First experience in the internet cafe

Last night Nicole and I went down to the internet café that is right next to our house to print our papers and to check it out. We weren’t really sure how it works, since it was our first time in one. I tried to upload some pictures but I think there must have too many because somehow I managed to freeze my computer. (So I'm trying to get pictures to work but haven't gotten it yet). Oops. We were there for about 2 hours. During the second hour we were there, a bunch of teenage kids came in and were playing games and chatting and stuff, being really loud in general. There aren’t that many computers down there, so some of them had to wait. They were like freaking out because Nicole and I were on there, and pounced on the computers like wild animals or something when we left, kinda funny. Today we had school early, and 6:30 came way too early. Before we left, they gave us a packet with housing norms and stuff like that, and one of the things was to limit showers to 10 minutes. Well, that hasn’t really been hard because in the mornings there usually isn’t very much hot water, so half the time you’re freezing your butt off and in there like 5 mins max. One girl who was here last semester said that it’s better during the middle of the day, when the water goes through the radiators or something. We got on the bus and the bus driver asked us if our pass didn’t work or something, but we were really confused, because we thought we just had to show the pass instead of putting it in the little machine. We’re still not really sure what that was about, but we didn’t get kicked off the bus or anything so it was ok. We had our classes, and they were fine, not terribly exciting. We got home and Juani had done a little bit of laundry for us. It is funny because the Spanish insist on ironing everything, even socks and underwear. The washers here are tiny, and no dryers of course. Kind of like how there aren’t disposals or anything. Nicole and I feel kinda bad because she does everything for us, laundry, food, most of the time makes our bed, etc., and she never lets us do anything. The week is already half over, and it’s hard to believe we’ve already been here over a week. On Friday we are going on our first group trip, to the Extremadura region, so that should be fun!

Paella and toilets

I forgot to mention yesterday at the “Just Fries” machine. It’s like a vending machine, in with like the juice and coke machines and stuff like that, except that it makes French fries. That’s right, you put your money in, it was like 1 or 2 euro, and then a minute and a half or two later you get out hot French fries. And you can get a sauce with it, like ketchup or mayonnaise. We decided to try it on Saturday just to see how it was, and they tasted pretty good, like regular fries. Kind of a hoot.
Sunday we didn’t really do much, just kind of hung out. It was nice to sleep in, and not really have anything pressing to do. We decided not to go into Madrid, there are plenty of opportunities for that. Juani’s grandson, Adrian and his mom, Monica, came over for a little bit, he was really cute. Then they left, and we had lunch. We had paella for lunch, which is a typical Spanish dish. You can put pretty much anything in it that you want. Ours had rice, peas, red peppers, chicken, pork I think, some fish, and also then a shrimp, crawfish, muscle, and clam or muscle (can’t remember which) on the side. I’m sitting there eating my rice and chicken and stuff, while the shrimp and crawfish eyes are just staring back at me, and of course the feelers and everything are still on. I’m not going to lie, I was kinda freaking out. Juani showed us how to do it, but I left it for the end. I ended up making Nicole take the head off for me because I couldn’t do it. I tried the shrimp, crawfish, muscle, but I didn’t really like it. Ok, it wasn’t the worst thing I had ever had in my life, but I think it is the texture and the head/eyes/feelers thing that gets me. But I tried it and that was what was important. Then we were just hanging out for most of the rest of the day, I ended up watching Wedding Crashers because the night before I completely passed out and didn’t see any of it. We ate dinner, watched some tv, yada yada yada. Then we’re getting ready to go to bed…Nicole had commented about how the toilet had been running. I went to the bathroom, but then the toilet wouldn’t flush. So I was like, “Nicole, what should we do?”. She said that had happened earlier so we just had to wait for it to stop running, and after a few minutes we were able to flush it and it was fine. It was just kind of funny because I was starting to freak out a little bit that the toilet was broken, but luckily it was fine.
Anyways, today we didn’t have class until 11:30, which was nice. Juani had to work today, so she left this morning. We left for school around 10:45 and then decided to take both buses instead of walking since it was raining. We waited for the bus, but it was starting to get late, so we were worried that we would be late for school. It finally came though and we were on time so that was good. Class was fine, I like our grammar class, and I think we’re going to learn a lot of useful stuff in there. We came home on the bus with Monica and Ebets, and while we were waiting, we were looking at the map and trying to figure out where we were, but we couldn’t find it. Then this older man came up and starting talking to us, but he was speaking pretty softly and we couldn’t hear him or understand what he was saying. We think he was hard of hearing because it looked like he had a hearing aide (which actually kind of just looked like a piece of toilet paper stuck in his ear). The bus finally came and we got away from him but that was interesting. We’re going to go do some more research about the Olympics and try to figure some of that stuff out. It will be our first experience at the internet café, so that should be interesting. I’m also going to try to put some pictures up, so that’s exciting!