My first Full Day! Part 1

Well, I survived my first full day in Madrid! It was very eventful and full of surprises, some good and some bad.

I woke up at 830am to my host asking me how long Monica had been in the shower. Considering, I was sleeping, I wasn't really sure how long she had been in the shower, plus I didn't want to throw Monica under the bus, so I just answered not long. Well, Emma (our host/ exchange student entrepenaur) mentioned to me that she turns off the gas over night, to save on money. So, poor Monica had to take a cold shower. Boo! I took a warm shower after Monica got out and Emma turned on the gas. Breakfast was served at 10am. It consisted of coffee and crackers with butter and jam. I drank water and tried some of the crackers. It was ok. I also tried the coffee but it was too strong for my taste, maybe by week 3 I will be use to it.

After breakfast, Monica and I used our other housemate's map to locate the Muesum and walk there. Our UTA director and advisor had asked us to meet them at the Museo de Prado at 11am. The walk was rather long and confusing. However, we were able to get there in about 30 minutes without getting lost. I'm so glad our housemate had a map. Either way, when we arrived we looked for Dr. Rosado (UTA director) and Lidia (advisor). We couldn't find them so we just starting taking pictures of ourselves and the outside of the muesum. As we were taking photos, our friends Anna and Claudia walked up with Francisca (another student from the US in our program). It was so great to see familiar places. The five of us continued to snap photos and gossip about our "host families." You see we believe our "hosts" do this as a job, since they have multiple students from across the globe staying with them. Anna and Claudia's house has 4 other students in it. Two of the other girls are from our school, Francisca and Cristina (my other buddy at UTA). The other two people are complete strangers but students as well. At our place, we have Ubeigdez (I believe it is pronounced Beig-dezz), she is a student from Norway. We haven't spoken to her very often, however, we did go with her to a pub the first night we were here. She asked us about Obama's healthcare reform. I honestly didn't want to talk politics with her, but we did a little.

Anywho, back to the Museo de Prado, as we were taking photos in front of the Velazquez statue I noticed a weird light in two of my pictures. I immediately showed Claudia, who began to give me a hard time about an "orb" being in the picture. It was sort of freaky but whatever. I've attached the photos to the blog, so you can see for yourselves. During our picture taking, Dr. Rosado shows up. After a while we decided to ride the tour bus around the city. However, it was too expensive and they were going to close at 4pm. So, we decided not to, since we only had a couple of more hours during their open times.

As we were walking away from the tour bus, we heard a voice calling Claudia. It was Cristina and her husband. They had seen us from the street and walked over to us. I'm so thankful we ran into them because they really made my day spectacular!

Ok, so I've realized this post is getting rather long, so I'm going to attach pictures now and post again for the second half of my first day.

The pictures are of the place where I am staying and the Museo de Prado.