View off my balcony, essentially the Royal Palace is in my backyard.
On Monday, we had orientation which was just like any other orientation I've ever been to, very long and boring. After they made us sit through a presentation, they brought us on a tour of the campus (which consists of maybe three buildings) and the neighborhood, for which we were all way too tired and hungry to pay any attention to. However, once they fed us, I was ready to go again and so I went out with some girls I met to a shopping plaza closer to my metro stop. After a siesta and dinner, we went out for our first real night out on the town. We went to a few bars and met up with some other kids from SLU and just took in the scene, which for a Monday night was surprisingly very lively. We met some people from all over including Chile, Egypt and France which was pretty cool. We went home at around 3:30am which for Spain is very early, most people don't come home until around 6:00 or 7:00am when the bars and clubs close and the metro re-opens.
Nighttime in Madrid
On Tuesday, Kenzie, Stephanie, and I decided to skip the second day of guided tours and decided to walk back from campus going only on a map of a the city. The walk which was supposed to be about 45 minutes ended up lasting over 4 hours mostly because we got distracted by all the stores and buildings and very rarely actually checked the map. Also, the only street signs in Madrid are actually on the buildings and are very hard to see, it's super confusing but we did eventually make it home. Hopefully the next time I decide to hike it home from class I make better time, but with my sense of direction the chances are not great. We went out again that night and just chose a random bar to start off at. We found it a bit odd at first when it appeared that everyone in the entire bar seemed to know each other and was casting us weird looks. We soon found out from the bartenders, however, that the bar we were at was an Argentinian hot spot so they all did know each other. We left shortly thereafter and went to a different bar/discoteca (club-esque environment) that we had heard about. Shortly after arriving, I look over to see Peter White come in and just about died. Peter is a friend from high school who has been studying in Toledo all year and just happened to be passing through Madrid and wound up at the same bar as us. Funny how St. Paul can still be St. Small even on another continent. It was fun catching up with him though and overall a good night out in Madrid.
Here is some of what we saw:
Wednesday was our first day of classes and I only had one class which was Spanish Literature and over half the class consisted of kids from Madrid who were obviously fluent, which was a little intimidating, but I met some very nice girls. (The girls in my program outnumber the guys by about 5 to 1). At any rate, my professor seems very cool and I am actually excited for this class. We sort of pulled a crash and burn at this point in the week and ended up not doing anything other than eating and going to bed.
Thursday was my first full day of classes, so of course I woke up sick. I toughened it out, however, and went to my first class which is Spanish Culture and Civilization. Many of the same people from my previous Spanish class are also in this class and being that it is completely in Spanish I found myself not being able to zone out even for a minute or I would be lost as to what we were discussing. Right after this class I go to Spanish for Business. From what I can tell, this is going to be my most challenging class. It is going to be a whole bunch of new terminology and from what I gathered, the teach expects near fluency and perfect grammar in our papers, so that should be interesting. I would consider myself proficient but definitely not fluent yet. I'm hoping that this immersion will help though so it's sink or float from here I guess. After my second class, I have a three and a half hour break before my final class so I got lunch and went to the nearby park with some friends and just explored which was really pretty. Finally, I went to my last class at 5:30 which was Theology 210 Old Testament. Being that I have studied the Old Testament since grade school and the nature of the first day, I am inclined to think that this class will be my easiest, not to mention it's my only class in English. After being sick and having such a full day, I ended up being smart and didn't go out with my roommates that night but rather went to bed and got a full 13 hours of sleep. My body was definitely grateful for my decision the next day.
Steph, Kenzie, and I outside our school
All of my classes are in this one, tiny building
Terrace on top of our roof
The view from the terrace
On Friday, we don't have classes so we decided to go shopping a little and find the main park, comparable to Central Park or so I hear, that we had heard about called El Parque Retiro. I will admit to buying and wearing a fedora on the way there, I guess you could say I'm becoming super Euro, but hey, when in Rome! Anyway, we walked the approximately 20 minute walk to the park and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was 65 degrees and sunny and the walk there was nearly as scenic as the park itself. There is this big lake or some sort of body of water in the park where you can lay out by as it appeared many of the locals like to do or you could rend a row boat which looked enjoyable. Although, I'm thinking that like those family sized bikes we rented at Virginia Beach, it's one of those things that is not as fun as it appears, but I'm sure I'll try it anyway at some point. We also saw the Crystal Palace which is used to be a green house I believe I read somewhere and that was pretty cool. Another interesting thing was that instead of squirrels being a common sight like in Minnesota, you literally see stray cats. It was the goofiest thing at first but they are literally everywhere.
...Now is where things get interesting. On the way out of the Park, we were stopped by these females with petitions on clipboards. Now, being the sympathetic person that I am, I agreed to signing a petition to make the park more handicap accessible. Little did I realize, however, that while one woman distracted me with the petition signing, the other one pick-pocketed me for 100 euros of cash. Now, of course you are probably thinking how dumb this was of me for many reasons, but I can explain! First and foremost, I admit to being a total sucker. I once got suckered into buying $50 face lotion from a kiosk at the mall with a good sob story. But in my defense, I am not used to needing my guard up and also I must admit I would have been more wary had they been men and not women. As for having $100 in cash, I was planning to buy a cell phone that day and they only take cash for some reason. So, at any rate, I hope the money they stole at least went toward the handicap cause they were petitioning for! As for me, a lesson learned in street smarts will hopefully prevent any more incidents like this.
Last night, we went on a "pub" crawl for 10 euros we went with a big group of SLU kids to four different bars and discotecas and met a lot of locals which was fun. There was a lot of dancing and a lot of the same songs played in every disco which consisted of songs that are months old in the U.S. and way overplayed and no longer popular such as Rihanna and Usher songs. However, this almost made it more entertaining as they were current hits with the locals who were loving it and at least we knew all the words. We got back at about 5am and I truly felt like a Madrilenan for the first time!
That brings me up to today finally! We didn't do much, just some shopping and walking around but we stayed pretty close to our area. Tomorrow we are going to Toledo for a day trip with SLU, so we have decided to take it easy to better enjoy tomorrow.
Thanks for bearing with such longs posts, I'll try to do better at keeping this updated!
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