Primeros Dias

Where to begin, where to begin...

After a painful red eye across the Atlantic on Wednesday night all 82 (or 83, I forget) of the Madrid study abroad-ers landed at the Barajas Airport. Why was the red eye painful, you may ask. Well, there's a certain beauty to flying internationally, and this beauty comes in the form of leg-room. Yes, leg-room. Yes, fine, I can handle an hour or two on a domestic flight that doesn't give me this luxury. But, not being able to even shift my legs two inches for eight hours left me praising the heavens that there are a lot of stairs to climb (and let me stretch my legs out) at the Barajas Airport.

We spent the first few days in a beautiful hotel in the middle of Madrid orienting ourselves and getting to know each other a bit. There were times, when we'd all be sitting in the dining area speaking English, that I'd forget that we were in Madrid. But, when we went out, it obviously became very clear. I got my new phone, had some tapas and vino, strolled through the front yard of the Palacio Real, and visited the Instituto Internacional in which I'll be taking all my classes.

I roomed with Elena, one of my best friends from BU. However, come Saturday we bid our farewell to Hotel Regina and set off in cabs to our host families. Elena actually lives in a host family fives minutes walking from my house. We both have beautiful dogs-->dog-walking buddies!

I have a lovely spacious room with a great host family in the beautiful neighborhood called Chamberi. Lots of positive adjectives in that sentence. I'm a five minute walk from class and a five minute metro ride from the center of the city. My host mom is just a master cook. Very, very dangerous. And she's offering me unlimited access to the house supply of chocolate. All the more dangerous.

Well, after moving in yesterday, I unpacked and had lunch. Come 10pm it was time for dinner. A few of us from the program met up and walked to one of the main streets. We found a cute place on one of the side streets and ate surrounded by locals. Even Elena didn't understand like half the menu, but no meat was served to our vegetarian friend and everyone looked pretty happy with what they got. After, we went to a cafe around 12:30am for some coffee. Around 1 in the morning we decided to go check out a jazz club in a popular going our area on la Calle Huertas. Bar was packed, but in Madrid there's as much nightlife on the streets as in the bars. We walked for hours with hundreds upon hundreds of other people. At four in the morning the streets were packed.

When we finally decided to call it a night, we took our time figuring out the night owl bus system that runs till sunrise because the metro closes at 1:30 in the morning. I got home safe and sound, but couldn't fall asleep till about 5:30am or so and have to get up at 10am to go for a great historical tour of the famous Retiro park (like Central Park in New York) with the program.

Basically, in these first couple of days there's been a lot of walking and "oo-ing and ahhhh-ing" at the architecture. The metro system does no cease to impress me. And I can't explain how happy I am to be back in a Spanish-speaking country. Although, my host mother says that my Ecuadorian way of speaking Spanish must be "fixed".


Tomorrow, I have my final interview for my internship. I'll tell you how that goes. Wish me luck!