when I got a text to meet up with Mardee. Of course I said yes! We started out going to a clothing store for her to see if she could find a skirt. I found two pairs of shoes that were on sale 2 for 10 euros. Score!!! When she went to try on a cute onesie we had found all went downhill. A cockroach was on it!! So nasty. To help with her traumatic experience I walked us to Corte Ingles and we found her peanut butter. Glad to know I never have to be without the stuff. Then on to the metro which was basically attached to the supermercado underground. So strange to me. Once we got to the Marriot she is staying at we were both hungry. There was a nice little place next door to her that we went to. They even have Greek food. I wanted one thing on the menu but since we were trying to eat dinner at the oh so early hour of 6pm we could only order "tapas." So I got a burger and fries and we split some hummus with the most delicious homemade bread straight out of the oven. It was lovely to hang out in the hotel for a while after that. Very nice. Her bathroom is bigger than my room in the hostal. No lie. By 9pm it was hard to leave that haven of ac and happiness but I knew it might take me a while to get back on the metro since it would be the first time I ever rode it all by myself. Thankfully Mardee has taught me well enough that I mde it back even switching lines without much trouble at all. This bodes well for me taking the metro to the airport tomorrow.

Ok it's 3:30 - taxi is supposed to be here by 3:45. Dang. That does not leave much time to finish this up and haul all my stuff downstairs including the flowers I bought my host mother as a gift. Quick recap of today. Tried to get money out of an atm this morning didn't work. Tried another worked less well. Made it to school and checked my bank account and discovered atm 1 charged me the money but never gave me the money. Crap! Ran to class and was about in tears but didn't want to miss anything. By 11:30when I got my break I felt a little better because I'd been able to text with my mom who lucky for me and not so good for her had not been bale to sleep and was therefore awake at 3am to be talking to me. Got to the bank during the 30 minute break and in my Spanish that still needs some improvement explained my issue. Well, they gave me all the info they could and even gave me a print out of the botched transaction so I could call my bank in the US. So my bank now knows what is going on but I stil need to take money out of an atm to make rent and i can't just get the money out of another atm because I have a $500 daily withdraw limit and the bank thinks I've already taken out $315. Eep. At least when the bank opened in the US I was able to call and talk to a person who is working on all of it. Hoping that it will all get taken care of soon. On a brighter note I went back to my tortilla espanola place and got two of them as take-out. Had one for lunch and will get to have the other for dinner. Yay! Wish I could keep rambling but taxi SHOULD be here in 10 minutes and me trying to lug 150 pounds of luggage is not only a comical site but quite a process for me. So farewell for a couple of days. I'm sure I will have plenty to say about meeting my host mother and my trip to London when I get back to my computer and (please please please, Lord!) wifi.