this looks famous...

let's first have a memoriam for my alarm clock. i got it for some birthday or christmas, a very very long time ago, while i was in middle school. i thought it was the coolest thing in the world.. a radio attached to a clock! awesome! it's lasted me for years and years, through 2 years of college. but during the trip over to spain, it has broken somehow.. and will never work again. i am very sad about this loss.. donations to my "Stop Airline Workers from Throwing Checked Baggage Around in a Violent Manner" fund will be accepted via email.

okay, on to describing the day:

after sleeping a solid 12 hours (9pm-9am... i was supposed to wake everyone else up but alas, the clock was broken), i woke up, got ready, and my roommates (sarah jane and kristine) and i decided to go into madrid to explore. we were actually supposed to meet some other people in our group, but since my alarm clock wasn't working, we missed the meeting time and so they probably left without us, i guess. (life without cell phones... we can't exist without them!) our father (faustino, who is apparently the head of CES in all of spain... wow) very kindly volunteered to drive us to the train station instead of having us take the bus, like we had planned. on the way, he started explaining all the places we needed to change from train to train and train to metro and stuff, and we gulped and realized what how much we DIDN'T have planned when we left. literally: we had no idea what we were doing or where we wanted to go. who does that? goes into THE major city in a foreign country without knowing where you're going? apparently, i do.

so we get onto the train and then later the metro. the whole time i'm clutching at my purse for dear life because i am terrified of having things stolen (read previous post) and don't worry, i was completely unattacked and we had nothing stolen (thank goodness). staring at the map, we really had no idea what to do, so i said, "let's get off at plaza de espana, that sounds important." yes, literally, that's how we chose where we wanted to go in the entire city of madrid. we get off at the wrong one, of course, and come out at some point that is just this residential area and start walking, feeling confused and really dumb. somehow, we stumbled across this park with this huge statue and decided to sit down for a while. after this while, i looked up and said, "what is this statue thing anyways? there are way too many people taking pictures in front of it.. it looks famous." and yes. turns out we ended up in the plaza de espana after all, and we had been sitting there for a good 20 minutes not knowing it. and turns out that just down the road was just the palacio real de espana (the royal palace for all you non-spanish speakers) and this giant cathedral and these beautiful gardens.

so we ended up being total tourists after all. i bought an ice cream cone with gelato (which absolutely beat the heck out of the gelato place in utah, of course) and we walked around and took pictures and ooohed and ahhed and the line "i don't know what it is, but it looks famous" was the most commonly used phrase of the day. (yes, it was in english, because kristine doesn't know very much spanish apparently, but we did use spanish a lot, dad, i promise: "parece muy famoso" was also said.) my legs hurt now but it was worth it. and we got completely lost on the way home from the train station (unfortunately, spaniards don't like marking their streets very clearly so it's impossible to know where you are) but it was totally fine because once again, we stumbled across our neighborhood (seriously. totally on accident.) and made it home. as chelsea w. would say (and in fact, did say) it was a miracle.

PS. there is a stop on the metro in Madrid that is... i kid you not... Hospital 12 de Octubre. the Twelfth of October Hospital! SERIOUSLY. 1012 hospital. i didn't take a picture, but i will, dont' worry. i was all excited when i saw that and my roommates looked at me funny... sound familiar, sarah?

and here are some pictures:

the large statue that turned out to be famous. i don't know what it was of. but it was famous. (there's a gigantic huge cement sculpture thing right to the right that you can't see.)

annndddd me in front of el palacio real!