after spain

I am back from Spain and full into graduate school now at Loma Linda.

Spain was a lot of fun. I'm really jealous of Bradley. He looks like he is really getting along well. He is happy and learning spanish. And now Sunny is there with him. Here is what we did while I was there:

monday: Arrive in Madrid in the morning. Ride the metro to Bradley's place and eat homemade spanish tortilla. walked around down town a bit.

tuesday: Pick up Ma at airport. Make some breakfast and open christmas presents. Me and ma took naps while bradley and sunny watched Napolean Dynamite, which I gave them a copy of for christmas.

Wednesday: We went to Segovia, which is about an hour from Madrid on the bus. It is a little city on top of a hill. One can still see the walls to the city and an aquaduct built during the Romans time is still standing. The castle Alcásar is at one end and is open for tourists. It´s pretty cool.

Thursday: The Madrid Zoo and the Reina Sofia. Sunny wanted to see raccoons at the zoo but the closest thing we could find was a kind of dog from mongolia that looked like a raccoon. They also had a baby dolphin. The zoo is expensive, like $20/person, but it is in a nice part of town with lots of trees and grass. I wouldn't actually recomend going. By the time we got to the Prado we only have an hour before they were going to close so we went to the Reina Sofia instead. They had a big Dalí exhibit and a lot of Picasso, including the Guernica which is huge.

Friday: We went to the Prado early and saw a lot of paintings. They something like 15 rooms of Goya. We also saw paintings by Rubens, Bosch, El Greco and a lot of others. My mom really liked a vibrant painting by Van der Weyden called The Desposition from the Cross. After the Prado I did a little shopping a bought mostly books, magazines and maps.

Friday night was new years eve and we went to the Puerta del Sol. It wasn't really that exciting. There were graphics shining on the sides of buildings with random numbers and words which might have had something to do with Don Quixote turning 400. The ball dropped while we weren't watching and a couple minutes later there was a decent fireworks display right over out heads. We stood around for a while after that and threw grapes at people. Apparently we were supposed to eat a grape on every ring of the clock tower at midnight but we didn't know that so we just threw them. There were some entertaining mexican girls drinking and singing next to us but we got bored of them and went home.

Saturday: We went to church somewhere east in the city and got there late. I'm not sure what the sermon was about, but I tried to read my Spanish Bible. After church, Cesar was really talkative and tried to make us stay for potluck, but we weren't hungry. He taught us how to say "God bless you" and my mom kissed him on both cheeks, which was different for him because he's from Peru, and he made fun of her. After church we went to the Retiro , which is like Madrid's Central Park.

Sunday: I woke up early and flew back to the States. It was a 24-hour trip and I was tired.