We leave Ireland tomorrow and I am so sad to go. This whole place and experience was amazing and I couldn't have asked for a better time. The people we met, the places we went, the things we did, all was wonderful. Thank you to Russagh Mill Hostel for an amazing 3 weeks, CorkXSouthwest music festival for introducing us to the best Irish people around, Ethan our favorite 16 year old tour guide, and anyone we met in between. SUCH GOOD CRAIC!!

You guys should check out Jessica's blog because she just put up pictures...

jessicabarcelona.wordpress.com

off to Budapest!!!

LOVELY IRELAND

Sooo I have totally failed at keeping up with the blog, but basically I am in love with Ireland and all its wonderful people. I am sooo happy we are here and everything has been perfect. I'm just going to write a top 5 list...

1. We are working at a hostel/adventure center near a town called Skibbereen in the south of Ireland. The place is awesome, our boss is this great English guy named Sean, the work is fairly easy nothing more than cleaning, making beds, and checking people in and out. We have been kayacking and swimming out on the sea lakes and hiking a bit!! The place is BEAUTIFUL!! They give us about 100 Euro a week for food which is more than enough and all of us helpers cook for each other. Right now we are working with 3 other american guys and an italian guy just left a few days ago.
2. We worked last weekend at a big music festival called CorkXSouthwest in exchange for free concert tickets. Best decision ever because they put us as "security" at the campsite so basically we did nothing, met all the cool people at the campsite during the day, and then spent the night at the festival with all the cool people we had met. It was hilarious and everyone was great. We learned how to riverdance in a field, went to drum circles, met band members, and also met generally the entire county of Cork.
3. We spent 2 nights in Dublin when we first landed and we fell in love. Everyone is so friendly, the atmosphere is super relaxed, and the pubs are hilariously fun. Everyone talks to everyone. And we had our first tastes of Guiness and to my suprise they were actually pretty good. We decided we almost prefer it to a lot of other beers. At one point we met some Scottish guys in kilts on the street and they ended up buying us pints and we spent a few hours dying of laughter with their ridiculous accents.
4. The weather is not a selling point. We definitely packed wrong and ended up having to go into town to buy long sleeved shirts the other day. It rains or is cloudy atleast once a day and is generally always cold. However, the sun does shine and when it does this place truly is magical. Its greener than green. And there is nothing more beautiful than seeing green rolling hills against clear blue skies. Ireland is soo peaceful. Such a change from the craziness of Madrid.
5. And finally, as always, the people we have met completely make the place. Last Monday we camped out with a group of crazy Irish kids who had come to the hostel on their long weekend to hang out and relax. This weekend there is a group in of 40 irish guys all here to play in a Warhammer competition- basically a big nerdfest where they paint figurines and get really in to this intense board game all the while getting drunk and causing a ruckus. We have been invited to stay in 200 different homes all over Ireland, from Cork to Kerry to Limerick to Dublin to Belfast. We have hung out with girls in a Polish punk band, a historian from Ireland, a group of cyclists from Wales, lots of hippies at the festival, Ivan- a security guard from Georgia the country, an Iranian candy man, Ruben Stone, an Australian guy who picked us up hitchhiking, the list goes on...

Last night I played electric guitar at a the bar where the Polish punk band played the week before. There was a guy we ran into at the bar celebrating his 22nd birthday who turned out to be the Aussie guy who picked us up 2 weeks ago when we first got to Skibbereen haha.


Gosh I love this place.

We go to Austria in a week!!!!

So Jessica and I are leaving for IRELAND today!!!!!!! I am excited beyond belief.

... And so thankful for Madrid and all the wonderful people I have met here. I feel like I needed this experience and I needed to meet the people that I did. They have helped me grow and have helped me look towards the future. I hate saying goodbye and the past week was full of them. My last night was spent hanging out in my apartment in Malasaña and cooking pasta with my Italian friend Cristian. I couldn't have asked for a better, simpler end to this adventure. Speaking spanish with a friend since the beginning :)

So now I move on to the backpacker lifeeeeeee- Jess and I will be spending two days couchsurfing in Dublin, then heading down to the south to work at a hostel/adventure center!!! Then hopefully stops in Austria, Hungary, and Greece!!! Lets hope the money holds up! I know we will have the time of our lives and in the end I hope to return to the US with a happy, peaceful heart. :)

Holaaa! Okay to hear all the work that I did for my radio class this semester click on this link.

http://chelsearaubenheimer.wordpress.com/

You can hear my voice in "Ficcion-Nicky" and "Programa Final"

Madriddddd- our time is coming to a close :(

This past weekend my friend ELLE was here from Boulder and we had an absolutely amazingggg week, exploring and relaxing and being part of the protests here in Spain.

Right now Spain is having this huge revolution type thing spearheaded by the youth- protesting against the unemployment rate, the lack of opportunities, the corruption of the entire political system, etc. In Sol, the center of Madrid, they have literally created a huge camp sight with a food stand, bathrooms, medical center. It is truly a sight to see. And every night and day thousands of Spaniards fill the streets to cheer and yell and make signs and start dialogue about some of these issues. The whole thing is pretty peaceful, but super overwhelming when you are standing in the center of this cheering, pulsing crowd. It is so cool to be a part of this in some tiny way, just to sit there and watch their history unfold. I am very lucky. My host mom says these protests will go on for at least another week.

Yesterday, Elle and I took the best little day trip to Cuenca, Spain- this little village about 2 hours away by train that is famous for their "casas colgadas" or hanging houses. They are literally these very old houses that were created off the cliffside so half the house is actually hanging. Its so odd haha. But the whole day was wonderful. We had good weather, packed a picnic lunch, and ended up going hiking around the whole town where there were paths along a river and the mountains around it. On our way home on the train we watched the Harry Potter movie on her IPad. Perfect end to a perfect dayyyyyy!!

But to top it all off I finally bought a shirt that says Malasaña on itt!!! Wahooo. There is this bar right down the street from me that sells shirts and even though I never really go there I just wanted something that said malsañaaaa- my homee. haha

Well the goodbyes continueee- I said a final goodbye to my friend from Galicia this weekend. No fun.

But I have to remember- next stop- IRELAND :)

I think my favorite thing in the world is when people from all different countries come together and speak Spanish as the common denominator. It is literally amazing to me that I was at a bar and had a full conversation with an Italian, a German, a Turk, and another American all in Spanish. None of us were speaking our native language, but we could all communicate because of Spanish. I absolutely love it.

This past weekend has been absolutely crazy. There has been a huge festival called San Isidro, and literally all of Madrid has just been an absolute party. But what else is new? Madrid is always a party. The other night me and some girls headed down to La Latina and ended up in a huge plaza with probably over 1000 people there just drinking, dancing, BBQing, and hanging out. The weather was chilly like fall in Colorado and it could have been a massive tail gate. But literally it was one of my favorite nights in Madrid- everyone was in such a good mood, we talked in spanish to a ton of different people, and I have never felt so connected to the city. It was amazing. Then at 6 in the morning, this like alien police force SWAT team, dressed in helmets and armor and with there weapons at the ready descended from the stairs in formation onto the plaza and started kicking everyone out. It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen in my life haha. There were probably about 100 cops that encircled the people and everyone more or less just quietly backed away into the night haha. We walked to the metro and I was in bed by 7 am. Hilarious.

Sunday was Chrissie's last night in Madriddd. We went out in La Latina with Christian for a few drinks and then had a very tearful goodbye at the metro. I will miss her so so much and I seriously don't know what I would have done without her here in Spain. I am so lucky to have such a good friend and I can't even imagine what this experience would have been like without my chicaa wapaa. I need to go to NYC soon to visit herrrr!!

Sooooo things are wrappin up in Madrid. I have less than two weeks left and it is so weird that it is all coming to an end. However, I still meet new people everyday- apparently there is a rapper group that lives in my apartment who I just met yesterday hahaha. Love it. This week I have one final exam that I need to start studying for and my friend, Elle, from Boulder is coming to visit!!!

Looove,

Chelsea

Madrid: Post Spring Break.

Soooooo lots has been happenin since returning from my beloved Portugal, let me try to summarize it all...

1. Jessica Kutz, my Greece buddy, came to Madrid for a few days because her program ended a month earlier than mine! So we spent a wonderful week meandering around the streets of Madrid, going out in Malasaña, and booking our flights to Ireland!

2. That's right! We are going to Ireland! Plans firmed up so it is definite that we will be in Ireland for a month working at a hostel/adventure center on the south coast outside of Cork. Could anything be more wonderful? No. We will fly into Dublin on the 28th of May and stay there for 2 days to see the city before heading down south!! We can not wait. Jessica left a few days ago to do a solo hike on this famous pilgrimage trail called El Camino de Santiago in northern Spain, so I won't be seeing her until we go to Irlandaaaa to begin the next step of this crazyyy Euro adventure :)

3. My classes officially ended last Wednesday. I had a huge written exam in my class with Spaniards that I hope went well, and in my radio class we recorded a final radio show where I had to be interviewed in Spanish about my experiences here in Spain, it was hilarious. So all I have left are two more exams in a few weeks and then I will be completely free from school and Getafe. Geez, it didn't just hit me till I wrote that last bit that I'll never again be in class with those Spaniards... makes me sad thinking about it..

4. We have been trying to explore new areas of Madrid lately to see what else the city has to offer. I finally went to the Prado, the most famous art museum here in Madrid, we checked out the National Library, which was weird because we couldn't actually go where the books are, we have walked to parts of north Madrid, got amazing Indian food in the immigrant neighborhood, and yesterday me and my friend, Krystal, literally walked 5 hours to the suburbs of Madrid where we watched some kids play soccer and found a beautiful park to rest in. It was cool seeing the more residential, less touristy parts of the city. Also, I have been trying to run more in Retiro and Park Oeste. Many people from my program have already left to go home to the United States (so strange to me), so I have been spending much more time alone than usual. Kind of sad, but I have found myself sitting a lot lately in the plaza by house reading a book or the newspaper. Speaking of the news, its odd reading about Osama's death from the point of view of a Spaniard. They seem to be much more critical of it all, and at the beginning a lot more disbelieving that he really had died. It seems to me that Europeans never think we do anything right...

5. I continue to meet the most interesting people here in Madrid. The other day at the bar, Tevia and I literally spent an entire hour editing a Spanish man's cover letter for his application to trade school in England. His resume was so poorly written in English that we pretty much re-wrote the whole thing for him. It was really funny and he was very grateful. Also, I finally met the owners of the hole in the wall Greek restaurant on my street. They saw me walking by the other morning and called me in to have a coffee and chat. So I went in, they made me a delicious frappuccino type drink for free, and we spoke in Spanish about Greece and our lives for an hour or so. Awesome. Met the Italian guy who I see everyday whenever I pass by to go get the newspaper who works at the Italian pizza place in the center of Malasaña. Met a Venezuelan guy who works at this club a few of us went to on Thursday and he pulled me up on the DJ stand and taught me how to play the Djembe (a type of Bongo drum) to the beat of the techno music. Hilarious.

6. And finally, FINALLY, I rode on a VESPA!!! Another goal complete haha. The other night we were walking around Sol, when our program director sped by on his motorbike. He has always known that I wanted to one day buy a vespa so he stopped and asked if I want a ride. Yesssss!! So the next 20 minutes I buzzed around the city with its lights glittering in the night, sooo happy. Brought back Bourtzi boys memories and riding around the countryside in Greece.

But anyway, tonight was a very good night. Chrissie, who just got back from Germany, Christian, and I went to yoga at the squat, then for a beer at Palentino, and then for another drink at a little cafe where we met up with his three other awesome Italian friends. I love when I can sit at a table and hear three different languages spoken throughout the conversation. It's amazing. I then walked back home, ran into the Italian guy and had a little chat in Spanish, then ran into the Greek guys closing up the restaurant who invited me to come have coffee there tomorrow morning. I am finally getting to know all my neighbors!!

Welllll, besides that, all is well. Chrissie leaves Madrid in a week so I will be spending these last few days adventuring with her!! I am going to be sooo sad to say goodbye honestly. Three more weeks left in Madrid... uggg I remember when I had three months. Time flies.