Week Two

Greetings, all! I know it's been a while since the last post - Kellie, I hope you're happy that I'm posting something new. It's been a pretty uneventful week. This past weekend we pretty much just relaxed. My roommate Chris and I went and saw the new Indiana Jones movie Saturday afternoon, which was fun. It's definitely the worst of the series, but it was still entertaining. Saturday night we went to "Sol," which is the part of Madrid where you find all the popular nightclubs and endless bars. It was pretty crazy, but once we found a place, it was pretty fun. It was a Cuban-themed bar, so the music wasn't what we're used to dancing to, but we still had a blast.

Sunday we woke up late and just hung around the house, watching tv and doing some homework. We also ordered a pizza from "Telepizza," which is their version of Pizza Hut. We're not ordering from them again. It was pretty nasty. But at least we can say we gave the local flavor a try. We now have the number for Pizza Hut ready to go next time.

This week has been pretty slow otherwise. We stayed up til past 1am Monday night watching a marathon of The Office. It's pretty cool how they do TV here - there are barely any commercials, and if there are any, it's either just one short one in the middle of a show, or a big cluster of commercials at the end of a show, which makes no sense to me since you can just get up and come back when the next show starts - sounds like a waste of advertising expenditures to me, but I'm a law student, not an ad exec....I guess.

We went back to our favorite restaurant "Carmen" again last night, and our prof (who is also the head of the Law program here in Madrid) walked in right after us, so he sat w/ us, and that was pretty cool listening to his stories about when he was our age and traveling Europe. He was telling us the American dollar was so strong that he paid less than 10 cents for a glass of wine, and he and his friends bought a good car for $600 and drove themselves up and down the continent. While part of me is jealous, the wiser voice within me knows that such buying power would be dangerous in the wrong hands....namely, mine. He also knows the professor at UT Law who heads up the Capital Punishment program that I took part in this year. Small world.

Tonight is one of the girls' bdays, so we're supposed to do something, but we'll see what happens - two of the girls are sick (including the bday girl), and one of the guys just got over being sick. Plus, we're catching our late train to Barcelona tomorrow night, so we should just be taking it easy. But when in Spain....

The weather FINALLY got nice out. It's been mid- to upper-70s and sunny the past couple of days. I'm actually sitting outside right now, and it's crazy how many people actually go to school here - I guess everyone has been holed up w/ the rain and cold weather, but the courtyard is packed now. The weather in Barcelona is supposed to be great too. I'm sure soon enough we'll all be complaining about it being too hot. Such is the human condition, I s'pose. At least it's not Texas humidity or apocalyptic AZ heat.

Hope everyone's doin' good, and I'll post something when I get back from Barcelona if not sooner.

Ben