It has been a pretty crazy rollercoaster these past few days. We had two days of orientation, which was absolutely boring. One of the girls who lives with me is really nice, we get along well. The other one, who happens to be my roommate, I don’t like so much. There isn’t one specific thing that I can say that I don’t like about her, but just being in her presence in general makes the homesickness so much worse. I know that sounds petty and that I should just try to be friends with her, but I know I cant. I love my Señora and her family. She is very funny and likes to tell us stories and act them out. She also enjoys telling us how much she hates her oldest daughter’s boyfriend. I guess some things are the same everywhere.
I did make a few good friends at school. I think my best friend thus far is a girl named Alana. She is German, but she lives in Switzerland. I like having a non-American to hang around because her values are much more similar to mine than most of the American girls here. It is actually kind of funny because when we go out I get asked every time if I am from Madrid. Everyone thinks that I am European and that she is American which is pretty funny.
Thursday night we went to a club called JOY. In Europe, no one really gets drunk, except for Americans, which is sort of refreshing, but funny because you see the Americans completely embarrassing themselves. We ended up at the same club Friday night and while standing outside, I ended up talking to a Brazilian guy who works as a club promoter. He put us on the guest list and we got in free. He gave us his number so that we never have to pay to get in, all we have to do is let him know we are coming and our names will be on the list. When we got in we saw another promoter, I think he is a manager or something, who we met the night before. He came up to greet us and took us right to the bar for free drinks and also gave us his number so that we can get it without a problem. It is kind of funny because all of the bars have promoters standing outside looking for Americans to get into their bars, because they buy the most drinks. They will bring you in and offer you a free drink because they think you’ll stay and buy more. So anyway, the nightlife is pretty crazy, we have been told it is the best in all of Europe and so far, I think I understand why (no one goes home before 4 or 5 am).
Finally, the one other cultural and interesting thing I did was go to a Tapas bar. Tapas are little snacks that you eat when you have a drink at one of these bars. The word comes from the verb Tapar which means to cover. A long time ago they used to go to the bar for a drink, and in order to keep the flies out of the drink they would cover it with a small plate of food, usually nuts or something like that. Tapas are no longer put over drinks and are not nuts either. They have all kinds of different ones. One of the famous ones is tortilla de patatas. It is a cake type thing made of egg and potato. It is actually kind of good. We ordered a bunch of different ones and shared. It was an interesting experience. Also, if you want to see my pictures from my trip to Pedraza, which I didn’t talk about but its explained in the pictures, you can go to my flickr page which is www.flickr.com/photos/mpotenza.
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