Midterm Avoidance

It's that dreaded week again: midterms. Lovely USC Madrid scheduled all of our midterms in the same week, and yet we still have our normal class schedule as well, so it's going to be a bit of a hectic week. I had a paper due today for my theater class (in spanish of course) so at least that's out of the way, but still three more tests to go! Two on Wednesday and one on Thursday. But then I'm done :-)

This past week was relatively uneventful, as I spent most of it sick at home. :-( But now I'm feeling much better, so at least it was worth it. On Friday we had a group day trip to El Escorial, a royal palace built by Felipe II about an hour away from Madrid. It's in a beautiful location, surrounded by mountains which still have snow on them and lavish gardens. The palace itself is very dark and gloomy though. Felipe II was a very Catholic king and wanted to show the citizens of Spain that even the king lives by Catholic principles, which apparently meant his palace had to be cold and dark. There were tiny windows and big stone walls, and although lots of magnificent artwork, not enough light to appreciate it with. There was, however, a very cool library (with almost all of the original books!) that was beautifully decorated and lavish in contrast to the rest of the building.

On Saturday, frustrated with my theater paper, I left and met up with a few girls to explore more of Madrid. It is finally sunny and (slightly) warmer so we walked ALL around the city for hours, exploring parts we hadn't gotten to yet. It was definitely nice to see more of the city, instead of traveling from freezing point A to freezing point B underground on the Metro. Saturday night we celebrated one of the girl's birthdays on the trip. We started at this restaurant/bar/hookah spot near her homestay which was really fun and different and then of course the big group split up and my part headed to the university area to check out some of the cheaper bars. It was a fun night!

Today I am avoiding studying for my tests (as always) and trying to figure out my plans for after the program ends. Planning travel is always very stressful for me. Anyway, just a quick catchup to a slightly uneventful week. This weekend I'm in Madrid again (taking a break from traveling for a few weeks) so I'm sure I'll find time to post soon!