Mi Dia Primero

Today felt like it lasted forever, but hopefully this blog post will not reflect the same.

This morning we had our first round of classes, which turned out to be little of the sort. Merce walked me to the campus, which is luckily only a couple of blocks down from our apartment, and we had a whole-group meeting in an auditorium. I was surprised at the collection of students in the room. There are about 20 of us from Missouri, and there was a group from Oregon, but other than that it seems to be mostly just one or two students from universities, sometimes not even students, but professors.

The program director and a few students from the Universidad de Oviedo led an introduction, talked about classes, and discussed excursions on weekends and little things they have planned for around the city. It almost seemed like the elephant in the room that they were speaking Spanish, since the vast majority of the people around would have been much better off with English.

After that we took our placement exam for classes, which consisted of a front and back written exam and a brief discussion with one of the professors to gauge your listening/speaking skills. I found out later in the day (and I was worried, mind you) that I did get into the advanced class that I needed for my classes for Mizzou.

Since we were done for the day, a group of about 8 of us walked to Los Prados. It's basically a mall. There is a 14-screen movie theater (THEY’RE SHOWING HARRY POTTER!), a huge food court, the equivalent of a Wal-Mart, and a whole bunch of smaller stores. I needed to get out of travel-sized toiletries, so I bought some shampoo and toothpaste and things like that. I also desperately needed tissues, since I am allergic to basically the entire outdoors here and have had a stuffed nose the whole time.

Then I walked back to the apartment, watched TV, and ate lunch with Merce. She made me some fantastic soup, and we had yet another discussion about her making me too much food.

At that point, we had a group tour of the city. It was a pretty good tour, and it lasted two hours. If you want to see pictures, my Picasa has a bunch. At the end, the tour guides, who are students at the university, bought everyone some Sider (pronounced see-dare) from a local bar. Sider is basically a European version of cider mixed with beer. It’s disgusting, but the locals, and even some people from our group, love it. It’s apparently an Oviedo thing, and they’re famous for it.

We made plans to meet back up for drinks at 9:30, so I went home and had dinner with Merce. I think with this meal, I finally got through to her about not wanting to eat so much food. She made chicken with an egg on top of potatoes. It was delicious, and I told her so multiple times, but I still think it hurts her feelings when I don’t finish everything she puts in front of me.

At the end of the day, I had a glass of wine with some new friends sitting outside of a little café. It was wonderful to just sit and enjoy the lively people and the beautiful scenery of Oviedo while we all told stories and shared about our lives. Hopefully the next month will be full of this kind of relaxing and beautiful evening, even though tomorrow, with the start of real classes, probably brings homework!