Madrid --> Logroño

After two relaxing days in my airport hotel, I woke up and got ready to head to the center of Madrid for Fulbright orientation. As soon as I woke up, I blew out my straightener, which was a huge bummer but also saved me some time getting ready... so positives and negatives, I guess. I went downstairs to check out of the hotel and hopped in a taxi. The ride to the hotel where our orientation was held was about twenty minutes long, and it was one of the best taxi rides of my life - I got a beautiful view of the city while I rode around with the windows down, not worrying about my luggage or navigating the metro.

When I got to the hotel and tried to check in, the man at the front desk told me that my room wasn't ready yet, but that he would switch my room with someone else's so that I could go straight up and get situated (which was so kind of him). After my roommate for the week got there, we met up with a few other Fulbright scholars and went out for lunch before our first orientation session. I almost ordered a dish with baby eels in it, but at the last minute I asked the waiter what the word meant and avoided it (probably for the best... I love trying new things, but there's definitely a time and a place for that which doesn't include the first day of orientation when I haven't eaten breakfast).

After orientation, the Fulbright Commission had drinks and ice breakers for us - I usually don't like ice breakers, but these ones were surprisingly fun and engaging. They served beer out of liter bottles and we all spent a few hours learning about the people we would spend the next nine months with. Afterwards, we went to dinner - it started at 9 p.m. and ended at 12:30 a.m., so when we finished we headed straight back to the hotel to sleep. Unfortunately, I was more jet-lagged than I thought, and I didn't fall asleep until 3 a.m., which made waking up at 7 a.m. slightly painful. I grabbed breakfast at the hotel, then headed to a nearby coffee shop to meet a friend who is also in Spain for the year - she will be in Madrid with a different program, so we both wanted to make sure we saw each other while we had the chance. After a ton of small talk the day before, it was so refreshing to catch up with a close friend - it's so wonderful having people I love tucked into different cities around the world, because it makes new places feel a little more like home.

After coffee, I headed to orientation. The most noteworthy thing that happened was during our lunch break - I tried to set up my new Spanish phone, but one of the places I went didn't have any prepaid phones and only offered 18-month contracts, so I had to head back to orientation and try again at the end of the day. By the time I got to the second store and ended up setting up my phone, I had walked over two hours (without Google Maps - anyone who is familiar with my directional skills knows that this was a huge success for me) and was ready to never worry about a phone again. After everything was taken care of, I headed to a "dinner" with Fulbright alumni, which didn't end up being a dinner... it ended up being an open bar and light snacks. After we had networked with the alumni in Madrid, we all headed out to an actual dinner before heading home to bed.

On Thursday, the State Department came to speak to us about terrorism in Spain and give us some general safety tips. When we got back to the hotel, the fire alarm went off, but it was so quiet that my roommate and I thought it was someone's alarm clock and didn't evacuate the building (oops) - it didn't end up being an actual fire, thank goodness. Because Thursday was our last full day of orientation, the Fulbright Commission threw us a "garden party" with the Spanish Embassy. No one really knew what to expect, but it ended up being a blast! There was a ton of food (my favorites were bacon-wrapped dates, lightly fried scallops, and garlic shrimp), and the catering company was very quick to refill glasses of wine, which surprised me since we were networking with some of the most successful and powerful people in Spain.

At first, I was a little nervous to network because I had never casually talked to anyone who worked for the government before, much less in another language, but it ended up being fine! After I had talked to some of the people at the Spanish Embassy, I also started talking to some other people who had been invited to the dinner. I had a great conversation with a professor at the law school in Madrid who was supervising six Fulbright PhD scholars, and another conversation with the supervisor of Global Classrooms who grew up in Argentina then moved to Canada, before moving to Madrid.

After the garden party, a few of the Logroño ETAs went out for churros and chocolate, which was amazing. We took the metro home (and got a little lost, but we're learning) and immediately fell asleep.

On Friday morning, we had one session in the morning to talk about integrating into the culture, then a few of us went out for Mexican food. I needed chapstick, so we went to shop at El Corte Inglés, where I was mistaken for someone who worked there because I was wearing gray pants and a black NorthFace, which was apparently similar enough to the uniform of the workers at the store to be confusing.

At 4:30 p.m., we took a bus from Madrid to Logroño, where we would be living for the next nine months. The view from the bus window was absolutely breathtaking, and I feel very fortunate to be living in a smaller city after spending a week in Madrid. Most of us don't start teaching until next week, so we are spending the next nine days living in an Airbnb and celebrating San Mateo, a festival to celebrate the wine harvest and the patron saint of Logroño. So far, I'm loving my new city and the people who will be living here with me for the next year!