Tuesday - Acceptance

Today I had class at 3:45 and 5:30. It is a nice change after a 9am day! Megan and I left at 2 so we could stop by the boqueria market and get our favorite muffins. We also found peanut butter aka Pate D’Arachide while we were walking around. My first class today was Sustainability. It seems like it will be a cool class, and the teacher is nice, though he seems a bit off into space, the kind students will take advantage of. He is also the teacher of my 5:30 class: Mediterranean Oceanography and it is in the same classroom, so that will be a long 3 hours! Oceanography will also be a neat class. We are taking a field trip to the aquarium on Thursday! The teacher was really cool in that he let the class out early so people could go watch the inauguration live. I was ok with watching it later on the internet, but there were some crazies in the class who would DIE if they weren’t able to watch it live. I met up with Megan after class to find the Apunts store and get more books for classes, and then we found a neat grocery store and got conditioner and I found some mousse. Conditioner is more expensive here, and hard to find. I guess maybe Spanish people do not use it as much? Oh and before I met Megan, I found a schedule for the NitBus, which will be helpful when going out because it runs all night from certain stops and one is near our dorm. I was also asked for directions by some tourists who tried to speak to me in Spanish! I think that means I looked sufficiently like a local, plus had a nice, friendly Kansas face!  I was about to blow them off for vendors, but they asked about a street I actually knew about so I helped them out.

Us American students made another great leap at dinner tonight. Max and I wanted to leave since we were done; however, others were not. We told them to go ahead and clang, but they didn’t. But when we started walking away, the whole cafeteria again started banging and laughing, without any prompting from our table! This is great news for us since it means we are interacting with everyone, but it also means that now when we want to leave separately, we won’t be able to do it without drawing loads of attention.

Another interesting fact about dinner tonight is that they served squid. Whole, little, mini-octopus looking squid. Sadly, I did not try them since there was chicken up as well…

Tonight while walking through a metro tunnel between lines, Megan and I heard a tune from Kill Bill. Turns out it was coming from a flute player sitting on the floor with an open case for money, you know the type. However, he was pretty good! On the way back we walked through the same tunnel and that time he played the tune of “Winner Takes It All” from Mamma Mia. We tipped him, because he made both our days! Now it’s off to bed for another 9am tomorrow…

One last thought: In Spanish class at home, we were taught to say Como estas? (How are you?) for a greeting. We were taught Que tal? as well, but only as an afterthought. However, everyone here asks me Que tal? and I don't think anyone has asked me como estas? yet. Perhaps como estas is more of a latin american trend?