Day 8 Monday July 8

Monday July 6th: Today was the first of 15 classes in Madrid. We already have homework. We woke up this morning to a car honking. Outside the open window of our apartment. Had a very light breakfast compared to the gigantic meal we had last night and headed off to school with our host mother. She showed us which stops to get on and off at in order to get there on time. We arrived at the school and everyone shuffled into a classroom that was packed with both chairs and eventually people. We had our introductions and orientation and then we took a test. This test was quite hard. The entire thing was in Spanish and I couldn’t finish most of it because I hadn’t learned it yet at Taylor. I guess it was semi-impressive that I knew the imperfect tense so I was placed in a little higher than about half the group. There are three other taylor students in my class along with two people from France, two from England, and one from Germany. Most of them speak both their native language and one other and all of them seem to be picking up on Spanish faster than all of us. Then entire class was conducted in Spanish and we were given a short homework assignment filling in blanks with the three forms of “to be,” hay, ser, and estar. I had a question on one of them and so I asked my host mother who proceeded to correct my homework. After class we took the metro back to our apartment and waited around until 2 when we at lunch (we got out of class at 12:30). I thought dinner last night was a large meal. I was wrong. Lunch today was one of the largest meals I have ever eaten. We started with a pasta dish that was penne with a red sauce that was mostly olive oil and spices with a few tomatoes in it. Then she brought out the sliced tomatoes and hamburger meat. Everything was really good and when I thought I was done she took the dish of pasta and divided it onto our plates giving us just as much as we got the first time. I won’t starve that is for sure. After lunch I couldn’t help but take a nap because of all the food in my stomach. Fortunately for me most things all but shut down in the afternoon. Around 4 or 5 they start back up again and don’t seem to stop until around 10:30. After my nap I finished my homework and walked to Park Retiro hung around there for a while and then walked back. I wrote a few emails and talked to some people online. Nothing of great consequence happened between my walk and dinner. We then ate dinner, which like the night before was a large meal, but it paled in comparison with today’s lunch. After dinner, I essentially went straight to sleep.
sorry for the lack of pictures but I don't carry my camera around with me at school.
enjoy
-Scott