Well, Here We Are

Hello everyone!

Well, I´m finally here, in Madrid Spain, living with a family by myself... Exciting! Actually, to be truthful, four people from WashU are living in the same building as me, but I am the only person living with this particular family. I arrived yesterday (Thursday) at around 3 pm local time, with little difficulty. My fencing equipment didn´t show up on time, much to my chagrin, but it has since arrived, and I am excited to start fencing when we get back from Barcelona and Granada. After getting the rest of my luggage, the other WashU people on the plane and I looked for Romiro (our WashU guide/teacher), who drove us to our respective houses. I met the Suarez´s, who I will be staying with for the next several months. They are very nice people, and the food thus far has been excellent (and healthy, gasp!). I had dinner, went and got pictures for my metro pass, and went to bed.

Today myself and the other students went to a short orientation session by Romiro about our WashU course and then went home for lunch. This afternoon he gave us a guided tour of ¨Sol,¨ the central plaza of Spain, which is similar (I suppose) to Times Square, except much older and with a lot more history. He showed us where the different types of shops are and gave us some basic information about certain slang words we would not be aware of (all of which I have forgotten, being the kind of person I am). Right now, I am sitting in an internet cafe typing to you all because we don´t have internet access in my apartment. Tonight some of us are planning to go to a bar in town somewhere that one of the guys that has been here before knows of. Tomorrow is free (plans TBD) and on Sunday we leave for Barcelona for a language intensive (which I desperately need).

It has been interesting getting to used to things here. The first thing I noticed is the size difference of just about everything. The cars, the shops, the elevators, the beds (unfortunately for me), among other things, are all smaller. Other small things are also difficult to get used to. For example, you have to open the door to the metro yourself, something Robin Meyer and I discovered when we almost missed our stop. The metro trains come in the opposite direction than I am used to, although the cars drive on the right side of the street, which in combination I find strange (explanation anyone?). Final on my list (although clearly not describing all of it) is a more present concern: typing. Below is the list of all the things not on our typical keyboard.

¿¡Çªº¬€

More frustrating, however, is the following list of things that are not in the normal place I am used to.

()/?;:{}][#@\/

It´s just a tad bizarre, and it took me about a minute to figure out how to type brackets (there is a separate button for a third option on the key which I was not aware of). However, given all these oh so complicated difficulties, I am very excited about my time here. I can´t imagine spending the whole five months and starting to become comfortable and adopt this culture, but clearly it will happen by the time I leave in June. I hope everything is going well at home, and I wish you all the best!