Orientation

My school in Alcala

Today we awoke to the more than annoying sound of the alarm at 7 AM which was probably the most painful thing that I have endured since moving to this beautiful country.  After hitting the snooze button and finally getting up at 7:15 we had a total of 25 minutes to catch our train to Alcala, where our lecture orientation was being held.  Since we had about a 15 minute walk to the train station this seemed right about perfect.  I showered last night so all i really needed to do was grab my bag, some breakfast and head out.  Since Christina is a perfect roommate, after i washed my face and came out of the bathroom, she had a plate of scrambled eggs ready for me on the table.  Perfect.  We ate, we walked, we got lost, we eventually made it to the station and boarded our train.  We had to switch trains at Atocha to get on the train that would take us to our orientation and then we sat there, music in our ears, for about an hour on the train.  We arrived there exactly at 9 and needed to get to our school, we thought, at 9.  Great, we're late.  It was only about a 15 minute walk to orientation but we decided to grab a cab and get there as close to 9 as possible.  We stormed in there, asked where we needed to go and were promply told that we were the first ones to arrive and we would start at 9:30, like the paperwork said.  Sweet.  We busted our butts to be the first ones there??? Not cool at all.  Orientation went through as quickly as it could and we were out of there in about 4 hours.  We learned some very important things both about our lectures and Madrid and I found out that I was one of two people in the program to not be a Spanish undergrad.  Normally I like sticking out in the crowd, this time...not so much.  On the train back to our place I met with a girl who convinved me to pick up Spanish classes on the days we don't have lectures so I'll be checking into that Monday morning.  Hopefully I'll be better at this Spanish nonsense after a 12 week class :)  We have our race tomorrow so today after we got home we just layed around lazy style for the after noon, christina and I got a kebab, and called it a day.