Spain, Day Nineteen

Wow, blogging is hard to keep up with when you are busy trying to experience Europe! Fortunately for me, today's post is rather short so it won't take much to fill you in. We started the day off by going to class, where our teacher had a nerd moment. Pretty much the whole class about this area of Madrid called Lavapies, which is currently a hipster area by the Reina Sofia museum that has a lot of multicultural restaurants and things. But it has a lot of history, which is something that my professor is actually writing a book on, hence the nerdy class period on all you need to know about Lavapies (pronounced "lava pee ay z"). Apparently, it began as an area where the Jews who got kicked out of Madrid were sent to live, so there is a lot of Jewish history going on, but you certainly can't tell now. There are no Jews or synagogues to be found. After she gushed to us about every event that had happened there from its creation to present, our professor took us on a walking tour all around the neighborhood. It mostly looked like a bunch of Thai restaurants though. We also saw a lot of people walking their dogs which was pleasant I guess. I miss my pets. Additionally, we also saw plenty of people making out on the sidewalk. I will never get used to how openly people display their affection here. Gross.

After our walk, Maria and I headed home for lunch and to rest before the evening's activities. We had signed up to go to an intercambio (holla at your palabra del dia!), which means "exchange" in English. It was coordinated by the study abroad company with a class at the local university where we could practice our Spanish with them and they could practice their English with us. It was pretty fun actually! I thought it would be scary but it was a pretty helpful experience. Would totally do it again. So after the intercambio, we just headed home to do some homework, prepare our stuff for our flight to Rome the next day, and just rest. A pretty decent day if you ask me.