Long Time Coming

I've been here for 4 weeks now and things are just beginning to settle into a rhythm. For the first week we were up in Santiago del Compastela which is this teeny little old city with cobblestone streets and the richest cultural history ever. We stayed in dorm rooms and had the most wonderful "monitores" (payed friends) showing us around and getting us used to the culture. We had LOTS of tapas, I tried octopus, a lot of it actually, its not that bad unless they give it to you whole, like when you can see the suctiony things and stuff...weeiiirrdd. But that week was essentially siesta, tapas, fiesta and getting back at 6 or 7 in the morning every night: CRAZY. We come home and the streets are still out of control. But what that week was really good for was getting to know the other people on the program so that when we were dropped here in Madrid we had kind of a safety net to fall back on. I got really close to four other girls, 3 of them are wesleyan students and one girl from Vassar. They're so so so great, and I love them soooo much. When we were in Santiago one of the monitores coined us The Spice Girls, we were the craziest of the group and always out the latest. WOOHOO.

Then we came to Madrid. That travel day was soooo hard. Its actually a really short flight but for some reason it was in the airport on that day that it hit me for the first time that I was going to be here for 4 months and not home or at Wes for the whole time. But I got to my little apartment with my very old couple and their very old dog "Boss," and they're so so sweet, and I have my own teeny tiny, room with my own bathroom that I've already managed to flood with the shower. But it's all ok. Paloma cooks dinner for me everynight, she's fantASTic. Lots of meat, chicken, and potatoes. A salad every night and a piece of fruit for dessert. Lunch we buy at school depending on classes. There's an incredible sandwich shop near campus run by two women that literally is to die for. All of the little colored paper are sandwiches people have invented and had named after them.

School is an hour away give or take, and it's CRAZY having everything in spanish. I'm taking Gender Soc, Theory of Image, Intro to Law, and a required language course. It's so interesting because school just isn't as big of a deal here as in the U.S. As long as you show up for the final, attendance doesn't matter at all and there is pretty much no required anything during the semester except for recommended background stuff. I'm actually doing way more work here than I do at Wesleyan cause I need to pick up the vocab and stuff.

But up until now everything has been about getting acclamated to having our entire lives turned upside down and into a new language. I know it's only going to get so much better from here, and I can feel that the settling in phase is coming to an end. It's crazy that it really does take as long as everyone said to feel comfortable.