Orientation...

June 26

Today was Orientation Day. And they pretty much explained all the tings that they should have explained BEFORE we left the US. I was pretty upset about that because I had a hard time trying to figure out the best way to carry our money, the best cell phone services etc. (all the small things that turn out to be really big.) So I thought the orientation was from 10-5 but it turns out it was 10-12 and then 5-6:30… what a big waste of time, in my opinion. But it turned out to be a good time to explore and I had to find a converter for my computer since plugs are not universal (I think that is ridiculous!) So we exchanged our money (oh! how depressing that was... 1dollar= 1.8 eruos) and took a little tour around the center of the city where we found a huge store called Corte ingles I imagine it is a super Wal-mart x’s 2 and with a little more class (this IS Europe). So after exploring we went back for Orientation and I saw my Spanish teacher from this past semester. It was so good to see a familiar face! It made me feel a little bit better about being there. This was a pretty low key day up until that night.

We all met up in the Rio, an empty river turned into a really long park, which almost divides the city in half. Anyway, we took lots of pictures and headed to a bar… and I was praying that there would be remotely good music there because I like to dance. And there’s no point in me going out if I can’t dance to good music. The music turned out to be okay. We met some Colombian guys (I was really surprised to meet them since we are so far from South America) but anyway we talked about Reggaeton and how it is virtually non existent in Spain (they play a lot of techno here). I told them I had been to the Dominican Republic, I think that comment was somewhat nostalgic for all of us because Spain is so different from Latin America. All the girls danced for a while and then we decided to go home since we had our first day of class the next morning.

Lesson learned: I appreciate being able to take two showers a day in the US