Tuesday, January 20, 2009
This was a pretty short day because it didn’t even begin until 1:00pm! Our shades block out EVERYTHING (as well they should, they’re intimidating, like something straight out of the army) so we got plenty of rest. I turned over to look at my clock and saw that it said 12:48 but figured it was AM and I had only been sleeping for a bit. That seemed wrong though so I went out to go to the bathroom and Julia was in the kitchen banging on the pots and pans just like dad does at home J. In a quiet voice I said, “Buenos días” and she just laughed and replied, “no, hija – buenas tardes”. Anyway, we quick got ready for class and sat down for lunch. (no time to use our new straigtener L) The meal was huge but tasted so good. We rushed off to class where I found out that I tested into level 3A which is classified as Lengua y Cultura but since Verónica assumes we’ll all improve during orientation, I’m registered for Estudios Hispanicos which I don’t really want to be in. The good part would be that, as of right now I only have class on Monday and Wednesday which would be really nice! After some more orientation stuff we headed to class. I have Rosana for grammar and Susana for the other class. I like both of them and I feel like we’ll learn a lot during these couple of weeks. We only had the second class for five minutes though because we all headed upstairs to the Salon de Artos to watch the inauguration! It’s so cool to see it from another country and hear what other people’s opinions are of the US. It was even crazier because it started hailing outside during the program! Brrrr… The professors asked us lots of questions when it was over, and it was really tough to respond because there aren’t any exact answers. One of them doesn’t speak very good English and was confused why we all laughed at part of the benediction where he described a world where, “yellah is mellah, brown can come around, red is ___, white will do what’s right, and black is ___” I can’t remember it all but you get the idea. They were also curious about the poet and thought she seemed really monotonous and they didn’t believe that she was a real poet. While we were there Mitch, a guy in our program who is from Central figured out that we live right next door to him! I can’t believe we’ve been here since Saturday and just now realized this… So he walked back with us in the rain but we stopped by Orange first to buy our cell phones. It was a long walk in the freezing cold rain so it was nice to take a stop halfway. We ended up getting a really good price on phones, especially on calls to the US. On the way back Mitch told us about an internet place really close to our place that’s only €1 for an hour so he showed us where that was at. Once we finally got home we had dinner which was a salad with oil and vinegar and tomatoes and a grilled cheese with what I would describe as deli-sliced chicken. It was good and nice to have two almost American meals in a row. Then Taylor and I headed to the internet place and stayed for a full hour. I got to Skype Rob and he called Mom but their computer was acting up again so we just typed. It’s always wonderful to talk to people at home J. After that Mitch met us and we went in search for tapas. We found a good place on Calle Navas and I definitely enjoyed my first tapeo. Our first dish was couscous with some veggies – it was better than I expected! Then we walked and walked to find another good place but a lot of them were closing which surprised us but we ended up at Loop where the tapas were olives and a kabob of mini hot dogs and peppers. Interesting .. Then we came back and hit the sack even though I smelled like smoke and really would’ve liked to shower. We’re not really supposed to between certain hours because the walls are so thin.
