Where I Live

I live in Argüelles (Yeah--Spanish has those little doohickey accent things too), which is a neighborhood on the west-ish side of Madrid. It's a pretty family-ish neighborhood (I live right between two schools), and the people who live in Argüelles have basically lived there their whole life (Case-in-point, apparently Julio Iglesias, father of Enrique, lives right up the street, if I understand correctly from my señora).

It's still pretty central, but it's about as far away as you can get from the center and still have a (relatively) short metro ride.

Speaking of the metro, I absolutely love it. It's clean, it's fast, many of the lines have relatively new and spiffy trains that are really really pretty. And some people would say that it is a drawback that it closes at 1:30, but not me. It just forces me to get home and get to bed, which is always a good thing.

Here is my room:

This is my room in its 'dirty' state. That's right--This is my room before I picked it up. Take a good hard look at that level of neatness, because I'm hoping it's here to stay. I'm fairly positive that after this year in Spain, the days of me just tossing my stuff willy-nilly about my room will be gone for good. (or they'll come back with a vengeance. I'd say it's split 50-50).

This is my desk:

Again, this is my desk in its 'dirty' state. And this is normally what I would call clean! Maybe a little disorganized, but it's a temporary mess! Not like the permanent piles of paper that are stacked on my desk back home.

I really like the view out of my window. It's always nice to see some green in a super-crowded city.

And of course, the only bad (or good, depending on your viewpoint) aspect of my room is that it overlooks the street, which makes it really noisy. Especially since on that street are two bars (Madrid, Madrid and La Cubanismisa--you can see their signs right next to each other above) with people coming in and out all night long.

I should know, because I hear them all night long.