the rain in spain stays mainly in... Madrid

Clever title I know, you don´t have to tell me...haha. So this was the weekend of Spain to see DANA! I didn´t know I was going for sure until thursday when I got the ticket (i tried to get it earlier but the lady lied and said they don´t sell spain tickets in france....meanie). So friday after class I hopped on a train for my 15 h trip down to miss dana. I let some New Zealand dude have my seat so he could be by his family, and by taking his seat I made an interesting acquaintance. Her name is Marie, I think, and she´s from Brazil. Right now she´s studying medicine in Lyon, and her french is so good I thought she was a native. But her tongue is portugese which is more helpful in spain than french is. She speaks english but preferred we spoke in french so it was again harder to carry on conversation but good for me to practice. I told her I was from the states, north of Chicago (no one knows about Wisconisn, or milwaukee, let alone B´field). She said where, and I said outside Milwaukee. She said she lived around there too for 9 months to learn english. She said she lived in a suburb called Brookfield....hmmm. Coincidence? She attended central, but she was there before my time so I wouldn´t have known any of her friends there. It was so bizarre. I was on a train in france on my way to spain and I meet a girl from Brazil who lived in Brookfield of all places. Needless to say we stuck together during the ride even when we changed trains. The conductors in the second train loved here and so they sat with us in the dining car and talked to her (I know no spanish so i tried to understand but usually didnt...they thought i was funny somehow because of that). Sleeping sucked and I didn´t do much of it, but by now I´m used to traveling like that. Finally at 8 am I arrived in Madrid.

Where I found DANA! Seeing her brought me so much joy I can´t even tell you. We figured out the bus system and found our way to our hostel and talked and talked and talked. Unfortuantly she was sick (but I love her to death for still coming and sight seeing even though she felt yucky). On saturday it rained and rained and rained. But we ran around town none the less. We saw cool gardens, Prada museam (with a cool painting that we saw Picasso´s interpretations of in Barcelona, it was awesome to see the orginal - esp since you can´t tell what the orginal was much from picasso´s renditions), flee market, a protest, a flamenco dance (arguably my favorite thing I´ve seen in spain, they were amazing and sooo talented), some street dance fighters, etc... As for food, I found that I love tortilla espanola which I´ve had quite a bit. Luckily Dana can make it for me when we get home! I also tried Paella. I loved the rice part but there were whole bug looking seafood things that had eyes that just stared at me...not cool. We are now in Valladolid, her home town, which is really cute. I got to see peacocks in her park which are beautiful (I think God smiled a little bigger knowing how beautiful He made them when He gave them their extra flare). We walked around and soaked up the sun. An old man complimented our pretty sunglasses...interesting. I got to tried churros chocolate which are yummy fried things that you dip in a cup of melted chocholate.

Now I have to head back to France, another 15h, but Im excited for my next trip....Tunisia in less than 5 days! I´m sad to leave Dana, but I know I´ll see her in like a week and half to start our last travels. Seeing her makes me so happy and I hate parting even for this short amount of time. God has truely blessed me, in not only being here but being able to share it was such an amazing friend. I´m getting super sad to leave all my new friends here too, they´ve been so good to me. I´ve learned worlds from the people I´ve met, which just adds to this experience. I´m going to miss France, and Europe, and always seeing new old things, but mainly I´ll miss the people I´ve gotten to share it with.