First Week

Well, I have been here for one week so far and I LOVEEEEE it! It's just like I remember, but better. The family that I'm living with picked me up from the airport and have been really nice. They have 3 kids, a 3 year old boy and two girls, aged 5 and 8. Both the parents are auditors and the dad does a lot of international traveling. The kids are all super excited to have me living with them and I'm excited to be living with a family too, since I don't have to worry about immediately finding an apartment after hauling my luggage through the Madrid Metro.

I feel like I've been here for much longer than a week, because everyday has been so busy. So the first day I got here, I just unpacked and slept! Everything here is closed on Sunday so I didn't do much then either. But since Monday I have been on the go! I have ventured out downtown in the center of the city, the south of the city, and my neighborhood (I live in the north of the city). I take the metro to go everywhere and I haven't got lost yet because it's so well labeled (they even have people perform on the metro just like NY). My first stop was Gran Via, a longgggg street with tons of stores on it. Just the architecture of the buildings are amazing. I also stopped off at the Puerta del Sol, which is like the Times Square of Madrid, but without all the flashing bright lights. There are tons of people, (tourists and locals alike), street vendors, stores, just everything. In addition to the center, I ventured off at other stops too as I had many errands to run this week (put money on my phone, stop off at the tourism office, get a monthly metro card, etc). I have had some speed bumps on the way though, but thankfully nothing major. So I already had a Spanish cell phone and I only needed to put money on it. So after waiting patiently in line for half an hour, I get to the front of the line only for the worker to tell me I need my passport to do that and of course I didn't have it. So I had to go all the way back uptown to get my passport to put money on phone. Also, I had to get my residency card. So I ask a police officer on the street where the closest police station is. A 10 minute walk later, the police station tells me to go to the Office of Foreigners. After waiting in line there for 40 minutes, they tell me I need to have an appointment and that I have to go to a different office for that. At that point I gave up (but it worked out, because at orientation for my job, they did everything for us!)

Other than that, everything has been going smoothly. I now have a friend who lives five minutes away from Real Madrid stadium, so of course I had to stop there. It's huge and amazing! It's also right next to a mall so of course I stopped in there as well. In the past week, I've been restraining myself to not buy all the great clothes, bags and anything else I see because there is just so much!

Some things that I have to get used to all over again: 1. eating lunch at 2pm and dinner at 10pm 2. not expecting to do anything on a Sunday since EVERYTHING is closed 3. the metric system: military time, degrees of weather, litres of milk instead of gallons, kilometers instead of miles, and the list goes on...

I also made some friends this week. A couple of people at my orienation and the cleaning lady of my apartment! She's actually from Peru but has been living in Spain for a while since her husband got a job here. I woke up on Monday to her in the apartment cleaning and was a bit shocked as I was not expecting anyone to be home, but by Tuesday we became friends, ate breakfast together and she's going to take me out to see the city, from a more local perspective.

So that kind of sums up my great first week. I love Madrid and the fact that it's so international and I can't wait to see the rest of it. I still have another entire week before I actually start teaching at the school, so I plan on seeing as much as I can before I become consumed with working!