After a disgruntling first day on Monday, I was looking forward to our orientation scheduled for the next day, to see a few other helpless faces. When I returned from orientation at 7:30 Tuesday night, I felt more lost and frustrated than I had when I left the house at 9am. The day was beyond long, filled with spanish everyone else seemed to understand and awkward freshman-like greetings. Although it was well organized, a room full of 180 people trying to figure out what is going on begs confusion. We had an afternoon lesson on how to utilize "La guia T", the guide to the subway and bus stations. As Dario (prounounced darEEo and NOT dario - mind you, I found this out the embaressing way) patiently attempted to explain which streets crossed each other and how to look up the right bus or "collectivo" to take, I wanted to pull a Billy Madison on his ass by throwing my guia freakin' T at him and screaming "I hate school and I hate all of you, I'm never coming back".
When I got home, I met my house sister, Mili, for the first time. She is a kindergarden teacher in the city. Mirta, Mili, and I ate dinner together. Mili complimented my spanish. Mirta laughed.
Later, I retreated to the tv/computer room, where Mirta started to rattle off DVD recommendations from their collection. She came across phantom of the opera and stopped. Es mi favorita, me encanta la musica! For the first time all day, relief washed over me. Common ground! Mirta likes to geek out to musicals, too! She just about crapped herself when I told her I had the soundtrack on my ipod. She asked me to burn her a cd.
Little does she know, she'll be receiving more than she bargained for with her new cd. Hairspray, mama mia, wicked!? shabooya!
Love it Mal. I am just so excited for you! It sounds like you have had a couple tough experiences but I love that you are keeping such an optimistic attitude. I'm at work reading this and relaying parts to my co-worker, and she said "Sad" (specifically to the part where you had trouble at orientation), but I assured her that out of all of my friends, you would be the one who could handle it and find humor in any troubles you come across. Oh and also, when I was in Spain a few years back the family that I stayed with for part of the trip also loved Phantom of the Opera and we watched it over and over again, and also listened to the soundtrack over and over. Thought it was worthy of noting as they are both Spanish speaking countries?...yeah maybe not. That's all, now that I have written a novel to you. :)
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