36 hours later (Treinta y seis horas despues) ...

Welcome to our first real post on theamazingtres blog! Contrary to what you may be thinking, it's not the first real post just because it is authored by Brad. It's actually the first real post because we're actually in Spain! We are currently sitting in the common room of our hostel and first home in Spain, Mad Hostel. We survived the Las Vegas, AZ blizzard of '08. We survived the Silverthorne, CO wind gusts of '08 (and I survived my first skiing experience). We survived the unforgiving streets of Philly (more on that to come). And here we are, finally, in the amazing city of Madrid, Espana.

Quick warning, this post goes into a bit of detail so if you are not REALLY interested in ever aspect of our lifes I'm sorry... the detail is necessary for our loving parents and family. Feel free to skip a couple paragraphs to get to Spain.

So quick recap of the beginning of the trip for those of you who weren't there (or those of you who forgot). I woke up at 6:00am, showered, said goodbye to my sister, and got Jamba Juice. Then we met at Denver International Airport where Brad was astonishingly 5 minutes early. We checked in and had some quality family bonding time (see pictures below) before we said our goodbyes. We showed our tickets and passports to M. Jackson (which I can only assume stands for Miss Jackson... I am for real) and then we were off to the gate. Unfortunately only Nathan and myself had seats so we waited at the counter for someone to find Brooke a seat. When the lady got there she informed us that the flight was full and we would basically have to wait for volunteers to get her a seat (volunteering was tempting for me to say the least). But then she realized she had one seat remaining for Brooke. So we all ended up having seats, though they were not together. There was also an army platoon at our gate that was traveling to Philadelphia to go to a camp there. Seeing all of them and their families saying goodbye was pretty intense, even more so than our goodbyes. And though they all were allowed to board first, as thanks for their service, apparently the airline decided that early boarding was thanks enough and United placed them all in middle seats. This, however, granted me the opportunity to sit next to a soldier and talk for a bit. Long story (actually about 3 hours...) short, he was in his 4th year in the army and didn't know exactly what they would be doing at the base. I found this out in the first 2 minutes and slept/stared out the window/listened to music for the remaining 2 hours 58 min.

We arrived in Philly and I was immediately tempted by a philly cheese steak airport restaurant. I decided to hold out for the real deal, so we proceeded to try to change our seats to sit together on the longer flight to Spain. As it turned out, that flight was packed full as well so we couldn't switch yet, we'd have to wait until we got on board to try and switch around :/ During this time we also got in touch with a friend of ours, the Josh Rogouff , who we decided to meet in the city of Philly. We took the train there and met up with Josh who came straight after work to show us around. Our layover was about 5 hours, but with security and train time that didn't leave us too much time to stumblebum around Philly. Luckily Josh is an experienced city boy, and he showed us all the key sites including the 30th street Train station, part of the campus of Drexel (where he attends), the two competing, neighboring pizza parlors by his house (California Pizza and Village Pizza), and his house. After seeing his bungalow bedroom and meeting his housemates, we proceeded to California Pizza (the worse restaurant with better pizza) to grab a quick bite to eat. Afterwards Josh took us back to the train station and bid us ado. Shoutout to Lauren Fredman.

We got back to the airport with an hour or so before our flight would take off. After sitting down for a little bit at our gate we heard in a Spanish accent "Jacobson" followed a little later by "Ross" and "Stern," "please come to the desk." We decided this probably meant we weren't going to be allowed to get on the plane and would thus be stuck in Philly forever. Thankfully they only wanted to check our identity or something silly like that and we proceeded to board the aircraft! (For those of you keeping track this means I did not get an athentic Philly Cheesesteak... which, by the way, Nathan seems to think is made with cheese wiz.. who told him that? seriously?) (edit: ok, after a lot of hard research I see where he might have been led to believe this... if you don't believe it either, read it for yourself here. )

Alright, well we got on the plane and after a little bit of fanagaling Nathan switched seats with a nice Spanish man and ended up in the very back of the plane. He then traded my aisle seat with a random american girl so I could sit back there in the aisle. Brooke just sat in the middle seat hoping no one would come up to her and tell her to move. (though she assumed every person who was walking towards us was gonna kick her out). Another nice Spanish man eventually came up to us, asked her if she wanted to switch, and then left for her seat. Each seat had it's own TV screen (mine broke half way through the flight..) and we had several movies, tv shows, and songs to choose from. I watched part of 310 to Yuma and then started watching "Nannie diaries" in Spanish. I decided it would be best for my Spanish skills if i watched it 15 minutes at a time and then went back and watched the same part in english. The goal was to watch the full thing this way and then watch again in Spanish. But half way through my tv brooke so i started reading my spanish dictionary. I got through the A's and some of the B's. (Brooke just informed me this is very long. I tend to agree.. but maybe i'll make a poll on if we appreciate Brad's long blogs or not).

I didn't really sleep much, but Nathan had sporadic(Brooke edit: hope it's not sporadically) nappings throughout the flight. Brooke had slighlty less nappings and slightly more watching of classic TV shows like "Numbers" and "Malcom in the Middle." People mad fun of me for wearing my Trix are for kids shirt. We ate crappy plane food, which was decent to bad. We were "awoken" with orange juice and crappy donuts. A Brazillian flight attendant informed me and Nathan (while Brooke slept) that we should visit his city in Brazil where there is a female to male ratio of 20:1. He also told us to wait until 50 to marry. He seemed to have learned from experience and he also brought me orange juice and tried to fix my tv, so naturally we trusted him blindly. We found out that cats in Spain meow like this "rrrrrooooooowth." We landed in Spain and brooke was in a bad mood because "she didn't sleep enough."

Stepping off the plane to Spain was pretty weird.. it's kind of surreal that we can be sitting down for 6:45 hours and switch locations in the world so drastically. We went down to get our Passports stamped and Brooke whined about how he didn't stamp her passport, but stamped her visa instead. I told her that her Visa is in her passport but she wanted to get a square stamped like she saw "in the movies."

We went to find our luggage (mine was first, brooke's was last) and then checked out storage space for our stuff while we visit Greece. We took taxis to our Hostel, but they made us take 2 taxis cause we had so much stuff. So i went in one by myself with this man who i do not respect anymore. Long story short we got there first and the meter read 20 euros but he charged me 30 euros because there is an airport surcharge. I had asked for a reciept but he just gave me a stupid hand written one. Very skeptical i argued with him for a bit and then gave it to him and decided not tip him. Then Brooke and Nathan arrived and I asked their driver about it and he said the surcharge is like 6 euros.. so my driver ripped me off 4 euros... i think. I hope he's happy. I think it was a different cab company though so who knows. Maybe I'm just a jerk for not tipping.

Finally to Mad Hostel. See for yourself, it's awesome. We're in a room with 4 beds/lockers and our 4th roommate is Barbara and she is from Brazil. (Like Canser de ser Sexy - Music is my girlfriend.) The facilities are pretty nice, the person at the front desk was very helpful and willing to switch between english and spanish to help us practice and still understand everything well. The common room has a bar (currently closed), some computers, some plugs for laptops, sitting areas, vending machines, and a TV that was recently on Disney Channel.

After settling in for a bit we decided to explore our surrounding blocks and grab some food. The area is pretty cool, but maybe it's just cause i really like seeing different cultures/cities. Especially the little convenience stores (which conveniently have huge rubix cubes). We ended up finding a nice little brewery/taparia/food place called Naturbier.

Quesiton: What do you call a beer that's mine?
Answer: Naturbier! (pr: Not your beer)

Question: What do you probably call natural beer in GermanSpanglish?
Answer: Naturbier! (pr: Not your beer)

The food was pretty good, though probably a little pricey.. plus water cost us 3 euros per person. Beer or wine would have cost us the same for probably a little more liquid for our money. (We're legal and we didn't even have the heart to drink here... i'm ashamed).

We also went into this little accessory shop where we were just looking around. We were followed by one of the employees possibly in case we had any questions about the assorted scarfs and belts, but more likely to ensure we didn't steal anything.

We found a theatre nearby our hostel where we are considering checking out a musical! There is also a musical somewhere around here called "We will rock you," it's a Queensical the musical (kinda like seussical the musical).

We napped a bit not cause we were jet legged but because it was ciesta time. (And also because Brooke was jet-lagged). It was probably a good idea.

Alright, sorry this was so long. I'm sure they will be shorter in the future, don't worry. Until then make sure you do the following:

1) Click on the poll somewhere on this page to tell me that you appreciate my long posts (if you do)

2) Make a Skype account so that you can talk to us!! Our skype name is theamazingtres .
If you'd rather just talk to me my skype name is Bradley.Samuel.Ross .

3) Post a response on our blog so we know you're reading! You might have to make an account here but it'd be well worth it. You can also email us if you'd like at theamazingtres@gmail.com

Thank you all so much for reading what you could of my long post. Thanks also for your love and support! We miss you all and hope to hear from you soon. Not sure of our plans for tonight, we're probably going to try and go out and see what we can find! We leave for Greece in two days. Until next time -

Brad, Brooke, and Nathan
Chau