Second Week of Class and Tour of Real Madrid’s Stadium

Though American University didn’t have classes on Monday because of Martin Luther King Day, Jr. Day (and actually had classes cancelled today as well because of snow!), Spain does not have such a holiday, so we still had to attend school.

Luckily going to class isn’t that horrible when you’re studying abroad. We learned more about how the idea and concept of a union of European states developed in my International Relations of the EU class. For Journalism Abroad, we analyzed a short film, converted newspaper-style headlines into shorter ones for radio by using more specific words, re-structuring sentences, getting rid of extra fluff (which helps improve our Spanish), and practiced actual presentations by creating a fake radio show based on an improvised conversation about our weekend complemented by a makeshift news segment of us quickly and emphatically reading headlines from the newspaper. Though that was definitely a fun experience, it was hard for it to compare with our first field trip for soccer class: a tour of the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, home to Real Madrid and also the national football team of Spain.

There it is!

The tour was designed a self-guided tour, but fortunately one of the professors in our soccer class came with us and explained everything to us at each stop. We were able to see a panoramic view of the stadium, visited the trophy room, looked at the locker rooms, walked through the stands, compared the regular seats to the VIP areas, and were even able to see the bench and stand on the field. Though we didn’t see any actual players on the field, it was still a cool experience that is one of the most popular tourist attractions in all of Madrid. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking. 🙂