Meeting Su Alteza, el Príncipe Felipe

Now that over a month has passed and the Prince and I are still dating, I think it’s finally an appropriate time to update about our glorious meeting.

Barely a week and a half after receiving a call from Paula at the Fulbright Commission asking me if I’d like to meet the Prince (um, yes please!) and telling me I “deserve it,” I found myself booking it across Madrid in high heels to meet up with the rest of the group who would also be heading to the Palacio de la Zarzuela.

To be honest, I was actually wearing flats during my trek to the Commission, hauling my heels in my purse.  After hiking up the stairs to the Fulbright offices, Paula greeted me warmly, expressing mild concern about my one-minute fault in punctuality and then giving me a head-to-toe once-over, followed by an unimpressed expression.  I assured her that I had brought other shoes, and immediately sat down to change into what I was sure would nearly quadruple my fashion points for the day (heck yeah, Aerosoles heels picked out by my mother, what?).  As I was shoving my flats into the depths of my purple purse, I happened to glance up and notice Paula and Patricia exchanging a worried look above my head.  I could only interpret this as Paula attempting to reassure Patricia that she really had made the right choice in inviting me.  At least I was only switching my shoes; I had also packed a pair of tights, in case that suddenly seemed necessary too.   

Once I looked presentable, they ushered me into a meeting room at the Commission with a large table covered with coffee mugs, around which important-looking people mingled in dark suits.  Naturally, as everything is in Spain, our transportation was late, so I had a good half-hour to get to know my fellow Prince-meet-n-greeters.  Essentially our group was about 15 people—a grad student researcher from the US and I were the only current Fulbrighters, but there were also two Spanish ex-becarios (beca = scholarship) who both studied in the US for their masters degrees, and then the rest of our team consisted of a smattering of important American Embassy and Spain/US Fulbright bigwigs.  

Finally our private mini-bus showed up and drove us just outside of the city.  At the gate to the grounds surrounding the Palacio, a guard boarded our private mini-bus to check our IDs and inform us that no photos were allowed.  Too bad, because the ridiculous number of strange, Spanish-looking deer (aka just different from those in MN) I saw on our 5-minute ride up the “driveway” would totally have been worth a thousand words.

The bus dropped us off at the rather unremarkable front of the palace (it could have just seemed like a suburban brick mansion) and we were ushered into a waiting room for about 30 more minutes.  Another man came in to brief us about the audiencia, and I was pleased he included the important information that a simple hand-shake was sufficient and appropriate; we would not need to bow or curtsey, so my pre-visit prepping from the teachers at my school was all for naught.

Eventually we lined up in a large room with nothing but nice carpets and tapestries on the walls, and waited awkwardly for the Prince to enter.  When he did, I couldn’t help but laugh—it was such a strange experience, and everything was totally silent as we waited for this very tall man to make his way down the line and shake our hands.  The Fulbright Executive Director, Maria Jesus Pablos, introduced each of us to him in what seemed like a whisper.  Then we took an awesomely awkward group photo before she talked about the Fulbright and its 50-year history between Spain and the US and important projects, and then the Prince responded about how great the Fulbright is and blah blah.    

I'm the one with lots of skin showing.  The Prince is the one with the height. 

Also, this photo is definitely not mine. (Stolen from here)

During Maria Jesus' talk, she mentioned the Global Classrooms project, which is a Model UN program that all the secondary-school Fulbright English Teaching Assistants are in charge of—we will be running an MUN conference for our students in March, so in the meantime we are working with the bilingual 14-15-year-olds at our schools to prepare them for taking part in this conference (which will all be in English.  The topic this year is Education, and each school is assigned 11 different countries to represent).  

So it’s actually a really neat program, but what's funny is that Maria Jesus pointed me out as someone who helps with it, as she was speaking to the Prince -- so he interrupted her to look at me and say, in Spanish, “I’ll have to ask you questions about that later—I don't know anything about it.”  ....and then he really DID ask me later.  So I, nervous and quickly turning BRIGHT red, smiled apologetically and stumbled over a few words in Spanish before Maria Jesus suggested I explain in English, which I promptly and shamefully did.  Luckily Felipe (first-name basis, nbd) speaks amazing English (high school in Canada and a masters program at Georgetown will do that for ya), so he responded by talking about a similar simulation he did at Georgetown.

We were probably with the Prince for about 20 minutes or so, as other members of our group asked him questions in Spanish, and one former Ambassador made a long-winded story-comment in English about the benefits of studying abroad... and then we shook hands again and left.  No snacks, no presents, no marriage proposal... nothin.  But hey, I basically had a private convo with the Príncipe, so I guess the visit was worth it after all. :)

ohh hey!

Just so we're all on the same page, I am in fact still in Madrid and LOVING IT!!

Apologies for the lack of updates... I PROMISE to write more soon.

Just a quick fun fact so my extensive fan base knows what I'm currently up to:

I'm meeting the Prince of Spain tomorrow.  Yeah, Felipe.  That one.

No big deal, he's only the next in line to become King.

And luckily my Spanish is totally excellent (......................una broma) and lots of us are going (........otra broma), and I am really good at dressing up (hahaha) and I'm super well prepared (...............ha!!), so I'll totally blend in and just hide in the back.

But like, en serio: From the little I know, it's the Fulbright Commission's 50th anniversary of existing between the US and Spain.  Somehow, I'm the only US English Teaching Assistant going, plus a US research guy, and maybe a couple of Spanish grantees, and then the Fulbright Commission people... so we'll be a pretty small "audience" for the Principe.

Thank goodness I did TONS of power-shopping with various friends and family members (aka my mom, with Adrienne consulting via photo texts) in the few days I had between camp and flying to Spain at the end of the summer, so I at least have a presentable outfit to wear... I think... I'm scared those with better fashion sense will tell me it's not perfect, so I'm not showing anyone until after.

But you can definitely expect pictures, as long as that's allowed...?  My students wanted to know if they could see me on TV.  A teacher I work with told me she'd buy the paper on Tuesday just to see if I made it in there.  So I'll have to post something about it here, too.  I promise.  

self-correction

magical = mágico

I'll keep that in mind the next time a stranger tries to talk to me about Alice in Wonderland...

random Wednesday

Tonight I saw "Los Sustitutos (Surrogates)" (dubbed into Spanish, and for only 5E -- gotta love figuring out the discount days), and I've decided that Spanish-language action movies might be the type for me; I left the theater pretty confident that I understood about as much of the film as I would have had it been in English!  So that's.... something.

Afterwards, I went with a bunch of Fulbrighters to MadridBabel (a free event hosted at Cafe Madrid every Wednesday night, where people are encouraged have "intercambios" with others in all sorts of different languages [let's be real, usually English and Spanish]), and it ended up being really fun!  The last time I went I actually really enjoyed myself as well, and Cathy made a good friend from that night... but tonight, I wasn't in the mood to meet new people and I wanted to go to sleep early, so I wasn't planning to stay for too long.

However, this was before I met Moises and his two friends.

Thankfully, and surprisingly, they weren't at all sketchy or creepy or really even that weird.  We talked about Cape Town, Harry Potter (okay, maybe they were a LITTLE weird), San Francisco (that convo was early on -- maybe the "oh my boyfriend lives there!" preemptively stopped their creepiness...?), and how my name wasn't Jennifer (as Moises kept calling me).  One of the guys asked me how I got home without a car when the Metro was closed, so I explained that I took a "buho" (literally "owl," but that's what the night buses are called), aaaaaaand he thought I said "burro."  Sorry friend, I do not ride my donkey home on the late night. That's purely a daytime activity.

The even more ridiculous conversation I had with a random guy who thought he knew Minnesota from the movies was also pretty incredible.  He asked what movies were filmed in Minnesota, because he was SURE he knew it, but he couldn't figure out from where... so I threw out "Grumpy Old Men."  He asked me to repeat the title, and then in Spanish, so I said, "....uh, Viejos... Hombres... Enojados??"  He, for some reason, looked even more confused, and I politely excused myself from the conversation.  While chatting with Cathy a good 10 minutes later, he came up and stood awkwardly in front of us.  When I finally acknowledged his presence, he shouted at me, "Alice in Wonderland!"  I politely asked him what the F he was talking about, and he told me in Spanish that Alice in Wonderland was from Minnesota.  I told him I didn't think so -- in fact, I was pretty sure it was a magical place (though of course I don't know real words so I said something like, "Pienso que es un pais ma-hee-cal, no..?") -- but he insisted that he'd gone to ask his friends, waaaay over on that side of the bar, and they agreed that Alice in Wonderland (with the Queen, and the rabbit, and the hole) was from Minnesota.

So apparently we have a new cause for state pride.  Thaaaaaanks Lewis Carrol, you honorary Minnesotan, you!

Other highlights of the day included buying strawberries, Clementines, a toaster (no "oven" but I'm learning to deal with the real oven instead), 0.30E bread for 0.28 (since it was either that "perfect" change or breaking a 1E coin... I must be pretty pathetic if the guy behind the counter didn't hold me to my 2cents), and a Marvel Comics (tribute to Justin Young) '09-'10 school year planner; getting my exercise on again in PE; attending a presentation by two Native American women from the US who make short films and were brought here by the American Embassy (and then brought to my school via me --> my coordinator); and finalizing details for a dress-as-your-fave-Spanish-fashion joint birthday potluck, coming soon to a culturally sensitive Fulbrighter's piso near you.

inspiration

Today, in Educación Fisica (EF—or really, since it’s part of the bilingual program, PE [for Physical Education] is appropriate), I participated with the students in an endurance circuit of sorts, with basketball and soccer dribbling, jogging, jump rope, and step-aerobics.  At each station, the students were supposed to memorize the health benefit (which, for dribbling a soccer ball apparently includes “Improves appearance”), as they were asked to recall them at the end of the period.

I realized today that I’ve a) been here a few days over a month, and b) not exercised in just as long (other than wandering around the city, which I did far more frequently early on).  I actually REALLY enjoyed today’s PE class, though, so when I was at the nearby “Chino store” (un-PCly called such because these frequent small-scale Big Lots discount stores all seem to be run by Asians) shopping for a new backpack (success: light blue with yellow trim; logo on the outside pocket says “LOBO” with an abstract wolf design—clearly the only reason I even picked it up) small/big enough to be my RyanAir carry-on, I wandered through the toy aisle and stumbled across.... jump-ropes.  So I bought one. 

For €1 I figure it’s worth it to at least *tell* myself that I *could* be working out if I wanted to.  I’m gonna look up gyms online tomorrow...

day-trippin

I’m not gonna lie to you—it’s absolutely pouring out.  And lightning even occasionally lights up the entire neighborhood outside my floor-to-ceiling living room window, with the thunder claps following so far behind that every single one of our Wyoming thunderstorms this summer would scoff at this pathetic attempt to fit into the same category.

I bring this up not with the purpose of informing you about the most boring topic possible in my life, but to admit that I’d really rather be lying in bed right now, falling asleep to the steady bouncing of raindrops on the rooftops outside... but, since I’ve noticed it’s been a good while since I’ve written anything, I wanted to give you a quick taste of my life these days.  But I’m overwhelmed by the task of updating about everything from the past so-many-weeks, so I’m just going to post random clumps of similarly-themed information whenever I find the time, and hopefully that will suffice to catch you all up on my life.  Vale?  Vale.

So Cathy and I really did go to Cuenca with Guilherme, my Brasilian almost-flatmate, and a bunch of international randoms he somehow brought together: besides me, Cathy and Gui, one girl was from Singapore, two girls were from different eastern European countries, and then we had with us two actual Spaniards. 

The only information I knew about Cuenca before jumping on (after almost missing) the (not-even-THAT-early) train was what I’d gleaned from Wikipedia: Cuenca has a really cool “old part” in the middle of the city up on a hill, and they tout their casas colgadas (“hanging houses”) as a point of interest.  I’ll admit it—I was interested.  I wanted to see the hanging houses.

And so did the rest of the group.  I don’t know where they heard about them, but Gui was carrying around a more larger Spain guidebook (in English, for some reason) than even my family owns, so maybe he had passed on fascinating tidbits of info, but unfortunately, what none of us were anticipating was the fact that approximately 1.5 hanging houses actually exist in Cuenca.  After hiking past the top of the old city, I pointed it (them?) out from afar, and we purposefully marched back down the hill to take a closer look.  Yup, even upon close inspection, said hanging houses were nowhere near as cool as promised.  It was essentially one house that had a few balconies attached to the side of the building (I guess “hanging,” if one were to use a generous adjective), overlooking a deep canyon with the river below, and then another house set farther back into the street, so its “hanging” balconies weren’t even out as far as the others’.

Naturally, being the positive, young and idealistic explorers that we are, we didn’t let a silly little misrepresentation ruin our day.  The sun was out, the gray skies had disappeared, and there just happened to be a festival for San Mateo (which none of us had known about), culminating in a modified running of the bulls in their Plaza Mayor (not as cool as Madrid’s). 

Overall, the day was hilarious and absolutely ridiculous, starting with the bizarre group of strangers (not only our funny mixture of personalities, but also incredibly varied levels of Spanish); to our lunch at a café where every single person’s order was incorrect in some way; to the fake running of the fake bulls (literally, men wheeling plastic, painted bull heads/torsos into crowds of laughing children); to the fake running of the “bulls” (actually female cows attached to ropes [held by probably the same men as at the earlier event], running through more contained, yet more frightened, crowds); and every thing in between.

Cathy and I ended up taking an earlier bus back than the rest of the group to try to be in Madrid for the start of La Noche en Blanco, a 9pm-7am city-wide street festival celebrating arts and bein’ artsy.  Though we missed the kick-off, which was supposed to be hundreds of white balloons with poems on them set into the air from Plaza Mayor, we still managed to participate in other incredible events throughout the night. 

Near the Prado Museum around 1am, I was in love with the public ballet lessons given by a man on a giant projection screen, but even more in love with the dozens of people lined up at the makeshift barres (long metal barriers set up for exactly this purpose), actually following along and not even laughing at each other as they pliè’d and arabesque’d. 

Around 2am, Cathy, Lily and I joined a large crowd of people to dance to a live DJ’s strange musical selections in Plaza de Cibeles (where, a week later, I joined a far larger crowd in support of Madrid’s candidacy to host the 2016 Olympics—check out this photo [I'm the one in yellow: http://bit.ly/sQNaV ] and click the link at the bottom to read the short article).  The three of us attempted to start a train throughout the crowd, but only got ~2 strangers to join... regardless, we continued to be generally the most dance-tastic people for a solid half hour until the rest of the crowd realized that really was what they wanted to be doing, too.

After grabbing some tortilla española and wandering around for a few more hours, I crawled into bed sometime after 5am and slept until 3 (as much as that was my strategy all through college, it’s DEFINITELY how I’m surviving weekends here).

Speaking of weekends, this coming weekend is long (not that they’re ever short—we don’t have to go into school on Fridays), as Monday is National Day in Spain.  Some Fulbright friends and I are hopping on over to Costa Brava via RyanAir, staying in a beach town called Lloret de Mar, so stayed tuned for an update on that.... ha, in the next month or so. 

Otherwise, I haven’t done too much traveling... Lily, Cathy and I went to Toledo this past Saturday, and although my parents claim I went there at age 9, I certainly did not recognize anything.  We mostly wandered around in search of sites of historical and cultural significance which we knew to be somewhere in the old, walled part of the city, but we ended up FINALLY stumbling across the Sinagoga del Tránsito about 20 minutes before it closed.  The synagogue was built by Muslims, for Jews, and used by Christians for hundreds of years, and is now part of a museum about Sephardic Jews in Spain.  It was actually really interesting, and I wish we’d had more time to spend actually *in* the museum.  Luckily, Toledo is only about a 45-minute, €9.70 (roundtrip) bus ride south of Madrid, so I think I should be able to make it back there (possibly tagging along with one of my classes, as I think the third-year students are going on a field trip in April!).

piso-hunting

I’ve decided that the best way to get to know a new city and the type of people who live there is through apartment (“piso”) shopping. That’s how I’ve spent my last week—scouring websites like CraigsList and Idealista for pisos with friendly-sounding roommates, sunny and bright living rooms, and bedrooms that could fit both me and a bed comfortably at the same time.

At first, I simply tagged along with Cathy, as she had begun the Search for the Perfect Piso online from the States. Of course I was not so well-prepared, and as I met more and more Fulbrighters who claimed they were exhausted from seeing 10+ pisos in one day, I realized I probably could have started the housing hunt earlier. However, once I actually began looking on the various websites for myself, I realized just how many options were available—no wonder people were visiting so many! Tons of different pisos were posted all over the Internet, with varying prices, locations, access to public transportation and our schools (spread mostly outside of the actual city limits), roommates’ nationalities and ages and occupations, etc. etc. etc.

Needless to say, it was quite a process.

But I couldn’t figure out how people could possibly make it to more than 4 or 5 in one day. The amount of time Cathy and I were spending at each place was, apparently, unusual, because we were just chattin it up with whoever showed us the room (one housemate, all the housemates, a landlord), spending ages in each piso asking all sorts of questions about the neighborhood, the apartment, and the roommates. Apparently other people spent less than 15 minutes per flat, while I really enjoyed getting to know the people at each piso, even if I would not have wanted to live in all of them.

One of the best people I met through piso-shopping is a Brailizan guy named Guilherme. He was a lot of fun and extremely friendly on the tour Cathy and I took of his apartment, so in my e-mail to him saying I’d decided to live in a different piso, I suggested that we could still hang out with him and his roommates (his sister and another Brazilian man). He wrote back immediately that we should definitely hang out, and that “You and your friend are super super super majas!” (a common word here for “really cool”) He followed this with, “You are hella cool (a slang that an American friend taught me lol)!!” and that’s when I knew that he was perfect. He actually just invited us on a grand adventure Saturday to a nearby town called Cuenca, and I’m super stoked to meet his friends and practice my Spanish while exploring a medieval town (which my family will be disappointed to note is actually not covered in Rick Steves’ SPAIN 2009?!?! [obviously, because I am my father’s daughter, I looked it up immediately]), and the bus there/back is less than 25E!

So, despite some disappointments during the Great Piso Hunt (“I’m sorry, we ended up giving the room to someone else...” or “You can’t have any visitors if you live here” or just not writing/calling back at all), I think we all ended up in some awesome places. Cathy and I are in a similar neighborhood—probably about a 10-minute walk between our pisos—and really, with the incredible public transportation system in Madrid, I don’t think we’re more than a few Metro stops away from any of our friends so far (other than a few Fulbrighters who are living in the suburbs where they’re teaching).

I’m actually not going to describe my piso too much at this point, since I can’t move in until Pablo, the guy living in my room, leaves, but I’m really excited about it! Right now, I’m staying in a 15E/night hostel nearer to the center of Madrid for another week, before I’ll head over to my new place and crash in the living room until Pablo heads out. Another Fulbrighter, Laura, is in a similar position, where she can’t move in (to her 8-person, extremely international piso) until 1 October, so she’s in the hostel next to me, and we can commiserate together about the lack of kitchen space for a few more days. I mean, I’m only kind of half-complaining about being forced to purchase chocolate croissants every day, but it is actually pretty annoying to not have a fridge for my yogurts (...they just get more cultured sitting on a desk in my room though... right, guys?)

Remember that time ¡¿I moved to Madrid...?!

It’s one of those nights where, even at 1am, the heat settles so thick in your bedroom that you can’t possibly imagine going to sleep, yet you can’t remember ever wanting anything more. The temperature outside is far more desirable than the oppressive heat indoors—a heat so sticky and unpleasant that I don’t want any parts of my body to touch each other, or even the sheets. The night is only made bearable by the occasional breeze wafting through my huge open window. Unfortunately, by having both panes of glass swung back, I have a full-on view into a number of rooms in the apartment building across the street, making me all too conscious of my own visibility.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed in my dorm room at Madrid’s Residencia Nebrija (our temporary housing during Orientation for all Fulbright English Teaching Assistants in Spain), I’m hidden from view of any night-(pr)owls across the small street. Although the Metro has supposedly stopped running at this hour, noise of nearby car and foot traffic, along with muffled Spanish conversations, still manage to waft up to my 5th story window. Perhaps some of the close-sounding dialogue actually echoes through the radiator, as I’ve only heard men’s voices and this is technically a male dorm (another Fulbright student I met earlier this evening told me, “If you see a girl in the Residencia, she’s probably with the Fulbright.”)

So far, I’ve only met other white female Fulbright ETAs. While I hope this is not an accurate cross-section of the group, I can’t help but think it probably is. Of the 7 of us I know after tonight, only 3 of us haven’t previously studied in a Spanish-speaking country, and one of those is Cathy (a romance languages major from Carlton who speaks French and Italian, yet “feels most comfortable with academic Spanish”), so she doesn’t really count, and the other girl studied in Florence and went to Brown, so I figure that all adds up to leaving me way back in their dust, alone.

I do already feel like I’m learning more vocabulary, which is where I desperately need a refresher. However, this does not yet make me much of a confident speaker, as my level is still a bit below conversational. I mean, if “conversational” could consist of me asking “getting to know you” questions and nodding with a smile, then sure, mark me down, but even when the other person (let’s say, a native Madrileño) slows down their (incredibly fast) speech, I don’t know what half of their words mean, and they still have that indecipherable lisp. I read in my awesome Lonely Planet Spanish Phrasebook the myth of an old Spanish king speaking with a lisp, and all of his country’s residents copying him out of respect, but as myths go, apparently this one isn’t true either.

Anyway, I do at least feel like I can say basic things in Spanish, even if I consistently mess them up. For instance, I told the older couple sitting in the row ahead of me on my flight from Frankfurt to Madrid, “Hace muy [should definitely be ‘mucho’] frio!” Luckily they ignored my pathetic grammar mistake in their desire to wholeheartedly agree with me (using the proper sentence structure, and even repeating the “mucho” several times—it really was that cold). Unluckily, they somehow thought it was all right to continue speaking to me in Spanish, so I had no choice but to promptly curl up in my two empty seats and fall asleep for the remainder of the flight. Actually that’s not entirely true, as I asked the stewardess for a blanket (in English, because why would I remember a word like that in Spanish?) and then moved back a bit to sprawl across one of the many empty five-seat middle rows.

Another awesome Day 1 interaction came when I wanted to check into the Residencia. A boy probably about my age, but of ambiguous nationality (I mean, what American would wear a “Venice Beach” t-shirt? Then again, what Spaniard?) sat near the elevator, where the friendly woman had greeted me in Spanish and then told me, I thought, to follow her. Tragically, because of my massive amounts of all-weather clothing stuffed into six thousand pieces of luggage, I did not make it up the few stairs in time to see where the receptionist had gone. My attempts to a) decipher whether the guy was part of the Fulbright program, and b) figure out where my new friend had disappeared to went something like this: I mutter, “Where did she go?” under my breath and glance at him; he doesn’t move. A little louder, I say, “De dónde ella?” which of course translates beautifully into, “Where is she from?” The Californian? boy, obviously confused, points at the reception desk (true, this is from whence she came), and I, dripping with sweat and exhausted, blurt out, “Yeah, I know, but she told me to follow her...”

So really, I’m doing pretty well with the whole language thing. I mean, I was at a little bit of a loss in the Frankfurt airport earlier (interjection: it is now 2am, and a large truck is power-washing la Calle de Cea Bermúdez. My only question: Why not? [Alison]), but perhaps that was due to the fact that I didn’t know if it was more appropriate to guess at a friendly greeting in German (“Guten tag,” anyone?) or just smile as big as possible and act confused (I opted for the latter, but it was no act). Apparently I missed my chance to ask as soon as I got off the plane where I was supposed to head to catch my final flight, and instead had to figure this out while trekking literally all around two entirely empty (read: super creepy) terminals, go through Customs and Security and find out my new gate number. (Speaking of security: No shoes off in Franky. And is it really true that ALL your electronics have to be “separated” out of your bag into another bin? I’m not talking laptop—I always take that out—but the faux-sympathetic German man scouring my carry-on just to find my external hard drive wanted every plug-able item out.)

Random update: It is now 2:10am, and my door just unlatched and creaked open... presumably from the wind, but how? Why am I still dying of heat prostration? Additionally, the traffic noise has mysteriously just increased exponentially.

Despite my fairly ridiculous Frankfurt layover, the rest of my travels were thankfully rather uneventful and easy. From Chicago to Frank, I watched two bad movies set in Greece (“My Life in Ruins” and “Mamma Mia!”) and now have a burning desire to travel there, yet never have to watch those films again. On the Metro from Barajas Airport to the Residencia, I made friends with a nice Australian dude who helped me carry my luggage during a mutual transfer stop (surprisingly, I saw him again later, but, even more surprisingly, I did not say hi). Attempting to exit at my stop, I accidentally jammed my large suitcase in the turnstile, and another kind stranger, this one of the Spanish-speaking variety, helped me wedge it free as he calmly muttered, “El lado” (obviously I knew by that point that we needed to turn it on its side, as it was certainly not fitting through otherwise, but I appreciated the opportunity to refresh my vocab memory).

Another pleasant surprise came when I emerged from underground at the Islas Filipinas Metro stop, and realized that the Residencia was somehow immediately kitty-corner from me. This may be the only time Google Maps has ever failed me, but the thrill of not having to walk the anticipated 2.5 more blocks with the heaviest suitcases ever was so great that I forgive everyone in Silicon Valley immediately (...that’s where Google offices are, right guys?).

Because I’d discovered that Adrienne’s Italian cell phone somehow still had minutes left on it, I was able to find out via texts that Cathy’s room was right next to mine. After finally actually meeting in person, we made a new friend, Cherie, who is on a Fulbright ETA too, but will be teaching in Valencia. The three of us went out to explore the city, stopping at a really neat apartment Cathy had found on CraigsList, an Internet café, and a tasty tapas-style restaurant where I ate my first of what is sure to be at-least-once-a-day Spanish tortillas (a delicious, awkwardly cold omelet with potatoes and onions inside). The man behind the counter fell in love with all three of us, bringing us extra bread (with cheese tooth-picked on top for me [I think he felt bad that I couldn’t eat much on the menu], and some sort of bacon-tasting pate for the others). Thank goodness I was able to impress him later with my extensive knowledge of his native language—“El cheque, por favor...? Or, uh, el cuento..?” To which he kindly responded, “La cuenta! Sí!”—and I could once again practice what I’m really getting good at: the smile, nod, and “Gra-thy-as” (only occasionally with the lisp, though—don’t get TOO crazy). As a punishment for my final faux pas (forgetting to tip, despite the extreme generosity), I went home reeking of cigarette smoke from the Spaniard and Argentine at the table next to us blatantly attempting to understand our English conversations all evening.

All in all, an amazing first day. I promise, I actually mean that seriously. I love everyone I’ve met so far on the program and really, in Madrid as a whole. Of course that’s not surprising, but I think it’s going to be an incredible year. Once the temperature cools down and I get over this weird jet-lag, I’m sure I’ll be able to think much more clearly, and Spanish words will just start flowing like the Big Horn River in Thermopolis (preferably at its early-summer, disaster-causing speed).