Primera semana en Madrid! (First week in Madrid)

Monday the 14th of January: the big day was there! Suitcases were packed with both long sleeves and pants as well as tanktops and skirts for high summer. The weather in Madrid will be around 10-15 degrees in January-February, but hopefully as from March the sun comes out and temperatures will rise up to 20-25! Well prepared and excited, but always hard to say goodbye to friends and family... 

I had a good flight and arranged a cab from the airport to the office where I could pick up the keys for my student room. The house is located almost next to the Retiro Park, which is with its surface of 1,4 square kilometers one of the largest parks of the city of Madrid. Pretty cool to have that as your "backyard"! My room is quite spacious for a student room and I live together with four roommates, with who I am sharing a kitchen and bathroom. Let me shortly introduce you to them, as I assume I will mention their names more often the coming months. Xavi, 33 years old from Chili, studying her master's degree here. Miguel, 18 year-old Spanish guy and studying here as well. Beth, 20 years old and from UK, doing her internship here at a Spanish language school. And Fran; 27 years-old Spanish guy who is working here in Madrid. When I arrived in my room, Miguel immediately was very helpful. He showed me around some places near our house, like the supermarket and El Corte Ingles, a big shopping center comparable to Bijenkorf, where I managed to buy some sheets and pillows for my bed. 

Since my lectures started on Wednesday, I took the Tuesday to discover the city a little bit. I started the day with a work-out at Basic-Fit and then went out on my own, walked through the stunning Retiro Park to end up in the city centre of Madrid. It is such a big city; I really have to get used to that! I went to CityLife Madrid, where the metro card I requested online back home, should have been delivered. Unfortunately, it wasn't there yet and I had to come back later. While walking back to my room, I decided to buy a temporary metro card with 10-trips for the coming days. 

On Wednesday, I went to school for the first time! Since the location of my school was called: Calle Quintana, I never doubted that it was a stupid thing to travel to Metro Station "Quintana". Well, it was! This was completely the other side of Madrid, so first day of school I was too late. Anyway, I managed to find the right way to get to school. The lectures in the first week were all very short introduction classes of around 15 mins, so there is not yet a clear impression about school life here. Lots of Spanish students in class; I expected more Erasmus students. But at least, this will help me to develop my Spanish language skills. On Wednesday evening I did a catch-up with Inge & Marleen, who are both students from Hanze Groningen and studying here as well for their minor tourism. Tourism is given at another location in Madrid, so besides our catch-ups, I will not see them so often. But we had a great time with the three of us and decided to do more fun stuff together the coming months!

On Thursday, my metro card had arrived and I picked it up. It's so cheap to travel around the city: only 20 euros a month (unlimited travelling through Madrid) for a student like me! Thursday evening, I went out to the city centre with my roommate Beth. We had a really nice time, had a drink together and then went to a Meet & Speak evening. This evening was organized by CityLife Madrid, where I also picked up my metro card earlier. There were a lot of international students to be found here from all over the world and purpose of the evening was to meet new people and to learn new languages. It was really really busy, and although I liked it to speak to people, I must admit that I prefer smaller groups. 

And now it's already Friday and the weekend just started for me! I'll go for a work-out later today. I should think about any plans for the weekend, but I might take it a bit easy this first weekend here. It was an intensive and pretty emotional first week, which has made me tired. But even though I miss everyone back home,  I have the feeling I will slowly get used to living here for the coming few months!