Its now been one week since I've been in Madrid. Madrid is a huge city with many different parts to it, Sol is the main nightlife area, Salamanca is the neighborhood I live in, and Almagro is the area that our school is in, just to name a few. Madrid kind of reminds me of New York in a way it has the same sort of feeling and a lot of the hustle and bustle that comes with such a big city. The funny thing about Madrid is that there are all kinds of people here; pretty much every corner store is owned by Asians who speak Spanish with Asian accents which sounds pretty bizarre, there are a lot of Indian people, and then tons of tourists from all over the world as well as the 10,000 plus American students study abroad all over Madrid.
 While here myself and Colman Tishler, another St. Mike's kid, are living together with a host mother, or Senora, named Paloma. She's a really nice older woman who lives with her daughter and her daughter's husband. We got lucky enough to live in a house so there are three floors; the top floor is where here daughter and her husband live, the 1st floor is where Paloma lives as well as where the kitchen and such is, and the basement is where Colman and I live. Its nice to have our own floor cause we get more space and we don't have to worry about being to neat all time because she never comes down here anyways.
 The program I came abroad through is Syracuse University's abroad program, but we study at the International Institute in Madrid which is also used by USC, BU, and Stanford. For us classes started officially last Wednesday an we had 3 days of the equivalent of syllabus week. I'm taking 5 classes this semester; Money and Banking and Economics of the EU are my classes taught in english and then Colonial Latin America, Spanish Society and Pop Culture, and Spanish IV are all taught completely in Spanish. Its definitely kind of weird having classes all in Spanish but luckily so far I've been able to understand everything my teachers say and hopefully my comprehension will only get better as the semester goes on. This week classes kick off and we actually have to start paying attention, but considering class only lasts about 5 hours its not to bad.
 It's been a great first week in Madrid and its nice to finally be settled in because I'm starting to feel more comfortable and get a rhythm which is always nice. I've bumped into a couple of my friends from high school  as well which has been fun and it'll be nice to see them throughout the semester as well. This weekend a bunch of us are headed of to the beach town of Lagos, Portugal to surf, swim and hangout which should be a blast, so i'll make sure to brag about how much fun it was next week, but until then nos vemos!