i shouldn't be allowed to write when i'm sleep deprived to the point of hallucination. "not as stale as qfc, has warmth and life and cookies for tea"? what?? anywho, i'm coherent now, with stories and pictures to share :)
so my second night here, the group from the program and i shared a couple bottles of wine with churros and chocolate before dinner (we never even made it to an actual meal. disaster). i'm already a lightweight, and i probably (update: definitely) could have done without any more drinks afterwards. but genius leilani had a couple beers at o'connell's with taryn afterwards. i was the american that almost fell off her stool at the bar. so when i get to the front of my apartment building, i find that the gate is closed. being too drunk to discern the difference between closed and locked, i assumed the latter and climbed the fence in 3.5" heeled boots. and inevitably fell on my face. my cell phone came out of my pocket during this ordeal and fell apart once it hit the ground. i put it back together with no problems, but as soon as i turned it back on it asked for an unlock code. i punched in random numbers for about ten minutes and eventually gave up, running with the assumption that i'd killed my sim card. when i got to the door of the building, my key wouldn't work. so i sat around for a bit, debating whether or not to just buzz my apartment and risk a grumpy confrontation with my host family, or to wait outside until some fellow drunkard made their way home and let me in. i chose the latter. instead of a shitshow with a key showing up, i got an old woman with a scowl. "necesita ayuda?" she asked warily. "si... es mi.... primer... noche... mi llave no funciona..." i stammered. she (thankfully) believed me and let me in, and from then on it was smooth sailing to my bed. i had to explain to my host mother what happened so that she knew exactly why she was giving me another key to the building. thankfully, she just laughed and said it wasn't a problem. but, note to self: stick to 3 drinks. forever.
other than being a public mess, i've been good about exploring and not drawing attention to myself. i'm getting to know my way around the major streets a bit better, and hopefully it will all be fairly familiar by the end of the week.
today was the first day of the orientation classes. basically just speaking in spanish and going over grammar and lexicon for 4 hours a day for 2 weeks before we start the classes at the university. i'm really happy that we're doing this, because i would be completely lost in a spanish literature class without this preparation. magical realism is already difficult enough to understand in english. the class went well; we were initially assigned to a specific group, and once we got together we took an exam to make sure that we were in the right place. after that, we were given a handout with all sorts of getting to know you questions, like, "who likes the color yellow?" or "who has the biggest feet in the class?" or "who likes japanese food?" we went over those for about 3 hours, and then were done. then mikaela and i wandered around the tide pools at the beach near our apartments for a bit before returning to our respective families for lunch. my host mom prepared this AMAZING, thick tomato and pepper soup with fried fish on the side. me encanta la comida aqui. and now, i'm here. we have to write a paper about the cultural differences between the us and spain that we've seen so far. the professor looked at us like we were crazy for asking how long it was supposed to be. i guess being a stickler for length is solely an american practice.
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