Its Only Ten AM and I've Already Had an Ephiphany

I've been thinking a lot about my time here in Spain.  I've seen loads of sights in Madrid and have, I assume, done all the touristy things there are to do here.  Between my two classes where I don't know any AU kids, I regularly converse in Spanish with a couple of girls I have gotten to know this past semester and in my Sistemas de Informacion de Marketing class, my group has recently completed a very impressive Market Research Survey and handed it in (although to be honest, my participation was generally research and idea based, evidently my written Spanish isn't a strong as I thought it was).

So what has me worried is that I only have about a month left, two weekends in which I won't even be in Madrid.  This coming weekend I'll be visiting BK in Rome with my good friend Tita.  I've been excited about this trip since I booked it back in September and I can't wait to just...EAT.  DD had come and visited me in Madrid and one of the main topics we discussed was how good the food was in Italy.  In fact, thinking about going to Italy and eating just made me facebook stalk a couple friends' pictures, since they recently returned from Rome.  I never had any doubt, but just so everyone knows, Spanish food isn't all that good.  Sure there's paella (although I still like my dad's paella way more) croquettas (good but heavy on carbs) and jamón in general, but I think some of my favorite meals here have been when it WASN'T Spanish cooking, but rather some other ethnic influence.  Let's be serious, gazpacho is pretty gross.

I knew I always wanted to stay a year here in Spain, but this has me considering it even more since it seems the semester has gone by so fast.  I can't, of course, since I would never graduate early from AU like I've planned on doing since I was a senior in high school.  I might not even graduate on time if I stayed, due to the fact that I'm not allowed to take Accounting or Finance classes here in Spain and all the classes I currently take only have a 50% chance of ACTUALLY transferring back to AU.  Third reason being that although Universidad Pontificia Comillas tuition is really only about 5000 euros or so, I am still paying full AU tuition, the additional money AU is of course, pocketing and building another useless piece of architecture that will no doubt fall down during the next snow storm.  No wonder they encourage students to go abroad.

I was talking with Águeda (yep, crazy name) and she was telling me that grad school is so ridiculously cheap here in Madrid, compared to the United States, where all education is expensive, AU significantly so.  So cheap, in fact, that a year might cost about 5000 euros, which is about $7,000.  And that's at Universidad Pontificia Comillas, which is one of the top schools in Madrid.