The Last Post

Dear Readers,

THIS IS OUR LAST POST. We sit in Starbucks salting our lattes with the tears of remembrance.

(Writing this post)

Today is our last full day in Madrid; we fly back to reality tomorrow.  Before we get sappy on you, here are some highlights of the past week.

-We both finished at UC3M, and will never go back again!

-Our friend Lauren came and visited from Morocco.

Here we are in font of the Christmas tree in Sol

-The goodbye dinner. We were regaled with drunken stories and final speeches.  The food was superb; we especially loved the chocolate and banana cake.

-Rachel gave in and got some official Spanish crotch pants

-Many celebrations at bars and clubs!  We returned to the club we went to our first time out in Madrid.  So nostalgic. They even played Bon Jovi, our fave.  

-We said our final farewells to some of our favorite places in Madrid (Restaurant Bar, Llaollao, cuevas, etc.)

Here we are embodying Madrid as el oso (me) y el madroño(Rachel).

Tonight will be our final night out on the town (at Casa de Cerveza, obvi). Go big then go home.

(here is where we become sad messes)

Thank you all for following us through these past four months.  We really enjoyed this blog and we hope you did too.  Unfortunately, we are not interesting enough to continue blogging in our daily lives. So, we sadly must say adios to our blog as well as to Madrid. 

By way of summation we will share two final lists with you.

Things we will miss about JYA in Madrid:

Travelling

Being in a vibrant city

All of our program friends and monitores (We really had the best possible clowder of amigos. It will strange not seeing them all everyday)

SANGRIA

Pasapalabra

Cute Spanish children

The food, mostly

Things we look forward to:

Speaking English

NO MORE HAM

Bagels, pizza, pasta, Christmas cookies…

Vassar, and real academics (pretention alert)

Our families and homes

Seeing our other friends

Having clothes

The holidays

VWM reunions

We could write more but are too sad to think of them.

We cannot believe how quickly these past months have sped by.  We truly appreciated our time here.  We will remember this experience for the rest of our lives.  We return to America with larger Spanish vocabularies (but smaller English ones), a greater appreciation of Spain, and of different cultures in general. We will come back to Madrid someday, but for now; all good things must come to an end, and thus we say goodbye. 

We wish you all happy holidays.

Hasta la vista (for the final time)

Hilary y Rachel