First week of school is over!

My classes are over for the first week! Woo hoo! Tomorrow I am going on a tour of Madrid with the university and I'm very excited to see the capital city of Spain! The tour was originally scheduled for last Sunday (before I was here) but there was a few inches of snow so they rescheduled it which is very good for me because now I can meet some more people and see Madrid! I will be taking a lot of pictures and I will put them up soon. Also, over the weekend I will take some pictures of the apartment I am living in so everyone can see what it looks like.

Yesterday, I went out and bought a dictionary (but of course today I left in my classroom, D'OH, hopefully it's either still in the room or someone turned it in to the office) and went to this bar called "Kingston's Pub", it was a pretty neat pub and they were even playing N*SYNC songs which was kinda weird but it made me feel like I was at home (kinda) here are some pictures (click to make them larger):

Today, during my break in classes I bought a SIM card from Vodafone and I now have a Spanish number! I also ran other errands like getting a passport picture for a student card that I need, purchased a workbook for a class, and then I went to McDonald's (I know gross) to get some American food! After lunch today, I helped Maitane ("my-taaaan-ey", my little host sister) set up her Nintendo DS to work on the internet and now she (or me) can play Mario Kart against my brother! How cool! Then, I took a 3 hour siesta, oh man that was so good.

Now, I am just getting ready for bed so I can wake up and meet at the school at 10AM for the tour. Please comment and let me know how the blog is and what else I should talk about and ask me questions about stuff you want to know!

Greetings from Alcala!

Yesterday was an interesting day. Traveling on the plane was just fine to Madrid but when I went and found a taxi, he took me to Alcala but then ripped me off and made me pay 280€ instead of 40€. I got an "official recepit" but it didn't have any sort of ID number on it and I forgot to look at the liscense plate or anything that would have ID'd the guy. The only thing I could do, according to my host mom (HM) who called her friend from the police, is to go back to the airport and look for him and then call the police while I'm there and try to get my money back. It seems dangerous but I will think it over because that is a lot of money I lost.

After the drama with the taxi, my host mom (HM) took me down to the University so I knew how to get to and from the campus. It's about a 20-25 minute walk which wouldn't be so bad except the temperature hovers around freezing all the time so I'll probably be taking the bus until it starts to get a little bit warmer. My first day of class was alright, I woke up late because my alarm clock on my phone thinks it's still in US time so my HM woke me up at 8, thankfully, and I was just about 10 minutes late to class. Today, the classes I took were "Iconos y Tradiciones de España" (Icons and Traditions of Spain) and "La globalización y la economía de española". The teacher for my Icons class is the director of the study abroad program and the teacher for my business class was the former director and speaks spanglish which actually helps me because he says what he is saying both times once in both languages.

Besides that, my day was quite plain (save for the fact that I'm in Spain). My HM marked some places on the map where I can shop and do some other things, so I might do that tomorrow, or maybe I'll just lounge around the apartment some more. Thats all I have for now, I'll put some pictures up soon of the city and my apartment so you all can know what it looks like.

-Jamie