This post was terribly written and quite boring. Feel free to skip over it.

(This post was written incompletely about 3 weeks ago....please excuse the incorrect dates! : ) )

(Ride of Death)

So remember all those lofty promises I made....2 entries ago? About blogging on a regular basis and such. Hah! Well, I´m sure those closest to me knew that those were all lies!

Now, almost 3 weeks after my last week, my head is swimming with recent memories and adventures. However, as I´ve been running on Spanish time but not quite fitting in all those promised siestas that I've heard so many speak of, I´m struggling to string any thoughts together. Please forgive my discombobulated recap.

This Friday marks my one month. I already feel like I´ve been here so much longer. I mentally seemed to slip into life in Madrid at a relatively fast pace. Although this month has not been all high and happy, I haven´t doubted for a minute that Madrid wasn't where I'm supposed to be.

If you read my previous post, you might or might not remember my whiny complaints about my commute. I had hoped that each day I took the hour and 20 minutes to travel to school would feel shorter than the last. Alas, my aspirations did not come true... I ended up dropping my math class (probably the best decision I´ve made since I been here) and adding an honors class on nationalism (to the dismay of many of my friends I´m sure, I´m actually very excited for this class cause we get to write 5 papers!). This new schedule meant coming earlier to school. Ok, not the end of the world. Until I did the morning commute. Turns out that extra 30 minutes early added another 15 minutes.

Ok, yeah shut up Emily. You have a long commute. BD! There´s a point to this story though, I promise! As a consequence of spending many hours each day on the bus, I began to thoroughly pursue finding my own apartment. After many fruitless emails, searches and phonecalls, I found a very quaint piso in a wonderful neighborhood called Goya (did Goya actually live in this area?? Who knows...let´s go with yes....it sounds cooler). I´ll be living with a wonderful girl from Puerto Rico - she´s been living in Madrid for 10 years and speaks very little English (yay!).

I´ve made a few great friends at school (shout out to Madison cause I know yoúre gonna read this ; )) who have some generously been showing me a wonderful authentic Madrileño experience. This time of year Spain is overflowing with festivals as cities, town, villages, and communitites alike celebrate the end of summer with one last final horrah. And my god, do these people know how to party.

My first fiesta, in a village outside of Madrid, was full of free concerts, fried intestines, spicy fricken fried potatoes, and one very painful amusement ride. My sister frequently reminds me that one time, many many years ago, my life´s goal was to hit all the amusement parks in the states and Western Europe. I cannot imagine why in god´s name I would have ever said this. Apparently I did. I would now like to make a formal retraction of this statement. It it NOT my life´s goal to go to all the amusement parks. Perhaps, maybe ít´s actually one of my goals to make sure I don´t.

The ride, which looked like 4 minutes of jolly good fun, was a bit more like 4 minutes of shoving my stomache and fried intestines back down to their rightful place. Not sure it was worth my 3 euros, but lesson learned: I'm officially too old for rides. Please refer to the photo above.

All in all, a wonderful night. I learned that friends intestines aren't for me, and neither are carnival rides. O yeah, and like my mom has reminded me a million times - I really need to invest in a decent pair of shoes... I blame all my future feet problems on this night.