Spain - Day 1

I went to Spain over the holidays. Song was going to Korea for the first week, and I just wanted to get out of Dubai and be alone for a while and relax. I also chose it because it was halfway between here and the states, so Phil and Eric and Dakota could come out and meet me there. 

One more thing was that I'd really wanted to try out my Spanish again. I hadn't used it in about 5 years, and I was really excited to see if I could remember any more. 

Lastly, I love going to hostels and meeting random people from all over the world, so this was yet another opportunity to do that.

It started off kinda rough actually. We get standby tickets through Song's work, so I woke up at 4am on the 21st, took a taxi to the airport only to get rejected for the flight and then come home at 7:30 am. Then I tried for the flight at 2pm, but I got rejected for that too so I had to come home and try again the next day for the 2pm flight, which I finally got. My house is only 10 minutes away from the airport, but it's still kinda tough to get all my bags and get ready, and then wait at the airport for a few hours only to come back just so you can go do it all over again. 

The one good thing to come of it was that I started reading through Life of Pi, which I didn't really love, but was still worth reading. 

Anyways, after finally getting on the flight the following day, I made it to Madrid at around 7pm or so, and was out of the airport by 8. I started seeing signs in Spanish, like 'llegadas' and my brain started recognizing things that I'd seen before in Costa Rica. It was exciting, because I'd been prepping the whole month of December for it.

I found the metro, and even though the lady at information told me I should take the train instead of the metro, I just took the metro, following the instructions that the hostel had emailed me above. I'd taken pictures of some maps and other things too to help me get there. 

Being on the metro was cool. They had little poems and famous pieces of literature posted next to some of the doors, and I started trying to read them to pass the time. I understood more than I thought I would, so that was cool.

After a couple transfers I made it to the final station, and once I got above ground it only took me a few minutes to locate the hostel. 

 Once I got settled in I went down to the main room and sat down on a sofa. I didn't know anyone, but I figured if I was gonna meet someone, it would be in the main room. I started studying some Spanish, but then sure enough, after a couple minutes a group of people sat behind me and started talking about playing a card game, so I turned around and ask if I could play, and they said 'sure', so I was in.

It turned out to be a Japanese/Brazilian guy, a Turkish guy, a Korean girl, and two Korean/American girls. 

 The Korean girl on the left is Jiyoung, and she was actually my best friend for the part of the trip where I was by myself. The other two are the Turkish guy and one of the Korean/American girls, but their names escape me.

The night was a lot of fun, but try to disregard the order of the pictures, since it's all messed up and it's too hard to rearrange them with this program. Basically, we started off playing a card game, and then we started playing a Korean card game called Go Stop. Then we either went out for some drinks or took the free Tango class that the hostel offered (I can't remember which happened first).

 In the end, Jiyoung made us all Korean food, and because the hostel's living room was closed (it was like 4am) we took it outside and ate outside of a restaurant that was down the street on the tables and chairs that they had locked up for the night. The food was great, and the conversation was fun and lively. Can't remember at all what we talked about that night, but a lot of it centered around different things about Brazilian and Korean and American and Turkish culture. At some point I'd told them that I'd lived in Korea, and I spoke Korean with Jiyoung for a little bit, which was cool.

 The tango instructor was this really sleezy looking nice guy, who spoke with a really thick Spanish accent. He was really friendly, and even though all of us really sucked at tango, he allowed us to just enjoy ourselves and try it out.

He offered the classes every Friday night, and since I was there the next Friday as well, he recognized me and we talked about tango for a good 20 minutes. Honestly, I know nothing about it before, but now I know a bit more after talking with him. Really, most of it was just him telling me about it and what he thought about it. Anyways, just a cool random encounter, you know?

He had no shame in trying to dance with the girls as much as possible. Actually, he started out dancing with the guys just to show us the ropes, but then towards the end of the night he was dancing with the girls as much as possible.

A few of the memories that stand out from that night are that the Korean American girl spilled a huge milkshake all over Jiyoung's dress when we went out for drinks. I was trying to teach them how to play the card game called Spoons, but she got too excited and knocked over the drink.

Another thing was that I tried to order a Darjeeling tea, but the waiter brought me back a cocktail, and then when we started talking to her (the Brazilian/Japanese guy was our translator for the night), we found out that she'd misheard me because of my accent. Either way, she was really nice about it. I thought that was cool, cause normally when you go to other countries people can be a little rude about language mistakes like that.

Lastly, two things stuck out in my mind from that night about the tango classes: one thing was that they started at 12am and ended at 4am. Not only that, but at around 1pm the pros showed up, and they weren't young. Most of them were in their 30s and 40s, but there were definitely a few that were in their 60s or 70s. Considering the activity and time of night, it was pretty impressive.

The other thing that stuck out as interesting was that we were in the kitchen at around 3am and some of the local ladies who were taking the classes would walk into the kitchen and just stick their head under the faucet and turn it on and drink from it as if they were little kids dying of thirst. Not just one lady, but several did that, and they were like 30 or 40 years old. Kinda weird, no?

Lastly, here's a video I took that night. I guess at one point we'd eaten paella that night. Didn't remember that though.