In the morning it was raining. We knew because we opened our window, which looks out onto the terrace. We lugged our stuff down three flights of stairs to check out. The guidebooks had promised us turtles if we stayed in this hostel, so Ally and I asked the man where they were. He said that they sleep during the winter, but he brought us into the next room to see them anyway. They were two big turtles, with shells about nine inches long, in a fountain. They looked kind of bored (a common side effect of sleeping) and I was tempted to put the rock and flowers nearby in the fountain for them to play with, but I resisted. Ally and I then carried our stuff over to the Hotel Fernando III, which was just down the road. The hotel was bustling with jet-lagged peers and full of luggage. We checked in, then went across the street to a café for breakfast. I have confused many café workers by asking for hot water with milk, or tea without the tea because I have been bringing my own tea bags places until I boost my caffeine tolerance and do the coffee thing. Ally and I returned to the hotel where we spotted Kai (Kai is a very good friend from school who was in Madrid last semester). It was a marvelous reunion, after eight months. At that point, it was time for lunch in the hotel dining room. Ally and I weren’t very hungry, but we went along. The three of us sat with two group leaders and two scared Wisconsin-ites, and of course we spoke only Spanish. After a siesta, Kai, Ally and I headed out to buy cell phones. However, as we were leaving the hotel, we spotted Sasha (another good friend from school). We had been asking the check-in people all day if she had arrived yet, so they warned her of her fan club when she finally checked in. She wanted to shower and sleep, so the three of us proceeded on without her. We found the adorable Plaza Alfalfa, and first went to a café complete with pastries, ice cream, and chocolate. It was kinda drizzly, so it was nice to be inside a bright, busy place. We got our coffees and some empanadillas to hold us over until dinner.
We proceeded to the cell phone store across the street. It was surprisingly easy to buy a phone, especially because Kai is an expert at both prepaid phones and Spanish. He answered questions for us, and helped us talk to the lady. I am glad we went on Monday, because the massive swarms of Americans all went later in the week when the clerks were frazzled. Ally and I got identical cute white and red phones with numbers identical except for one number. We walked back to the hotel, protecting our new babies from the rain, and we spotted a tiny fruit store. We got in trouble for touching the oranges, but we left with six mandarins and a kiwi apiece. Next door was a pet store, so we stopped to observe the iguanas, neon birds, guppies, turtles, and an out-of-place rabbit. We made a couple more stops on the way back: “El Palacio” and the hotel Amadeus. El Palacio is the CIEE headquartes on calle Munoz y Pabon, where our CIEE classes will be. It’s a great building, very Moorish, with a fountain and lots of colors. All the rooms are named after cities in Andalusia. We went up to the roof, and saw that there was a little staircase to an additional terrace. We climbed up, and this gave us an amazing view of the city.
We recognized the terrace and the patio furniture from the video in our online placement exam. It was good that we chose to explore the building that day, because the terrace has since been roped off. The Hotel Amadeus was just as it looked like on the website, which plays Mozart in the background. It was pretty fancy, and filled with musical instruments--on the wall, in the living room, in rooms to play them, etc. The lady saw us looking in from inside, and invited us in to look around. We made our way up to the two levels of rooftop terrace, where we had an even better view.
We got back to the hotel just in time for the introduction meeting. All two-hundred students crowded into the sala of the hotel to meet the staff and go over the schedule for the week. Then it was time for dinner. Ally and Sasha were sitting together, and Kai and I together. We chatted with the people at our table, and afterwards proposed going for ice cream. Six of us from our dinner table headed out, got ice cream, and just walked around. It was nice to make my first batch of friends, especially because they wanted to speak Spanish. We went back to the hotel, and I talked to my roommate a bit before bed. We were assigned random roommates for these two nights. Mine is named Stephanie, and she goes to Penn State. I attempted to sleep despite drunken Americans yelling in the hall. More about that later.
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