La Husa Princesa: Orientacion. . . y Beyond

I apologize for writing a short novel every time I post on here, but I know there are some people (well, maybe just my mom) who want to know every detalle of my vida aqui. I'm going to try to keep it brief, though, because the things that I am writing about happened a couple of days ago and I want to catch up.
First, I think I need to recognize my lifeguard friends. I mentioned earlier the disposable camera they were putting to good use, and it made me so happy to look at those pictures when leaving my mom had made me so sad. Pretty much as soon as the plane left the ground I had that packet of pictures open.
Alison and Friends, you did not disappoint me. I really, really, really want to share a few of the fotos, but like I said, my cd/dvd drive isn't working right now.
Another thing I wanted to mention- my internal soundtrack. I should add the next two songs I had stuck in my head while I was travelling: Paper Planes by M.I.A., when I was trying to get the pay phone to work in the Dublin airport and it just kept taking my money, and My Brain is Hanging Upside Down by the Ramones, pretty much that whole day.
Alright so: back to Madrid and my arrival at the Hotel Husa Princesa. I really didn't expect IES to set us up in a 5-star hotel, but they did. Maybe European standards are a little lower? I don't know. It was nice either way.
The first day, we had an orientation lunch. There was a safety demonstration, so now I know all the tricks for stealing my cell or wallet (not really). Then we got our room keys and learned who our roommates would be for the night. Here was where I ran into some trouble.
As I explained earlier, my name in Spanish sounds nothing like it should, and it was absolutely mangled by the woman handing out room keys, so much so that I didn't realize that they had even said my name for a while. I resolved to change my name in Spain asap.
I made it up to my room, however, and my roommate arrived later. Some of us went out for tapas that night, and then we got some bocanellos later (basically I ate an omelette sandwich with tomato slices and half a grilled pepper on it). I couldn't get on the internet because it was 6,50 euros for a half hour, and by then it was too late to go to Starbucks.
The next day we had meetings about our apartments or dorms or homestays. There was more name-mangling at these meetings. One of the boys named Jeff had his name so destroyed, it reminded me of the SNL skit with Noonie and Nuni and they can't pronounce the name Jeff; they keep saying things like Guerf instead. If I could find it on YouTube I would post it.] I met Laura, one of my flatmates, and eventually we found Leah, another flatmate. There's also Meghann, who used to live in Spain and is basically fluent. We checked out and met our RA (they just call thems ras here) and took cabs to our apartment, at Fernandez de la Hoz 58-6[insert degree sign here]. We are apartment 6C.
I might have told some of you that I was going to have 4 flatmates plus an RA. Well, one of the girls cancelled, so we were left with a single room and two doubles for us four girls and somehow, I ended up with a double room to myself. It's the best thing ever.
After we went to the IES center for our language placement test [let me just say that I thought I had aced it through the first ten questions. . . too bad there were 90 more and they got progressively harder] we went out to El Corte Ingles, which is kind of like Macy's and WalMart combined.
You need to know that the section of bebidas took up maybe a third of the grocery section. There was row after row of every alcoholic drink you could think of (at least, every one I could think of. . . I'm not very imaginative when it comes to alcohol). I thought it would be nice to get a bottle of wine and drink a little with dinner- you know, when in Rome.
[We got in trouble for trying to take pictures in the produce section]
When I got back to the piso [let me add for future reference that our ra was not there, and we hadn't seen her since we'd gone to the IES center together], I made myself a Hot Pocket [made with three cheeses. . . but what three cheeses?] and went to the kitchen with Laura to pour us some wine. She'd bought a white wine, and I'd gone with a nice pink bottle- we thought that would be a safe, tasty option.

I don't know if there was some champagne action going on in that wine, but it definitely made a loud popping sound when Laura pulled the corkscrew out. We got a few laughs from that, and then we poured ourselves some.



Can I please just say that it was horrible? I didn't realize that in Europe it was legal to bottle cleaning supplies and sell it in legitimate supermercados [In fairness, I should add that price was a factor in my selection, and the wine I chose had cost 3 euro. . . that's about $4.] After my first sip, I made a face that Laura thought was funny, and told her she could have the rest of it.



So my first adventure in wine selection was a disaster. On the upside, however, whenever I decide to take off this toenail polish, I have a whole bottle of pink liquid that should do the trick.

Later, Laura and I had a hankering for some helado- ice cream. The three of us- Leah, Laura, and I- decided to trek out to get some. We went around our block a few times before we realized it was futile. Our ra still wasn't back when we returned to the apartment.
I went to bed late- she wasn't here. When we woke up to get ready for our field trip to Segovia, she was still MIA.
More about Segovia later.
[That's me looking all enthusiastic. I thought it would be delicioso.]