Capital-Hopper Extraordinaire

I've been in Madrid for twelve hours and already my Spanish has improved tenfold (i.e. I can now form childlike sentences). It helps that I'm hanging out with a Mexican chica named Laura who speaks minimal English. So far she's shown me all around a couple sections of the city and made me an incredible bowl of guacamole. It's my turn to cook for her tomorrow evening and I'm scared because OH MY GOD I DON'T COOK. I called my mother and left her a message begging for an email on how to cook vegetable pasta. If anybody else wants to instruct my ignorant ass on the ways of imbecile cooking (Jennifer?), feel free.

I took my first overnight train last night. It was kind of exciting in a Polar Express sort of way. I felt like I was away at summer camp, except it was a summer camp that moves really fast and causes your shoulders to slam into the walls when you walk down the hall. I shared a sleeper room with three other girls in second class. It was really awkward when I first got in the room because we all just kind of sat there in this tiny, little box, knees touching, sneaking glances at one another, no one saying a word. Finally I started talking to the girl across from me; her name is Angelina and she's from Russia but is living in Spain with her British boyfriend. She's twenty-eight-years-old and has a four-year-old son and a fifty-year-old boyfriend who won't let her work because she's too pretty. I inquired about this Russian beauty and she told me that she's medium pretty, but that Russian women get much, much prettier. And unfortunately, they out-number Russian men by about five-to-one, so the men get to be very choosy, which is why Angelina dates Europeans instead. Makes sense to me.

After the Wallet Stealing Bonanza of 2006 I met Laura in the Atocha train station and we headed back to her place where I took a much needed shower and squelched my vegetarian urges by eating a ham and mushroom omelet. Then we walked all around Madrid and I fell in love with yet another city. More posts to come as I've hooked my laptop up to Laura's Internet connection. Check out my photos if you're bored. Lots of scenic landscapy crap, but there are some interesting ones in there too.