Now I am cramped in between two beds in a train room sleeping six. The light is off, but I am writing by the light of a small night light. I have to tell you about a funny thing that happened in Madrid.

It was around 3:00 am and everyone was out dancing at some club, except me, Christine, and Jen. I had a drink with them at a cafe outside where we ran into Mike, Jake, and Orane, who I had thought went dancing. We sat and talked, asking Orane questions about her country (France).

Later us three girls went exploring in town. After we got back to the hotel, we were hyper and laughing on the balcony. There were some Spanish boys in their early twenties, drinking and loitering outside, 3 floors down, enjoying the warm night air, as do all Spaniards. They looked up, noticing us because of our noise. They yelled things in Spanish, including the word for "stupid." Offended, we began to step away from the balcony to close the shutters. But the Spanish boys cried out, "WAIT! WAIT!" when they heard our English voices. We went back to look down at them and they asked where we were from, in broken English. We told them and ended up having a sort of late night hollering bilingual conversation separated by 3 floors and an outdoor street.

I wanted to do something memorable, so I decided to take advantage of their interested voices and dramatically yelled "DANCE FOR ME!" (in Spanish). So the good looking one in an orange shirt began to dance, Spanish style, and his four friends began to clap. Then I yelled, "CANTAS!" They asked what I wanted them to sing and I immediately responded with "Livin La Vida Loca". There was confused chatter amongst them at first, followed by "AH, AHH, rrRicky MARtin! Si, si!" (etc) So they sang all together, and quite well, serenading us. Later they sang a few Spanish songs too, and continued on like this for about half an hour for us. We took pictures and they posed. I'll never forget that evening. THAT'S culture.

departure - arrival