Apartment

Well I'm all moved in and spending my first night in my new apt. here in Madrid. Can you believe that these next 10 months will be the longest I've lived in just once place in the last three years?!? I just loved putting my suitcase under my bed knowing I won't be using it for another month until I go to Germany:) When I got back from dinner, my roommate and her boyfriend were watching the Spanish B-Ball team play Russia and I was pretty sure my brother was doing the same thing in the US today! It's really nice to be able to have free Spanish tutors on call 24/7, as well, except it's a bit hard when I don't know a word b/c they know almost no English.

I've finally got internet connection so if any of you have SKYPE let me know. I'm on under bcurtis45 and would love to chat with you guys.

Funny Story #3: Up until yesterday, I thought all these people were saying "hello" to me when I passed them. I didn't understand their funny looks when I said "hello" back. Well, turns out they were all saying "hasta lluego" really, really fast and slurred as they do here in Spain. "Hasta lluego" means "see you later" in Spanish and here I was saying "hello" back to them in ENGLISH.....duh!!!!!

Ikea España!

Last night a few of us girls came across this sign for ¨Parque Warner Madrid¨and we couldn´t pass it up!

Since tomorrow is my big move in day, I spent the day at IKEA-Madrid. It took almost an hour by metro to get there, but I was able to get cheap sheets, pillow, lamp, light bulbs, hangers, etc. I´ll keep you posted as to how move in goes tomorrow, doing it by way of metro is going to be an experience.

the grocery store

Yesterday was a rough day.

1. I went to the grocery store last night and asked for ¨leche desnudo¨instead of ¨leche desnatado¨.
Translation: I asked for ¨naked milk¨instead of ¨skim milk¨. Ouch.

2. Then, I finally came to the realization that the fall fad for Europe is going to be ¨skinny¨ jeans...enough said. Ouch.

Rough day, rough day... hahaha.

Practical Spanish

Well, classes are in full swing now and the homework and quizes are piling up. Before I get going on some of that stuff, I had to share with you the oddest experience I´ve had here so far.

First, let me set the scene a bit. There are about 30 Americans staying at the University dorm (which is really more like a hotel) and the other half are Spanish students. The groups are a bit segregated, but between the 60 or so of us in the dorm we all reconginze each other, etc. Well, the other night a few of us girls were in my friend Katie´s room hanging out and chatting when she got a call on her room phone. The man said it was the front desk and asked her to stop smoking. She did her best to explain in Spanish that this was an American room and that we don´t smoke, nor were there candles or anything of the sort. However, he kept asking to stop producing smoke in the room and finally settled with her opening a window. By now, the rest of us thought she HAD to have mis-translated something because this story was making no sense. Either way, we opened a window and forgot about it.

Well, later that night after we all were back in our own rooms and Katie was asleep, a Spanish student came to the door, knocked , and greeted a Katie with an odd surprise. He was standing in the doorway with a sign reading ¨Por favor, stop smoking¨ and was wearing a George W Bush facemask! Can you imagine? He didn´t say anything and just walked away. None of us know what this means, but it´s pretty odd either way. Thought I´d share that rondom bit before this studying.
And as our prof. pointed out, we´re thinking of you all back at home on this Sept. 11th! sense.

Weekend

Hola, Gang!

Well, I´ve started to move my stuff into my apartment slowly, but I won´t move in fully until next weekend when they stop feeding us for free in the dorm....clearly I´ve never been one to turn down free food. I´ve been slowly stealing roles of toilet paper, too, to use in the apartment so that I won´t have to buy any. What can I say?

I already booked my first two trips. On to Germany in October to visit our exchange student Lena and one to visit my awesome cousin Katie who is having me in Amsterdam Oct. 31-Nov. 4. I´m super excited for both of the trips, gives me something to look forward to.

Last night was my first night out on the town here. It was a bit hard since ALL 20 of the Americans went together, but it was still pretty fun. The students here don´t go out until midnight at the earliest so we were out until 6am (and that was early!)....finally a country who ¨gets me¨! Stay up all night, nap all day...what more could I ask for?

As for now, I´ve been focusing hard on saying all the stores I will visit here in Spain phonetically, as the Spaniards say them. Here is a list for you to try and figure out:
es-tar-booocks.
ka-efe-se.
macdoo-nal-ds.
boo-ger keeng.



(Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds, Burger King...all of which are located in Madrid!)

Piso Hunt

Hola from Madrid, Amigos!

Well you´ll be happy to know that I found an apartment. It´s with three other Spanish girls around my age, in the ¨mixed¨neighborhood (meaning immigrants, older Spaniards, college kids, etc.) so the price is right! I´m withing two blocks of the fresh produce market, the supermarket, the church, a park, and the metro stop is 10m from my front door....and most importantly, the McDonalds! Haha, tough to beat in my opinion. I even get my own TV in my room and WiFi internet which is hard to come by here! Pretty lucky if you ask me, but at the same time I´m just happy with a roof over my head. I´ll be moving into my apartment within the next week or so and will then be able to use my own computer to upload a few photos.

My weekend was filled with the ¨piso¨ (or shared apartment) hunt. The first few phone calls were hard to make as I still don´t understand much of the ¨Spain¨Spanish with the lisp and all. Last night, I went to the Plaze de España with some of the kids from the Marquette program. Turns out one of them was the girl I was told to look for who knows one of my really good friends and when I gave her the name of a few other people I knew at MU, the first person I named was her boyfriend....talk about a small world!

I have also discovered that I was Spanish in a past life. Here, everyone stays up until the odd hours of the morning, sleeps in, eat a late lunch, an even later dinner at 10, and somehow they make time for a nap in the middle of the day! The entire city closes from 2-5 to eat and sleep....EAT AND SLEEP....... in the MIDDLE of the DAY! Ha, I was just living on the wrong side of the pond all these years!

Funny Story Numero Dos: The ¨besito¨. So in Spain, it´s common (and necessary) that when you meet someone or greet them you lean in and give them a kiss or ´besito´on the right cheek, then the left. Well stupid me...when the first door to the apartment opened I went to shake hands with the girl as she learned in for the peck. I was so startled that I forgot to move my hand and poked her right in the stomach!!! Then, I felt like such an idiot I couldn´t remember how to apologize and was stuttering. Ha, all I could do was laugh. Subsequently, I have now learned the Spanish word for AWKWARD.

The Metro

Buenos Dias Amigas!

Well, these first few days have been a whirlwind of activity. So far, I´ve been trying to keep this thing updated, but that might start slipping as I start the apartment hunt and registration for classes. Monday starts my first intensive culture course which is a 4 hour morning class about Spanish culture, politics, art, history, and language. It also will be the first day I need to find a place to live so I think I´ll be getting busy for a few weeks at least. ¨Real¨ classes start October 2nd so then I´ll be a little less stressed.

As for now, it feels a little like being a freshman in Madison: learning about a new city, where things are, etc. First (and most importantly) I´ve already scoped out EVERY SINGLE super-marcado (supermarket) in the area. Cearly, we all know where my priorities lie when I move to a new place. BUT, you´ll be happy to know the food is very similar to the US, and I even saw a McDonalds with a walk-through window (we don´t even have those in the US!). I also went to the local market which is all fresh produce. I was shocked at how cheap everything was: fish, bread, veggies, fruit, etc. It seemed VERY fresh so hopefully I´ll be able to get most of my food there once I have a place.

Funny Story numero uno: I´ll call this ´The metro´. The first day we were here, a few of us girls decided to go to the local department store. Seeing as it was a few miles away we took the metro. WELL....the line we needed was a circular one and our stop was only two stops down the away. What we DIDNT understand was that there were two trains running opposite directions on the circle. So, we hoped on the first one we saw and were off. After about 10 stops and 20 minutes we realized this wasn´t right. Turns out we had taken a left instead of a right on the stairs at the station and we ended up traveling the wrong way on the cirle. Instead of going two stops down, we went all 28 around the OTHER way! After that hour (instead of 4 minutes) we at least felt like we got out Euro worth. But now I know how to use the metro...