Nomad no more

Well it is official, after 2 week of living out of a suit case  I have an apartment (actually here they call them pisos, so I will from now on be refering to my place as a piso, its easier to spell.)  Funny how things work out, all of us from my program coming in wanted to live with Spanish roommates and now I dont think any of us are.  Me and a couple other girls went around and looked at about 8 pisos and none of them were with spanish roommates.  Other nationalities yes, french, italian, dutch, you name it, but spanish, nope.  Go figure.  I dont know if because of the economy more young people are living with their parents but spanish roommates were none to be found.  I ended up waiting with 2 pisos that I liked.  Both the girls who already lived there told me they would get back to me after they showed their places to one more person.  Well within an hour of each other they both let me know that they were going with a different roommate and they were really sorry.  I guess I didnt make too good of an impression, or these other people were the queen or something because I was left homeless with 12 hours until we had to check out of the hotel.  Well my hotel roommate Rebekah (yes the one I met at the Chicago Consulate this summer)  Had already rented a piso with two rooms and was going to just look for a roommated when she got there.  So she said it was alright, I and decided to move in with her.  It all worked out, now im not homeless and she doesnt have to go through the trouble of finding a roommate.

So there is the story of how I ended up where I am.  We are in a very residential part of the city, but no in sense of a suburb.  There are many pisos packed into this section of town, with small streets separating them.  I guess I will have to get use to the sound of cars, motorcycles, dogs, and all other city noises swirling around me.  Not to mention we are on the 1st floor and I swear the lady who lives above us walks around in high heels.  The first thing I did was go out and buy a fan ( Em you dont know how much I wish I had the big box fan in your room, that would be so clutch at my piso.)  Anyways we thought getting the piso would be the easy part, but we would be wrong.  Now we have to get everything we need to make it a place where we want to live.  We have gone to the grocery store like 5 times in 2 days.  We needed sheets and blankets and a few more dishes, and soap and hangers. . . the list could go on for days.  I never realized how much stuff I would need to live on my own.  I feel like im constantly spending money, which sucks because we dont get paid for the first time till the end of October.  But we are moved in and Wednesday night I made my first meal on my own and it was. . .  A sandwhich! Ta Da!!!!  It had been a rough day and we were both tired.  Dont worry, last night we made this really good chicken pasta salad with veggies.  Im lucky because Rebekah loves to cook and is really good at it, so hopefully she can teach me a thing or so I dont live off of spaghetti this year (although they dont have prego so im a little nervous about that.) 

Now we also had to get a cell phone, open a bank account and get internet in our piso.  None of them easy tasks to accomplish in Spanish.  The phone I got, and the bank account is open.  Dad you would be proud of me, I opened it all by myself and im pretty sure I know how it all works. My spanish debit card is in the mail (to arrive in ten days)  and then when I use that to get money I wont have any atm fees.  The internet on the other hand has been a frustrating process.  Our piso didnt have internet, so we have to get it on our own.  We went to the phone store to inquire and the cheapest way they told us was to buy this plug in internet if you will.  It goes into your USB and you have internet,  you can take your computer anywhere and be online, pretty handy.  But they guy tells us it wont work very well for skype.  Well is is not even an option for either of us, so the other choice is getting wifi through our phone line which takes 2 weeks to process and install, aaaand we have to have a bank account to get it started.  Well this was before I had a bank account.  So we decided to go with the instant interent for the first month, and then when we opened our bank accounts to come back and start the process of getting wifi.  So we get it all set up to our computers and later that night we try to go on the internet and it doenst work. Great.  No interent.  So the next day we go back and they tell us basically that the company is having techinical difficulties at the moment and it should be fixed that day.  Well a day goes by and still no interenet.  So we go back this morning and the guy tells us that the company told him they will have the problem fixed in 24 to 48 hours.  Awesome.  No internet for 2 days after already paying to have it for 4.  So looks like anywhere you go in the world interent is a stressful thing. 

Anyways to lack of internet is why I havnt posted in a while.  I decided to come to the public library and see if they had computers to use, and as you can tell, they did.  So for the time being Ill make a trip to the library until we get our internet working.  Oh and the spanish key board is very different from the ones im use to and I cant figure out how to use an apostrophe, so I apologize for anything that is unclear.  I hope you can decipher it.  I cant remember is it said the library was open on weekens.  Around here, most things are only open 5 days a week and on sunday just about everything is closed.  But the library might be different, im not sure.  Its nice to have somewhere to go though, now that im in the piso and I dont start teaching for a week, im not really sure what to do.  Its hard to run around here since I have to stop about every 2 minutes for a stop light.  But we walk everywhere so dont worry mom I am getting some sort of exersize in.  I feel like there is much more I could say about how different everything is, but this post is alreay a short novel, so ill wrap it up.  Im in a piso and beginning to create a life here, its a slow difficult process, but we are up and running. 

Goodbye for now
Katie