The Grad Consortium, Madrid and Free Tapas

Well, today was the day of the grad consortium as well as the day that Allison left, so basically I was on my own for most of the day.

Allison departed at about 6:00, I think? I was not yet awake, I have heard that she made it safely home. I may now lose one of my more consistent readership cities as Allison's mom may no longer read it.

So this will be a short blog, but I just would like to thank all of you. Even if you didn't comment, I did know that people were reading as I could follow along and see how many hits I was getting, and it was a good feeling knowing 20 something people were enjoying my blog.

I also got a compliment from an OSU professor about my blog at the conference, so that was neat :).

Ok, so anyway, the rest of the roommates had to leave at like... 7:30? Sometime that I am not aware of, since I wasn't involved in the planning. I do remember walking up and hearing them chopping potatoes and some talking and then going back to sleep and then waking up and discovering that I was all alone, which was something that basically hasn't happened since about... September 8th.

So I read a little bit, have I mentioned yet that I have blown past Eric in our book? Well I have, not that I expected anything less, but I know Eric had high hopes. There are very few people that I believe can outread me.... of course there are probably lots of people who after we are done with a book would be able to test on it better... maybe?

So after reading, I finished up my presentation and then I had a small lunch. I was waiting for Markus, my friend from Germany to arrive, since he was coming in and we were going to check out Madrid. Unfortunately, he had a lot of bad travel, and so he wasn't able to make it. So after I while I just struck out into the city to explore a little bit.

I actually really love walking through Madrid. I have a fairly good sense of direction which helps a lot, but the city, actually all cities in Spain

So I needed to get a shirt for the conference, I managed to pack not enough polo's... which was silly of me, I should have planned better than that. So that was my primary goal while walking around. I went into a few shops and finally settled on an olive greenish polo that was pretty nice, as well as not expensive. I can also wear it again, so that is nice.

I then went and got a few more post cards. I realized that Allison took some of the postcards home that I had purchased, which was a little unfortunate. I then walked around a little more. And I saw a couple of cool things:

The first... well not cool thing, but I walked by the Church of Scientology:
It was huge! and fancy and I could have gone in and got tested for free. I figured, I didn't really need that, so I walked on by, but I thought that the size of the place was funny.

I saw what I think was the congress of Spain? I am not sure since it seemed so unguarded. Only like 5 policeman, all sitting in their cars smoking, but it said Congress of the ... something. :p

The final thing I saw was the funny bull statue, that was interesting only in that it looked very mad, the shirt says Crazy Bull.



So eventually I headed home and looked up how to get stamps and went and did that. I had to do it entirely in Spanish! It was actually not as bad as I would have thought, and really it was kind of smooth.

Then I got ready to go to the Welcome reception, except a few minutes before I was going to leave, Eric contacts me and says they aren't feeling the reception so they are just going to come home, which is fine with me, it means I don't have to travel! :)

I also arrange it so Markus comes back with them. So eventually, they show up, it turns out they turned the wrong way for the train and so they had to walk to the next train station which was about a mile away.... :-/ Not very fun.

So they show up and we eventually go out to eat at a little place near here. The lady spoke english and yet did not understand our orders. Chris B. tried ordering a Spanish Omelet and she was like, Spanish Omelet? and he was like Yes. And she said.. A Spanish Omelet? and he again said yes and point to the picture on the menu. And she said, its eggs and potatoes, and he said yes, I want that. She finally just accepted it. I am not quite sure what she was trying to tell him or thought that he didn't know.

After dinner we split up, they all went to get their posters while Markus and I went to drink a beer and talk for awhile. I took him to the place where they had belgian beer but sadly they were closed, so we just went to this little shop right under Hotel Cruz Sol. And we got tapas!!!! We ordered a beer and they brought us two chicken wings. lol... it wasn't the best tapas, but they were legitimate tapas and we weren't even trying. It is like... we are learning! :)

That was pretty much the evening. We tried going to bed early since we all had to wake up early for the conference. We sort of didn't succeed at that, but we tried!