So over the weekend, I went and pruned grape vines at this little farm that the director of our program owns about an hour outside of Madrid. My back still hurts. All the same, it was a really cool experience. Tim, and Drew, and I helped Ramiro (our program director) and Hermin (a crazy local guy) trim all of the plants and pick up the old vines afterward. Hermin also had a love for setting things on fire, like the dry ground of the farm. He said that we had to burn away all the grass and weeds so they wouldn't overtake the grape vines. I believed him because he looked like he'd been a grape farmer for his whole life, but lighting the dry ground on fire still made my kind of nervous. I also went the Retiro a couple of times over the weekend to play my guitar, and last thursday I went to this crazy discotec called Palacio again. Anyway, got to go. Here are some pics. I got a picture of Hermin and his hilarious little motor scooter.

Segovia/stuff

Hello everyyybody. Over the weekend all of us WashU pepes went to Segovia and Granada as a group. Segovia was pretty amazing. There is a Roman aqueduct there that is still intact and that was still functional until sometime during the 1900's. That was pretty amazing. I also really enjoyed the main plaza in Segovia; it was very charming. Segovia is really pretty small though. I think there are only about 50,000 people there. The next day we went to Toledo and basically walked through a bunch of churches. That was a little bit excrutiating at times because we learned more information than I really wanted to know. I also went the the Retiro last Friday, which is this huuuge park in the middle of Madrid. Apparently it used to be the grounds for the royal palace way back when. I´m going to go back to the Retiro agian on Friday with a group of friends. I think we´re going to picnick there and I´ll probably bring my guitar sos I can find some other people who play music. Pictures soon.

So, I´m at school right now, and I´m waiting for this class called cuento to start. This seems like a really cool class; it´s basically a workshop in which we read a bunch of short stories and then at the end we write our own. Last week was pretty amazing. It was the first week of classes for the regular ciriculum, so I went to about one million econ classes. On Thursday, I went to this discoteca called Palacio until 6 AM with some French kids that I met at school, Mari, Pauline, and Olivier. Then on Friday, we all went to a pub crawl together. Anyway, I´ve got to run, but here are some pics.