Columbia has way too much money to burn

It was not a bad time in Madrid this past weekend. The weather was mild (cold at night as always, but not New York cold), and despite the fact that a lot of my friends went to Cadiz in the south of Spain for Carnaval (even though Carnaval ended on Wednesday but don´t count on travel agencies who make their money from less-than-bright Syracuse sorority girls to tell you that), we had fun. Thursday night kind of went downhill after a bouncer wouldn´t let me into a club because he found the water bottle of vodka I was keeping in my pocket. (For the record lots of people, at least the Americans, do that - it´s not sketchy, it´s efficient!) But props to my roommate for leaving in solidarity. Later in the weekend we spent most of the night at a salsa club, where we made poor attempts to actually dance salsa, and oh yeah, a skyscraper near by apartment burned down in the largest fire Madrid has seen.

We were paid a surprise visit by Dean McDermott, who runs Columbia´s study abroad program, after some kids here complained about having to take classes at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (which is, I don´t know, far or something. And kids smoke and drink in the middle of the day there. I don´t know what their beef is.) In typical excessive Columbia fashion, they flew her over here to, I don´t know, ´´observe´´ or whatever. By the way, everyone who pays tuition there, thanks for the $800 dinner at La Rioja hehehe.

Another mildly interesting cultural observation: there isn´t much privacy in Madrid, especially for young people who tend to live at home until they´re like 30, which affects behavior in the street. I´ve never seen so much PDA and public drinking (though never at the same time). Making out on the Metro is practically a national pasttime. I don´t know about you, but nothing gets me hotter than thinking about all those color-coded Metro lines intersecting. Mmmmm....