A Trip of a Lifetime

Background on Jordan: Apparently, Jordan is not quite as close to Munich as I originally anticipated; the flight definitely took over six hours, but the experience was unreal. Not quite sure what I had expected of the Middle East as I had never traveled anywhere (culturally) similar to it, but I came to find out it is an AMAZING place (or at least Jordan was for me). Jordan is extremely mountainous, quite developed in terms of roads and other infrastructure, pretty clean and well preserved, and people were pretty open and welcoming (as long as you were respectful of the culture and customs of the country—yeah woman were definitely more oppressed than other cultures, but that is probably the case in many non-western cultures). Lastly, the food is UNREAL! I think it was some of the best food I’ve had in my life – I definitely stuffed my face with olives, hummus, grilled meats, falafel, pita bread, etc. the entire trip!
Dan met me in Amman (capital of Jordan) where we met up with one of my oldest and closest friends, Grace, who is currently teaching English in Jordan on her Fulbright fellowship. Grace had a palatial apartment that she shared with two other Fulbright-ers (Jen and Hannah) that is roughly 10 times the size of my Munich apartment. We started the trip with shisha (tobacco that we proceeded to smoke from a hookah every day for the next five days there—I think my lungs are still coughing up smoke); it’s a Middle Eastern cultural experience that we obviously had to partake in religiously.

Our first full day there started with a delicious brunch followed by a dip in the Dead Sea – the lowest point on Earth! It’s insanely salty, which keeps the water buoyant and resulted in the inability to sink.

We followed our dip in the Dead Sea and mud treatment with teaching English to Sudanese & Somalian refugees in a Jesuit Center. Interestingly enough, Amman is a safe-haven for quite a few refugees as it has the resources and is fairly welcoming; Grace, along with other Fulbright teachers and volunteers, teaches English to children and adults who are in the process (sometimes decades long) to obtain a visa for a more developed nation. It’s incredible how important it is around the world to have a strong command of English – everyone there was so appreciative of the lessons. Our three hour lesson ended with a double dose of schwarma (grilled meats wrapped with tomatoes/tatziki in pita bread).

Day two began with Dan and me exploring the streets of Amman successfully without being scammed – never undervalue a good guy friend who can not only protect you from random men but can also mimic accents like no other and be confused for a local.

After our adventure filled with falafel and shisha smoking, Grace joined us for a four hour drive south to the city of Petra, an ancient city (established in 6th Century BC and was once the capital for the Nabataeans people) that was once a mecca of economic activity -- we experienced Petra by night [read a race to make it to this night show where Bedouins (nomadic Arabs of the desert regions of Arabia and North Africa) played a flute and some other old-time instrument]. The scenery along the ride was unbelievable – think rolling mountains vaguely similar to Southern California.

After much needed rest, we filled day three with Petra by day. Imagine scaling mountains (we really did climb hundreds of steps up and down giant mountains and ruins) and falling/tripping over and almost dying several times to get these great shots of us at different vantage points.

Of course, the trip didn’t end there; we continued our shisha tour of Jordan and headed off the next day back to Amman on the Dead Sea Highway. This time around, the “White Visitor” (female form of giant white dust/sand storms that blocked anything beyond fifty feet of eye view) wasn’t around and we got GREAT views of the Dead Sea and Israel right across the water.

We stopped off at a castle that was once used to protect the city of Karak during the 3^rd Crusade and ended the afternoon with a panoramic sun-setting view of the Dead Sea atop giant cliffs, eating ice-cream and sipping hot chocolate of course. Alas, my trip came to an end with more amazing Middle Eastern meals and sweets – I think I ate enough for two people on this trip – and shisha smoking.

Can't wait for what the next adventure holds!

Start of what is sure to be an absurd six months in Europe...

Trip to Munich: After nearly sleeping through my flight (thank God for awesome roommates who will wake you up and drive you to the airport at ungodly hours!), I landed in NYC seven hours later to have dinner with a group of college friends at a Mexican restaurant that was apparently in the middle of nowhere (but uber convenient for me to get back to the airport :)). NYC Dinner @ El Parador Cafe

My flight routed me through London Heathrow (it was my first time there, and I hope I never fly through Heathrow every again – it really is the most confusing airport I have ever had the displeasure of walking through) and then finally to Munich. SO GLAD my flight was on Saturday – apparently it started snowing on Sunday in London and half the flights were cancelled – another reason to never fly through Heathrow, it shuts down with just an inch or two of snow.

Living in Munich: So I’ve only been around for roughly two days, but I’m already in love with Munch. Aside from the fact that German food is just as terrible as I remember it from my Berlin trip, the weather is literally ten degrees or lower here right now, and I speak absolutely zero German, it’s great. Typical German meal (had this on Sunday at a beerhall / restaurant):

My apartment is roughly two feet big – please come visit, you can stay in a hotel , kidding! The location of the apt, however, is amazing (except it’s roughly 45 mins away from work) – within a block is a Tacos y Tequila restaurant as well as other cafes. Luckily Munich is fairly international regarding cuisines so I won’t starve for the next six months. Apparently, a number of Vietnamese people live in Munich (I go to Vietnamese restaurants so that I can read the menu and know what I am eating), so I’ve made friends with a local shop-owner who offered to have her son (who conveniently has a lot of time on his hands and happens to be 22 yrs old. Haha) take me around if I got bored or needed a guide.

Touring Munich: I expect there will be many more posts regarding Munich and its surrounding areas, but here’s a first glance. Stumbled across Marienplatz after going to a Catholic mass in German that lasted for 30 mins (short and sweet, and apparently anyone who is religiously affiliated has to pay a tax to the Church here); picture below of Marienplatz, the center of Munich:

Tomorrow, off to Jordan to see Grace!

Work hard, play a lot harder

Let's start where I last left you, back in Gurgaon (where the Msft Office is located, just outside of New Delhi).

Funny story of the week (pretty embarrassing but had to share):
Basically, my team has learned just how absurd I am. One day after eating a very large dinner, I thought it'd be nice to walk on the treadmill at a slow pace to help with not feeling so full. [Side note, apparently you shouldn't exercise after dinner as you need all the energy/blood you have to help with digestion.] I brought a good book along to read while on the treadmill and over an hour had passed before I finished my workout. By this time, it was around 10pm and the fitness center was completely empty except for me. I had just witnessed the maid coming to clean the area and close the door behind her and was ready to leave the gym myself. I grabbed my stuff and headed toward the doors. There were two large glass doors. I went to one and started pulling and pushing with no luck. I thought how strange it was that the door was locked and proceeded to the next door to pull and push, again with no luck at actually opening the door. Afraid I was going to break the door had I pushed or pulled any harder, I looked around frantically for a phone and could not find one. At this point, I was getting a bit mad and started swearing like a sailor, thinking how absolutely ridiculous it was that the staff would lock the gym doors with me inside. Luckily, the hotel restaurant looked right into the gym, so I pulled up one of the curtains and started tapping furiously at the window toward people at the restaurant and/or anybody who could see me. I waved my arms around like a crazy person, all the while basically swearing towards the hotel/hotel staff. This carried on for five minutes until a hotel guest left his dinner and walked to the gym doors and so very easily just pulled the door open. Yeah...needless to say, I felt like an idiot.

So aside from embarrassing stories, work has been good. It's been pretty busy as I'm wrapping up any loose ends before I leave, since surely no one will care to respond to me after I'm gone.


This past Friday, I went to the Kingdom of Dreams to watch a Magic Show (ironically with an American magician). It had to have been one of the worst shows I've ever seen...the magician showed mostly promotional 80's/90's videos of himself performing huge tricks and had very obvious slight of hand tricks. I think my mind could actually figure out what he was doing half the time (yes, it was truly that bad). Apparently, you can watch him in Atlantic City...though I would highly recommend against wasting an hour and a half of your life. On the bright side, I did get to ride a camel in the middle of the street for two bucks.

Aside from the camel riding, my team and I found this great ex-pat brewery where they brewed their own beer. The beer is pretty light and fragrant, just my type of beer. It tastes a lot like a Sam Adams...it's yummy! We had our fair share of beers and shots on Friday night, all leading me to head to bed at 2:30am....


Yeah, a little over two hours later, I was up again for my trip to the Taj Mahal. Totally hungover, for sure! It's interesting that even though the roads in Gurgaon are pretty modern with highways and interstates, etc, just a ten minute ride away from the city, you get pretty bumpy dirt roads with tons of potholes. However, in the middle of the fields, we managed to find smooth paved highways...does this make any sense? No, not much in India makes much sense to me. Four hours later on the road, we reach Agra, the city where the Taj Mahal is located. It's funny that herds of cows and goats in the middle of the road are no longer shocking to me. After almost being scammed by our driver (he said his friend could help us - for no charge - navigate the Taj Mahal lines as it's not safe and yada yada yada to which we said no thanks...note, do not ever accept 'free' services in Asia...nothing is free in Asia...the tip you will have to pay will likely be much higher than the cost if you had paid for the services elsewhere), we headed to breakfast at the ITC Mughal and then to the Taj Mahal. It's a beautiful site indeed, probably more beautiful had I not been so stubborn and turned down every "guide" that approached us, thinking I should be able to find an even better guide inside the gates. Epic fail, we had to go without a guide due to my stubbornness. My co-workers were not too impressed with the Taj, but I thought it was pretty cool! It's symmetry is incredible! The area that surrounds the mausoleum is gigantic (probably a bit excessive for a dead person's resting place).

Here's my fave picture of the Taj (we found an awesome bench under a tree with a great view!):


After the Taj, we went to the Red Fort (another cool Agra site) and the Oberoi Hotel for lunch. From the hotel, you could see a great view of the Taj...actually, you could see the Taj from basically most places in Agra...that's to give you an idea of how massive the Taj Mahal is!

So to finish up my weekend, I was able to bargain my way through Dalihaad, an "international" market (read, a market where every stall had the same trinkets/scarves, etc.). Afterwards, I met up with an old friend and teammate, Kiran, from a class I took while in Holland on Indian culture/business world. We hung out in a park in Delhi center-city. How crazy is it that I was in Delhi literally at the same time that she happened to be in Delhi for just five days!



Now back to the real world...and onto Singapore next weekend!

Corporate Yuppie - Indian style

WOW! I've had many adventures since my last post and have not posted any of the stories into this blog.

Here I go again, being seriously ridiculous around the world, though a little more business than usual.

Takeoff from Seattle: Unfortunately, I missed my "St. Practice Day" celebration in Seattle, but no fear here, my layover happened to be in Chicago where I could meet up with Brie and Lauren (no accident for sure). To appease my liver (read, further destroy my liver), Brie brought some Jameson for the car ride (NICE!) and we proceeded to an Irish pub for some drinks and lunch. Of course I had to eat a giant steak seeing as it's illegal to kill a cow in India, thus no beef for me for the next three weeks.


So I climbed onto my nonstop flight from Chicago to New Delhi a little buzzed for sure. Apparently, it's American Airlines' longest nonstop international flight, and probably not good for my health that I only got up twice the entire flight. The plane wasn't as filled with Indian families as I thought it would have been; there were quite a few tourists on the plane. Anyway, as soon as I sat down, a man approached me expecting that I switch seats with his wife since I was traveling alone and he wanted to sit next to his wife. Obviously, properly asking me to switch seats was just an afterthought...oh Asian manners...

After landing in India, I tried to purchase a SIM card, which would not work on my phone. The SIM seller was pretty mad at me as he had already activated the card. It's also interesting to note how often phones are used in this country; during the work hours, people's personal phones are just ringing blatantly and being answered no big deal.

Aside from randomness in the airport, work has been pretty good. It’s definitely exhausting as you’re with your team from morning to around 8:30/9pm. Working in an office away from main campus also requires you to work on Redmond time – I’ve had to take late night calls for meetings with managers, etc. and work around their time. Other than that, it’s not too bad. I work in a conference room with 6 other people, so it’s nice to be focused and not goofing around reading the news and such. After work, we usually go out for a pretty big meal. I think I’ve had every single Indian dish I’ve ever wanted to eat. Lots of kebabs, lamb, naan, and random food filled with yogurt and lentils, etc. Funny enough, my favorite food so far was from a Lebanese restaurant. Here are a couple of pictures:


Aside from Gurgaon, I went to Mumbai (Bombay) for the weekend. It was nice to get away from Gurgaon but I’m pretty exhausted. Traveling as a tourist in India is incredibly tiring, especially if you don’t have your own car/driver. I am constantly being scammed by the cab drivers! Of course, we couldn’t leave Mumbai without seeing an elephant for a ride on the highway…


Our trip began with a stop at the Gateway of India, probably named that because it’s a pretty large commercial port.
In going there, I was able to view the beautiful green Indian ocean water. Seriously, this country is probably one of the most polluted countries I’ve seen. Granted, I’m here during a dry season and probably did not expect as much smog and pollution everywhere since my benchmark is my last Asia trip, which was during monsoon season where the rain probably helped clear a lot of the pollution away.

Gateway of India wasn’t very much of a site, so Marissa (my coworker who is on the trip with me) and I had lunch at the Taj Mahal Hotel, which is incredibly nice, where we were able to once again have a great view of the waters (note the sarcasm, the waters are gross). Funny enough, Marissa and I ended up having dinner at the Taj as well. I think India is a little too insane to be doing much else…it’s just far too chaotic and without someone local, all you can really do is see the main touristy sites and hang out at your hotel.

Aside from the Taj Hotel, we went to the Elephanta Caves, which is an uncovered site Hindu gods’ faces carved into the rock slash side of the mountain. On the way there, I had a fun brush-up with a monkey. Note: Never dangle your camera around a monkey….bright, shiny objects tend to attract monkeys, surprise! Luckily, my camera was not stolen by the monkey, but here’s a fun picture of a monkey taking a sip of mango juice from a bottle.


At night, Marissa and I toured some local markets, full of bangles and patterned scarves. Basically, the usual trinket/tourist trap from any large city. We also found a beach near our hotel that was quite a wild celebration of sorts. Locals were celebrating Holi, a festival where one smears all types of bright colors on each other marking the beginning of Spring. On the beach, people were celebrating by having a bonfire and then running around the bonfire in circles, while also throwing colors on each other.

Before leaving Bombay, we also managed to go to Juhu Beach, where Marrisa and I were the only two not covered in bright colors, making us pretty obvious targets for Holi. We opted out of being Holied as we figured the planes would not let us back on covered in multi-colored powder (that incidentally is extremely tough to take off).



More to come next weekend!

Fine, Cane, and Jail

Okay, so as promised, I am writing about my adventures in my tour de Asia. I’ll do it country by country so it’s not too overwhelming.

Let’s start with country #1 on the trip: Singapore

Singapore is probably the cleanest, most respectable place ever! It’s so the opposite of the rest of Asia, and since it’s my favorite country in Asia that just tells you how Asian I truly am. Hah! In Singapore, there is actually zero trash on the ground (okay maybe a little, but probably the cleanest country I’ve ever been to, aside from maybe the Vatican), nobody shoves you when you line up, everybody looks and dresses amazing (seriously, everybody dresses as if he/she is on his/her way to the club or some other fabulous party), the metro system is super convenient and clean, and the service is amazing. I would definitely say that Singapore is the Europe of Asia; the clothes they wore and everything reminded me of Europe…but with all Asians and malls literally on every other street instead of old buildings. I think we went into at least 10 malls (and they are really big malls, too) in the two days we were in Singapore.

Okay, so I’ll tell you now about the events of our trip. We got to Singapore and their metro system is awesome, except for the ticket machines. It requires that you put 1 Singapore Dollar (SGD) to get this metro card and you use it to put the fare cost on it. When you’re done, you put the metro card back into the machine to get your 1 SGD…but for your next ride, you have to repeat the entire process, instead of being able to reuse that metro card to reload. I complained about this inefficiency a lot!

My sister and I got to our bed and breakfast Sunday afternoon on June 14th…totally exhausted from just landing in Asia. I totally ticked off the cabbie by offending him and asking if the meter was on (in most of Asia, meters conveniently “don’t work”). Luckily, the B&B was amazing: super duper clean and the owners prepared breakfast each morning. So we met up with Yingheng and Aaron (both friends from Penn) and they took us from China(town) to (Little) India, all within a few blocks. Since the boys were huge eaters, we sampled everything on the street to get a taste of, well, randomness. Singaporean food happens to be a combination of Chinese and Indian food. Around afternoon time, we heard the Islamic song prayer (you can actually hear it from almost anywhere in Singapore, I think?); it was our first time hearing it so that was interesting. Yingheng amused us by coming shopping with us and then took us walking around some famous areas like Raffles City (Raffles is considered the founder of modern day Singapore) and Marina Bay. I loved that Singapore was surrounded by water and everywhere you went, the buildings reflected off the water. We went to Clarke Quay (a cool bar strip near the bay) and had Turkish ice cream: ice cream where the vendor picks on you…you’re mostly paying to watch the vendor act silly.

The following day, my sister and I were mostly on our own. We went to Orchard Rd, super famous for its shopping. Unfortunately, my sister and I didn’t realize that the shopping was all ridiculous name brands wayyy out of our budget. There were at least two stores for every designer. I tried on a Dior dress and looked terrible in it…sad, even in a several thousand dollar dress, I still look silly. A bit of advice, it’s really not expensive to eat at a real food court so even if you’re in a really nice area, don’t go to a shady looking basement area food court just to get cheap food…it’s probably going to be terrible (as my sister and I quickly figured out). After our stroll down Orchard Rd, we went to a mall where we could actually afford things, Vivo. I bought tons of cute clothes for super cheap prices; it was Singapore’s sale season so that was awesome. The only bad thing was the super small sizes. For example, in one store, I wasn’t allowed to try on clothes that were less than like $10 or something. So my sister pulled out a Large sized skirt and I thought, I don’t know if I’ll fit it…it’s a large and I’m usually a small. Yeah, so the store employee measured my waist size and pretty much told me I was too big for the size L skirt. Haha SAD! Anyways, I went on to buy an XL shirt later on in that day. Also, one out of the many weird things you will find in Asia is that there is an “F” size…which means Free Size. This free size is apparently a one size fits all type deal; unfortunately for me, the F size in Singapore was like an XS in America.

Other than the ridiculously small clothing sizes, Singapore did have other downsides. There are crazy strict rules, to where it’s kinda terrifying. On top of the rules, they brainwash you by having signs everywhere that pretty much tell you what to do. They also show videos to tell you how to behave. Seriously, it’s a bit extreme, but I guess that’s the only way to turn around a country so quickly like Singapore has done.

As a side note, if you’re ever stuck in an airport, pick Singapore. It has free games, music, internet, and everything else you could ever need in an airport! I’ll load pictures soon.

Okay, so that about details my entire Singapore trip. It was super super fun, I’d totally recommend it!

Life is Good

So I feel like I should update everybody on my life events. Sorry I’ve been completely out of touch…I’m rarely online these days, except for at work. As far as what I’ve been up to, I’ll start with my life presently.

Life in Vietnam:
I actually live on the outer edges of Saigon, not more than 15 or 20 kilometers from the very center of the city. I live in my 104 year old grandma’s house. My grandma’s pretty weak these days…she lies down all day and I’m pretty sure she has no clue who I am or that I even live in the house. I’m always surrounded by family and always going to visit or have dinner with one family member or another…my aunts are practically at my beck and call. It’s nice but can be a bit suffocating because I’m not used to it and feel like I’m burdening them (though they disagree)…good thing I go to work where no one bothers me. Anyways, a lot of random men hit on me through my tour de Asia so I ended up buying a wedding band to wear so that I’m not bothered by strange men, though I doubt anybody believes I’m actually married.

Okay, so I can’t stress enough how many people there are in Vietnam. In a country that’s probably half the size of California, there are 85 million people currently residing in Vietnam. The roads are crazy dangerous…there are motorists everywhere and nobody drives normally. I feel like I’m in New York City, except way worse. A lot of times, I ride on a “xe om,” a mini-motorcycle, literal translation is “hugging car,” because you have to hug people when you ride one. Haha. When crossing any road…you pretty much have to put your life in others’ hands and hope that they stop (read yield) for you to cross. Aside from the massive amounts of people in Saigon, it’s a pretty cool city. Pretty much anything I want or could need is in Saigon…there’s even a Notre Dame Cathedral built by the French that looks almost exactly like the one I visited not too long ago in Paris. I haven’t been into it because it only opens during Sunday mass.

Okay, so I lead a pretty good life in Vietnam and am even considering working here for a few years? The only thing that kills me is the insane humidity and heat and the fact that there’s practically zero air conditioning.

Working for Coca-Cola Vietnam:
As far as my project for the summer and the workplace…I’m loving it! I really enjoy working here; people don’t seem to work as much and are super friendly and joke a lot. To give you an example, the CFO of Coke Vietnam one day told me I dressed sexy that day and talks with me about fashion all the time. Another day, during snack time, my boss told me to bring the snacks to the big boss to win over his support to see what I would do. It’s also pretty relaxing to work here, though I think I came during a slow season. Three days a week, we have snack time at 4p.m. and hang out and chat for at least half an hour. Every day after lunch, you go to brush your teeth together and chat in the restroom for at least 15 minutes. Work starts at 8:30 a.m. but nobody actually shows up at that time. I leave at 5p.m. even though work doesn’t technically end until 5:30p.m. I’ve gotta admit, this work-style is winning me over.

In regards to what I actually do everyday other than goof around…my project is really cool and totally up my alley. It’s about Coke’s “Water Neutrality” initiative where Coke wants to return the community the amount of water it uses. It returns the water by providing the money to build water pipes and such in order for the poor to have access to clean water. My project deals with assessing last year’s results on these projects (how much water we have actually returned) and with writing a proposal to request $ for next year’s projects. In doing this, I will be visiting these poor communities throughout Vietnam and even in Cambodia to talk with local NGOs and visit the worksites myself and maybe even follow the NGOs on surveying the sites. So that’s my life presently…I’d upload some pictures but my sister successfully destroyed my camera along with the memory card with over a thousand pictures from Asia that had not been uploaded onto my computer by dropping the camera at the waterpark.

I have a ton of interesting stories from Asia but I’ll wait to write them another time.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July and is enjoying his/her summer!

Back to the Motherland...

So, I know it's been quite a while since I've updated my blog, but I figured I would pick up the habit again seeing as how I leave tomorrow for SEAsia.

First, I want to talk about what I was up to after my Rome trip. I got to spend most of my last month in Europe in Holland, exploring more of the country and catching up with a lot of unfinished projects and papers. I went to Keukenhof, the largest flower festival in Europe, located an hour away from Rotterdam in a town called Lisse. Here are some awesome pictures from the flower festival. Notice the picture of me with tons of azalea bushes (azaleas are the flower of Mobile).




Aside from the fabulous springtime weather and beautiful flowers in bloom all around Holland, there were also fun Netherland traditions taking place in May. One big celebration at the end of April was Queen's Day officially celebrated on April 30th. It's kind of like a 24 hour celebration of the former Queen's (of Holland) birthday. In this celebration...people wear crazy orange outfits and get incredibly incredibly intoxicated and roam around the people-filled streets eating random food from food carts and dancing to live techno and hip-hop music. To give you an idea, here are a couple of pictures: There's also a Queen's Night celebration the night before where people party through the night. Both Queen's Night and Day are celebrated throughout the country in pretty much all the major cities. The biggest celebration is in Amsterdam, where I went, but the Queen usually attends a parade in one of the smaller towns in Holland. Unfortunately, some lunatic this year decided to go on a rampage and drive into the crowd at the parade, killing nine people and injuring even more. Insane! It was apparently an attempt to take down the royal family.

Okay, enough about my random adventures in Holland. After finishing up most of my work at RSM, I went on a weeklong vacation to Spain towards the end of May. It was incredible to get away from the still cold May Holland weather and bathe in the warmth of Spain. I landed in Barcelona on a Sunday afternoon and it was absolutely beautiful. I met up with a friend from Penn, Lauren (I already mentioned her in my previous posts). Our hostel was in the center of Barcelona, a super cute place full of really friendly people. We met a lot of randoms on our Barcelona trip. We went to all the touristy places: Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia was amazing! It's also absolutely huge!


Of course every place was amazing...Barcelona is a really fun city with a lot to do. We went to Park Guell, the beach (where apparently, lots of foreigners/Asians go around asking you to buy overpriced drinks and offering massages every five minutes...really really irritating and made me appreciate the beaches in Alabama!), the magical fountain that wasn't even running (we totally missed out on the light show), and of course, the main street Las Ramblas. We even met up with my roommate's sister who was studying in Barcelona!

So after our tour of Barcelona, we hopped on a six hour bus ride to get to Madrid. Luckily for us, Kelly (coke intern from last summer who is now working for Coke in Madrid) was able to accommodate us in her apartment. Kelly met us at the bus station and we went to Tapas and Josh's (friend from Penn who went with us to Rome) housewarming party because he just found an apartment for his summer housing in Madrid. The next day, Lauren and I met up with James (my old friend from high school who happened to be studying in Alcala, a town right outside of Madrid) and he took us to the central plaza, Plaza del Mayor, and to the gardens (read gigantic park) in front of Madrid's Royal Palace. It was a lot of fun, and we saw some cool peacocks just hangin' out on the lawn. Here's a fun picture.


Afterwards, we met up with Josh and his family (who were in Madrid to visit him for his birthday) to go to the Prado Museum (which by the way is free from 6-8pm on weekdays!). It was awesome, Josh gave us a great tour because he took a class on the paintings in the Prado. Later that night, we went out for tapas and to a random Hawaiian bar. Seriously, Madrid is the city of random! A ton of fun! I'm not going to further bore you with the in depth details of my Madrid trip but I can pretty much assure you it included a lot of wine w/ spritzer (sangria, vino de verano, etc.) and other drinks and tons of random tapas that usually had some sort of ham and olive oil involved. I love Spanish people but I definitely do not like Spanish food. Imagine tons and tons of pork meat and olive oil on everything! Don't get me wrong, there are definitely amazing things about Spain, like its super chill and super nice people who are willing to help you at any time! I'm going to end this post with my favorite picture from Spain...if you think about Spain, think "JAMON!"

So I've been home for two weeks hangin' out and getting ready for my next trip...going to Vietnam...which leaves in a little over three hours! I'm pretty excited and I'm hoping to keep my blog updated throughout the summer...so check on it every once in a while!