recientemente

last Thursday: this was the day of Inda's funeral. at about 8:00 pm my mom, dad, and I drove to a church in pozuelo. we stood outside for about half an hour while family and friends came and I met a ton of people. many cheeks were kissed that day. then at 8:30 we went in and sat down. first the priest said some things, then one of Inda's daughters said some things, then the priest said more things, basically. lol but no, a lot of the times while the priest was talking we had to stand and repeat things and once we kneeled and yeah, I don't really know what happened. there was also communion. but yeah, that was mostly it. so then I met more people, and ended up sitting with my neighbor Carlos, who's 16 I think, and talking about random stuff. since I didn't really know anyone his mom Lola (one of my favorite people, their family is just awesome overall) offered to take me home while my mom and dad stayed and talked with family. so I went home with them, and after we got back I went on a walk with Carlos because he needed to take his dog out. he said if I was ever bored or anything we could hang out, so that was nice. he also invited me to hang out with him and his friends the next day, but they ended up not doing anything.

Friday: school, talked with Laura and Sergio and Groberth for a bit, came home, sat around, the usual

Today: so today I woke up and ate breakfast and had just started to Skype one of my friends Mary when my dad offered to take me into Madrid to visit a few places. and obviously I had to say yes, so I told Mary we'll Skype later (shoutout to you Mary, you're awesome), packed my camera, and we headed out. we took the train to principe pio and the metro to opera, and walked to the palacio real. from here it's just gonna be pictures and captions. so here it is
















so this is the palacio real. today there was a fiesta type thing because the king of Spain was coming and a ton of people were there to see him. I heard a ton of languages so that was really fun. there was a big group of Asians, some people from Germany, I heard English and i would assume from England, but I couldn't hear well enough to catch an accent, and there were obviously people from Spain as well. so that was cool to see. we didn't stay to see the king but we did see a few horses start walking down the road.

these are some street views. pretty sweet, I know

 

so this is the big cathedral we went in. its really close to the palacio real.

on the inside: the ceilings and stained glass windows were amazing.

another view from the outside.

so here i what i more or less understood was something about the saint of Madrid. but i got to go up those steps and look up close so that was cool

 view from the entrance. on the right and left there are more hallways with different statues and paintings and such. if you've been reading this regularly i went to el Escorial recently, but you can't take pictures there, but this is really similar.

this is the church underneath the cathedral. we didn't go any farther because you had to pay, but we saw some pictures and its basically a ton of columns and other paintings and i don't know what else. so pretty cool

 so outside of the church these little kids were getting pictures and they're all color coordinated and its just really cute

plaza mayor! i had been here already, but we went and there were a ton of people because of the fiesta thing. i really don't like using the word fiesta for this because it wasn't really a party, but that's what my dad called it, so yeah. fiesta. plaza mayor. lots of people.

this is me and my favorite part of the plaza mayor behind me. you can kind of see the paintings on the building, but i just love it because the rest is brick and this part is just awesome. so yeah that's a bad description but i just really like it

 

a mini plaza that i forget the name of.

 and of course the street performers. this group i especially liked because there was a bassist :) but we saw quite a few quartets. it always surprises me and makes me smile that the majority of the players are young. i just think that's pretty cool. if i lived in opera, i think i would want to find an instrument and play and try and make money. that would be cool.





so yeah, that's kind of a summary of the last few days. tonight my friend Jameela is coming and we're going to watch an indian movie and she'll sleep over, and tomorrow we're going hiking in the mountains! so that'll be super fun.

so yeah. hasta luego!