"Travel is more than the seeing of sights, it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." - Anatole France
Spanish Breakfast - pan tostada con tomate y aciete de oliva -
(toasted bread with tomato schmear and olive oil) and café con leche (coffee w milk).
It has been a whirlwind since I got to Madrid. I'm pretty sure the first few weeks/month it's still going to feel like this, but I feel like I've been super busy and my first week has gone by really fast.
So I forgot to elaborate about my last day at home, basically, I was a little over zealous with my last day at home and of course ran out of time by the end of the day. We had a big send off to Spain for me and a welcoming home for my cousin Scotty who has been in Asia for the past year or so. It was convenient that it was Labor Day so everyone had off work and was able to come. So to celebrate/see everyone we went to lunch with my mom's side of the family - my uncle Kenny & fam, my mom's cousins, Uncle Jeff + fam, and our family to this chinese place where you had to wait in line a long time. Not my preferred choice for food/one of my last American meals but it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. And it was fun to see my family before I left because I was in Honduras this past June when they had our family reunion - so I had missed them then. After lunch, I was running around doing last minute packing ALL DAY. On Monday I also had a Skype date with a possible au pair placement family (for those of you who don't know what an au pair is - it's someone you nanny for and speak English to their kids, & they give you free room & board). Later, Kays and I went to an early dinner with my mom at Lemonade (love love love). It was nice that I was doing goodbyes all week so that on Monday I wasn't running around seeing everyone that day. Then Kels and I went to the Dia Frampton concert in Hollywood. She played an early set for only an hour, which was great because I had more packing to do and needed to get home.
I ended up staying up all night packing (I literally finished 30 minutes before we left the house). I had an early flight at LAX (7am) so my dad and I left at 4:30 in the morning. I made him park the car and help me in with my bags for check in because I had too many to carry by myself. He didn't gripe about it, but I know that is not what he prefers (so I am always thankful for him!!). I was so tired at the airport but it was nice because I slept all the way from LAX-DFW (2.5 hrs) and had a 5 hour layover in DFW but got to eat TexMex at Blue Mesa and have their sweet potato chips & salsa that I so have missed. I slept again for a good portion of the 9.75 hour flight from DFW- Madrid Barajas, the flight was SO FULL (probably because of Labor Day in the US & end of summer). They played "42" (the Jackie Robinson movie) and "Trouble with the Curve" which were awesome because they are both baseball movies & 42 made me miss the Dodgers but I still loved it. The guy next to me on the plane was an older engineer from Fort Worth who goes to a small city outside of Milan for business so we talked about how we both love FTW and he told me about visiting Lake Maggiore in Italy vs. Lake Como (which is on my wish list). But it was good because he wasn't a big talker, so I was able to sleep both before and after dinner & breakfast.
I am staying at an airb&b place for the first week while I do orientation and look for apartments. AirB&B is a site where people rent out extra rooms in their houses or apartments, for travelers. It's really afforable and just as much privacy as a hotel. Joyce and I did it in Austria last summer when we stayed in Vienna and we really like it. Right now, I'm staying in the center of the city with an older couple and their names are Blanca and Cassio. When I got to Madrid, Cassio picked me up and waiting for me at the airport - which was sooo great after such a long flight. I didn't have to figure out how to get to their house or lug my stuff on the metro or anything, he was just there waiting to help me with my bags and we drove home in their car. Blanca made me breakfast when we got back to their apartment, because it was around 11am. While I was eating breakfast, I was talking to her about moving to Madrid and she was literally looking up apartments for me to go see (so nice of her!). I showered and took a 3 hr nap after that because it was like 4am or some crazy hour at home and of course I was still jet lagged. When I woke up, I went to go look at an apartment that I had set up from one of the program director's links that she sent us. It was south of the center in the Atocha area - 3 bed, 1 bath but the kitchen was SO SMALL. Seriously room for only 1 person in it at a time. The bedrooms didn't have a lot of windows either so I wasn't in love with it but it was good for me to see.
I went to dinner that (Wednesday) night with some girls that I met in a facebook group for the BEDA program. I had asked Blanca how to get to Plaza Mayor to meet them and her and Cassio were like, "Oh let's just take a walk and we will walk you there," which was so sweet of them. I ended up meeting a bunch of girls and we ended up at this place for tapas outside of the Mercado de San Miguel (San Miguel Market) which is soooo fun. After dinner, we went to the Mercado de San Miguel for dessert and more sangria. The Mercado de San Miguel reminds me of 100x times less crazy Boqueria in Las Ramblas in Barcelona. There is fresh food from different stands and they make it for you - there's drinks, tapas, ice cream, fish where you pick your fish from the ice and they fry it there in front of you, smoothies, nuts and fruit stands, olive stands, etc. It's also great because they have places to sit (tables/chairs) in the market for you to eat what you bought and they sometimes have live music there as well. I'm really excited about it because I love outdoor markets like that so I think it's gonna be one of my favorite places to go.
The next few days were a blur because we had orientation - from 9am-3pm on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, we spent all morning filling out forms for an NIE (Número de Identidad de Extranjero), which basically is like a driver's license for Spain without the driving portion, so more like a state issued ID card. But you use it as your ID when you open a bank account, or change money, or buy a long term metro pass, etc. It is also necessary so that you give the government tax and allows you to work in Spain. We also filled out social security papers for Spain and got our program guidelines, insurance benefits (yes mom I get private health insurance & dental, yay!! but of course I will still keep my Cobra) and such. Then, we spent the afternoon waiting in line to turn in the papers so that Esther/Samantha (the directors of BEDA) could go to the Spanish government and apply for our NIEs. If you apply for a NIE by yourself it can take 6-8 months but we should get ours within the next 2 months. During breaks, we went to a nearby restaurant and had tapas, Spanish breakfast (my favorite!! pan tostada con tomate y aciete de oliva - toast with tomato schmear and olive oil) and café con leche (coffee w milk).
On Friday, there was this Spanish teacher guy from BEDA who talked to us about the education system in Spain explaining public, half-public/half-private, and private schools in Spain and the different age levels and when/what school is obligatory to attend. BEDA only has teaching assistants in half-public/half-private and private Catholic schools. He also talked about the mission of the program, the Catholic schools that we will be in, their affiliation with University of Comillas and University of Cambridge, Cambridge English testing that we have the opportunity to do, and the classes that we will take. His lecture last like 4 hours so I was dying sitting for that long and I just played hangman in Spanish (which is a lot harder than you think), in the back row with Sam. We finally got our class schedule (not teaching job schedule), and most of our classes are 1-2 times a month on Friday nights from Oct-Feb. :( I'm bummed that classes are on Fridays but there are not that many and most all my friends will be in class at the same time as me, so we plan on hanging out/going out after. We also took a language proficiency exam on Friday for our level of Spanish (Levels are: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2) - because if you test at B2 or above you are allowed to attend less classes on Friday. Not sure how I did, but I'm hoping to get B2. Orientation helped with making new friends - which was great and once classes start that will help too. I will write another post about new friends and apartment hunting later but I've written a lot in this post - so I'll break it up a little.
Sorry this post wasn't super exciting - I will write more about the city, adventures, apartment hunting, and new friends in my next post because there is lots to tell. Miss & love you all!
No comments:
Post a Comment