February?

Well I have been successfully guilted into updating again, so here we go, props to all of you. I've had an eventful week and weekend and the weather has been beautiful, which is very exciting. I have discovered new tapas bars, I have visited the Prado (where they are doing construction - very loudly - which is a little obnoxious), I have been to the Plaza de Oriente at night for some string quartet music (Beethoven, Shostakovitch, and Smetana, and the last was my favorite), I have discovered a bookstore with a cafe/bar in the middle (I want to live there), I have discovered the Street of (Likely Mediocre) Mexican Restaurants (where I will undoubtedly eat anyway, because you can't take the California out of the girl, or something), I have been to a bar to watch Real Madrid (one of their soccer teams) win a game and celebrated with Madrileños, and I have gotten lost on a two-hour walk that ended me in the Parque del Buen Retiro, which is Madrid's equivalent of Central Park. Of course, I don't have pictures of anything besides Retiro, because I am a terrible tourist. Retiro really is amazing, though.



Lots of fountains...



A big lake where you can rent a boat and paddle around...



And beautiful sunshine. Lovely. (I am laughing at all you sad people in California who are bemoaning the deluge of rain. We keep having one beautiful day after another.) I was talking to another girl in my program who's from California as well and we basically decided that we feel like we never left the state, weather-wise. It's just breezy, and sometimes cloudy, and sometimes rainy, but mostly at least partly sunny and never really very cold. I'm loving it, and my inner Californian is very glad I don't have to deal with the trauma that is New York in February.

I have also been planning Many Trips for this semester and gotten myself Very Worked Up about everything, and (classically) still have very little to show for all my planning (besides plane tickets to London in April!).

I will leave you with this picture of the pigeon that is carrying on a serious relationship with my window. There are two or three that roost outside on the sill and constantly make cooing noises (at really weird hours of the night, too, don't pigeons go to sleep when the sun goes down?) and occasionally fly into the glass, because birds are stupid (several of you have witnessed this via videochat, so you know I'm not making it up). This one in particular pecks at the glass until I start throwing things at it.



You gotta love living in cities. But hey, as long as it doesn't crap on my laundry, I guess I'll stop complaining.



In conclusion, I wish you all a wonderful February. People in New York, please don't freeze. (I'm laughing at you too, but in solidarity.)