Day 1 (Take 2)

I took a 45 minute nap today after writing the last post, which was pretty much the best thing ever.  I woke up refreshed and took off for a walk to meet my new Michigander friend.  Amazingly, she's from Alma (which Michigan people will know is very "It's a Small World"), and has an MA in linguistics.  In spite of a large age difference, we got along quite well, plus we both knit and crochet, so even more to talk about. She is going to try to get together with me again next weekend, which is known as "Easter Week" here.  Basically, the whole city (include my workplace) shut down from Thursday through Monday.  5 whole days!  The Spanish love their holidays, apparently.  I'm a little worried that I might go crazy with 5 days of nothing, so I might try to plan something with other friends.  If not, I'll plan some adventures to get me out of the house and plan to get some work done anyhow!

And now for some random bullets:

I met a bunch of people at the BCBL today, including a guy who introduced himself to me and then announced that he is the captain of the soccer team.  He implied that I should join, which resulted in a hysterical discussion about how the rest of the team is also not great.  I pointed out that most of them are European which means they are inherently better at soccer than me.  Apparently they are one of the more popular teams among other teams - which, they hypothesized, is because they are easy to beat.

The walk to my bus stop is literally uphill both ways. See, I live at the top of a really, really big hill. A "we don't have hills like this in the Midwest" hill. Actually, it's sort of like the hill I lived on when I was at a music festival in Vermont. Which they called a mountain. So anyway - big hill down to the ocean. Past my house, the hill goes up some more and then starts going down to the street where my bus stop is.

I had to sign a bunch of paperwork today, including a form that said I read the center's emergency plan which states prominently "IN CASE OF FIRE OR OTHER EMERGENCY DO NOT RUN OR SCREAM!!" I laughed for about 10 minutes reading that.

The cafeteria is sort of like a dive bar with pintxos. The women working whipped out their very fast Spanish with me, and when I asked them to slow down because I don't speak Spanish well, they told me that I didn't look like an American. Apparently, my trench coat purchased at the Gap for 10 dollars this winter is the best purchase I've made. I saw several Spaniards in nearly identical coats today, so at least I'm not betrayed as being clueless 'til I open my mouth.

Everyone warned me how expensive it was to live her. Apparently, no one has lived in Chicago. Or Boston, or New York, or anywhere else with expensive things. Wine and food in particular are dirt cheap. I stopped by a slightly larger market today to pick up food for the next couple of days. I bought granola bars, some pasta, some cheese, an apple, enough salt to get me through my whole time at BCBL, garlic, and paper towels for 5€ - a little over $7. REALLY. I was so happy I almost danced up the giant mountain to my apartment (until I got tired and took a break to watch some tiny Spanish children playing). I bought a bottle of rioja wine yesterday for 5€, which was by far not the cheapest bottle in the store, and it is actually really tasty. My apartment is much bigger than the studio I had in Evanston my first few years at Northwestern. And it's cheaper than my apartment was then (4 years ago - I'm sure it's way more expensive now). The bus costs 1,40€ for the full fare, and once I get my bus card next week, it'll be 0,75€. Which is significantly cheaper than the CTA buses, is super clean, and runs fairly reliably. I know hotels are expensive, and fancy restaurants are too. Sure we're taxed a lot, but I also get free health care and a number of other free benefits for that. So, yay to that!

My work keyboard is a Spanish keyboard.  Which has most of the stuff in the right place, but lots of stuff in totally confusing places, and I still don't know how to make the @ symbol.  Today I resorted to copying and pasting it.  The left shift key is also in a weird place, as is the dash, the forward and back slash, and the question mark.  The parentheses are on 8 and 9 rather than 9 and 0, which means every time I tried to hit the left parenthesis key, I'd get the right.  As a fast typer, this makes me crazy pants.  One of the guys I share an office with was totally amused as I was hunting for something on the keyboard, muttering to myself.  I doubt he'll be that amused when I have a day when I write for 8 hours.  On those days, I'm going to have to bring in my laptop.

And now I'm off to bed since I have to get up crazy early for 11 hours of conference-ing tomorrow!