¿Cabe o no cabe?

On Monday night, Carmen took Ashley and I to Carrefour, a small grocery store nearby our house. It was quite an experience. I love going to foreign grocery stores! Then on Tuesday was the first day we went to Fuen Carral!!! Oh man, Fati and I are in love with Fuen Carral! It's a whole street full of stores, and I LOVE to shop!! We didn't have a lot of time, so the three of us just explored a bit. So of course we HAD to go back on Wednesday! I got these super cute trendy Euro sandals for only 5 euros! Fati has been on a mission to find a new purse ever since we got here, but sadly, she didn't find one she liked, so we went to Fuen Carral again today! We finally made it to the end of the street of the shops of FC and realized we were at Sol! Which is another major shopping area! hahahahaha. So we journeyed on! Side note: there are also a plethora of hookers in this area, Gran Via. It's hilarious. I don't think I've ever actually seen real live hookers working the streets during the daytime. This was for real. Anyways, we shopped for about 4 hours!

Yesterday, Wednesday, was my first day to teach English class to an 8 y/o for an hour. We get paid for this tutoring and we (all of us students) go to the family's home. So, in order to get there, we take the metro. I thought I had my route all figured out and I had both my metro map and my map of Madrid, and had given myself about 45 mins. to get there. Well let's just say when I had to change from line 5 to line 6 Circular, I went the complete WRONG direction around the circle. GAHHHH!! So I literally went through probably 20-25 stops. I wanted to die. And there was no other line that I could have switched to that would expedite my travel. So once I finally got off at my stop, I raced out of the metro and attempted to figure out where the street was that the family lives on. I was going in the right direction, but the street signs are not like ours in America; they're on the sides of buildings and are very hard to read. I asked a waiter in a cafe that I walked past and he said he'd never heard of the street, so I simply thanked him and moved on. Turns out the street I was looking for was at the corner in the same block. Ay ay ay. Long story short, I called the mom and got directions from her and made it there...30 minutes late. Ha. Well I know how to get there for next time!

This week was my first week of my marketing class and so far I love it! My prof is from DF (Mexico City) and he is so cool! He speaks English but with a super thick accent, so you really have to listen to understand him. He is really really well educated and went to the London School of Economics and tons of other places for a BA, MBA, and PhD. He makes our class so fun! We always end up talking about food (marketing food, etc) and it's really fun because he tells us he's going to take us to a real Mexican Restaurant here in Madrid.

On Wednesday morning, we took a class field trip to the Prado Museum here in Madrid! It is a world-famous art museum and houses the famous painting "las meninas" by Diego Velazquez. I've been to the museum before, but it is still muy interesante! We saw paintings by Goya, El Bosco, Greco, and one more.

Tomorrow we are going on a class field trip to Segovia! I am really excited because it is a lovely city! Carms made us all awesome sack lunches for the trip and after dinner she showed us each of our lunches that are labeled: "Fati" for Fatema, "A" for Ashley, and "J" for Hayley, of course. Haha, no one understands my name in Spanish, but I'm used to it. Whenever I say my name, I always have to say "Hayley, con ah-che" (how you pronounce the letter 'h' in Spanish). Anyways, Carms tried to put our huge lunches in a small brown sack and made Ashley try to squish it in. She kept saying, "cabe?? no cabe?? cabe?? no cabe??" The three of us couldn't stop laughing and we tried really hard to hide it. We couldn't help ourselves, she is just so cute and kept trying to fit our huge lunch in this small brown bag and it just wasn't working. (Caber="to fit"). Oh brother. I love Carms!

Anyways, that's all for now. Here are some pictures of the Prado and of my beautiful school here in Madrid!