It's getting late here, by american standards anyways. For the spanish the night is still young. But I'm still kind of in american mode so I'm getting pretty tired. But I want to be caught up on the whole blog thing so I figured I should do that before I go to bed.
Today was the first day of class. I had to be at the school at 9 so I set my alarm for 7 so I could be ready for 8:15 breakfast and leave by 8:30 to allow for the the 10 to 15 min walk to turn into a 30 min walk in case I got lost. Well. I turned off my alarm at 7, decided I didn't actually need that long to get ready, fell back asleep, next thing I know it is 8:08. Yikes.
So I grabbed my shampoo real quick and some clothes to throw on. Prayed the shower wouldn't be too cold. R said you have to wait awhile for it to get warm, but I didn't have that long to wait. It was freezing at first so I was all set to content myself with just getting my hair wet enough to brush through when it got pleasantly warm and I was able to actually shampoo and condition which was much needed after my very long day of traveling the day before. When I got back to my room it was 8:17ish I believe which is definitely some kind of record for me. But I still had to do something with my hair and was late to breakfast. R called me down a few minutes later so I quickly threw my hair up in a bun, hardly paying attention to what it looked like at this point. By the time I got downstairs for breakfast it was 8:30 There was all of these spreads our for bread and the toaster was on the table and R kept asking if I wanted any tea or coffee or anything. But all I had time to do really was scarf a piece of bread and get going.
I got about half way to the school maybe even 2/3 of the way there you could say when I wound up in this plaza and knew the name of the street I needed to take from there but wasn't sure which direction it would be in. The last street I tried was finally the one I was looking for and there was just one more turn after that so I still did get to the school on time even after that hectic morning. I checked in and was sent to a classroom where I met some people who all spoke english which was nice and we got to work on our placement test which seemed pretty basic but was full of opportunities for spanish language learners to make those mistakes that we all make no matter how many times we have studied the topic or how many years we have been studying spanish. It's especially hard when my classes at Benedictine have all been lecture based where I am just listening and not really speaking and definitely not getting any grammar reviews. But anyway. When we were done with the test we got to go over it with an instructor and talk to them about it which was our oral exam. Then there was a little break before our brief orientation.
Some people talked to us about different things about the school for a little while. Then we got divided into our groups. I'm in the B1 group which is the intermediate level which is where I expected to be. Emily and I got put in the same class and it was nice knowing someone there. There were also 3 other american girls who will be there for a week before they start their program at some university here. There is also a girl from Brasil who I met while taking the test and then there is a girl from Holland who has already been here for a week. Everything was really relaxed and conversation based. We talked about ourselves and asked everyone else questions and just got to know each other while practicing spanish. It's a really good method of teaching I think. After we would finish an activity the instructor would write out some sentences that she heard that weren't correct and we would have to try to correct them.
Then we had another break from 1-1:30 and after that was our afternoon class. It was just me and Emily and the three american girls from the morning. We did some more talking and getting to know you activities and then we filled out a map with the different regions of spain and tried to fill out these questions about spanish cultural in groups as a sort of contest/competition. My partner and I quickly learned we didn't really know much about spanish culture at as we did not have answers for a lot of the questions. We are going to finish going over that tomorrow I believe.
After classes were finished Emily and I wanted to find some place to eat since we hadn't eaten since breakfast. We decided to go to this pizza place that wasn't too far from my house. We stopped by Emily's house on the way and I got to see her house and meet her host mom. She seems nice enough but I think she is harder to understand than R and J and seeing Emily's one on one situation makes me really glad to have H and K to help me out and dominate the conversation. We then went to my house so I could drop off my stuff. We were able to find the place pretty easily and had a nice meal. Then we went and walked around this huge store I guess you would call it, Corte Inglés. It has just about everything you could ever imagine in it.
Then we headed back to the school to go on a tour of the famous monuments and such of the city. It was all in spanish but I think I got most of the information. It was especially hard to pay attention though because I was getting so tired and the sun was setting and the wind was blowing which made it pretty chilly. At the end of the tour we stopped at the café/bar for drinks but by then I was starting to get worried about making it back to my house for dinner. When we finally left we weren't sure exactly where we were or how to get back to the part of town we are actually familiar with at this point so we had to have the guy who led the tour tell us where to go.
We did make it back eventually and really without too much trouble. Thank goodness for maps. Though I really do miss having my phone with me and being able to pull up google maps at any time. I made it back after the time that I though dinner was going to be at but they still hadn't eaten so I didn't actually miss it. We had a really good hodgepodge of things for dinner and I have been relaxing in my room ever since.
And now I am very ready for bed. Hopefully day 2 will go just as well.
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