First Day of School!

As you may have inferred from the title, today marked our first day of classes at Carlos III. Woohoo! This past week we had orientation and registration for classes. Other than our required lengua and cultura classes, we got to choose 3 courses from the university. At least one of those 3 had to be a "grado" course, meaning a class we take with Spanish students. I signed up for art history (grado), teatro español, and historia de España. The latter two are taken with other American and international students, but still taught in Spanish.

Today, I had the lengua class and history of Spain. Lengua was sort of boring - filled out a worksheet and gave introductions. Felt a lot like middle school Spanish but hopefully that was just day one. After lunch and a couple hours of break, I came back for history of Spain. It sounds like it's gonna be a pretty straightforward and general history class, which might be boring but it's a subject I feel like I should be familiar with. Also, the professor seems great - friendly, engaging, and told us that he is open to suggestions about the course. My schedule every week is generally pretty good; even though I start at 9 am on Wednesdays and Thursdays, the other days I don't start before 12:30 pm and I don't have class on Fridays. Three day weekends wassup. The commute to Carlos III from my apartment takes about 45 mins. Since I didn't have to leave here until 11:30 this morning, I went for a nice run in Parque Retiro.

Speaking of school, I think this would be an appropriate moment in my blogging timeline to share some things I've learned/observed as I come up on my 3 week mark in Spain.

• Babies and young children here are cuter than in America. No explanation. 
• If you can say the word "vale," you can pretty much get through any conversation with a Spaniard (thanks for the heads up, Deb!)
• If you walk down a street without seeing at least one Museo del Jamón (basically Madrid's ham shrine), you are probably lost. 
• Spaniards dress for the season, not for the weather. Case in point: this past Saturday was perfect out - 60 and sunny all afternoon. However, all the señores y señoras were walking around in their fur coats and winter hats...??
• Bidets.
• When you buy a movie ticket, you get an assigned seat. Also, you can't go into the movie theater until 15 minutes before your movie actually starts. Huh?
• Milk doesn't always have to go in the refrigerator. I still don't get this one.
• Chocolate con churros (see photo below) is the best thing to eat at 5 am when you're still drunk and waiting for the metro to reopen at 6 taking an early morning stroll.

YUM

That's all I have for now...wish me luck on my second day!