Curso IntensIIIIIIIIIIIIIvo

So I think I have beat jet lag! After my close to 24 hour day yesterdayyy I did not let myself go to bed until 11pm local time. Our 4th room mate came in! Her name is Meike (pronounced My-ka) and she is from Frankfurt. I am like super impressed with how nice everyone is. A lot of students have a friend from their home school with they sometimes pair up with (if not people from the same country tend to congregate) but everyone is so open. Example: Meike was going to her friends apartment with a bottle of Bailey´s and leftover food and invited everyone in the apartment to come. I was entirely too tired but that is just one example.

This morning I woke up at 6am without help of an alarm clock FREEZING cold. Our heater in our apartment doesn´t work so it got down to probably 50 degrees? I was in two long sleeved shirts and pajama pants and the sheets and this fleece blanket and I woke up shivering and burrowed face and everything under my covers. I had to get out of bed to put on real clothes and my jacket. Brrrr.

Our intensive course started at 8 and campus is literally a seven minute walk. Well, if you know where it is. My room mates and I (the two dutch girls- Betaina and Atty) wandered downstairs 7 till the hour and convened with like 6 more girls. I haven´t been to the campus yet so I was just following the leader... who did not know where we were going either. We ended up being 20 minutes late to the preliminary meetings, oooops looks like being on time will continue to be a struggle for me.

SO MUCH ROOM FOR ACTIVITIESSZSZ

During our first meeting this morning we got the list of activities that we are doing. So for 50 euros we have like tons and tons of planned activites.. cooking lessons, salsa lessons, poker tournaments, dinners, etc. The thing that I find most different slash am excited about are the discotecas. We are going 4 times within the first week. So you know how at Tech slash whatever American university you pregame for a bit starting at like 9 or 10 and then go out around 11 (and that´s on the later side), here we go out to like 9 or 10pm then i don´t know what we are suppose to do.. on our official schedules, we aren´t going to the discotecas until 330AM. That´s not even a joke. Most of the other European students were also impressed by that. Three thirty?? That´s like waffle house time slash let me get my drunk ass back to north ave or find a place to shack. It´s like the most bizare thing I have ever heard. No wonder Spain has there 3 hour siesta (everything is closed from 130pm to 4 30pm)...

So the way the levels work for this course is from A1 (beginners) to A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. The people in A1 don´t know ANY spanish. Like at all. I have no idea how they plan on taking a full course load in Spanish in like two weeks. I ended up being in B2 because they didn´t have anyone sign up for the C levels. Yes, I am the ONLY person that already speaks spanish. I can´t even tell you how many times people asked me why I was taking this course. One of the kids in my class was like, shouldn´t you be in like Z2? So they love me. I just sit quitely in the back because I don´t want everyone to hate me for already knowing spanish. Nah not really they are actually all really nice to me and understand that I just want to make friends. And they use me to help them translate and such. Maybe they are just using me....

The kids I have been hanging out with the most are 2 guys from Austria and this Lithanian girl  and Slovenian girl. I have been trying to avoid clumping with the other kids from the United States. I feel like even if I am speaking English, I will get more out this experience if I spend more of my time with kids from other countries. We had like a 45 minute discussion about driving at almuerzo (in Valencia that refers to the meal between breakfast and lunch). In europe, they were telling me that they paid 2000 euros just to GET their license. Crazy. Also, a lot of the kids I have been hanging out with are a lot older. Like most of the European students I have met are like 22-25. Keep forgetting to ask how long their university studies normally are...


mmkaaay well I am about to head over to someones apartment to plaaay. We have our welcome dinner at 8pm. P.S. I was under the impression that we were so unclassy because we binge drank and it was due to our legal age being so old etc...(the only other times I have been to Europe was with parents prior to this) Well no apparently the night before I got here the police came because one of the apartments was too loud slash had too many people. I think its just not as big of a deal since it´s legal. So HA parents it´s not only the ¨American College Culture¨ that you think I have so openly accepted. Young people like to play and alcohol may or may not be involved.

P.S. The most useful thing I have packed that most other people didn´t was a cork opener. (Idk how I remembered to pack it, Julie)