team days

one of the things I'm going to enjoy about living in Europe is the sheer amount of beauty in the cities. If you think of Canadian cities, they are mostly concrete and usually have one historic/nice looking building - fine, maybe 2! But in European cities and in cities like Madrid and Bilbao, the beauty is everywhere. Don't be surprised if you see lots of pictures of streets and buildings from me, they are absolutely gorgeous - from the colour to the architecture to the narrow streets they are in and the cobblestone sidewalks.

i spent another 2 days (April 28th and 29th) in Madrid after the conference for Team Days! This was a space for the new national team of AIESEC in Spain to get to know each other, develop a team identity and discuss important issues such as who will share which bathroom in the flat :) Cris' plan was to take us to this beautiful park in Madrid and spend the day outside. But it wasn't that warm (only 18 degrees Celsius you know :P apparently that's cold in Spain!) so we went to the local Starbucks instead. The prices for Starbucks are funny - in Canada you pay say around $3.50 for a latte. For the same latte and the same size, in Spain, its €3.50. So the same monetary value, just different currencies.

While having our get to know you and team bonding in general, we were sitting on couches near the window. While Kimmie was talking about her life and we were in a generally serious moment, an old man stopped at the large window and pointed. While pointing at each one of the girls on the team (which is the entire team except for Sebas) he was saying "Guapa" - which means beautiful. This man was probably like 75 years old. He had a hat on and a full suit and coat on. After he pointed at us, we all broke out laughing. And he just stared. He then he froze - like a statue. He THEN proceeded to do the robot in front of the mirror. We continued to laugh so hard (it was a good ab work out). Then another man walked by, the old man stopped him and pointed again and told him about our beauty. After the man walked off, the old man froze again and stared... then he winked and just left. It was a pleasant moment to the day and would have been super creepy if it wasn't such an old man. But in his case, was kind of charming.

as mentioned before, we talked about sharing bathrooms and sharing bedrooms. Sylvia the Tica (Costa Rican) will be my roomie. The flat is awesome - really big and lots of room. For an AIESEC flat, its AMAZING! Hardwood floors, marble bathrooms - its great. There are 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms a living room/dining room, kitchen and laundry room. Check out pictures on facebook :)

For one the nights, the new team cooked dinner for everyone. I suggested stir-fry since its a near Canadian staple and very easy to make. I loved the expression on every one's faces when they didn't know what it was and thought it very exotic. Kimmie (the Aussie) and I were the only ones who knew better. We put lots of veggies in and it was good to eat some healthy food (especially after almost two weeks of bread, meat and pasta - to some that is heaven, but not for me!)

a cool thing about one of the train stations in Madrid, called Circenias (they are short distance trains that generally go to the suburbs and towns around Madrid) is that it has this indoor rainforest thing going on. Besides the tropical plans and the temperature controlled dome, there is this lake part and it has thousands of turtles in it!



And contrary to popular belief, even though a bunch of us got sick right after the conference, none of us (including me) have pig flu :) just putting it out there!

You can check out pictures on facebook here.