Before I came here, I had heard that the best friend you make on a foreign exchange aren't actually the friends from your host country, in my case the Spanish kids I've befriended, but rather the other kids from around the world that are studying abroad in the same program and country. These past two weeks have really made me think that that's true.

Two weekends ago, for all of Saturday and Sunday, we had our first of three major orientations we have throughout the year. Before it, I wasn't all too excited to go. I wanted to see everybody, and share and compare experiences, but I didn't want to spend the whole weekend going over the same rules we've gone through some three or four other times. I get the fact that I can't drive, do drugs, or hitchhike while I'm here. 

After the orientation, I had a completely different mindset. We didn't go through rules a single time. The whole weekend was just what I wanted to do- sharing experiences and embarrassing moments, plus a bunch of teambuilding games that were a lot of fun. Also it was nice to get to know more the people in the Madrid area, because of course the people I became the best friends with at our orientation in New York all live in other parts of Spain.

And now, after the orientation and exchanging names and numbers, we've been planning on a lot of stuff to do together so we can meet up more often. With the help of AFS we're planning a Christmas party, I've started a free Spanish class with a couple of them two days a week after school, and this last Saturday, 11 of the 18 of us that are living in the Madrid area met up at Madrid's theme park, El Parque de Atracciones, to celebrate three of our birthdays (including mine).

We all had a blast spending the whole day in a theme park together, from splashing eachother on the water rides until we were soaked to the bone to challenging eachother to stay completely limp on the roller coaster that sits completely upside down for 10 or 15 seconds.

But one of the best parts of the day definitely has to be how we started it. Since we were there to celebrate birthdays, one AFS girl brought a cake. The only problem with that is it's a theme park, and there aren't many that let you bring in outside food or drinks. So we managed to fit it in one girl's purse, and we snuck it in. Then we all sat to eat it on a patch of grass with a sign that said "Don't step on the grass" (but in Spanish), so there went rule number 2. Plus it was an ice cream cake so it was melted, and we ate it with our hands. Perfect.

After the park closed, we all went to Starbucks. We'd been to this one before, so we knew they'd ask us our names to put on the cups (This is the Starbucks where I became Yeick). So we decided since they'd screw our names up anyways, we might as well have fun with it, right?

What did we come up with? Harry Potter names. Left to right in the picture is supposed to be Snape, Draco, Voldemort, and Minerva. You should've seen the face of the lady that had to write our names on the cups when we said them. The cup that was supposed to be for Hermione didn't even get written on...