The days here are longer..

Today was the first day full of something close to learning. It started off bright and early (we were expected at the university at 9AM sharp), and went until 5:30. For those of you without steady employment, this exceeds the length of an average workday. This is a lot of learning for someone who has not thought critically since May at the earliest.

After our typical egg & toast breakfast (with the fun addition of some cookie/cracker type things) we headed off to school! After sprinting through the subway (picture several flights of long, steep - I´m talking 89 degree angle here - stairs) and still being 10 min late (but not the last ones there, more importantly), we are no longer concerned about becoming obese as a result of Angeles´ cooking.

We had further orientation about something or another, followed by a bus tour of the city! Obviously I went super touristy and took all sorts of unnecessary pictures, because I´m typical like that. Unfortunately, my internet is not working on my laptop so I´m using the desktop and can´t put up any of them. Fear not though, because I hope to go back to all of the main sites and take better pictures sans window glare and blurriness from taking them on a moving vehicle. (I´m all about high-quality.) We got to explore Plaza Mayor which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It´s a big, square plaza with streets shooting off in all directions, filled with little shops, bars, and restaurants. After enjoying some free time, we walked back to our meeting spot only to run into Spiderman! Now, this was not your ordinary Spiderman. His girth indicates that even superheroes succumb to the temptations of spanish cooking. I was reinspired to run, and only ate one of the two sandwiches Angeles had prepared for lunch. One was a ham sandwich - the other, the one which I ate, was some sort of cheese and salami sandwich. I also had a shortbread cookie, and an apple. It was our first lunch away from home, and it made me long for Emilio and his television.

At the conclusion of the tour, our endurance was tested. We had to sit through a 2.5 hour lecture about Galicia. Now a 2.5 hour lecture is hard to handle in English, even when you´re well rested. In Spanish, when you´re still catching up on your sleep, it´s nearly impossible. I took a lap around the building in the middle of it to pump myself up, but I don´t think I´d be able to recall anything that was mentioned today. Luckily we´re going to Galicia tomorrow (until Sunday), so I´ll report back what I learn first-hand later.

On the way home from this terribly long day, we stopped at my new favorite store, El Corte Ingles. Huge is an understatement. It seems that they sell nearly everything and at seemingly reasonable prices. Although I was overwhelmed and overtired today, I see this becoming a very useful resource in the future. Unfortunately they had no tide-to-go pens. This is unfortunate as I have stained nearly everything I´ve worn so far. Oh, well. I guess this serves as an excuse to buy cosas nuevas, si?

After relaxing en casa, and going for a late run along the river (for those of you counting, that´s 2 days in a row, aka impressive), we enjoyed a delicious dinner of chicken with onions and a side of spring rolls (which we christened hot pockets to give them that good ol´american feel.) We watched a bit of some political debate show with Emilio of which I caught very little except that everyone was positive that he or she was absolutely and undeniably correct. So goes life.

We still had to pack for Galicia which was more stressful than I´d anticipated. Especially since we actually have no plans for where we´re staying over the weekend. I´m going to go ahead and assume everything will fall into place once we get there. Of course, we´re leaving in less than 5 hours, so even though this day was pretty long, we´re nearly out of time!

I´ll be without internet in Galicia, so hasta domingo! :) ¡Adios! (The desktop has a spanish keyboard, so it could do cool things such as: ñ, ç, €, ¿, ¬, º, ª, and Ü)

It was definitely the shorts.

Today was our first full day in Spain. With Angeles and Emilio as our fearless leader, we braved the streets of Madrid (after the same hearty breakfast as yesterday). We were taken to the subway station just a few blocks away, and took the circular (say that with a spanish accent) nearly right to the university!

University San Pablo CEU (pronounced say-ooh) doesn't appear to have a campus - in fact, from what we've seen so far, it's a building. Angeles and Emilio left us to be oriented along with the rest of the DIM kids (not yet sure how I feel about the acronym, since everyone actually seems pretty bright). It was fabulous to be reunited with those we already know, and exciting to hear about what we're going to be doing, but when the 4 hour mark hit, we had just about had it.

The best part of the morning was definitely the awesome advertisement we found at the metro station:

"Is the man of your life already out of your life? Sell it!"

Amazingly, we were able to retrace our steps and find our way back to home, sweet home. Angeles prepared us a lunch of lasagna (it was pasta with a lot of cheese and some spinach), and bread. I was so excited with the portions - it seemed so appropriately sized. We had clearly underestimated our host mother, because she sneak-attacked us with some fish after we finished, doubling the size of our meal! I nibbled at it, trying to cut it apart and rearrange it so it looked like I had eaten more than was actually the case. (I can be sneaky, too.) She also served us this melon that was FANTASTIC! It was white. I may or may not have researched it. For any interested parties:
http://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/melons.htmlIt's the canary melon. SO. GOOD.

After lunch, Angeles went to a mysterious pool that's somewhere above us (we told her we would accompany her soon), and we went on an adventure of our own in order to buy some telefonos moviles! We went on the metro again (we're pros now) to Arguelles and met Perry and Mike there, since we were hoping that if we all bought phones from the same carrier that we would get a cheaper rate when calling each other. Across the street from the subway station there was literally a row of stores that were all selling cellphones. Perfecto!

We decided to go right down the line, starting with Vodaphone. Someone on the program had just purchased a vodafone, and so our previous line of thinking applied. We were in the store for a pretty long time, trying our best to interpret some different offers they had for prepaid phones. We were translating, adding, dividing, and trying to find small print that told us the REAL price, when suddenly one of the employees approached us and asked in English if we needed help. Obviously we were rather surprised - how could they tell we were Americans? Perhaps because of all of the aforementioned reasons? Couldn't be. And then...it suddenly dawned on me. I was wearing shorts. We were told before arriving that shorts were not worn by any REAL Spaniards so that if we wanted to fit in, we shouldn't wear them. I didn't really believe it, and in fact, I'd already seen a lot of Spaniards in shorts, but in that moment, I knew it to be the truth. Never mind the English we had been loudly speaking just moments before...from the moment we stepped into Vodafone I had branded us as Americanos. Luckily, these plans are very confusing and English was pretty convenient. Unluckily, when we finally decided we were ready to commit, the service in the store fails and the employee is unable to use his computer to make any sales. What? Is that even possible? We were dumbfounded, but as we left, we realized that perhaps it was better not to have a phone service whose own service in its story is unreliable.

We chalked it up to a practice round and continued down the line of phone stores. After a failed attempt, we ended up at Movistar. In nearly only Spanish (the other customers in the store were from the US and helped us out with one detail) we finally got telefonos, and for very cheap! Overall success!

We returned home, and decided to go for a run along the river across from the apartment. It was a little bit of a strugglefest, but it happened and that's what counts. The other rumor I'd heard before coming to Spain was that no one runs here. As Erin and I were running along the river speaking in English, we got stares from the other runners going by and realized that we'd made another glaring error. They too, seemed to know we were Americans. Not only were we running, but we were now both wearing shorts. Might as well have been wearing the American flag, right? I know.

After our feeble attempt at exercise (even the mostly sedentary Emilio commented on how quickly we'd returned), we relaxed until 10:30 when we ate an interesting dinner. We had french fries which were familiar, but with a main course that was not. We're pretty sure that it was ham and cheese in some sort of fried crust...with ketchup on top. Probably my least favorite so far, but truly not bad at all. It was a lot better than it sounds. Angeles complained how we don't eat enough and didn't understand why we decided to split the Flan she gave us. Emilio knew our weakness for the melon and had her bring more of that. She tells us time and again that we're growing girls and need to eat to grow strong. I guess mother knows best?

Today I learned first-hand that certain cultural stereotypes are blatantly incorrect. Just to be safe though, I'm wearing a skirt tomorrow...

A Taste of Spain...

Apparently, it's 11:11 in Madrid. I think I'm okay with this, although somewhere inside my head I'm pretty sure it's actually only 5:11. Even if that were the case, I'm pretty tired right now, so I'd still consider going to bed.

The airport and flight were obvi great fun, but 7-13 hours later (depending on how you look at it), I was finally standing in the Madrid airport! It turns out that the process of going through immigration and customs in Madrid is as simple as having a security look at your passport and stamp it without asking any questions or even looking at it. I could tell I'm going to like it here already.

A ton of people from the program were on a flight that landed right after mine so I got to see a lot of familiar faces while battling the masses to grab my massive (rainbow-strapped) bag from the belt at baggage claim. After finding my lovely roommate amongst the crowd, we watched a our taxi driver literally jumped up and down trying to shove all of our bags into the trunk to make them fit. (Note: he did. We were thoroughly impressed.) He dropped us off at a street corner and pointed to literally the sketchiest looking building I had seen thus far (complete with a mud-splattered door and walls) and told us that this was our destination. We tried to make the best of it, and ended up making fools of ourselves (gotta start off on the right foot.) Obviously, it was actually the nice looking building next door, and obviously every single person within our range of sight was staring at us while we dragged our "dead-body-sized" bags to the door, and made a desperate intercom call to whom we hoped was our host family.

When we finally arrived I was so pleasantly surprised to meet Angeles and Emilio! Angeles is a feisty 70 year old who you would swear doesn't look a day over 50 (I would've taken a picture of them, but I don't think we're quite on that level yet), and Emilio is her perfect counterpart - he's a seemingly crotchety old man who's actually be sweet as can be!

Of course, the first thing they want to do is feed us. For breakfast, Angeles made us eggs over easy, toast, fresh squeezed orange juice, and coffee. Everything was wonderful and I don't even like coffee OR orange juice. I did my best to distract myself by unpacking and such to prevent from falling asleep afterwards. I actually have my own bedroom which is cool for the space, and it expands the English speaking areas of the house to two rooms rather than just to the one I figured Erin and I would be sharing. I have a balcony off of my room which is beautiful! It overlooks the river and you could see what I believe Emilio said was la iglesia de San Francisco. Along the river there's an awesome path that Erin and I have already decided we'd like to run.

After lunch and dinner however, we're thinking we might have to run it more than once a day! Lunch consisted of generous portions of paella, salad, bread, and spanish tortilla - a dish made from eggs, onions, and potatoes. I suppose you could say this was much more than a taste, but it was delicious!

After lunch, we decided to take a walk around the river to digest a bit. We ran into a girl from Duke who's living on the 8th floor of our building with another family! We came back and relaxed for awhile, spent an excessive (really, really excessive) amount of time figuring out how to get the internet to work on my computer (success!), and tried to keep ourselves awake until dinner. Angeles had assured us that dinner is a very small meal. When the time finally came (10PM!), we discovered that "small" means 3 pieces of pork (each!), bread, pasta salad, and a banana. Duh.

I'm actually here. In Madrid. Right now. Tomorrow, it's off to the university to remind us that this IS in fact real life.

Iglesia de San Fransisco

Adios!

Away We Go

In less than 24 hours I will officially be en route to Espana. I'm excited to say that I'm all packed up - I'm even an impressive pound and a half under the weight limit. (I guess this means my souvenirs will have to be pretty light...but I suppose I will deal with this when it becomes an issue.) I can already tell that I will not enjoy repacking in December, but I'm guessing this unfortunate task is an easy price to pay for the opportunity to live and study in a foreign country for a whole semester.

Worries:
1. Having a mean host family
2. Not being able to understand said host family (maybe this would be a plus if they're actually mean)
3. WHY IS DINNER SO LATE? I pretty much count down to dinner from breakfast on, and don't know if I'll be able to make it. (Maybe I could catch an early-bird special?)
3. There's a pretty good chance that I'll give up on this blog in like, a week. That's not so much a worry as a fact.  We'll see.

While I can't guarantee it, there's a fairly good chance that future entries will be more interesting, so don't give up on me yet!

Note: 1 checked bag, 1 carry on, 1 backpack, snazzy rainbow bands....good work.

Adios!