1st days

After a long plane ride, I finally arrived at Madrid international airport! I thought that I would be super excited upon landing, but turns out, I was more nervous than anything. Being alone in a strange country with a language that I am not fluent in is indeed a bit daunting. Therefore, when I spotted a girl wearing a Cal sweatshirt at the luggage terminal, I went for it and introduced myself. Luckily, the girl, Maria, is in the same study abroad program as me! (What are the chances of that?!?) We shared a taxi ride to the hotel. Since she is Mexican and speaks fluent Spanish, I was relieved of the task of negotiating with the taxi driver. As we drove through Madrid city, I was utterly amazed by the buildings here. Most of the architecture is of a baroque European style. Every scenery that passes through the window seems like a picture perfect spot. I was tempted to whip out my camera and let my tourist nature take over, but talking with Maria subdued such temptations. The hotel where all of the UC students met up is located on la Calle Via Grande, the main street in the center of Madrid. After meeting up with some UC students, we took a walk around the city and stopped to have lunch at this cafe in el Corte Ingles, a chain department store. The cafe is on the 8th floor, and the view that we had from our table was absolutely amazing. I could see the rooftops of almost all of the buildings, including a couple of cathedrals! Everytime I looked out the window, I was reminded again of the fact that I am now in Madrid! For lunch, I ordered chocolate, thinking that I would get hot chocolate as a drink. There was my first mistake..... The hot chocolate that came out was more like a hot chocolate syrup, to be eaten with churros. I was therefore forced to order churros on top of my tortilla with bacon and eggs, which....was also not what I expected. Apparently, Spanish tortillas are not like Mexican tortillas. What came was more like a pancake covered by ham (not bacon) and an egg. Despite the surprises in the dishes that came, I really enjoyed my meal. For the rest of the day, I walked around Madrid, attended orientation (completely in Spanish of course and through half of which I nodded off. Jetlagging was getting to me and I could not stay awake for my life. My arms still have bruises from pinching myself throughout this meeting), had dinner in this cute restaurant, and met about 30~40 UC students (I think that there's a total of 70 of us). Dinner here is at 9~10pm, and by that time I was so sleepy that other UC students thought I was high on something. Everyone sounded so far away and apparently my face had such a blank expression that I totally look stoned. Anyways, I totally passed out when I came back to the hotel.

The next morning, I had breakfast with other UC students at the hotel, and then we all went to this large room where host families picked us up. Each host family had a photo of their student, and they just walked around the room and collected their student based on the photo. I stood around for quite a while before my family recognized me, and I totally felt like an kid in an orphanage hoping to get adopted lol. The family that picked me up was a family of 4 plus a dog. There are 2 daughters of ages 22 and 24. They live in Getafe, the suburban city within 20 minutes of Madrid. This is also the city where my college, Carlos III, is located. The house is a 3 storied building that is very nice and cozy. I have my own room on the 3rd floor. It is really cute with a slanted ceiling and a window right above the bed. It is so bright and sunny in the day. I had my first meal with the family at about 3pm for lunch. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day in Spain, and they served me soo much food that I thought I was gonna burst. I had mussels with olive, pastel (this cake-like thing) filled with vegetables, bread, duck, potatoes, and arroz con leche. I also had tea to help myself stay awake after the dessert. The family speaks Spanish sooo fast that I have a hard time understanding them. They're very nice people though, and they slow down whenever they talk to me. The daughters, Sandra (22) and Diana (24), speak English, since they've studyied abroad in Ireland, and they translated whenever I really couldn't understand. My goal is to be able to understand all conversations within the household fully and be able to communicate fluently by the end of my stay here. Right now I'm able to communicate everything I want to say (although often with broken grammar and substitute words) and understand only about 50% of all things said. After lunch, I took a little nap, and then Diana took me around the city. I took the metro to my college and shopped with Diana in el Corte Ingles (there's one within 5 min walking distance to the house). I also went to a tobacco shop and obtained an identification card in order to get a monthly metro pass. The streets in this city remind me very much of Taiwan. The small houses, the many residential high-rises, the parks filled with people just hanging out, and the little shops all around the streets give me a very familiar feeling. Even the humid hot weather reminds me of Taiwan. We returned to the house at around 9:30pm, and the entire family came together for dinner. Dinner is the lightest meal of the day in Spain. The mother, Concha, never eats dinner. For the rest of us, we had a slice of Spanish tortilla (this cake-like food made of potatoes), a small portion of salad, and dry bread. It was not very filling, but thank goodness I've always had a small stomach, so the small portions didn't bother me at all. It was just very surprising in comparison to the huge meal that we had for lunch. Dinner is also less formal than lunch. We watched TV and Concha used the computer (called el ordenador, not la computadora as in Mexico) throughout the meal, whereas for lunch we all just sat around the table and talked to each other. I really like this family, and I think that I totally lucked out in finding a house with wi-fi.

I must go to bed now, for I have an early and packed day ahead of me =)