I am finally in Madrid! This is my second day here, first full day. It feels so nice to be settled in with my family. All I want now is for classes to start and life to get as normal as it can be. My host family, Luisa and Antonio, are really friendly and nice. They're in their fifties I think. I'm trying to speak as much as I can at the moment, so far I've only gotten a few "no entiendo"s from them. I have my own room and bathroom which is really nice, as well as wireless, or as they call it wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee haha).
This is kind of my first time to relax since I've left America. The program has us as busy as possible, or perhaps more than possible in my opinion. We got to Madrid around 10, took a bus to the Skidmore center and then had fifteen minutes to pack a bag to go to Toledo. Once we got to Toledo we basically immediently started orientation. It is really really difficult to pay attention to someone when they are speaking Spanish for two hours straight. If you zone out for even a second it's hard to pick the topic up again. Like, if they say a word I don't know then I wonder what it means and by that time I've already missed something. It was a little scary to have all of our crucial information given to us in Spanish, because I think I only understood half of what was said. Toledo was really beautiful though. It is this medieval city with tiny narrow streets that cars nonetheless drive fast on. I was worried my feet would get run over a few times. We went to a bunch of touristy places, cathedral and a museum with lots of El Greco (but not View from Toledo, alas). There was a random Bosch painting in my hotel room. Zelie and I got put together in the hotel which was nice. The program got a bunch of profesores from the University to come and give us a preview of their classes, which is I guess kind of good, although it sucks because some of them are really boring but they are all an hour long. The geography one we had today was the worst one.
Madrid gives me a strange feeling. I feel like the city is really easy to navigate; I walked home from the Center today. At the same time, the language thing makes it really really foreign. It is really tiring to always have my brain on for the Spanish. It's really frustating to have to think about how to say something every time I want to speak, but hopefully that will go away with time. My host mother already said my Spanish was better than yesterday, although I find that hard to believe.
Anyway, I can't figure out pictures yet, but the one on the top is from Toledo. Hay más on Facebook (sorry Mom). I'll figure it out later.