Day 9, 10 + 11: Class, Meetings, New Friends and a bit of fun

So the past three days have been full of meetings, classes and ISA group activities. On Sept. 1, I had my first ISA meeting at Sol (city center) with everyone. I walked over with Daisy and as the clock above the Casa de Correos (gov't building), I saw the swarm of ISA students gathered at Kilometro Cero (see my pics). At first it was a bit awkward just standing there, not knowing anyone. Daisy and I introduced ourselves to Carlos the director and some of the staff. One of the staff members, Jessica, is from New Jersey (Rumson) so we chatted about that. Then for a minute or two, Daisy and I were talking by ourselves, when a girl I had chatted with on FB before (Brittany) saw me and came over. We talked about how she almost missed her flight to Madrid, because she got held up in Paris because her converter for her electronics looked "suspicious" lol. Then she introduced us to some other girls including her roommate (Sarah, Emily, Carly, Ubah, etc..yay I'm remembering names now). Surprisingly there are a lot of people from the Denver, Colorado area (UC Denver...Kendra you'd like this). After that we went upstairs to the ISA office which was just a 30 sec walk from Sol up Calle Mayor.
Once in the office, we went over some basic beginning of program stuff, introduction of new vocabulary we will use (cool= guay and ok= vale). We all had a little meet and greet after Carlos' talk and then headed to the bus for a tour around the city center. We saw the Royal Palace, Plaza de Espana, Sol, el Paseo del Prado (which is the museum triangle located near the huge Parque del Retiro), Gran Via, Plaza de Cibeles and then back to the spot where they picked us up.
After the tour was over, people went their separate ways for the night....

The next day, we had our first day of school (well, our intensive Spanish month..regular classes don't start until October). We had to be at the metro stop by school at 8:00am...so that was not fun. We got there on time and started talking with more people. We all walked about 10 mins to the school which is super tiny, like 1 main building with some residencias, but with an amazing view of the city...I'll take a pic one day). We took a placement test, quick oral exam, and then had another orientation about the school that took quite a while. I was soo hungry because I didn't have much for breakfast, which is the Spanish way. So lunch rolled around and we all went our separate ways until our 2pm meeting at the ISA office. We had a quick lunch, I exchanged numbers with a few people and talked in the ISA lounge.

Basically, Carlos went over details that we already kinda knew about but he showed us some fun videos and he is "super, hiper, mega" funny (say that with a Spanish accent..it's his favorite phrase).
We were in there for about 2 hours, and everyone else still had a bit of jet-lag, when Carlos told us... "oh yeah, last thing, you have to take a quick 30 min exam". We were all shocked out of our sleepy stupor and took a quick beginning of the program test, so that at the end we can see how much we improved. After the test, a few of us decided to meet up at Sol at 10:30pm to just hang out and go to a cafe.
So, 10:30 rolls around and Daisy and I go to Sol to meet up with everyone. A few people showed up (Brittany, Carly, Blake, Joe, Alston, Judy and Jordan(girl)). We all went to a little cafe and talked for a few hours. We had to get up early again the next day (which is today) so Daisy and I decided to head back and go to sleep.

Today (Sept.3), we got to school about 8:15am to figure out our schedules and get our student cards settled. I have three professors for my Spanish month, and today I met two, Juan from Madrid and Paula. They are both awesome. Juan is very nice and made everyone feel welcome right away. There are just a few people in my section (they split everyone into different groups according to level). There are about 12 of us (myself included), Cynthia, Elizabeth, Joe (from the other night), Sylvia (from Denmark), Brent, Maret, Margarite, etc. It was just the first day so we did a quick exercise and got to know each other. After that, we had a Conversation class with my professor Paula. Paula is super nice and super guay (cool). We started off with an interesting exercise to get to know each other. There were only 5 of us in the class (Cynthia, Sylvia, Joe, Margarite and myself...I don't know what happened to the others). We did some ice break type activities and get to know each other even better. This class is simply conversation, so we'll just have topics and talk about them. Also, the classroom has an amazing view of the city...
After classes ended at 11:40 am :)...we all went back to our places. Daisy and I had lunch and took well deserved naps. It's now 9:15pm and we're going to meet Alston, Matt, Blake, Emily, Brittany and some other people tonight at Sol again. Lisa Ahmed from Baker is here for a few nights, she'll be going to Barcelona, so I'm going to try and see her.
Tomorrow, we're going to Toledo, so I'll post more after that excursion.

Hasta luego