El Cine: Lope y un bar

Thursday night, our group gathered for Tapas followed by an outing to the movies. Tapas were at this neat restaurant that used to be some kind of torture chamber I think - a little creepy but cool.

After this we walked to the movie theatre and were early so we walked a little further down the street to get ice cream. The theater, btw, was on a street that is actually a big red light district in Madrid, and it was pretty visible. Isabel says that technically the profession of prostitution is legal in Spain but it is illegal to be a client. It was a weird. There were scantily clad girls posing every 20 feet or so who reached out to men as they passed and leaned out to whisper lowly into their ears . We stayed in front of the ice cream shop for about 10 minutes while everyone ate. I felt uncomfortable. People in our group joked about "transactions" and watched the girls while reeling of play by plays like sports commentators. It doesn't seem like the thing to joke about. I think it was different too because this street is a pedestrian street. In the states I think I've driven through a few red-light districts in a car but the pedestrian street was closer, more visible and harder to ignore. It's still difficult to articulate my feelings about it.

At 10:30 we proceeded to the theatre. The big Spanish movie of the year (Isabel says that there's usually just one) came out a week or two ago. It's called Lope and it tells the love story of Lope de Vega - the famous Spanish playwright. It was pretty good, a little slow in parts ... and did I mention, complete in Spanish without subtitles. But, all things considered, I understood most of it which is pretty awesome.

After this, most of us decided to stay out and enjoy some of the Spanish nightlife (12:15). We went first to a club recommended to us by Mixuy, but they refused to let the two boys in our group inside. This was apparently opening night of fall season for the club and they claimed to require a jacket and tie for these boys. However, several Spanish guys were let in while we were there in jeans and even t-shirts. The real agenda: many clubs here don't like to let in many American guys. American girls=commodity but American guys=competition. To express our distaste for this discrimination, we all left and went back to Sol to find an alternative (1:30 am). In Sol, the employee of an Irish pub sought us out and enticed the group to the pub with free

entry, a free shot and 5 free mojitos. So we went. It was smokey, crowded and very American influenced. In fact, I think that night everyone I met was American. Nevertheless, the music was good, it wasn't too loud and it was fun to dance a bit. I'm happy to be enjoying a bit of the nightlife, but I still would like to find a more Spanish experience in the future I think. Anyway, I was getting tired earlier than most of the group so Lindsey and I left "early" (3:30am) to go home via nightbus - another adventure :) But I still took a cab from the nightbus stop in Usera to my front door (cheaper than taking a cab the whole way while still avoiding the walk home from the stop). I was dead tired when I got home but still stayed up to chat with my parents and with Katy and Claire - a lovely way to end the evening.