The start of my Spanish Journey

So to keep everyone informed of my happenings over here in crazy Madrid, I figured I would start a blog. That way, everyone can stalk me like I know you all want to.

Let's begin with what I'm doing in Spain. I received a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in a secondary (high) school about an hour outside of the center of Madrid. I'm teaching at a school called I.E.S. Profesor Maximo Trueba. I will be working there 16 hours a week, then spending the rest of my time by (hopefully) teaching individual English lessons under the table and traveling. There are going to be about 75 of us here through the Fulbright program.

Okay, so I started this great adventure last Tuesday when I left from Louisville at about 5 pm eastern time. It was kind of tough to leave the parents at the airport and not know whether or not I'm going to see them for 10 months, but I was able to get through it. My flights took me from Louisville to Memphis to Amsterdam to Madrid. One cool thing about the flight was that I sat by a guy from England who had just done the Ironman triathlon in Louisville. He sat in front of me on both my flight to Memphis and Amsterdam, so I talked to him about how I want to do a triathlon in a few years. He was probably in his 50s and had already done 20! Also, when I got to Amsterdam they didn't even check my visa. The document that I had to drive 5 hours (each way) to Chicago to drop off and pick up wasn't even looked at. I'm sure it will be important later when I try to get my residency, though.

Almost 17 hours later, I finally arrived to Madrid. And while I was here, my luggage was still in Amsterdam, along with the 5 or 6 other people who flew from Memphis to Amsterdam to Madrid. I had to talk to them and have them send the luggage to the Fulbright office here because I really didn't have any other address and didn't know how my residencia worked.

I got to my residencia where I'm living through orientation the 7th-11th and until I found an apartment after a 26 euro taxi ride (which is about $40). I probably could have taken the metro for cheaper, but at this point I just wanted to get to the residencia.After settling into my non-AC room in the 90 degree weather, I had to take a nap and rejuvenate before even thinking about starting to find what I needed.

The next morning, I met some of the other Fulbrighters who arrived early and we went out on a search to get abonos (monthly metro passes) and phones. We then thought we needed to go ahead and get our residency cards before anything else, so we walked all over the city and all we got were appointments at the end of September. Little did we know that these cards are something the Fulbright Commission is going to help us get during orientation. But hey, the 4 of us were able to really get to know each other through all our walking in the heat.

By the end of my first full day, all I had to show for my work was a metro pass for the month and a lot of fatigue.

The next morning (Friday) I got up early to go get a pre-paid phone from Orange with Megan, another Fulbrighter from Baylor. The guy was really nice, but I would much rather have done a contract. We can't do contracts now because we don't have the residencia card, but I might switch over to one when I get it. I then found out my luggage was at the Fulbright office and went to pick them up. They were nice and let me leave one suitcase there until I found a permanent place to live and didn't have to take another taxi.

After having a phone and some other clothes, I started piso hunting (piso is what they call an apartment here). I looked on 3 different websites (loquo, idealista, and segundamano) to find open rooms in pisos or open pisos. A lot were ridiculously expensive or really far out. But I did find 2 that sounded good, and went and visited them on Friday. And for the piso hunting, I will start a new post...