One Step Closer.

September 15, 2015 No Comments

*Written this morning*

Good morning, or if you’re reading from the United States….it’s 3 am,

It’s 8:30 am here and my roommate and I just got back from breakfast. A HUGE breakfast!! The hotel where we are staying provides it and I have put on at least 3 pounds each day from breakfast alone, not including the various drinking and tapa-eating that we seem to do throughout the day. 🙂

Yesterday was our first real day of orientation. We sat through a number of boring…but helpful! presentations. And then we ventured out for CELL PHONES!!!

I am one step closer to being a real, functioning adult here. I actually came to Madrid with an unlocked (Verizon, creo) iPhone, which I took to Orange (a cell provider here) and had hooked up with a sim card. The first month cost me 30E for 2 G of data and 15E worth of calls and texts. And it will only be 10-15E/month after this! First Spanish accomplishment, check. My only complaint is that they’re so….say this, but do that, if that makes sense. Like they say we get this and that with our cell phone “plans” and that we are getting some special “deal” since we are part of this program, but then they don’t provide any sort of contract or even a paper explaining what we are getting. It’s kind of up in the air, so I guess I’ll be rolling with the punches, huh?

Hmmmm the cell phone thing took longer than expected, but my roommate and our other amiga, Annie, were able to walk around downtown a bit and it made me SO excited to be able to live in a city like this and explore mas. We headed back to the hotel and I used the gym for an intense 25 minutes. But really, it wasn’t intense. I could hardly figure out how to use the machine, but something was better than nothing.

Then-let’s see- we got ready for dinner and a flamenco show! Everyone loved the show, but I thought it was just ok. Maybe I’m too critical/ cynical (probably), but it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I’ll give flamenco another try, though 🙂 Dinner was tapas and sangria #tourists. Not eating pork makes for some interesting tapa eating, but eggs and cheese and bread are always good and the Spaniards have those bases covered, as well.

After dinner and the show, we headed to a German bar with the whole group, but like the old ladies that we are, we only lasted all of 45 minutes before heading back to the hotel (and stopping along the way for a few toiletries) and going to bed! Paaaaaarty!! Or should I say, fieeesssstttaaaaaa!!!

Now, I’m sitting here clicking away and desperately trying to get my Gmail to load so that I can load my semi-plain, semi-boring pictures and share them with you all. Because I know you care, deeply.

Today we have more orientation and then Monica, Annie and I are going on a mission to find: