Communication Is Key

January 15, 2010

The next day, Thursday, was quite the adventure too. In the morning, the wind woke me up-it was so strong. I knew I would want to use my hair dryer because it would be so cold out. After I showered and dressed I plugged in my converter and then my new mini Wal-Mart hair dryer for $12 into the converter. I turned it on high and began to blow dry my hair. Looking back I probably should have first tried it on low or could have used my adapter as two people now have told…make that 3 people. While I was drying my hair I noticed that the hair dryer was really quite strong like it was when I tried it out in the US but something seemed wrong…I looked down the barrel of the hair dryer and it was glowing bright orange as if flames were about to coming shooting out of it. I immediately turned it off but too late…I had fried my new $12 hair dryer and I am planning on buying a new one even though it will be with a Spanish plug.

The day before we had arrived a little late for class but it was ok because it is normal to be late in Spain and when I had gotten to the school, even though it was past 9:30, class hadn’t started yet. That windy Thursday morning however I did not have class at 9:30 but I had thought that Kaitlyn did. As we were walking from the bus stop to the school I asked Kaitlyn why she wasn’t walking fast to school as I had the day before since we were also running ‘late’ that morning. She simply told me that she didn’t have class that morning at 9:30 but she thought I did! Thus we were both at school an hour early when we could have taken our time and slept in more! Lesson learned: Communication is very important. J

Back to the wind—it was so strong that while waiting for the bus, I felt like I was going to be swept away by it. My hair was whipping in front of my face, just going everywhere!! Every day, my hair is crazy with the weather…rain, wind, snow, you name it. The weather in Spain does not like my hair! The electricity won’t even let me dry my hair in the mornings! J

Later that night, we met up with our usual group to go out. There was going to be an Intercambio at a bar called La Negra Flor or The Black Flower. An intercambio is a meeting of the English and Spanish language where I am able to practice my Spanish with a Spaniard and they are able to practice their English with me. However when we got there, there was 20 Eau Claire students or so there for the event (exaggerating) and 3 Spaniards…thus we did not stay very long and looked for another café/place to eat to go to. We had a hard time finding a cheap place to go to. At one point a Spainard who we thought had too much to drink was came up to Eric and was talking to him about a place to go to…at some point the man thought Eric was Spanish because his he accent sounded authentic to him. We did not trust the man’s advice and went in a different direction than he told us too.

We ended up at a rather American restaurant where some of us ordered sandwiches like BLT, Vegetarian, and Bacon and cheese. I bought una tarta Manzana which was an apple tart that kind of reminded me of flan with caramelized apple slices on top. Though it didn’t have any sugar in it, it was still quite good.