Today we planned to spend the afternoon with Maria (the Spanish teaching assistant at the kid's school) and her family so we used the morning to take it easy and get some laundry done. While everyone was sleeping, I went for another run. This time I ran through the big park to the Madrid bullfighting arena (more on that in a moment) and back through the big park. Once laundry was done we met Maria and she drove us to her house 20 minutes north of downtown Madrid. There we met her mom and dad, the foreign exchange student, Aaron, and two of her brothers: Pedro and Borja. There apartment had a pool so we went swimming and then we had a proper Spanish meal: three courses with an ice cream treat. We had a great time with them. All the Spaniards were very impressed with the kids Spanish. Luke was quite the charmer. He and Borja had a nice conversation. He liked Luke so much he gave him one of his Real Madrid jerseys. We spent about 4 hours with them and then Maria drove
us to the bullring were they were having fights tonight. We bought some tickets (they were very cheap) and decided to stay until things got violent. Things got violent pretty quick so Amy took the kids to the Plaza outside to read their books (they wanted to leave, we did not force them). I stayed and watched until the first bull died... wow what an experience! I made an audible gasp when the matador put the sword into the bull. It was all the cliches we think of that go with a bullfight, but all real. I could have stayed longer but I met up the rest of the family and we went back to the hotel. Tonight we are going to get food and watch the Spain / Italy match. Tomorrow we are off to Seville by bus (6 hours!). Hopefully the next hotel will have wifi. If it doesn't, you will know why I didn't update tomorrow.