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)