Classes, first trip, and laundry

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So this past week was a very stressful time but I am still having a lot of fun! Last Sunday we were trying to run errands before classes started only to find out that most places in our neighborhood weren't open on Sundays. Sunday night, we went to dinner with Carolin and Lidia's and mine new roommate, Julia, from Germany. We didn't stay out late though since class started the next morning. I had a class at 8:30 am so Lidia and I left our apartment at 7:15 in order to get to school on time. Lidia rode to the first metro stop and then realized she didn't have any classes that day and went back to the apartment to sleep. I got to school and found my first class, which was the only class I had that day and it was only a hour long, was canceled. I was not very happy that it had taken an hour and 15 minutes to get to school and that long to get to back to only be at school for 30 minutes. When I got back, Lidia and I ran the errands we were supposed to do on Sunday.

Tuesday was not much better class wise, and was actually worse cause we had class most of the day. Lidia and I had another early class, 8:00 this time, so we left again for school while the sun was still asleep. This class was in Spanish and it was titled the Social Structure. I'm not sure what I thought the class would be about but I didn't expect it to be about communism, capitalism and socialism. So for about a hour, at 8 am, we sat and tried to follow along with the over zealous professor practically yelling about the structure of society, in Spanish. Very quickly, Lidia and I realized that this class was not going to work out. We had a break between our next class so we sat in the cafeteria trying to figure out what class we could take instead of Social Structure.

At 10:00, Lidia went to her anthropology class while I went to Marketing. It was slightly easier to understand what the professor was saying but I was still only getting about half the information about the class. Lidia had a harder time because the anthro class was above not only her spanish level, but also her level of schooling. So we met back in the cafeteria and looked up another class we could take. The school we are going to does offer some classes in English but only about 10 and they are all business courses. This works for me, but not so much for Lidia. We met up with another international student and found that we were not alone in the struggle to find classes we could understand. We had to wait some more until our next class, which was Intermediate Spanish. We knew that at least class would be ok, and thankfully it was. Once we got back to our apartment, we were so tired from having to try and understand Spanish all day we just hung out and tried to find easier classes*, hoping that Wednesday would be better.

I found an Macroeconomics class in English at 10:30 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so I decided to try it out. It was so much easier and even though the professor said some things in Spanish, I was able to understand everything. It was such a relief. My next class wasn't until 3:00 pm so I had to wait around school. After about 2 hours of waiting, I found some other international students in the class but they said that it had been canceled. So, at this point, that is two classes that had been canceled within two days, without me knowing about it before. I was starting to get annoyed. Also, it didn't help that it was pouring rain all day long.

That night, despite the rain, Lidia, Julia, and I met up with Carolin in Sol. We were going to meet up with some other international students but we were late getting to the meeting spot and missed them. So we just went out on our own. We went to different clubs and were surprised to hear that most of the music being played was American music. After 4 or 5 clubs, Carolin and Julia went home and Lidia and I met up with other friends, Susie (from Germany) and Benedict (from Austria). We went to a club called Pacha. We had to check our coats and the only bills I had were a 20€ and a 50€. It was only 3€ so I gave them the 20. I only received 7€, which was clearly not the right change for a 20. I went back to the girls at the coat check and asked them but they swore that I only gave them 10€. Even though I started out being mad about losing 10€, the music and vibe at the club helped me forget about it. We had so much fun!

Thursday we got to sleep in before going to Spanish at 2:30 pm. Then Thursday night, I stayed in and caught up with friends on facebook while Lidia, Carolin and Aizza went out to a salsa club. On Fridays, we have no classes so we all went out to get churros with chocolate at a pastry place called Ch&Ch (chocolate con churros). Then we walked around Sol and went shopping. We were going to Toledo early Saturday morning so we didn't stay out late on Friday.

7:00 am came way too early on Saturday morning and the rain didn't help much either. But Lidia and I met up with a group of international kids and some professors from school and went to Toledo for the day. It only took about an hour by bus to get there. It was a fun day but very long, wet, and cold. We went to two mosques, the Catedral de Toledo (cathedral of Toledo) and had some free time to explore on our own. For lunch, Carolin, Aizza, Lidia and I went to a small seafood place called La Taberna del Pescador (the tavern of the fisherman). It was fairly good food for a good price. I had soup for the first dish and beef with salad and potatoes for my second dish. When we got back last night at around 7:30, we were so tired we just had dinner and put on our pj's and went to bed.

Today is another lazy day...and a day that I have been dreading since I first got to Spain. Laundry day!! Normally this wouldn't bother me but as you can see from the picture below, the process of turning on the washing machine is not quite as simple as back home. Lidia and I spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get it started. It's going now but we will see how it turns out.

I don't have to finalize my class schedule until March 1st but I am pretty sure these are the classes I am going to take:
1) Gestión y organización empresarial (Management and Business organization) on Tuesdays from 8-10 am. (Spanish)
2) Macroeconomics on Tuesdays from 11 am-12:30 pm and Wednesdays from 10:30 am -12:00 pm (English)
3) Marketing on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 4:30-6:00 pm (English)
4) Intermediate Spanish on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30 to 4 pm (Spanish)

*Side note: It is not that the classes in Spanish are too hard it it just that we don't want to have to worry too much about school that we don't get a chance to experience Spain fully. Just want to clear that up.

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Photos

Metro stop closest to our apartment
This is the metro stop we take to get basically anywhere.
To get to school we ride to 8 stops to Casa de Campo

Casa de Campo metro stop
From here we ride one stop to Colonia Jardin and then we ride on bus 561 to school

My soup from lunch
It had an egg and pieces of bread in it

La iglesia de los Jesuits
the church of the jesuits

San Juan
St. John

View of Toledo from the twin towers
The twin towers are on top of la iglesia de los jesuits

Comments

[Eileen]

Love it!!
Thanks for so much detail! Keep it coming! Love you, Eileen

[MaryMargaret]

CUTE!

[MaryMargaret]

this is stunning- YOU not the background!! :) i miss youuuu!!