Wish I had more time to write a more comprehensive blog, but it seems as if I've waited a bit too long, for I am headed to the airport in about 50 minutes en route to Italy for spring break. Woo!

Quickly, though, I am really having a great time in Madrid. There are so many awesome areas to go to, so many beautiful parks, so much to do! It's amazing.

My birthday was one of, if not the very best. On Friday, the 19th (mine is the 20th), I went with a trip that was offered through my program on a bus ride to Valencia for the culmination of Las Fallas festival. Throughout the week, the various towns around Valencia create absolutely massive, ornately detailed floats, with satirical themes (I guess I'm not down enough with Spanish culture/politics to know what they were really satirizing. It also didn't help that, like in Barcelona [crap, I didn't even blog about that, did I?], they have their own dialect which I couldn't really decipher, despite being somewhat similar to Spanish.) Anyway, the last night of the week-long festival, Friday, is when they BURN 'EM DOWN in colossally epic fires which are by no means safe but by all accounts wondrous. Throughout the day, leading up to the burning at midnight (and my birthday, of course!), there were explosions and firecrackers and whatnot booming constantly. On more than one occasion I momentarily lost hearing, and on even more occasions I saw little kids lighting things on fire. It amazed me that, as far as I could tell (for I didn't see many limbs lying astray), very few people were getting hurt. I suppose that was really the only difference, along with the utter jovial attitude and various tents lining the streets selling delectable treats and drinks, between the streets of Valencia on the last day of Fallas and the Gaza Strip. Actually, I guess there was really only one similarity between the two, but still, the comparison did come into my mind multiple times (I can't tell if that's too racy of a thing to say. I don't mean to be political. But I do keep it real. And I know that there's loud shit going off randomly within the Gaza Strip. Oh – and the crowds. That's a definite similarity. Yikes, I did not intend to do a compare and contrast essay between Las Fallas and Gaza Strip. But here I am. Carry on.). I met some cool people, accidentally (I swear) dined-and-dashed, and had my personal space violated time and again as the hour of the Crema, the burning, approached. It finally did, and yes, it was awesome, and yes, I'm kind of a pyromaniac.

On Saturday, I waited in line for OH MY GOD 4 HOURS for Real Madrid tickets, but it was totally worth it. I went with my man Bobby, who's been living here for a little more than a year, and we had a great time, and then went out after and did a fairly nice job representin' the 21st año.

Ummm. Family came March 5 - 12. Was great! (Yes, I'm giving you 6 words.) And my Spanish family is going really well. I've got a lot of anecdotes and thoughts on Spanish culture (as cool as they are for going out 'til 6 a.m. and not really caring about anything, they're kind of... big pussies [since it's in parentheses it's okay to use vulgarity, right?]).

Excited to see Italy and get a comparison! Here we go!!