Mi casa, milo, mi escuela, y mitch

I suppose I have to set the scene for my local surroundings.

mi casa, an apartment on the seventh floor a block from university.  Beautiful and simple.

notice little Milo, terrier of some sort and a great addition to the home.

where we eat, the apt observer will note the furby on the shelf.

mi cama, very comfy, nice shelving all around it

this is my roommate mitch, I didn't let him pose, he's nice guy, I swear its just the flash that makes him look kind of angry...i hope.

mi escuela, only four buildings, very small but very nice

SuperSol, and their tropical tree decoration outside.  a grocery store where I bought rum legally... it completely ruined alcohol for me.  No more thrill of the illegality.  I decided to not ask if I was allowed to have the alcohol in my room in order to add some lost fun.  Its hidden pretty well.

Typical Madrid street near my school.

View into the schools courtyard.

Yet another of our four buildings

This reminds me slightly of New England... not too happy about that, I'd rather have originality.

Now that I've bored you with some silly details I'll throw an interesting story your way:

It was our first night out in Madrid.  My roommate and I headed out to the metro (subway) to find the rest of the 20 or so Lafayette students.  We were all set up to meet at El Tigre, a bar.  On the way we were flagged down by Chris Lavery, a Lafayetter.  El Tigre was packed so they congregated in XXX a nearby bar.  From there we decided to bar hop. 

We hopped our way into a business district.  Failing to find bars there, we rounded back to the back alley's to a club.  We were waved into the club by the owner and as we turned to leave because it was a monday and way to early for anyone to be out clubbing, a few people already bought beers.  

The interesting part comes in the form of me, a regular drinker looking out a Spanish club full of no one but Lafayette college students who I had never seen drink before.  A few had beers, a few had rum and cokes, the music blared, and we casually sat and talked.  Beyonce danced on the monitor, techno blaring, and me (along with others probably) finally realizing that Madrid will be different than anything I have encountered before.

Introducion

Hola, this is simply a blog of stories and photos of my time in Madrid.  Not very original but not intended to be.  I'm a Lafayette College student studying through Saint Louis University in Madrid, Spain.

I have a few stories under my belt already and I've only been here 3 days so this might actually turn out to be interesting.  One thing I'll promise myself is to not tell stories in a dull way and to attempt to tell them in ways that you haven't heard stories before.  Being an engineering major its not really my game to write fluff and describe every little detail.  But also being a very odd character sometimes I might just focus in on inconsequential details and rant about the pointless.  Also I'm known to argue about the agreed upon.

My own personal philosophy is some form of Hegelian.  I believe conflict breeds change and change is mostly good and very necessary for society.  Society is an organism and it must breathe.  I suppose politically its healthy to swing from party to party.  Socially its seems healthy to rebel against our parents whether they are conservative or they are wild partiers it seems to be best to go in the other direction.  just a thought of mine.

What actually matters is that my parents seem to be pretty conservative so I'll be running in the other direction, always ready to adventure and party as far as my money gets me.  Unfortunately my parents were also humanities majors in college which means I ran in the other dirrection into a brick wall called engineering. I love it but its no cake walk (walking on top of cake?)  so the partying gets held back by studying.  Let's see how it'll all turn out.

welcome to a brief glimpse into my trip to Spain, my excursions across Europe, and my way of thinking about things.

Sincerely,
Brendan Hodgens...