Riverside (let's go)...

Puente: Día o días que entre dos festivos o sumándose a uno festivo se aprovechan para vacación.

Possibly my new favourite word.

If there's one change I've definitely noticed between living in the UK and living in Spain, it has to be how Spain does national holidays (or 'puentes' as they are called in Spanish). In the two months I've been here, we must have had at least five or six national holidays, most of which have coincided with a weekday and has resulted in a nice number of days of classes. Whilst it has disrupted classes considerably, leaving some tutors and enthusiastic pupils somewhat frustrated, I see it as something to take advantage of to see more of the great city in which I live.

So, what has this puente entailed? Well, highlights include:

-A night at 'Joy' on Thursday, complete with a 2 am trip across to get pizza, free truffles and a James Bond themed night. A downside has to be one man who has most likely damaged my ear drum through an unnecessary desire to repeatedly shout 'I study in Bournemouth' and 'You speak E-spanish?' in my ear for quite some time.
-A trip to the Manzanares River with some friends, where we hired four person bikes and cycled along the river for the afternoon, stopping off to play on numerous mini playgrounds conveniently placed along the way.
-'Cafe Concierto': a live music night organised by the GBU, involving a jazz band and a hip hop band called 'Crazy Truth Crew'.
-Celebrating another friend's birthday on Sunday afternoon, complete with milkshakes and feeling suitably foreign after failing miserably at salsa compared to the latinos present. One day I will find my inner Shakira...

All in all, feeling suitably blessed right now!