...Educativa.

We started school today! We caught the bus around 9:00 and got to campus in plenty of time for our class to start at 9:30. And if you have ever heard that Spanish people are relaxed about time... it's true. Our teacher today was named José. He teaches both Spanish and history. We will have a few different teachers throughout the semester. José is nice, and he is a good teacher. And we can understand him, which is the most important thing... We did some activities that helped us get to know people better. Those can be awkward and just annoying sometimes, but it was fun. We laughed a lot. We are with about twenty other American students for now. There are seven of us from Roberts, but everyone else is the only student from his/her college! They are all really awesome. Sorry I keep giving uncreative descriptions... he was nice... it was awesome... That's just how it is I guess! Later tonight we are going over to one of the other student's apartments for dinner. Most all of us are going to be there so it will be a good chance to get to know them better. Free meal!!! And friends!!! We are really excited about this :-) Ok, finishing up the description of our first day of school... after the introductory stuff, we had a coffee break. We didn't get coffee today, but we did buy a chocolate croissant! It's a big deal whenever we eat something sweet or whenever we eat meat... good stuff that we will have to remember to appreciate once we get back to the US. After the break we had class again. We did some basic Spanish. We got out at 1:30, so it was a pretty short school day.

Since Tracy wrote her blog there have been several awesome developments in the area of home life. Hot showers!! And... free wireless Internet. FREE. Here's what we did. We noticed that there were a bunch of networks in range, but they all needed passwords. So, once we had met our awesome neighbors, we wrote them a note asking if they would let us use their wireless if we payed them some money each month. Last night, the guy came over to give us their password, and he said that we didn't have to pay anything. We get five bars too! So life is more "normal" now. Hopefully we are learning to see "normal" as "exceptional." We are thankful for the things that we didn't have at first.

Almost all of our encounters with Spaniards have been wonderful, but today Rachael and I had some issues with the postal workers. We got one of those notes in our mailbox that means you have to go to the post office to pick something up. So we ran there and gave them the slip of paper. I showed him my passport and signed everything. When he gave us the paper that was addressed to us, we realized it was actually something that was supposed to go to the people who lived in the apartment before us! So I tried to explain that to the guy... it did not go well. "¡Madre de Dios! Las mujeres!" That was all we could understand of what he was saying because he was using a different dialect. It was obvious that he was mad, so eventually we just left... with the mail that wasn't ours.

Considering that would not be a good note to end on, I will write a little more. One of the things that I have really enjoyed here is cooking. We made some excellent stir fry the other night. And yesterday we had chicken, potatoes, and peppers! I am dying to try more Spanish food, but so far, we cook like Americans. Well, we are Americans. But hopefully soon there will be paella on the stove!

Betty