Piso, Strikes, and Museums, oh my!

So I've been meaning to write for a while, really! Like, I'll be walking down the street thinking "I should blog about what just happened today!" and then I'll tell my parents on skype or I'll write a facebook message to mis amigas, and I forget all about blogging it. Womp womp!

But anyways, here's what's been going on en mi vida!

I moved into my piso! Woo! I was camping out in a teeny room in the back for 5 nights until I could move into my real room on October 1. It is not an exaggeration to say that this room is literally smaller than the bathroom...

because the bathroom is huge! This is just a small taste of it.

Well I've finally moved into my new room and it's nice to have officially unpacked! I have two huge closets, lots of shelf space, a desk, and a bed! Yay!

It is now "slightly" messier than this, but you get the general idea. I also bought a cheap poster frame from the corner store so I have lots of pictures up on the wall above my bed. So I get to see all of your smiling faces every day!

In my piso I live with four other girls who are studying in Madrid: two other American girls, a Spanish girl, and an Italian girl. I've expressed this many times before, but I forget to whom I've expressed it, so I shall repeat it. Whenever I'm talking to the Italian girl and I don't understand her, I never know if it's because it's the Spanish I don't get or if she's just talking in Italian. The other day she asked me a question and I had no clue what she said, and after my quizzical look, she said "Oh!! Perdón, perdón!! Mio italiano!!!" So she is speaking in Italian!!! It is fun though because there are always people of different nationalities visiting so I've met tons of people I probably wouldn't have otherwise! Yay!

Let's seeeee. I was supposed to start working on Monday this week, but I had my NIE appointment (the appointment to get my residency card here, thus making me legal) on Monday and couldn't go. So then I was going to start Tuesday, and even though the coordinator at the school said there was a teacher strike on Tuesday, at orientation they told us all to still go unless you have direct permission from the headmaster. I woke up at 6:45 (by far the earliest I have woken up here) to take a metro and two trains to San Martín de la Vega (where one of my schools is located), and when I got there the headmaster was like, "There's a strike. Didn't you know?" So they told me to go home. Womp womp. The trains only leave every hour or so, so I had some time to kill on the platform.

The teacher strike continued through Wednesday and I finally went to school yesterday... but there was a student strike. So one class had 11 students, the next had 1, and the next had 0 so then they sent me home! The school I went to yesterday is a bilingual institute so many of the students have been taught in English for years, and even though many of them had pretty thick accents, I was still really impressed by their English. In the first class, all the students were 11-12 years old and they just asked me basic questions about who I am, where I'm from, do I have any pets, what sports do I like, yadda yadda. I asked them questions too, and got quite the variety of answers when I asked about the music they like. For example, one teeny little 11 year old girl answered, "I like Shakira. And Slipnot." Whhaaaa??

I have met TONS of other auxiliares (that's our official title) thanks to facebook. There are literally over 1400 of us in the greater Madrid area, so people are always posting things like "Hey, I'm going over to the park if anyone wants to join." or "Hey, there's a band playing at this bar tonight. Everyone should come." Someone posted about going to El Museo de Reina Sofía on Wednesday, and I'll be honest, I was a bit skeptical. I'm not the biggest art fan in the world, and after drudging through El Prado (sorry, portraits of old people I don't know is not fun to me) I wasn't sure if I wanted to go. But it was lots more interesting! Yay! Annnnd I got to see art by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Not just like one painting here and there, but they had whole rooms dedicated to each of them. Awesome! The only thing that would have made the trip better would be complementary wine to sip on while perusing.

Speaking of wine, there is a bebida here called Tinto de Verano, which is basically sangria with lemon Fanta. BEST. THING. EVER.

And it comes in two-liter bottles!!! Shweet!!

I'm hoping to take some day trips out of Madrid in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned!! And if you have any suggestions of where to go, I'm all ears because I really have no clue and I'm relying on information from everyone else/facebook/spanish tourist websites.

P.S. Yesterday I learned the phrase for "I'm awkward": "soy patoso/a". Not like that would be a phrase that would come in handy or anything.