speaking of papá

i´m having a great time with papá...it´s still soo exciting that he´s here! saturday was sort of recooperation day for him, as he was pretty tired from traveling, so we didn´t make it to el escorial as planned, but we did see an awesome play saturday night called "el caratero de neruda" about the friendship between pablo neruda & his postman...with some political stuff thrown in there as well. it was a realllly enjoyable play, especially because i could actually understand all that was going on! after that, papá and i had dinner at my host family´s house, which was so delightful. lots of pizza, lots of laughing, (lots of español of course) & lots of this hilarious game called "tienes un clip?" that ana taught us. it was good times, we stayed until 130 am, then woke up the next morning to go to "el rastro", madrid´s biggest flea market.

two & a half hours later all we´d bought was an umbrella. but it was fun nonetheless & i´m sure i´ll go back and leave with something other than an umbrella. after that we headed to my house to have lunch with my host family--homemade pasta, which was AMAZING, to be followed by a game of canasta! soo much fun. 5 people & 3 decks, it was great. papá actually brought in the win, and i came in 2nd. holler, montoys! after that we napped for an hour then headed off to to "loco por el fútbol"--a bar-club-restaurant type place whose name says it all. jonathan met us there & the three of us got to watch the end of formula 1, which was actually really fun to see, and the barcelona-real madrid game. real madrid scored within the first 3 minutes of the game and i couldn´t believe it. it was awesome...the place erupted. the place was really fun--plasma screens all along the walls of the 2-story place, and big screens above those. we had a good time. we left surprised that real-madrid held down the win--2-0! awesome. we were pretty disappointed that the streets weren´t filled with fans, though--the rain does that, i guess.

today i had class, then met papá back at the hotel and we got café con leche and some sopa & enjoyed some quality time to just sit and talk... it was really nice. the rain is sort of draining us. haha, no pun intended. but. it puts a damper on things because i wanted to do some more fun stuff outside, like row boats in the park. i suppose we´ll make do. tonight we´re off to the oldest restaurant in the world--el botín--founded in 1725! (goya worked as a plate cleaner there in 1765) with katy & jenny...i´m excited.

miss you all...abrazos y besos