I am thinking about starting a new feature on the blog: Daily Tapas. This is where I can write about the events that happened recently without a huge amount of detail. Just a way of getting all of my thoughts down in a quick manner! Short bites of my life in Spain, just like tapas!
Let's begin.
Day 4:
Finally got my meal card after the third time being told I had the wrong card (room card, student card). Now I can go get breakfast without looking like a total idiot!
Registered for classes and got into all I needed. The server crashed shortly afterward because so many people were logging in.
More apartment hunting today. Called an apartment agent and visited two places at 2:00 today. From Leganes to my place was more than a hour. I budgeted for this travel time and left around 12:45 without lunch. Somewhat hungry, I grabbed a snack from the vending machines here at the dorms. It was a layered pastry, similar to a croissant, in a triangular shape covered in chocolate. Not the healthiest option, but enough to tide me over for the journey.
The fact that I could communicate effectively with the apartment agent, Carmen, is a good baseline for my spanish knowledge. All of our phone calls and conversations in the apartments were in Spanish. I could understand 70% of her literal words and around 90% of the overall meaning. I don't think she held anything back on account of me being American; from my experiences looking at U.S. apartments, there was little difference. Responding in Spanish and formulating questions is still my problem. Hopefully, that will improve with time.
Near the city center, I decided to do some wandering around. The weather forced the issue about my transportation means. When registering for classes, it started snowing in Leganes. When I left for the apartments, it started raining, which then conveniently stopped when I toured the apartments, and then started again. I took the metro from Embajadores to Sol, the city center. This was actually my first time taking the normal metro; between the dorms (station San Nicassio), Leganes, and Getafe, I take the Metro Sur (south metro) which is its own loop with only one connection to the normal metro.
Starting my tour, I visited a few stores to do some 'window' shopping. I found El Corte Ingles, which is like a Spanish Macys. My next stop, which I had seen earlier, was the Real Madrid soccer club official team store. As one of my favorite teams, I almost died looking at the item selection (and the prices too!). Later, I scouted some Spain national soccer team gear at a sport shoe store. I am already making a list of the items I need to buy! Probably could go through a lot of money on those alone!
More wandering in the city. This time it was sunny outside. Visited the Opera house adjacent to the Palacio Real, the Royal Palace of Spain. It is built on a cliff, overlooking a beautiful view of suburban Spain. With the sun starting to set, it was a wonderful view.
Earlier, I had purchased a return train ticket to depart from Sol to Leganes. On my way back to Sol, more souvenior shopping at some trinket shops which sell fake soccer jerseys. Might consider buying a few of those if only for the price. Many such shops were located in the Plaza Mayor which I walked by for the second time.
I also got my phone fixed at an Orange (cellular company) store! Yay!
Returning to the dorms, I met up with Bobby and departed for the Leganes Orange store to fix his phone. Running part of the way to make sure the store did not close, his phone was fixed and then we departed to find a tobacco shop. You must understand, going to tobacco shops does not carry the same stigma as in the U.S. Our purpose was to purchase a discount train pass for next month, sold commonly at most tobacco shops. Not finding one, we then found a place for dinner.
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