Meh. Rough Day.

So the first couple days were ok, then we got to today. Today was the first of many days from hell. I'll start from the beginning...

Traumatic Experience 1: The showers in Spain are very small and water is very expensive, so you have to be quick. So this morning, I couldn't get the water to get warm - so the beginning of my shower was like ice. Well, I am showering and suddenly the water gets scalding hot. So since there was no in-between, I took an ice cold shower.

Traumatic Experience 2: When I was trying to leave for school this morning, I was trying to lock the door, but I couldn't see anything in the hall, so I tried to turn on the light - however I hit the house alarm instead of the light. Well, my host mom woke up and came out and pointed to the light switch then told me to have a good day and closed the door. Got off to a great start there didn't I...

Traumatic Experience 3: My host mom showed me where the metro station was, but not how it works, so this morning I had to go put money on my transit card. The cards have to be put in a machine and you pay with cash or a credit card. Well, there are lots of different types of transit cards here and I put my card in the wrong slot, and it got stuck, so I had to ask a random lady for help (in spanish...very broken spanish...). She got it out using a straw.

Traumatic Experience 4: So after I got my card back, I still couldn't get the machine to work. So, I asked a woman who worked there if she could help me (again with the very bad spanish...) and eventually I got it paid for. However - in Spain, credit cards have pin numbers and in the US we don't, so of course I couldn't get my card to work. Debit was good though, so no problems.

Traumatic Experience 5: So I now have my card and I can't figure out how to get through the gates to get to the train. I'm thinking it's like Chicago where you put your card in the side and it comes out the top...well it turns out my card is a magnet and you just tap it on the top.

Traumatic Experience 6: Figuring out what side of the track I needed to be on to go in a specific direction. There were no stairways - you actually have to exit and go back up to the road and come down on the opposite side of the street.

And to top it all off, I can barely understand my host mom and anyone else in the city, yet I can understand my professors and the program leaders. I think it's just that they talk too fast and have the accent, but it's hard. I can tell my host mom laughs at me and gets frustrated because I don't understand a lot, but I'm trying. No one understands how hard this is until they try it. In the US, I thought I was really good at Spanish, but here, I am very bad. I couldn't survive without some of my friends that speak fluently.

And on that note, tomorrow is another day, and hopefully it will be better. It's the first day of classes...