Abba Castilla Plaza Madrid

... to say that I guess it's not that common to wear a suit in a interview here in Spain. I got a group interview at Loreal and all the Spanish just looked buiness casual, or actually like they went to Zara and just wanted to look nice. It was so weird, so fashion forward and almost not professional at all. Here I was with the other 2 American's wearing suits and we have all the Spaniards in their extremely trendy clothing.
Loreal has quiet the aire I ...

... but catching up a bit with the two of them.
El Palacio Real de Aranjuez was absolutely gorgeous. It was built by Isabel and Ferdinand as their spring residence. The palace is just outside the city of Madrid, near Toledo and was built as a spot for the royal couple to take a break from the city life of Madrid and enjoy the countryside. Because the palace was only a vacation home it is not as large as many of the other Spanish palaces but ...

... schedules etc; But, of course, I was enjoying Maruja's cooking and the like. She even mentioned that Jon and I spoke the best Spanish she had seen among all the students that she ever hosted, which made us feel pretty good. In all honesty, I feel like Spanish is improving and I am really excited to get even better. Fluent? Who knows. We shall see about that. REAL classes start tomorrow at the university so I will be sure to update everyone about this later in the week.

... lady had a panic attack on take-off and Colleen volunteered to assist her during the flight, along with a couple of others. So Colleen spent the flight halfway down the plane looking after a passenger while I had three seats in row 1 all to myself, and was left to admire the incredible view of Lisbon as we landed, amazing flying in over the city like that. We had booked a hire car to drive down to Lagos with Peter ...

... pieces of gear, including a new, pocket-size GPS with preloaded Euro maps.
Did I mention that we bought a new travel computer to carry with us on the trip? From previous traveling we learned that Internet Cafes get expensive. Besides that, they aren't always easy to find, machines are antiques, and there is NO privacy.
ASUS released a new, very light MINI-laptop computer last fall, 7" x 9." I told you it was MINI. It's called the "eee PC", as in ...

... wasn't even completely free, the reservations on the train were 6E each direction, it was only the ticket on the train that was free. Karla got a little bit of sleep on the 9 hour train ride to Lisbon, I think I got a whopping 20 minutes of sleep near the end. When we arrived in Portugal we both decided to fly in and out of Ireland rather than take the train. So far it was good for day trips, but overnight trains without sleeper cars are for the birds. More as it develops.....

... Post-Barcelona-Syndrom". Er tritt am ersten Tag nach der Ankunft ein und hält mindestens einige Tage, wenn nicht Wochen. Natürlich ist ein wichtiger Bestandteil des PBS nicht die Stadt Barcelona, sondern die Stadt Moskau, wo man nach einem vierstündigen Flug drei (ja, drei) Stunden mit dem Taxi nach Hause braucht und sich dann auch bei dieser Fahrt unnötige Fragen stellt. Doch der Ursprung des Bösen ...

... which just makes me happy. Oh the metro, I have fallen in love and am taking it back with me. It's my favorite. Way better than DC's.... Anyway, so as far as touristy stuff, we've already seen the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museums along with the Palacio Real and old "Austrian" Madrid. Georgetown pays for the guided tours, so we got to see the best things and learn about it from an amazing guide. If I went to the Prado on my own I would be bored out of my mind ...

Hola!! We arrived into Madrid just in time to see Spain play their first game against Ukraine in the World Cup. We saw on TV in our hotel that the city had set up a big screen TV in Plaza de Colon and had thousands of Spanish fans had congregated to watch the game. We realized the Plaza de Colon was on the way to the American embassy where we were headed (as Jeremy needed additional passport pages for his passport as well) and thought we'd stop off to watch the last portion of ...

This morningI took the train to Toledo which is about an hour orso south of the city. Toledo is a smaller town and has much more of a "spanish" feel to it. The city center is enclosed by walls and there are several puertas or gatesto get into the city. It was a very hot day today but Toledo was a great city, I can see why hand held fans are so popular here. Toledo ...