Boring Administrative Stuff

Location: Madrid, Spain

Tuesday May 25, 2010

Carmen walked me to el Hotel Husa Princesa for our IES orientation. We spent all morning introducing ourselves, getting information on Madrid and the IES program, and watching role-play on how to avoid pickpockets. The administrative staff actually acted out scenarios or tricks pickpockets use to distract tourists, such as: asking you for directions with a big map while they steal under the map, dropping money so you will bend over so they can steal your wallet in your butt pocket, passing a newspaper/some other object over a table to take the phone or iPod lying there, or stealing in a crowded metro and handing the wallet to his “colleague” who immediately sneaks away.

A three-course catered lunch complete with wine followed the orientation. My table bonded over the afterschool cartoons of our childhoods. No matter where each person grew up in the states, everyone watched shows like Pokémon at some point. One girl, Brooke, claimed that she was a hardcore Poké-addict. Nintendo was quite smart to choose “Gotta catch ‘em all!” as their slogan, because Brooke had to catch them all. She had binders full of collected cards, glass cases for the ones that were deemed “rare,” and separate decks for battling. I’m surprised how nice and normal Brooke turned out to be despite of all that. Haha. Jkzzz.

After a placement test, I returned to my Madrid house to eat a light dinner of jamon y queso sandwich. Celia and I bonded over dance. She has been dancing el flamenco y el clásico (ballet) for seven years and now attends a Conservatory in the morning and then goes to an afternoon school. It’s a shame that she hurt her knee seriously during ballet class a few days before my arrival. So she’s been wearing a full thigh-high cast since and then switched to a more liberating brace. Because of her injury, she hasn’t danced, but I’ve watched a Youtube video of her company. In exchange, I showed her Hide and Seek, one of my favorite Cavalettes videos. Celia’s conservatory specializes in flamenco, but she likes ballet a more. I guess I could show her videos of Groove and RB, also… but I’m not sure something like Harvard-Yale would be so appropriate. Omg, the Pon de Floor part would be so awkward.