"Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch."

I finally have wireless. Only it won't recognize Instant Messenger or Mozilla Firefox, which chupas mucho because I use those 2 the most. Now I have to use Internet Explorer, and I don't like Internet Explorer.

Classes started today. I had a class at 10:45 and 5:45, Lit of Democratic Spain and Span Cultural Studies. I woke up at 10:37, which is not enough time to get there had I already been at the Metro stop. So I washed my face in a hurry and then panicked because I can't wear the things I would normally wear when late for class, because this is freaking Madrid. Then I remembered that someone said that there are 3 classes canceled today. I never did find which were canceled, so I called Gisella, who I knew was just out of class, and asked her to run to room 3 to see if anyone was in there. She told me the most miraculous thing ever: "Lit of Democratic Spain has been canceled today so we'll meet on Thursday." Qué suerte otra vez, no?

So I went to breakfast, where I sat with the Belgian girl. I found out her first language is actually French and she's just that fluent in English, she's a beginner at Spanish. I met her 3 Belgian friends and we chatted a bit about languages and such. Then I unpacked and cleaned my room a bit. Then I went to lunch where a girl sitting alone heard me say something in English and asked me to join her. Turns out she graduated from Mary Washington in 1999. Small world!!! She's 30, and she just finished a month-long intensive teaching course here and she's qualified to teach in anywhere Europe. She just found an apt, and now she's looking for a job. She said she'd have to take me out for churros con chocolate sometime. Then her German friend, who looked around 40, came and sat with us. He's finishing up a Spanish course and goes back to Germany on Sunday. He was really cool, and I certainly enjoyed his German accent. And no, I did not say, "Hey I took 2 German classes," because then I would have been prompted to perform and I hate that.

I went to my second class, in which there are maybe 10 other students and the professor is Irish and I think speaks little Spanish. Seems like a interesting class, though. Then I came back to my room and after sort of doing mindless internet things for a while, went to dinner at 9:30. I sat with the other Americans in API and another girl who is apparently attending Suffolk and from Arizona asked to join us, so of course I pulled up a chair for her. Then a French guy, who knew Gisella from a Suffolk class, and his Spanish friend joined us. The French guy is fluent times a million in Spanish... he sounds like a Spaniard. But he's very slow at English. So we made him talk in English and we spoke in Spanish. He was really funny and made a lot of American culture bashing jokes which I really enjoyed. So despite leaving Barradas only once today, it was quite an internatonal day.

Now I'm back in my room and about to go to bed insanely early for Madrid so that I can get up at 7 so that I can catch the Metro around 8:15 to get to class at 9. Buenas noches!