School Begins

Hola amigos.

So on Monday, we started orientation for school. Not gunna lie, it was kind of boring. I met a few people in my group but didn't really talk to them that much. We listened to random people for about 3 hours telling all the information we need to know. It was a little overwhelming. Our student ambassador then took us on a "neighborhood/campus tour" but she didn't say much about where we were going so I'm not really sure where anything is. At one point she lost half of our group. So needless to say, she was not the best person to learn from. Luckily a lot of my friends had good people showing them around so I know am pretty good at figuring out where everything is. Even though I am somewhat directionally challenged, the area around campus is easy to navigate, even if the streets don't have signs like they do in the US (makes it a little harder to know where you are).

After our neighborhood tour, I met up with some friends and went exploring around Madrid. We hopped on the metro and went to Sol, which is the main place to go in Madrid. It has tons of cool places to shop, things to see and places to go. At night, this is where most of the students go because they have the best bars/discotecas. I'm looking forward to checking it out. Although Sol is very interesting and a pretty place to walk around, there are some very sketchy characters there. While visiting the plaza mayor, which is a really pretty place, a man started walking toward us making the weirdest clicking/high pitch screeching noise. It was pretty frightening so we left. Soon after walking toward the metro, a street performer dressed in a sparkly pink blanket and a rams head (this is a common outfit for them- sparkly blanket and an animal head) started whistling at us. Then less than 30 seconds later, a man turned to me and burped in my face. It was so rude. These are only the most obscene things that have happened to us. Needless to say, my blonde hair, fair skin and green eyes don't really allow me to blend in well. I have gotten more than a few stares and many people have whistled or made strange noises at me and the people I'm with. It is just an adjustment.

 El Sol

La Plaza Mayor

We went back to our apartment and had a wonderful dinner. I learned that my host mom thinks my name is Allison, and calls Megan, Mega, and our roommate Stephanie, Stephan. It's funny though. She's really nice and a really good cook. Also, her spanish isn't difficult to understand, so I like that it's easy to communicate with her. The only weird thing is that there is someone that lives in a room between us and we haven't been introduced to them. We have seen a guy and a girl in the apartment randomly so we're not really sure what's going on there....

Tuesday was the second day of orientation. We bought our books and then had time to kill until 3 when we were going on a trip. Megan, Becca, Maureen, Hannah and I walked around the neighborhood and just did random things until we needed to go back. We went to this place called la tienda verde for lunch, and I got a sandwich and chips for only 2 euro. It is really good, so I think I found my go to lunch place. We then went to this really nice exercise park and just took pictures, which made us look even more like Americans. But we had fun and didn't really care. We did a lot of walking so I was little tired, but I'm going to have to get used to it because they walk everywhere here. It's a pretty clean city, although I've noticed tow things- one is they don't keep their dogs on leashes and two the do not pick up after their dogs. It's kind of gross but other than that the city is pretty much spotless.

Fountains in the Park

Trying to be sassy (not very good)

All of the students who came back later hopped on some buses and we went to visit El Pardo, which was the summer home of all the royals until Franco decided to live their during his dictatorship, now the palace kind of has a bad name. I think it is really pretty though. It kind of sucked because we weren't allowed to go in but we walked around and had a good time. After that, we went and got a marienda (snack) which consisted of hot chocolate and churros. It was really good. Then we headed back to school.

 In front of a fountain at El Pardo

El Pardo

After that Megan and I headed home because we have dinner at 8, which is way earlier than most people luckily. I feel sorry for the people who eat at 10, that would be way too late for me. Before dinner we met our fourth roommate, another Megan, who had been in Hawaii because her sister was getting married. She seems really nice and I think all four of us will get along really well. Megan and I planned our tentative trip schedule for while we are here which I am very excited about. We have about 10 trips planned, not including day trips, so we are going to be going all over. After dinner we all decided to try to go out before out first official day of school. We walked to Sol, which is about a 25 minute walk. We were supposed to meet up with some friends of Stephanie and Megan, but we could not find them at the bar they wanted to meet at. It was kind of sketchy and didn't have Sangria, which is what we wanted, so we left in search of a different place. We didn't walk all that way for nothing, so we stopped in this little bar/restaurant called "el cafe mejor de Madrid" (the best cafe of Madrid). I don't think they are used to Americans coming in there, but they seated us and everyone who was in there kind of left us to ourselves. We order a pitcher of Sangria, and it was really good. Although communicating what we wanted was a little difficult since we did not know the word for pitcher, the waitress understood what we wanted, and overall our first trip to a bar was a success. It was a fun night, and after we were done we walked back home and got ready for bed.

We started classes today and so far I've only had one. My schedule is a little funky and I have a 5 hour long break between classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. My spanish class was fine and I really like my teacher. She's hilarious. And we have 10 our of 15 people in the class who are from the Chicago area so it is kind of funny. I'm looking forward to seeing how my other 2 classes go today and my other ones tomorrow, but I will update about that later. That's about it for now. Sorry all these posts are ridiculously long. As Megan pointed out to me, I like to write. Hopefully you all find this to be somewhat interesting. Anyway I'll wrap it up here and update some more either tomorrow during my 3 and a half hour break or Friday when I have NO CLASSES! :)

Hasta luego,

Ash