5th december!

It’s the day before Sinterklaas, exciting …
To celebrate that, Kelly and I went out for dinner to Vivares 37 again, because it offers very good value for money. Three courses including bread and drinks for 13 euros!

Finally the 5th of December! This means that Sinterklaas is back in Madrid for this evening only. Our Dutch friends organized some Sinterklaas decorations to give the evening the real feel. The idea was that everybody had to buy three small presents from the budget of 5 euros. This means that all presents are useless, but that does not make the game less fun. I bought a children’s guitar, the reindeer hat and a big party glasses. As you can see, very useful presents …
The idea was that we would play a game, which is very simple. There is a dice, three rounds and assignments. The first round the presents get distributed among the participants. The second round assignment were included to make the game more fun. Each number on the dice meant an assignment. The final round was the same, but with different assignments.
The game was so much fun as there were some presents that everybody wanted: a small Christmas tree, another reindeer hat, and a Spiderman advent calendar. I also wanted the reindeer hat as it was super awesome. Unfortunately, at the end of the game I ended up with only 2 presents: a little samba ball and my own reindeer hat. So I was not that lucky as you can see. I had a lot of fun though and that is what matters most.
After the game, we went out with a small group. I did not go for long as I was up from 7 a.m. that morning. I was completely exhausted so I decided to head home quite early.

The rest of the week I had to work on the cases and final project for Strategic Management. This means a lot of work for a small portion of the final grade. Not that motivating if you ask me, especially when you get a company where no information can be founded.

Saturday was an important day for Madrid: it was ‘El Clásico’ against FC Barcelona, the arch rival of Real Madrid. I did not want to miss this match so with some of my friends we decided we wanted to watch the game in a pub full of supporters. It was not easy to find a nice bar, but close before the game started we found a place in Tribunal. It was crowded with Real Madrid fans, but also with a small Barcelona fan group. With a beer in my hand I enjoyed the game very much because my favourite club won: Barcelona!
That day I also found out that the final project for Strategic Management had to be handed in next week, not this week. This meant that I had done a lot of work for ‘nothing’. The other side was that I could relax a bit more next week.

Sunday I wanted to do a cultural day so Kelly and me went to Cibeles Palace. My parents went there last week and they said the view from the top of the building was magnificent. I wanted to see for myself so there we were, waiting in a long line. We found out that there was a nativity scene and that seemed to be very popular. When we were in, it turned out to be in miniature. A bit disappointing when you had to wait so long. We also visited an exposition about 9/11, which was quite impressive. There were artefacts from the scene and also big pictures. Finally, we went to the roof of the building which gave us a fabulous view of Madrid.
The next stop was Museo Naval, were you could see the oldest naval map of the world. Furthermore, there were miniature ships and other naval equipment. It was very interesting to see. A good end of this cultural day.

Next week I am going to Porto and that should be very nice.