Carnival!

Up until this last week, I had always believed that warm, sunny weather in February was a myth! Well no more, this last weekend especially was absolutely beautiful! That proved to be a major bonus for me this weekend because I have a friend visiting and walking around Madrid in nice weather is much more enjoyable.
Classes ended well last week, my schedule is all straightened out now and things are starting to have a rhythm to them. I´m still enjoying my classes too, which is a big plus!
My friend, Adam, arrived on Friday night, and will be in Madrid on and off until Sunday. It was so nice to have a visitor come to see me, especially someone from home! Adam is studying in Florence this semester so we figured we were too close to one another to not visit. Saturday we spent in Retiro park, basically the Madrid equivalent to Central Park. By far the funniest thing we did was rent a row boat and row around the little man-made lake they have there. We just spent the rest of the day walking around the park, which was a ton of fun. Then that night, the Carnival paradewas going on so we stayed downtown and watched that. For those of you that don´t know, Carnival is the huge party they have here before Lent starts, people dress up in ridiculous costumes and the streets are full of people! It was so fun to see how into it some people got, there was a whole family dressed up like cavemen that decided to fight the dinosaurs that came through during the parade! It made for an unforgettable evening.
Sunday was a pretty calm day for us, we went to the palace here in Madrid. It was something I hadn´t done yet, so it was new to both of us! It was pretty cool to see a palace that is still in use in present day, the king doesn´t actually live there, but its used for a lot of royal functions. Then the rest of the day we spent walking around the center of the city and the shopping district.
It was nice to have a relaxing weekend before starting the week off again, basically on my Mondays and Tuesdays I am going from 7:30 am to 9 pm, so its a little tiring. I´m still teaching English, and its going really well, I have great students and am having a blast teaching them! The rest of this week is pretty calm for me, I´m thinking that I´ll get a head start on all the work I will have to do, although the weather is so nice I might be tempted away to go outside and enjoy it.