catching you all up...

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, life has been a little crazy! I went to Barcelona, Sitges, and Lisbon with my parents, and my brother and his girlfriend. It was great! I absolutely loved 

Lisbon, I cannot wait to go back and see other parts of Portugal. I also have decided that I want to learn Portuguese next! I also now have very limited internet access, so all of you who have written me I really appreciate it, and I am sorry if I haven’t written back. The internet in the apartment is completely broken, and they cant figure out how to fix it. The company was at our house for 3 hours on Sunday, and they still couldn’t figure it out. Go figure.

So I have moved in with my new host family, and it is the best situation ever! The mom is American, but she only speaks Spanish to me, and there is a daughter, Andrea, who is 15. They are incredibly nice, and their house is full of pictures and artifacts from their travels all over the world. I live only 10 minutes from my internship, in the center of the bustling city. Its great cause I live in the part where everyone works, not in the touristy part of the city. I made a great friend with this girl from the states, named Medha, and she only lives about 10 minutes from me walking. It is really fun to be living so close, and I find myself a lot less tired because I am not commuting anymore.

My internship is going great, Im sad that I only have a couple more weeks to go. I am getting a lot of information for my research paper, and am excited to start writing it! Basically I will be writing about the difference between homelessness in LA and Madrid, and how the presence of social programs helps alleviate homelessness. Now, you all may have very different opinions about how much the government should spend on services for people, but the stark differences in numbers makes me certain that with the implementation of services, homelessness could disappear in LA. In the city alone, there are about 700 homeless people here in Madrid. In LA, the number is around 50,000. In Madrid County there are about 5,000 and in LA County about 70,000. Its incredible, right? One of the main reasons there are so many less is because Spain offers something called the Renta Minima, which is a service that gives a stipend for a apartment. Through this many people have a place to live, even if they are having trouble finding a job.

So last weekend I went to Pamplona to see the bulls in the streets. What a weekend I had. I couldn’t begin to write all of the crazy things that happened, but ill give you a little glimpse of the weekend. We arrived on Friday night, 3 hours late because of traffic in Madrid. That made our 5 hour bus ride 8 hours. Medha and I had reserved a hotel room 3 days before, in a 4 star Golf and Spa resort. From the street it looked like a castle! We were a little nervous because the room was 150 Euro a night, so we got 4 other friends to go with us. But of course, hotels don’t allow this, so we found a back door and snuck the rest in. It was incredible! The room was HUGE, and 4 of us slept on the ginormous bed while the other 2 slept on the floor. We got to bed around 130 and slept till 430, left at 5am to go into town and get a spot on the street to see the torros. As many of you can imagine, I was not the happiest camper, but was ok because they run at 8am, and afterwards we could go back to the hotel and sleep till our check out at 1. To make a long story short, Medha and I got to take advantage of their exquisite spa, which included 6 different kinds of showers, one with the aroma of tropical flowers. There was a pool, spa, sauna, and steam room, and yes, these chairs you lay on and they get warm and relax your muscles. I was in heaven. But, we had to leave there around 430pm to meet the other girls in the city. This is where the fun began, because at 5 we were in the city, and didn’t have any place to stay, and basically just hung out until the next morning. The crazy thing is everyone does this. For 24 hours the streets are full of people drinking, bars are open, it is completely nuts!!! At about 2 am I was pretty tired of it all, and really annoyed with drunk people, and it was really really cold and rainy, so we decided to try and find a place to catch some sleep. Almost as soon as we found a place in the train station to close our eyes, (this is after walking around for about 9 hours) the police came and said they were closing the station. So, after thinking for a bit, I remembered that on my route there are a lot of people who sleep in the little rooms that have the ATM’s, cause they are open all night, and are warm. We found one (called a cajero) and seriously, I think I got the best 2 hours of sleep that I have ever gotten in my life. It was nice and warm, and we litteraly just lied down on the floor and closed our eyes. Probably one of the craziest things I have ever done, and will ever do in my life. Around 530 we got up, and decided that we would try and catch the 7am bus. Our tickets were for 10 am, but we were hoping that people would forget and seats would be open. That didn’t end up working out, so Medha and I went to the plaza and watched from the seats there. It was pretty amazing. The best thing about it was being able to see Spaniards in their element. It was just like one of our baseball games….everyone knew what to chant or yell at every point in time. They knew when to stand up, what songs to scream, it was amazing. I really thought it was beautiful. That is, until at the end they let a baby torro out and all the people were playing with it and abusing it… that I didn’t like, and actually ended up leaving the plaza early cause they were mistreating it so much.

As for now, I am back to my studies, and will remain in Madrid for the rest of my time here. My host mom is a great cook, she even got me to eat mushrooms! Well, I did shove a piece of bread in my mouth after every bite, but still, I ate them. Yes mom, I know you’re proud of me.

I love you all a lot! Tell me how you are…I am going to start going to my internship every day because I can use the internet there, so I should be a lot more connected. Hope you are well!

Besos, Kelly