First Rain, New Piso, and Politics

September 10th

I woke up wondering why it was so dark in my room as generally light comes in through the holes in the shutter.  I opened the window and was pleasantly surprised by the first rain.  It was a gentle rain that washed away the dust from Africa and dropped the temperature by 30 degrees.  I laughed as I had taken over all of my rain gear to my piso the day before.

In class I had to present my newspaper article.  Apparently my presentation went well as people seemed engaged and were asking questions.

After class and lunch, I went back to my room to start homework and also figure out my classes.  I got frustrated with my classes and decided to take a quick siesta.  Its a tedious process to register as I have to enroll in a total of 16 classes by hand also try to make the schedule work.

My short nap turned into a 6 hours sleep as I had woken up at 5, looked at my watch and decided to take my time getting up by laying down on the other side of the bed.  I fell asleep and woke up at 8:00.

I had told Nathalie that I wanted to hang out at 3:00, so I called her and told her I had over slept.  I was planning on going over to my piso anyway but I felt irresponsible for completely missing our time.

My roommates were waiting for me when I arrived.  We walked over to a tapas bar in Plaza Nueva to meet with some of their Erasmus friends to discuss plans for this weekend.  They were talking of renting a car and touring Andalucía.  I had group activities Friday evening and Saturday morning, but I thought it would be fun to go.  I had originally wanted to visit Alex and Vanessa in Cádiz as they were giving a presentation, but we had group activities and I wouldn't have been able to get there until Saturday night.  For the road trip, we planned on visiting Córdoba on Saturday.  Sunday we weren't yet sure but were considering going to Málaga.

Back at the piso we hung out with our other apartment mate Antonio.  Nathalie and Heiko went to bed and Antonio and I stayed up discussing philosophy and politics.  We talked about gun control, abortion, and the US health care system.  It was difficult to articulate what I wanted to say about the subjects in Spanish, but I think I did a pretty good job in expressing my opinion and it was great practice in comprehension and speaking.