Thursday, September 4, 2014

The First Day

No sleep till Madrid. Seriously though, seven hour flight and not a second of passing out. Went from 10:00pm in NJ to 12:30pm in Madrid which means I pretty much skipped a night of sleeping. Luckily when I landed and hopped into a cab on my way to my apartment with a cabby that spoke 0 English making my first experience in a foreign country start with ease (I don't speak Spanish at all).

My landlord wasn't at my apartment but her 18 year old daughter was and although she spoke broken English she was extremely helpful getting me setup along with helping me get a sim card, some outlet converters, and a basic understanding of the streets around my apartment.

So I thought of a great idea pre-move to bring an outlet splitter and buy a $50 2000 watt converter so instead of buying multiple converters. In theory this worked out well. In reality I shorted the splitter and every outlet in the apartment. Let me repeat 'I shorted the splitter and every outlet in the apartment'. Yep. That's me. Luckily it was nothing a flip of a breaker switch couldn't fix but the panic attack I was having before that problem was solved was severe.

Apparently the one month pass metro cards take two weeks to come in because all of Madrid is currently in the process of switching from paper passes to laminated which is kind of shitty for anyone who is currently moving to the country, like myself. Luckily, a little birdy told me about a Tobacco shop that will make one for you. Genius me decided it would be a good idea to get to this shop through the metro without my cell phone since it was dying. Leaving it to charge in my room I proceeded to get lost in the street of Centre Madrid for about two hours.. in 95 degree heat... on no sleep. Misery ensued.

When I finally got to the shop I noticed a humungous line out the door. Turns out everyone heard about this shop's deal and I ended up spending another two and half hours in the heat waiting on line to get my metro pass. In the end though it was worth the wait instead of wasting money for two weeks until it came in the mail.

I was told before my trip that English was common enough in this country that I could get by on a little Spanish knowledge at first for the first couple of weeks. After one day I can safely say this is isn't true. Almost no one here understands English and I have a very poor understanding of Spanish (a lot worse than I really imagined). It had become extremely stressful asking for directions or simple questions which makes me nervous about how the next couple weeks are going to pan out. Luckily I felt like I picked up a lot small phrases today that should help me.

If I can make it to 1 am there is a club today that is free because of opening day that I may have to check out but honestly all I can think about right now is sleep and then more sleep.

It has been a very stressful but productive first day. Hopefully, the next days will come easier. Pictures to come!

P.S. if there is no more blog posts after this first one it's because there are no fans in my apartment and I've drowned in my own pool of sweat. Enjoy that image.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for all the chuckles, intentional or not! You are very brave, or as they say in Yiddish you have a lot of chutzpah! Love you, looking forward to the next installation.

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  2. I am so very proud of you! I know this will be hard, at first, but you will get the hang of it. I love you and have great faith in you.

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