Hello cyber-world! My name is Sophie, and I am so pleased to have the chance to share a bit of my time abroad with you! Before you commit to reading this, I feel like it’s only fair to set a few ground rules and address areas of potential uncertainty:

FAQs:

Who is this girl?

Good question. I’m a junior at Tufts studying International Relations and Environmental Studies. I love running, hiking, and eating, am perpetually late, directionally blind, and sometimes eat entire bags of candy on my own. That pretty much gives you a holistic idea of whose words you’d be dealing with here.

What are you going to blog about?

Another excellent one. I have no idea! Any ideas? For now, the (a)broad (I’m so sorry) plan is to treat this as a pseudo-journal. I’m going to be completely forthright and present you with the same sort of garbage I would put in my own notebook for myself to read 40 years from now whilst reminiscing on the glory days, in as accurate of a way as possible. Obviously, this means things are coming from the perspective of this 20-year-old rando named Sophie, so bear that in mind! I’m only presenting you with ~my~ Madrid! That being said, if you, as the readership helping me out with this blog, want to hear about something, just feel free to let me know mom!

Do you have any ideas at all? Why are they letting you write this?

This is a hardhitter. I don’t know why they are letting me do this, because there will undoubtedly be several jokes made at the expense of Tony Monaco over the course of this blog, but I HAVE actually been keeping a list of ideas. It’s as follows:

Dogs wearing clothes here
Older women staring you up and down on the metro, it is socially acceptable
Legumes –not eaten for dinner, what gives? Think it’s too hard to digest
Slippers-you’ve got to own a pair
New Years Resolutions-I have too many
Directional blindness
Perpetual lateness
Offering (no longer am certain what this one means. I think I meant to indicate how my host mom will always make me take several plates of food)
Our bread bag says “lingerie” on it

There is clearly a wealth of material to choose from.

Why should I have any remote interest in your blog, rando girl?
This one is a little easier. I just am very accident prone, but am shameless enough to proliferate the resultant stories—this is a winning combo on the humor front, so if you’re looking for cheap laughs from a toilet-read, look no further, I am your girl.

Sophie Lehrenbaum, student blogger

In conclusion, my time in Madrid has been a whirlwind, and I would love to share the good parts with you and allow you to laugh at my expense for the bad bits too. And I’ll try to paint this beautiful city in the light it deserves in the meantime.

Hasta pronto,
Sophie