Been here for three days now, I arrived Wednesday the 17th in Madrid. I feel I have everything I need so far, but I could have practiced my Spanish more! People here are very friendly about helping you out as long as you try to communicate with them. Packing light is definitely a good idea as I found out upon arriving in Madrid. I took the metro to my hotel where I discovered it was a hassle dragging it up stairs. Access to elevators is limited in the metro stations. Good thing I only had three bags with me, which I still struggled with. Other than lugging baggage around the metro, it is a very easy to use system to get anywhere in the city. What does not come so easy is adjusting to the time here. The time zone here in Madrid is 9 hours ahead of California. Yikes! It's my third night here and I am still not adjusted. They say it takes at least a week for your body to fully adjust to the time change. I find myself waking up at 4 in the morning and crashing in the afternoon around 3pm. The time change also makes it difficult to get over a cold. I was unfortunate to get sick before I left, and am still getting over the cold. Luckily there are plenty of pharmacies here with many similar medicines at home. I also made sure to pack plenty of dayquil and cough drops. Since I have been in Madrid I've spent time walking to the local plaza's, taking the metro around, and I also got to visit the estudio de santiago bernabeu, home of the great Real Madrid futbol!
Today I met with the rest of my study abroad group. Everyone is jetlagged and tired. I'm surprised that many of them still want to go out tonight even after such a long flight. I hope that with this cold I will be feeling up to going out. Earlier we had tapas and our first experience with an impatient waiter. I guess we were taking too long and they wanted us to free up the table. When we asked for a moment to pay our waiter replied sarcastically "take until tomorrow why don't you". But the tapas were still great. Tomorrow we will be visiting the Prado museum, Palace in Madrid, and we will be moving into our apartments in Salamanca by the evening. Hopefully I'll get a good nights rest for tomorrow. I look forward to moving into Salamanca. I will write in the next week. Hasta Luego!
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