Adjusting

The graduate students are warming up to me I think. The girls in my office are Artemia, Raquel, Claire, Veronica, and Maria. All the girls are very nice to me, they speak English as best they can for me. Unfortunately I have not been so bold as to ask how to say things in Spanish. Baby steps, people, baby steps. I work primarily with Claire, who is a French graduate student. It makes for an interesting time because she tries to explain things in English, but when she gets flustered she explains in French, English, and Spanish goulash. I understand the French, but when she slips the Spanish in I get more confused. Maria and Artemia are also quite nice, although I feel like their new puppy...they have to train me and ask me if I want to go to lunch with them etc. It is nice, I just feel bad for being....¨what the French call, les incompetants¨. Veronica and Maria probably speak the best English...although with all of the translating going on, I find myself thinking in choppy sentences because I have to speak in broken English to be understood without the nuances of our culture. The dudes...well, unfortuantely I do not know their names. There is the orange glasses dude, the guy with the laptop, and the blond (although I think the blond´s name is Carlos). We will call Orange glasses dude ¨The OG¨. The OG tries hard...he invites me to lunch (they always try to get me to drink coffee! which by the way, is 1 part black muck to 1 part whole milk....and they serve it in an OJ glass...gross) I commend each and every one of them for trying to explain things to me, I just need to try harder to reciprocate. (actually, Veronica and Claire have been teaching me Spanish words around the lab today, so I am making improvements :))

I think this weekend the plan is to go into a city. I might go to Toledo...people highly recommend it around here. I really want to go to the beach, but it takes 3 hours by car to get there and I am not sure if I want to waste an entire day going to the south of Spain when I should further acquaint myself with Madrid before the weather gets colder and no one hangs around. Although, it will be one of the last few weekends for the beach I fear. Oh well, what can you do? (The most annoying thing ever is the misplacement of the question mark on this keyboard....the question mark and hyphen are switched and it is driving me CRAYYYYZEEEE).

In other terms of adjusting, eating the food here is like eating RoBro...a cafeteria at Clarkson. Your body needs to embrace it and mine is trying to, but it is having a difficult time. Like with my self consciousness, my body just needs time to get used to everything.

Anyways, happy hump day all. And if you are from Phelps and reading this, happy hump and dump day :)