FLAMENCO DANCING!!!!
The weather was perfect today! Some of us went for a run through the park and it was amazing. We headed off with our lunches to go and visit the hospital at the university of Alcala. It was super cool to see the similarities and differences between our Emergency services and ICU and what it's like in Spain! The nurses are all so friendly, and tons of them speak English. So we loved it!! After our fill, we went back to the university, had lunch, and Ivan, an associate professor there who has like a million degrees and PhDs taught us a class on his research. It was all about care in the field at the end of life. His purpose was to determine what the line is between life and death, and when we stop life saving measures and declare someone dead. And then, if declared dead, how to distinguish them in order to preserve their organs as a donor. In order to donate your organs, you have to between 7-60 here, and there still needs to be good perfusion during transport to the hospital. So, basically, they determine them to be dead, but continue mechanical ventilation and mechanical chest compressions simply to keep the organs viable. But it is a big ethical debate. It was super interesting to see how different countries and medical personnel all have their own say in the matter. But they are working towards goals to make it more uniform and of course, keeping the goal of life as the central motive for care.
We hopped on the train into Madrid and wandered around the archaeological museum there! It was incredible. We definitely could have spent more time there, but there is so much to see, and we don't have enough time for it all! We walked over to the statue of Christopher Columbus they have in the middle of a round-about. And then to la puerta de alcalá, a giant archway symbolic for the city where we are staying outside of Madrid. We found our way over to the metro station and as we walked out to the street, there was a huge crowd! Little did we know, we were at the ticket office area for a soccer game. It was crowded and the streets were filled with fans and small parades of people. We walked around the corner and found our place- El cortijo, taberna flamenco. It was so cool! We got there at 8 and had a private dance lesson. (ps, all of us are terrible at flamenco...but, we have decided if we fail the NCLEX, we might move to Spain and become flamenco dancers anyway, it's so cool!) we also learned that in England, the telephone game you play as little kids is called Chinese whispers. And the percussion box you use with flamenco is called a cajón. I got pretty good at it actually! Plus, we got a lot more flamenco culture and history than I think any of us knew had ever existed! At 9ish started the dinner and around 1015 the entertainment for the night. It was amazing! The two dancers were incredible. The girl was actually from England, but moved to Spain for an escape, fell in love with flamenco and never left (she also owns the place and taught the dance lesson before) And the guy was a definite Spaniard who danced like no one we had ever seen before! Half of the group decided the safe route home and left before the last train back to alcalá. The rest of us stayed for the end of the show, got stuck with no public transportation and decided to try out the uber system in Madrid. To our very pleasant surprise, it was really good! Our driver was this nice old man who talked to us the entire time about our time in Spain and all the cool places he suggests for us to go! And we asked him a thousand questions too about things we wanted to do but didn't quite know how. It was definitely worth the extra adventure! We are loving it so much here! All the old architecture and the loving people are amazing.
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