Probably don't have to actually state the fact but I have not really been keeping up with blogging this week. Can't even say that I have been particularly busy and could therefore not keep up. Just been lazy. This is kind of why I never make it very far/long with journals and blogs. I miss a day and then it is easy to miss the next day and so on and so forth. But it is Sunday which marks my one week anniversary with my host mom. Also, have not found a protestant church yet here to go to on Sundays (this is mainly for lack of researching :( ) and I did not get back until 2:30am this morning and am too groggy to do anything else beyond sit at my computer and finally update. I'm going to just go quickly through each day since tat his point I can't really remember everything that happened each day. Quickly through all but the last like 48 hours which I still remember plenty well that it :) .
Sunday/Monday
Got back from London and made my way to host mom's house through the metro. Had some issue with opening the door but eventually got in and went straight to sleep because I was quite tired. Come to find out that one of host mom's son's was actually here for the week. I found this out when I finally opened my bedroom door and they discovered that I was actually there. Introductions made and all was well. All except apparently the grocery stores were not opened so no shopping for me. It's ok though because I still had peanut butter. That night we all watched a movie. In Spanish the title is "Jardin de la alegria," but it is not a Spanish film so I don't know what the English title is. Was a good movie and pretty funny. When it was over it was already like 12:30 so I needed to get to bed since I still had one more review class to go to the next day. Not that I made it on time.... Nope got myself horribly lost trying to walk there then had to use my phone to get me to a nearby metro and eventually made it there 30 minutes late when I am usually 15 minutes early to class. Awkward. Got there after introductions had already been made. This was not necessarily a bad thing considering I was only going to be in class with the new people for one day. There were like 12 of us in all which is a really big class for there. Class went well though it was sad that Michelle was not there. And even though I probably would have not enjoyed being in class with some of the new people for an extended period of time, I was sad that it was my last day. I learned so much each day and I had until Friday for orientation to start. Got back from class and went grocery shopping. I knew I needed to apply for a transportation abono sooner rather than later because it adds up paying for the metro trip by trip or even buying the ten trip tickets. So after my siesta, darling host mom took me to a fotomaton machine to get passport size pictures taken to apply for an abono. And I was pretty sure that I had to apply for the "normal" which is for people 23-65. The joven one is better because it is 20€ cheaper each month which adds up. We get to the store or "estanco" to apply for it and the guy tells me that not only can I apply for the joven one (yay) but that I cannot do it there but rather HAVE to do it online (boo!). Let's just say that it was not easy to do. Because I had to upload pictures of my passport and one of the passport photos I had just paid for in the fotomaton to the site for the application. And of course they did not upload correctly and needed to be reformatted which I don't know how to do. At least Ramon did and took care of it. So now it's just a waiting game for the abono.
Tuesday
My birthday! No class today which was sad. So I slept in. I didn't have anything to do until lunch time. When I left my room my host mom found me and wished me a happ birthday, giving me a birthday card from herself and a box of chocolates. So happy! Also my card from my mom came in that was musical and we all enjoyed listening to that. Right about lunch time I took the metro to IH where I had been taking my review classes to meet up with Katrina. While I waited I actually found the announcement board that I had not known existed for the last two weeks. Go figure. And there among all the apartments for rent and excursions and such I saw a job ad that was perfect for me! Basically playing in English with two baby boys. Now that I can handle. Babies & English. So I took down the number to call later. Had a good lunch with Katrina followed by ice cream and she gave me an adorable little red change purse because i like hers so much. It isn't just like her because she got hers in London but the sentiment was lovely :) Returned home for a siesta and didn't do much else until I texted Mardee if she wanted to do anything. Met her at her new place which was cozy and set out to find a chinese store. I love these stores. They are basically chinese dollar generals or wal-marts. Not dollar trees mind you because there everything is a dollar. Dollar general or family dollar. You can find anything at these stores. ANYTHING. If you cant find it they know just where it is an it is all cheap. Come to find out that after getting lost a bit that Mardee was actually going to the one I had used to frequent back when I was living at the hostel. I actually knew how to get there, albeit a long way. So we searched for everything on her list and found everything but febreeze. There were air fresheners but their scent just wasn't very good. On our way back we stopped in a mini restaurant that did not even have any seating that sold hot dogs. Even vegetarian hot dogs which had caught Mardee's eye. I was all for some french fries. after chatting with the guy at the counter for a while and him letting Mardee try all of the sauces, he ended up giving us my french fry for free. Happy birthday to me!!! Got back to her place to eat the food. watched some youtube videos until nearly 10pm when i realized how late it was getting and headed home where host mom and Ramon were watching a sad movie called the White Masai. I finished watching it with them and headed off to bed. It had been a good day.
Wednesday
I forgot to mention that I did call that job number on Tuesday. We set up an "interview" of sorts for Wednesday at 6pm in the park. I was a bit of a bum for most of this day. Left the house to figure out where I was supposed to be meeting at 6 and did some summer reading and linguistics review in Retiro Park which was lovely especially with all the kids around trying to pet squirrels. Went back home ate lunch, took a nap, fidgeted and then set off for the interview. I got there early (as usual) which would not have been so back except for this was the day after three weeks that males decided to take notice of me. Some tried to talk to me on the way in the park but I ignored them, partially because I was on a mission to get a job and partially because they were speaking English to me and that insults my intelligence and partly because I was flat out not interested. I then choose my little bench to sit on and wait at and another guy comes up to me and starts talking. At least this time it is in Spanish. He didn't really get the hint that I was not interested either.I was trying to be nice about it saying that it was not a good time I was meeting someone about a job and I didn't know what the woman even looked like so I really needed to be focused. And in the middle of this joy the originally English yelling dude comes up and informs me that I was rude to have not talked to him. So sorry. Apparently when a man is yelling at me I must automatically stop what I am doing to attend to him. Nope. Not going to happen. So Spanish speaking dude finally leaves me be. And for like 2 minutes I'm alone fidgeting and wondering when the mom is going to get there. Then English speaking dude comes back and starts chatting. I tell him the same thing. So he says well let me know if he doesn't show up and we can get to know each other. Ok. Sure. Sounds good. Please get here woman! And she does and I am so relieved. We walked around and chat, find a place and sit for a while. She shows me pics of the baby boys. After like 30 minutes she heads home since it is time for the babysitter to leave and I promised to let her know my schedule as soon as I find it out. Crossing my fingers at this point.
head home and kill time until group meet up. It was arranged to meet at a bar to watch the soccer game. I detest soccer. But it wasn't like I had offered any ideas. I got lost and eneded up meeting Mardee and Niki and Mardee's place. I was wearing another new pair of shoes and had re-torn open the place on my left foot. Great. Painful. Thank, God that Mardee brought bandaids! We got there. It was dark and loud and impossible to meet anyone. When the 90 minutes of soccer agony ended some went out to club or who knows what and didn't get back til 5am. It was already almost 1am and I had no idea had to use the night bus so I just went back on the metro before it closed down at 1:30am.
Thursday/Friday
Thursday I did a dry run to campus to see how long it would take to get there. Mardee was to meet me at the school and then we would explore the area. She might have got lost and I might have wandered around and played on my phone for over an hour waiting, but hey that's life. When she arrived I took her by the school since I had walked to the metro stop she was coming out of and then we decided that food was needed. Well she needed food from not having eaten like anything that day and I just wanted to explore. It was an awkward time of day to be searching for food. Most restaurants were closed for preparing dinner in a few hours while others might be opened but did not have gazpacho and patatas bravas like she was looking for. We eventually settled on a place that met all needs. They were very nice too and flattering. I just ordered a chocolate milkshake, but they gave me some bread for free. It was nice and I decided I would find my way back there one day.
Onto Friday. Woke up jittery about the first day of orientation and tried to assemble anything I might need. The day before it had taken me 37 minutes to get to school but that included a little getting lost time. I decided to give myself an hour to get there since I would be going earlier in the morning and was not sure when morning metro rush hour might be. I got there within 30 minutes. Dang. The university people kind of looked at me like "why are you here so early?" Ok, they did not just look they actually said we aren't starting for a while maybe you want to walk down the street and get some coffee or something? Too bad I don't drink coffee. Thankfully Mardee showed up only 5 minutes later and we decided to go to a pharmacy together and get some bandaids for my still messed up foot. By the time I got back to the university a few more people were there and it was less awkward. The university actually had some coffee and juice set out along with some little food. So people mainly drank and maybe ate fairly quietly and we stayed in groups of epople that we already knew for the most part. It was an uncomfortable wait. Especially since we never went into the building until like 10:15 instead of 9:30 like we had been told. Apparently they had built in time for socializing and coffee. Wish I'd known - I would have slept in a wee bit more and gotten there closer to 9:45 instead of 9am.
There were about three different sessions in the morning though all in the same room and with 1 fifteen minute break in between. That 12:30 break was when I scarfed down some of the food I had brought as lunch not knowing what the schedule would be like. Interesting conversation during break. The last session was a program specific meeting so we split up between literature, linguistics and teaching. Then we finished up our last hour and a half. At this point I was starving. I finally knew my schedule and did not care for it but at least I knew it. Sleepy. So I headed home. Took a siesta. Received the printer I had ordered online and went searching for an electronics store to buy a printer usb cable so I could actually use it. No luck. Ended up going to a chinese store to find a cable. Found one. Got home and it didn't work. Crap. I can't return anything to those stores :( There went 5 euros. Me and Ramon spent over and hour working on it even after I had looked everything up online that verified that the cable I bought was just worthless. On the bright side, to tear me away from my computer angst, host mom and Ramon took me to the movies. That was quite an experience. Theaters are tinier and more expensive. The popcorn is not buttery. How do I know about the popcorn? Because host mom insisted on buying me some after not letting me pay my entrance into the movie. So sweet! The movie was "Your sister's sister" but in Spanish they had made it "El amigo de tu hermana." This theater plays all movies in their original language with subtitles (if original language is not Spanish). So I did not have to do any thinking at all during the movie since it was in English. I did however read the subtitles the whole time because how they choose to translate fascinates me. I should also add in that the theater assigns seats - you have no say in the matter. Strange for me since in the states getting to the theater early means picking the seats you like the best. Not here. It was still nice and I decided I would have to return the favor one day and take my host mom to the movies. We got back by 10. I'd eaten an entire medium popcorn and was full so only they ate dinner. Messed with the laptop some more and then called it a night. I got an invite to go out but at that point I was in pj's with zero desire to metro or figure out the night bus.
