Turkey Day

My new flat

I have returned to the center of Madrid!

I just moved in last weekend to a flat near the Quevedo metro stop, a 20 minute walk from Sol, and a ten minute walk from Malasaña, my favorite neighborhood. I am living with a girl named Inés from Albacete who is studying to be a nurse. I am going to miss my old roommates, but it was hard living so far away from the center (even though Madrid has a good transportation center, it took me 1.5 hours to get home one night from the center on two metro lines and one night bus). I spend all my time in the center for arabic classes and my volunteer job, so it just makes sense to be able to walk home at night. Plus it is an old flat and I love all things old!

Off to the races

Continuing my streak of randomness, I decided to spend a recent Sunday at the Hipódromo outside of Madrid, watching a horse race. My friend Meagan had an extra free ticket so we took a bus ride out to Zarzuela, a nearby town to spend a day at the races, although extremely under dressed for this type of crowd. Motivated by our free tickets, the four of us decided to each put up 4 euro on the horse with the most absurd name, in this case it was #5 Canibal. To our random luck, he won the race and we won an incredible sum of 12 euro. We promptly spent the money on beer and spent the rest of the races hanging out on the grass.

Recent visit to Alicante

Although I love living in Madrid, I needed some fresh sea air, so I headed to Alicante for the weekend to visit Mariana (my flatmate last year) and her boyfriend Jeff. I took my coworker Andrew along (from Portland) and we spent two days feasting and wandering the city.

Encuentro Internacional sobre violencia de género

Next Friday I will be volunteering as an interpreter for women from various parts of the world who will be in Madrid for the International Meeting of Gender-based Violence. Women will be coming from Central and South America, Africa and the Middle East to spend the week in Madrid and nearby areas discussing domestic and gender-based violence.