After a much more than anticipated busy weekend I woke up Monday morning, exhausted but excited to start my first day of work. My biggest worry about the entire day, well my entire internship, was my Spanish. This entire internship was going to be in a language that I have only studied for 2.5 years and I had the biggest, and one of the scariest, feelings that it was going to be a huge challenge. Unfortunately, this feeling was quickly reassured. I got to the office on time (huge surprise for me, I woke up late and did not really know where I was going) and met everyone in the office (there are 8 people, two of which are my bosses). I headed into one of the meeting rooms with my bosses to talk and do basic orientation things. Between my lack of sleep and the fact that I had not listened nor spoke Spanish for over a week I had a really hard time understanding the overall conversation with what they were both saying. I kept apologizing for my lack of Spanish and they said it was perfectly fine and that things would get better soon. For the rest of the day I got situated and the various accounts set up and started to talk to everyone in the office. We also went out for coffee which was something that they informed me was going to happen almost every day and of course I was excited about that (café con leche every day, yeah I can definitely get used to that).
Once I was done with work I went to the school that I was going to take Spanish classes at night to sign up and get things taken care of there. For the past few weeks I had been emailing someone about the classes and luckily she was there so it didn't take much time to get my schedule sorted out. Then I headed back to my place to relax before I went back for my first class later that night. Mondays and Wednesdays I am taking a class that is below the level I tested in just as a review and with languages you can never study the basics too much. Tuesdays and Thursdays I will be taking a class that is a little bit more challenging for me so that I can get ahead and improve my Spanish faster. I really enjoyed both classes and both teachers are great.
The rest of the week was a lot of adjusting and getting used to being in Madrid and getting to know my new surroundings. Thursday night (ended up skipping class) I went to the ATR awards show which recognizes achievements in the journalism field. Cibercorresponsales, the place I work at, won an award and they invited me along. The night was a lot of fun and after the awards one of my bosses and myself along with a few of her friends and her sister went to eat dinner. It was a lot of fun and it was nice to get to know my boss a little bit better. Also her sister was going to be in Madrid for a few weeks and we made plans to get together and explore the city a little bit.
Almost the entire day Friday I spent relaxing, besides walking around a little bit outside. Saturday morning I met up with my boss' sister and we took a free walking tour of the city, well half of the city. It was nice to explore the city a little bit and it was great to explore with her.
Sunday I went to a town that is about a 45-minute train ride south of Madrid called Aranjuez. My other boss is from that city and he invited me down for the day. I took the train, which is so easy and convenient to use (keep in mind I am from Los Angeles where the public transportation is either non-existent of mediocre at best) and was met by my boss and his girlfriend and his nephew. They were all so nice and excited to explore the city with me for the day. Also, they all spoke English really well (his nephew was learning it in school and was great for only learning it for a little bit) and it was so weird to hear my boss speak English because we set rules from the start that we would only communicate in Spanish, unless I got extremely beyond confused, so hearing him speak in English was weird.
We walked around the royal palace and the gardens around it for a few hours and I really enjoyed talking to all three of them, especially my boss' girlfriend. We kept switching back and forth between English and Spanish and it was just a lot of fun to talk to her and all three in general. We got sandwiches for lunch and ate outside a park (we weren't allowed to eat inside of it) and then spent a couple hours walking around the park. By the time we were done it was starting to get kind of late and my boss' nephew had to finish homework and I needed to start heading back. They dropped me off at the train station and then headed back to Madrid. It was such a great day-trip and I really enjoyed getting to know my boss because we were going to spend the next 7 weeks together so it's nice to know something about the people you are working with.
With that, my first week in Madrid had come to an end.
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