1) Walked to orientation with my roomies. I don't think I've ever walked to school before with anybody, much less actually felt included in a group of my peers so quickly.
2) Giggled with Katie for half of the orientation about ridiculous worksheets and ridiculous comments.
3) Saw Cristina and Fausto while I was out for a walk. They were giving a tour to the new CIEE students (my program from last summer) and stopped me in the middle of the street to introduce me to the newbies and ask how I was doing. :)
4) Purchased my cell phone. It's a PINK Samsung Galaxy Y - basically a cuter, newer, tinier, pinker version of my American phone that costs 1/4 the price!
5) Went grocery shopping - which is always an adventure in a foreign country. Got shampoo/conditioner, shaving cream, that rose chapstick that tastes like Playdough, lots of kinds of raviolis (as they were on sale) with pesto sauce and cheese, hangers and a tiny plant for our room!
The Unfortunate Things about Today:
1) Let's be real: Orientation was boring. I learned 90% of the stuff from last year's orientation and I swear instead of two days and 75 pages they could seriously compact it all into 15 minutes and a double-sided note card.
2) It only took the sentence, "Do you have this phone here?" in Spanish to get the man working at the cell phone store to say "Oh... you speak English. One moment." What the heck?!!? He then proceeded to play around on his phone - I figured he was looking for a store that had the phone - and then he showed me the screen. On it was Google translator with the sentence translated from Spanish "I will have to order it. It will take two days. You must pay today." Well, gee, thanks. I felt like I was deaf. I continued to respond to all of his questions in Spanish and he continued a feeble attempt at responding to them in English. o_O Nothing makes you feel more obviously incompetent than a sales guy thinking your Spanish is so awful in one sentence that he thinks he can do better using three words mispronounced and misused in English. Ugh.
3) I literally got sideswiped by a bus as I was standing, waiting for the walk sign to come on and staring at a little girl crying and screaming (Katie commented earlier today that while they kids here are adorable, they're always throwing tantrums. Too true.). I went to throw my hands up and fell backwards as it hit me. A lady yelled something (not sure if at me or the bus driver) and I ran away, pride seriously injured.
4) Apparently grocery stores no longer provide you with bags? They lady checking me out asked if I had bags with me. I said no. She rang me up, pushed my stuff to the side, and rang up two more people. I had 40 euro worth of stuff and a 10 minute walk. I clearly was going nowhere. Finally I piped up, "Uh, can I... buy a bag??" She laughed and said she wondered how I was planning on carrying all that stuff and then stopped checking out the next lady mid-sale to go around the counter and hold up two different designs of shopping bags. At least she was nice, but jeeze did I feel like a total oblivious idiot.
5) I'm in this little city that I was sooooo blissfully happy in just a little over a year ago - but it all feels different. I keep trying to go to the same places and buy the same food and take the same streets, but it doesn't feel right yet. Sure, it's only day three, but it's really getting to me. The people are different. My home is different. The school program is different. It's making me have copious amounts of "saudade" (a Brazilian word, basically meaning a strong feeling of nostalgia and longing for something in the past) for last summer. I thought coming back would make me super blissed out again like I was, but instead it's like a feeling of being so close yet so very far, far away. And certainly missing certain people back in the US isn't making it any easier. Last summer I had this faith in Conor that he would divinely direct me to people I was to meet and adventures I was to experience. That faith has since dwindled and now I just feel alone and forlorn and a little hopeless - just like I have felt since I left Spain last year. Apparently the feeling isn't intrinsic to Spain, it's something that I have to create - but I just can't quite remember how.
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