New People; New Experiences

 by Katie Reed
Universidad de Navarra, Spain

So Sunday night ended slightly comically.  Courtney was our entertainment without even wanting to be.  Before the movie she brought food down to my room to cook her dinner.  After waiting forever for the water to boil she finally got to looking and little did she know, but she had put the pot of water on the wrong eye.  Her cooking skills are a working progress...she will get it before we leave, I hope.  Anyways, Monday began the first day of Spanish class with all the other International Students.  We started by taking a test to see if we were in the lower or upper level spanish class.  After the test we went and waited in the cafe for an hour or so and got to talk with a lot of the students.  I learned at lunch by my new Italian friend that Fetuccini Alfredo is not Italian.  Apparently she went to the states and had no idea what it was so she tried it and still had never tasted or seen anything like it before.  I was quite amazed, needless to say, since my its my favorite "Italian" food.  After lunch and the rest of class we went back to the dorm and Amanda and I watched Dumbo in Spanish.  Then later Courtney, Amanda, Nick, Bobby and I went to La Morea to show Nick around and then we all went to eat McDonalds for dinner.  I have never enjoyed eating McD's quite that much!  After all that it was late so our day was to an end.  The next morning Amanda and I left early to go to the bank on campus to get our accounts set up for our stipends.  And of course when I get there they wouldn't take my passport copy, they wanted the actual passport.  So, after class I had to go back over there.  Class went very well today though.  We all sat in groups and did group work the whole time.  At one point we had to rotate from person to person around the room and introduce ourselves and talk about what we like to do.  It was really cool to be able to actually talk to everyone personally.  I met one girl throughout the exercise who was in love with Tennessee, and particularly the accents from Tennessee.  That was definitely a first to hear in Spain.  There was also a guy who said he hated the U.S....stay away...haha.  However, after class Mama Katie helped Amanda figure out how to do laundry here and then Courtney, Nick and I went to the bank.  Now back chilling for a bit then to figure out what to do for dinner...hmmmmm....