the good, the bad and the short-circuits
Madrid is still, without a doubt, one of the most fabulous cities in the world. Actually living here is (obviously) very different than studying here with a group that arranges everything for you, but it's been an, erm, character-building experience. Now for the good, the bad, etc.
The good:
-Our apartment is now decorated and CUTE! Thank you IkeaSpain. And we have quite good stolen internet...at least in Camilla's room.
-The Euromasters students are superfun, and as a few of them are living the real 'auberge espanyol', we've had some dinners at which english, spanish, french and a spattering of italian are spoken, which is SO confusing and so so so fun. Especially when wine and cocktails are thrown into the mix.
-Our classes are going to be extremely interesting, and I'm actually (pathetically) excited to meet a couple of the lecturers. Mostly the one whose work I pretty-much-copied to write my Capitalism paper last semester. I want to thank him. And get his autograph. *squeals*
The bad (but mostly okay, now):
-When we moved in, we didn't have mattresses. Or heat. However, once the mattresses were delivered, they turned out to be supercomfy (aka no hole in the middle! yaaaaaaaaaay! i'd started to despair of Spanish mattresses.) And a few days later, the boiler was fixed. Aka we can take hot showers AND we don't freeze at night (yes, it does get that cold.) We also don't have internet anywhere in the house except Camilla's room...which is officially five feet wide. It's a bit tricky when we're both Skyping...but we'll survive.
-We had several tiles fall off of our bathroom wall, and will now be hiring ourselves out as Handygirls, as they are nicely glued on again and look more beautiful than ever.
-Our classes are going to be quite tough, at least workwise (thanks to that whole we-don't-want-you-to-read-too-often-in-English-so-we're-giving-you-translations-from-english-to-spanish-to-read...BAD-translations. Muahahahaha), which is NOT what us Madrilenyos were led to expect, but again, with lots of coffee (cafe con leche, soy caramel lattes, you name it it's here!) we'll prevail.
The short-circuits
So. The heat was fixed. We had internet. We even had mattresses. What we didn't have was any real food. So, under the pretense of becoming a real cook, I prepared some gourmet comida (okayokay, I'm lying, I was going to heat up some tortilla espanyola, as a break from the diet of deli meat and rice I've been consuming) and turned on the oven. Nothing happened. Confused, I turned it off, then turned it back on again. And with a crack(!)...every light in the house blacked out. Camilla, who was mascara-ing her crazylong eyelashes, shrieked and I stomped down to the super's office. He turned the lights back on! And then he had me turn on the oven...and they went off again. That time we learned our lesson. So it's back to rice and deli meat, at least for a couple of days. Le sigh.
Love you all.
The good:
-Our apartment is now decorated and CUTE! Thank you IkeaSpain. And we have quite good stolen internet...at least in Camilla's room.
-The Euromasters students are superfun, and as a few of them are living the real 'auberge espanyol', we've had some dinners at which english, spanish, french and a spattering of italian are spoken, which is SO confusing and so so so fun. Especially when wine and cocktails are thrown into the mix.
-Our classes are going to be extremely interesting, and I'm actually (pathetically) excited to meet a couple of the lecturers. Mostly the one whose work I pretty-much-copied to write my Capitalism paper last semester. I want to thank him. And get his autograph. *squeals*
The bad (but mostly okay, now):
-When we moved in, we didn't have mattresses. Or heat. However, once the mattresses were delivered, they turned out to be supercomfy (aka no hole in the middle! yaaaaaaaaaay! i'd started to despair of Spanish mattresses.) And a few days later, the boiler was fixed. Aka we can take hot showers AND we don't freeze at night (yes, it does get that cold.) We also don't have internet anywhere in the house except Camilla's room...which is officially five feet wide. It's a bit tricky when we're both Skyping...but we'll survive.
-We had several tiles fall off of our bathroom wall, and will now be hiring ourselves out as Handygirls, as they are nicely glued on again and look more beautiful than ever.
-Our classes are going to be quite tough, at least workwise (thanks to that whole we-don't-want-you-to-read-too-often-in-English-so-we're-giving-you-translations-from-english-to-spanish-to-read...BAD-translations. Muahahahaha), which is NOT what us Madrilenyos were led to expect, but again, with lots of coffee (cafe con leche, soy caramel lattes, you name it it's here!) we'll prevail.
The short-circuits
So. The heat was fixed. We had internet. We even had mattresses. What we didn't have was any real food. So, under the pretense of becoming a real cook, I prepared some gourmet comida (okayokay, I'm lying, I was going to heat up some tortilla espanyola, as a break from the diet of deli meat and rice I've been consuming) and turned on the oven. Nothing happened. Confused, I turned it off, then turned it back on again. And with a crack(!)...every light in the house blacked out. Camilla, who was mascara-ing her crazylong eyelashes, shrieked and I stomped down to the super's office. He turned the lights back on! And then he had me turn on the oven...and they went off again. That time we learned our lesson. So it's back to rice and deli meat, at least for a couple of days. Le sigh.
Love you all.