Day 12: Wednesday was a school day. I had tests in both of my classes and we also have group meetings Wednesday’s at 3:30. They served squid for lunch, which was interesting. It tasted alright, but it was cooked in black sauce that looked like tar. They also had some potato wedge pasta plate. I got stamps Wednesday, so hopefully I’ll get some postcards sent sooner or later.
Day 13: Thursday’s field trip this week was to the Prado museum in Madrid, that holds many paintings from famous artists throughout the centuries. It was cool and all of the paintings had different representations through every little detail. Afterwards, a lot of people left for the field trip to North of Spain, but Meghan and I stayed behind because we were late on signing up and there was only one seat left. We went souvenir shopping, took the metro BUS for the first time, and took the metro. Meghan might say that I got us lost on the way home, but I’d say we were just taking the scenic route. We started a count of how many Spaniards yelled out the window at us (may not have been in the best part of town). We still made it to lunch in time and afterwards, a group of us went down to the theatre to get Harry Potter Tickets for the midnight showing that night (Me, Meghan, Chelsea, Cathryn, Arianna, Tamra, Nick). After the metro and two metro transfers, we found the theatre and found out it was closed… we came back and bought the tickets online and had the best siestas of our lives. After dinner, I went for a run in the gorgeous park, and everyone met to go see the Friday 12:15 am Harry Potter movie. Apparently, in Spain, when they list 00:15 under Friday it is understood that it actually means the Saturday morning, so when we showed up, you know all the crazy Americans were there furious. It sucked because we thought we were seeing the movie six hours earlier than the US, but culture differences changed our plans. So that night we went to Dalai bar for a little bit, but called it an early night.
Day 14: Got to sleep in today, because I had no morning plans. I woke up at about 11:00 and Meghan and I headed to the metro station at 11:45 to go SKY DIVING!! We had to take metro and the bus on the way their, and the language barrier was difficult. Had a ham and cheese croissant and ice cream for lunch (the usual here) at the bus station. It was about an hour and a half bus ride and everyone siestaed the whole time. The way Spaniards interact is a lot different than Americans. They are much more physical with each other than we are. After we were sitting, a man got onto the bus that knew the guys in the seat in front of us, and was rubbing up against him in his greeting hug. It was funny. In the bus station, I went to the bathroom and the stall said, “When was the last time you did something that made you feel free?” It was a sign. The whole bus ride, they were playing songs to just tell us to go skydiving, like Freefalling. We finally got off the bus at this deserted little town and were a little worried. We got some directions from construction workers who spoke no English, but finally found the place after walking around the town and down a dirt road. When we got there, we went to check in and the credit card machine had taken my credit card but declined Meghan’s card, so we tried a million cards, but the machine was broken, so we had to get a guy to take us into town to withdrawal money. Meghan took out 300 Euros from an ATM and the 300 Euros never came out, but were deducted from her account…. It was a rough money day, needless to say Lillo, Madrd isn’t a very big place. We finally found a machine that worked, but it was a major CF. When we got back everything went well and we put on our jump suits and nice gear caps to get ready to go. The nerves really hit you when you start getting suited up. Before I knew it, we were getting in the plane to go. The plane was TINY and there were about nine people in squeezed in it. I was on the bench and Meghan was on the floor right next to the door that was being flung open a lot during the elevation up to the right height. We were sitting right in front of the instructor we were jumping with and they were getting up buckled together as we got higher. I started having a panic attack as the plane kept getting higher. When it came time to jump we sat on the edge of the plane, with legs together, tucked under the plane. We kind of just fell out of the plane and were free falling for about a minute, which I think was definitely the coolest part of the jump. When we got a little bit closer, my instructor, Tomi, pulled the parachute and we slowly (5 minutes slowly) lowered to the grounds. For me, it was pretty painful because my ears popped the whole rest of the way down and I got dizzy. To land, I had to stick my feet out in front of me hand hold my legs up as high as I could. It was really hard to do with the air pressure and the harness on. It definitely took me some recovery time after we got back to the land, but Meghan was on an adrenaline rush and needed no recovery at all. We got our photos and videos that were AWESOME and Tomi was our taxi to the train station. Skydiving was definitely a GREAT experience. I’m really glad I did it in Spain, we had wonderful instructors, and I got to check it off my bucket list. It is definitely something I probably will never do again. We took a train back to the metro, which was about an hour and a half before the metro rides. It was a super long day and we were glad to be back in Madrid. For dinner, at about 9:30 we found a delicious American restaurant where we got chicken sandwiches and fries, and they even had ketchup on the tables. We went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter Friday night to make up for our “cultural miscommunication” the night before. Even though we weren’t the first ones to see it, the movie was great!!! It was a great way to wrap up the Harry Potter series. We walked home from Sol, where the theater was, because the metro was already closed and got home at about 4 am. Great day!!
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