PERI: Madrid part 1

Well Mitzi and I have parted ways, she started her program on the first and I checked in to a hotel in Madrid to just chill out until today, when I could check into the ISA hotel.  I spent the last two days catching up on my sleep and talking to my family and my fiance Andrew, it was really nice, I feel ready to jump into orientation!  I am now at the NH Nacional, the designated ISA hotel.  One other girl from ISA is here as well, so she came up to the hotel room with me; I have a feeling I am going to meet some very fun, intelligent people in this program!  The only thing of note that I have done in the past few days is take a very stressful taxi ride.  This morning, after I checked out of my hotel, I took a taxi to the NH Nacional.  The driver seemed confused at first when I told him the name of the hotel, but he then reassured me that he knew where it was (in Spanish... of course).  Well... he ended up taking me to El Plaza Del Sol, where our hostel was our first night in Madrid, and he wanted to just dump me there!!  So in very broken Spanish, I explained to him that this is not where the hotel is, it is a 15 minute walk that I do not know how to, nor will I, make with my suitcase!  He just drove around and around pretending he knew where it was and speaking very fast to me and then asking why I didn't understand him.  I told him that I took a taxi from NH Nacional to my original hotel and it was 18 Euro, so thankfully he stopped the meter.  I could not find the address for the hotel in any emails, but by some stroke of luck it was still entered in the 'Map' Application on my iTouch!  He was very angry when I told him the address, but he took me there for 18 Euro (I gave him a 5 Euro tip).  So that was frustrating.... but now I am here and just have to wait for the rest of the students in my program to arrive.  I am so ready for some structure and to not be on my own; it is exhausting having to figure out every move I make on my own, with no one else to speak to.

Plaza del Sol

Since not much else has happened, now is a good time to list my observations thus far:

-I can definitely see why I was warned before I came, and the Spanish stereotypes that I heard seem to ring pretty true thus far....#1-"Spanish men are forward."-- OHHH YES they are!  A matter of minutes after stepping of the plane, we got smooched and and cat-called, and it has not gotten any better since. #2-"Spanish people are loud"-- I only have one good example of this up to this point, at lunch a few minutes ago, the couple next to me was VERY loud.  They were clearly arguing in loud, heated tones in the middle of the cafe, and it didn't seem to phase anyone but me.

-Flying over Dublin, Paris, and now Spain, the country sides look so different and beautiful here than in the states.  There are huge rolling fields of all different colors and textures with no roads or houses in between, and then you see little clusters of villages every so often, it is so quaint and really shows the community spirit that these cultures seem to possess.

-I saw a cemetery in Madrid today, it was so strange!  All the gravestones were the big, tall, bulky ones that you only see scattered in American cemeteries, and all of them were literally stacked on top of each other!  It looked more like a concrete junkyard than a cemetery.  Nothing like the beautiful, lush, old cemeteries we saw in Dublin.

That is all for now, my program starts tomorrow and I can't wait!! adios :)