Taking It Easy

Today's blog is for yesterday, I was having some internet problems and was unable to fix them last night.
But yesterday was a wonderful day, I got up early and ate breakfast with some of the other students. I'm happy I did because I met one of the other residents, Juan David. If I remember correctly he is from Bolivia, he is very nice and also speaks English and Spanish, but he is helping me with my Spanish by not talking to me in English even when I don't understand he just breaks everything down. Now at the dorm there are about 20 students, but he told me that everyone is still on vacation and about 200 students will move in on the 26th. That should be quite interesting and I pray that I am speaking better by then so I won't be lost.

But after breakfast I went to go open a bank account and was gladly greeted my program director's in-laws, they were very nice and took there time to make sure I understood everything. They sat with me the entire time while I was opening my account, which was very successful and I experienced excellent customer service from the director of the bank. After that they showed me around their beautiful flat on one of the main streets in Spain and where they have a beautiful view of the city. I wanted to go ahead and get my visa paperwork out of the way, but I am learning to enjoy each day as it comes and did not want to miss out on the opportunity of spending more time with them. For lunch we went to one of the local restaurants and had the menu of the day , which consists of a three course meal. First, I had paella with chicken, paella is a traditionl spanish dish of rice and chicken, fish, or meat. Next, I had fried calamari which was quite different from what I have had at home because here you could tel that it was fresh. Lastly, I finished it off with some ice cream. Now the question of the day is, Did I finish everything? The answer is No. Although in my book I think I can eat a lot, but I am not use to eating such big meals. This was quite amusing to them because I kept saying there's more, Oh my God! After lunch I had to go back to my room and get my books for class and they waited at the bus stop with me until my bus came. I must say I am very happy that they were there to help me and they reassured me that if I needed anything just call, I really appreciated that!
After I went to class for 4 hours, I decided to go to Nerja, one of the beautiful beaches in Spain, with some of my classmates on Saturday. . .but because I was so tired this morning I decided to cancel.


Instead, last night was one of the residents, Hiram, birthday and it's tradition here that if it's your birthday you have to get thrown into the pool. So after dinner last night, we put balloons in the pool and lit candles in the shape of 23 and sung Happy Birthday to him after they dumped him in the pool. After it was over Hiram realized that he scraped his skin because he was struggling so much and they had dragged him some of the way. But I had a great time with them and it was my first official social events at the residence.

















So that was the end of Day 3 and the beginning of Day 4.
The lesson I am learning so far is to take one day at a time. Hopefully today and tomorrow I'll just go walk around the city and on Monday try to get my visa finished.