Accepting Adversity

Well, it has been a week... and a half maybe 😬

In my defense, I have had no wifi the last week and a half so it's been early impossible for me to be able to sit down and write my blog post. For some reason my phone won't use the data and load anything off of wifi... so I have been just going around without Google Maps, Google Translate, WhatsApp, Instagram, Email, Snapchat, etc. It has not been easy. I even had to wait to upload all my instagram stories for the BHC Instagram takeover until I had wifi.

Besides all of that, life has been very interesting since the last time I posted. To start, my friends and I went to see the castles in Murcia, it was beautiful! We also go to see a famous cemetery, and go inside a museum for free, which were both very interesting.

Another cool thing I go to do was make homemade sangria! This was really interesting because Sangria is a huge cultural attraction in Spain, and the locals drink it almost daily. My friends and I made our own version and added a little bit of a monster energy drink since we are still getting used to their "no sleep" schedule on the weekends.

Another amazing thing I got to try was Murcia's favorite dessert... a gofre! If you don't already know what a gofre is, it is just a fancy, European version of a waffle. They have little waffle stands everywhere, and you just order a waffle and pick what toppings you'd like on it. They have sauce options, ice cream options, and candy topping options! The waffle I tried I got caramel sauce and Oreo cookies with a Tiramisu flavored ice-cream on top. It was amazing!! It honestly surprised me a lot because in the U.S. I don't think many people consider waffles and crepes as a dessert, but her in Spain that's what they consider a real desert... and they also consider cake (pastel) as a breakfast item! This definitely stood out to me!

Later in the week, my friends from Poland decided to throw a Polish party! It was so exciting and fun to learn about all their cultural foods and dances. I even got a chance to teach them some common American dances like the Cottoneye Joe and Cupid Shuffle. Their greek roommate also taught us traditional dances from Greece, and my friend from Morocco attempted to teach us some Moroccan moves. It was a great night with a lot of memories! I also got an invitation to go to Greece at some point which I will happily accept in the future :)

After the Polish party, I was roped into a last minute decision to go to Madrid. Normally I'm very against last minute planning... but for some unknown reason I agreed to this trip against my better judgement. We thought all was well in the world after I booked the hostel and we all booked our tickets. After our fun five hour bus ride, we arrived in Madrid at about 10:30 at night. From there we used cabify, a knockoff version of Uber, to get to the hostel. However, when we got there we came to realize it was the wrong address. This upset me a lot because Booking.com provided the wrong address in their confirmation email! After quite some time looking at the maps, making phone calls to the hostel, and investing another $45 into a cab service, we were finally able to make it to the hostel. We finally arrived at about 12am.

Here is where it gets interesting, so make sure you're sitting down and grab your popcorn👀

When we go to check in, the desk clerk couldn't seem to find our reservation. Well that was because I accidentally booked the reservation for April... and they were fully booked for this weekend. So now we are in the outskirts of Madrid, the ghetto if you will, at 12am with no place to stay. Keep in mind I also still have no phone service at this point because the carrier didn't fix it. In addition, booking.com has a no refund policy.. so I also lost $130 for the hostel reservation on top of the cabify and uber charges getting there. At this point it time, my friends and I were like what the heck are we going to do now, it's 12:30am at this point. To our surprise the desk clerk of the hostel called us back and said his business partner had room for us in another location.

We were very desperate at this point, so we began following this random man at 1am in the ghetto of Madrid, who was supposedly walking us to meet his partner half way, with the hope that he wasn't a serial killer or trafficker. My friend Sara and I let our two guy friends walk ahead with him and we stayed back just be safe because we were very sketched out in this situation. We had our pepper sprays ready and the Spanish Policia on speed dial. To our luck it turned out this man was genuinely trying to help us and we actually made it safely to another hostel. After all of those shenanigans, we just went to bed.

The next day we went exploring the center of Madrid. The weather wasn't the best, but it turned out to be fun regardless. We stopped at a burger place for lunch, and then just walked around and went to the cathedral and art museums and other popular attractions.

After a day of exploring we decide to go to Teatro Kapital, the biggest club in Europe. Overall it was a greta experience, the club had 7 floors each with a different theme, for example one floor was rap, one was pop, one was Latin American music etc.

Besides the crazy, and not well-planned trip to Madrid, everything has been good. However, I have been a bit homesick. I really miss my friends in the US and especially my family. I also miss the school system at VWU. Everything is very laid back here in Spain in terms of academics. For example some of the midterms are optional! I feel like I've been being lazy in school since there isn't much to do in terms of homework and other assignments with deadlines. This has been a really hard adjustment for me since I'm normally very type-A personality with my schoolwork. I don't like having little to do and I feel like I get behind very quickly. I also don't see people around me being very motivated to learn or get ahead on their work, which I feel like starts to affect my own mindset. This has definitely been a challenge for me, but I am continuing to try and adjust and making appointments with my professors to be sure I am on top of everything. It is definitely much more stressful to know your final grade relies only on a final exam and a project, nothing else. If you don't pass something you're basically out of luck, so I'm still trying to find a way to cope with this stress since I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well.

Other than these concerns, all is well and I look forward to what the next week will bring!