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DAY ONE:  Traveling from Seattle to Chicago to Madrid
August 6-7, 2015

Thursday the Seattle Pacific University Men's Soccer Team and I departed from home in order to go play and train at Madrid. We have an incredible opportunity to see what Madrid has to offer to the everyday tourist as well as train at the Spanish National Team Facility, also known as the Ciudad Del Futbol.
 
Once we left Seattle and arrived to Chicago we had a two-hour delay, which turned our three-hour layover into a five-hour layover. This compounded the misery of International travel, because we then had an eight-hour flight from Chicago to Madrid.
 
Once we arrived at Madrid we got to our hotel, dropped off our luggage and headed straight to practice. The trip to practice also experienced a 10 to 15-minute delay due to a few of my teammates having an unfortunate time in one of the three elevators at our hotel. They were lucky enough to choose one of the elevators that had a malfunction, which caused it to drop like the popular Universal Studios ride, "The Tower of Terror".

After they were fished out of the elevator, we headed off to practice and were able to lace up our cleats for the first time in Spain.
 
Conditions on the turf field were tough to deal with due to our legs being heavy from traveling, and the extreme heat in Madrid. But after practice was over many of us headed down to the Puerto Del Sol, which is a popular area in downtown Madrid. Del Sol was gorgeous and offered a crash course in Spanish culture and history. There were statues of historic figures, beautiful buildings, thousands of Spanish citizens, and a tremendous amount of shops and cafes.
 
All in all our first day in Spain was long and tedious, yet many of us enjoyed the experience.

Thanks for reading my blog about the trip and I will post another entry soon,

-- Shamele