Making mistakes already but learning a lot

Today has been an interesting day so far. This morning, we went all had to meet at the Plaza de Cervantes, which is basically the center of town. We pretty much all live in what is considered "downtown", but that is the main part. Juani went with us to show us the way, and it is pretty easy, we only have to take 2 streets to get there. Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quijote, is from Alcala, so there is a statue of him in the Plaza and many things are named after him. After everyone was there, Susana, the director of our program, showed us where the post office, bank, and a bookstore are. Then we went to a little shop where we all had to get our picture taken for our transportation passes that we are going to be getting. It is really nice because we are going to get passes to ride the buses and trains for free, even in Madrid. From there, we walked to school so that we would know how to school from the Plaza de Cervantes, even though none of us could probably do it again if our lives depended on it. It wasn't far though, about 20-25 minutes to walk from the Plaza to school. We had our Civilization and Culture class, which I think will be a good class, we will learn a lot of useful information, geography of Spain, etc. After Civ and Culture, Susana took us on a tour of the school, where we saw the library, computer lab, etc. then had Composition and Conversation class with her. I think that should be a great class too. I really like Susana, and Magda, the other director of the program. They are both very sweet and willing to do anything that we need, and basically like our "aunts" as they said. For both the Civ and Comp classes, for our final project, we have to buy postcards everywhere we go and at the end write a description of all the places. That should be a fun project and a great way to look back on everything. That was all of the class that we has, but the majority of the other people had a different class after that. There were only like 4 of us that didn't have that class, so we were just hanging out and talking for awhile. There are 3 students from the University of Alabama. Two of them are girls, but they don't really talk to us much, and we barely even know who they are. When we were getting our pictures taken for the bus pass, they were there but we didn't even know it was them because we didn't recognize them. The other guy, Tom, is a lot more social and we were talking to him for awhile. He is a nice guy, and seems to be very adventurous. Nicole, Tom, Juanito (not his real name, but everyone calls him that), Nick and I decided to try to take the bus home for lunch, while everyone else was still in class. We wanted to get the #10, but we just missed it, so we took the #1, which goes to the same places, but it makes more stops and takes longer. We didn't really know where we were going, all we really knew was that the bus would take us eventually to the Plaza de Cervantes. I recognized our stop along the way, so Nicole and I got off, then walked the rest of the way home. Luckily, Juani had taken us last night, and I was able to recognize some different landmarks and knew where we were going, like the Telepizza and the supermercado. After the supermercado, we forgot where we were supposed to go, and walked a little too far, but then we came back and asked someone who told us where to go. We were a little bit lost, but not too far off. We got home, and Juani was waiting for us with lunch, a lentil soup with bread, salad and fruit, which was good. After lunch it is siesta time, since it is already after 3, and everyone rests. Later tonight, I think we are going to go to Plaza de Cervantes, maybe go to the bookstore and buy our books for class and explore a little bit, since we actually know how to get there this time, and may go out a little later and explore too. Everything is closed for lunch/siesta and the bookstore and shops don't open back up until about 5 or so.
There are a lot of things that are different. I had forgotten how fast people drive, and it is funny because yesterday when we were going to school, we had to cross the street by one of the roundabouts. Juani made sure we were looking out, and she would tell us when to go, and run across the street. People park in what seems like the middle of the street, or try to parallel park and are within inches of hitting the other car, but make it, perhaps tapping the other car a little while they're at it. Impressive, but something I could never do. One thing that is kind of hard is that the Spanish use the vosotros verb form, something that our American teachers always told us isn't necessary to learn because no one uses it, but that is almost all they use here. (It is a less formal, more familiar verb form). Most of us haven't really learned it; it is easy to understand it, but I don't really know how to use it myself. The food has been different too. It has been pretty good, we ate some kind of meat at almost every meal, something I am not really accunstomed too. I don't really eat much meat at home, so that is a change for me. The Spanish schedule is much different, our class at 11am is perfect, many people get up later, and 8:30 is pretty early for them. Breakfast is very light, then la comida, lunch, is the main meal of the day, around 2:30, and then dinner is a little lighter, around 8:30ish. I think I like this schedule better, but I've never really been one to get up early anyways, haha. We are always learning new things, how to get to school, how to get home, new vocab and everything. "Bad words" that we would think of in the States don't really have much meaning or significance for the Spanish. Anyways, we are going to go explore soon, so that should be exciting! We'll see how lost we get this time!