First Day of Classes

June 3

Day 3 – First Day of Classes

7:35am: My alarm goes off. I intuitively turn it off.

8:40am: I look at my cellphone and realize I’m very very late. I was supposed to meet Breanna by her house at 8:30. I will soon attach a photo of Granada’s map and my rout from the house to school. School is about a mile and a half from here. So, I threw on some clothes, gathered my belongings and took off – halfway I powerwalked, the other half I ran. Jesusmio.

9:05am: I entered the classroom. The second CLM building is very nice. It’s a walled building further down the street parallel to the first CLM. You go up a flight of stairs and in front of you is a courtyard. The courtyard is surrounded by orange trees. To your left is a patio with benches. If you go towards the courtyard, you arrive at the main entrance. The building is beautiful and I think most of it is made of marble. Soshal sya.

10:50am: Our first class ends. Our teacher is Profesor Adolfo Sanchez. We pretty much just did conversational stuff. No English is permitted inside the classroom although I did get away with some today. I think my Spanish has improved exponentially in my 2 days here in Granada. By this time, I am starving and very thirsty. So I just bought a bottle of water for .70 euro.

11:10am: Our second class starts taught by Profesora Ma. Luisa Something (I forgot her last name). We mostly did cultural stuff. We got to know which Spanish phrases to say in certain occasions and what are some Spanish customs. For example, it is common for Spaniards to beso-beso (kiss each other in both cheeks) when introduced to someone new. It’s the norm for girl-girl, accepted for girl-guy. If it’s a guy and guy, they shake hands. In Spain, it is an annoyance if you arrive early – for example if you are invited for dinner. That’s all I could think of right now. :P

1:01pm: We are done with classes for the day. Shannon, another girl in the Central College program, actually got transferred to my class so I was pretty excited about that. She hurt her foot very badly from all the walking we did yesterday. I thought it was just one of those you can shake off but I guess not. She’s also an athlete and she plays basketball and has had problems with it. The walking probably aggravated it. Anyway, she can barely walk, so we go to Veronica’s office in CLM 1. I told her that I sometimes get those and it would hurt so much but after sometime you can kinda shake it off. Well, she kinda shook it off there. So we proceed walking towards the city.

2:15pm: I walk with Shannon towards the river to where she lives (very out of my way) because I wanted to go to the Vodafone store to buy a SIM card. She thought that siesta was not until 2:30pm. When we got there, 10 minutes out of my way, the store is closed. BUMMER. So, I turn around and head back to my house. In Spain, they usually eat lunch ( the heaviest meal of the day) around 2:00 – 2:30pm. In a way, my wasted out-of-the-way-walk wasn’t so bad since from that I found a shortcut to my house which is not complicated like the one my host mom showed me. By now, I feel like I know most of the more important streets and where they connect. Or maybe, I just do have a good sense of direction. I think it’s both.

Oh back to the Spanish siesta. I didn’t fully understand the weight of the Spanish siesta until now. Seriously. They close almost everything at 2:00pm and do not open back till 5:00pm. This sucks for us because we get out of class at 1:00pm and that only gives us 1 hour to “shop.” It really does suck coz all you can do is “window shop.” Whatevs.

2:45pm: I arrive at the house and tell Paco I’m home. He just sat down to eat his lunch. He gets up and gets me my plate. I had macarones. It’s not macaroni pasta. It looks like penne but it’s not ribbed. It had like a light tomato sauce and had some bits of ham. It was very good. I topped it with cheese and paired it with bread. As I did not have breakfast, that lunch was a great relief.

3:40pm: I left the house to go to the “meeting point” by the plaza Isabel La Catolica. We had to meet Veronica there so she can show us this place where we can volunteer.

4:40pm: We go to Central College’s 2^nd office (CCA 2) and we had our workshop there. We talked about what were our goals during our stay here in Granada. Most of us wanted to improve our Spanish skills, meet other people, become a bit more independent, etc. Cool beans.

6:10pm: We all leave to go the internet café. The same photo people from Central the other day asked if they could take pictures of us while getting all excited at the internet café. Shannon couldn’t really walk by now, so she wanted to take the taxi. Brett, the photographer, rode with us so he knows where to go. He took the taxi bill (well, Central did). So that was a relief. My first ride in like 3 days. :P Anyway…

6:30pm: I get on the computer!!! How exciting! But bummer was the connection was too slow to accommodate my uploading pictures to the web. Good thing is I’ve copy-pasted my journal from last night to my blogspot and multiply. Anyway, I left there around 8:15pm.

8:30pm: I went to the Orange store por la calle Camina de Ronda. I tried to ask about calling rates and what the charges were gonna be like if we called each other in Granada. I didn’t have any id with me so I couldn’t really buy it then. Maybe tomorrow. And maybe I’ll go with Vodafone. I hear Vodafone’s cheaper.

9:40pm: We had dinner. Jesus Maria Jose! Les dije que cada cena es como una fiesta. Every dinner it seems like we’re having a party. Tonight, I had my very own special scrambled egg already on my plate. Then we had fried large diced calbazin (which I joked were the primos/cousins of the calabaza – to which Paco agreed :P), we had fried fish, some other fish fried the same way, and mi favorito de todo el mundo – calamares!!! Swear it looked wayyyyyyy better and larger and tasted super good(and genuine) than any other calamares I’ve ever had.

I sat with them for a while and we all talked. I’m actually pretty excited I can carry on conversations with them. MariaLuz says I have really good Spanish. So I guess that’s good.

11:00pm: I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed.

11:55pm: I’m done with this journal and I’ve fallen asleep twice while typing this. Anyway, bear with me if I have blatant grammatical errors.

12:00mn: I’m going to bed!!! Hopefully I get up tomorrow. Ma. Luz has told me though that she will knock on my door and wake me up at 8:00am. So I think I should be good. Vale? Vale.

xoxo

Kristia