Well, I have a lot to say. Or, on second thought, I better rephrase that. I have a lot of thoughts floating around my head right now, but I am not going to say them all or write them down, because that would take a while, and I am also not really in a writing mood right now. This means that I might not finish this post, but if I don't, I will tomorrow, or maybe the next day. It all depends on my mood. Anyway, we had our first AFS orientation since we got here this past weekend. It was... interesting, for the lack of a better word. But in a good way, I think. To but it simply, I enjoyed it. So, the details:
Friday, roughly 4:30 in the afternoon: Jón (the Icelandic student who is living in the same town as me) and his host mom pick me up at my house.
5:17. We arrive at Chamartin, a train station in the north part of the city of Madrid. We walk in, thinking it will take us a good five to ten minutes to find the Burger King we are supposed to be at at 5:15. We look to the right. We spot the Burger King 20 feet away - problem solved. Jón's host mom then leaves us as we go to check-in with the AFS volunteer that is there. I check-in and then look around, promptly realizing that I don't really remember much of the people here. Well, nothing I can do about that. We spend the next while warming up to each other.
5:50. We are still by the Burger King and are still missing people. Once again, realize I am in Spain.
Roughly 6:15. We finally get on the train going to Cercedilla, which is a small town that is kind of in the mountains (I say kind of because although I think it was in the mountains, the mountains are so much smaller than the ones at home that I don't really feel right calling them mountains).
Timeless gap. This was occupied by us riding the train, taking a bus to the hostel, getting assigned rooms, and probably free time, although I'm not sure if we had time for free time, if that makes sense.
9:00. Dinner. It was mashed potatoes, a filet, and soup. These were the first mashed potatoes I have had since I left the States, and although they were more... I guess fluidy would by the right description, they were still good.
10:00. We all go to a separate small building that ended up serving as our meeting room for the rest of the orientation. This was when I decided that their favorite team-building exercise is the knot one. You know, the one where everyone closes their eyes, walks into the middle of the circle, grabs somebody else's... sorry, I got distracted for a few minutes here. My computer is saying that else's is not a word, and it is making me start to doubt my English skills (there is one Austrian girl here whose English skills are quickly declining as she picks up Spanish, so hopefully this isn't happening to me). Anyway ... hand, opens their eyes, spends a minute trying to untangle themselves so that they once again form a circle, and then give up. Well, in two orientations now, we have begun with that one.
10:something. We continued to do team-building exercises, but I can't remember which ones. They all had a common theme though - they sucked. This is what led to the lack of a word to describe the weekend. On the one hand, it met, and probably exceeded, my expectations. On the other hand, it fell miles short of my expectations. I mean, I was expecting the activities to be fun. Sorry for the language here, but we f*****g went to a hostel in the middle of nowhere in the forest, miles from Madrid. At the least I expected some kind of hike or nature related activity. But no, we did shitty team-building exercises in a small building, as well as a couple of things on a square cement floor outside. I mean, feel free to explain the reasoning behind this if you see it, but this does not make any sense to me. Not in the slightest.
11:20. Done with organized activity for the night. Start of free time, although we have to be in our rooms and silent by 12:00.
12:05. One of the guys working in the hostel kicks us out of the lounge area we are in and sends us up to our beds.
12:45. Everyone in my room is finally ready for bed. Light goes out.
8:15. I am awakened in order to be prepared for a 9:00 breakfast. It doesn't really take me 45 minutes to go to the bathroom, get dressed, and put in my contacts, but can't really do anything about it.
8:20. Look over at Jón, who is one of the people rooming with me. He looks like he got almost no sleep the night before. I ask why. Apparently the Chinese volunteer who is in the room with us snores. Luckily, I didn't really notice it.
9:00. Door opens to the dining room. The few of us downstairs start to go in. Then, in comes running one of the volunteers, yelling at us that we can't start until the whole group is here and ready. We grumpily shuffle back out.
9:and what feels like ages later. The last of the girls finally comes down, and we can finally go in for breakfast, which consisted of toast, some kind of cake-like food, and juice.
10:00. End of breakfast time. Off to the green cement square outside for morning wakeup time. In other words, it is once again time to half-participate in rather sub-par activities led by the volunteers.
11:00. We move into our meeting/activity room and are broken up into groups, where we talk about some impressions we've had so far and draw a web with us in the middle and other people here around us. We then put garbanzo beans on each person in order to represent the amount of "love" we feel between this person and ourselves.
12:10. Start of our half-an-hour snack and break time. Snack consisted of juice, some tasty breadstick-like food, and something that went really quickly (unfortunately I can't remember what) and was really tasty.
Well, I have to go eat dinner. I will either finish this tonight or tomorrow or sometime soon. I'm not going to proof-read it, but when I wrote it I felt like it was a little erratic. If so, I am sorry. Also, I think I came across as fairly negative in this posting, but I actually had a lot of fun at this orientation. I think it is just easier for me to write about negative things than positive things. Anyway, dinner time. Bye.
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