Welcome to Malaga

I finally arrived in Malaga yesterday morning, or, as it felt to me, at about 4 AM Saturday. I quickly hooked up with another girl from the states with whom I had been in contact. She in turn introduced me to a few of the local students she had met. As of now there aren’t all that many students here, only those taking exams. Classes don’t actually start until the first week in October.

Two of the students we met invited us for lunch and, in addition to some salmon pasta we had jamon serrano, cut straight from the pig’s leg. Last night we went downtown with two students from Poland and enjoyed the evening talking and people-watching in one of the city’s major plazas. One thing is for sure, when people say everything starts later in Spain they aren’t kidding. Yesterday’s lunch was at about 3, dinner at about 10; we didn’t make it to the plaza until about 11:30. Most of the people didn’t show up until well after midnight. When we left at 1:30 there were still tons of people out and about, showing no signs of going home anytime soon.

People here are amazingly nice. Right now I am living with one roommate, but he will be leaving in a few days, he is only here to take exams. My real roommate(s) will probably not arrive for a while. Today my current roommate showed me around Malaga, of course we had to stop at a few cafes along the way. If there is one thing I wish America had that I have seen so far it is such cafes; a nice, quiet atmosphere, good coffee and tea with or without alcohol; just a good place to sit and talk or read altogether.

So far language has not been too much of a problem. One thing is for sure, people talk amazingly fast. But when they understand you are a foreigner they slow it down a bit and I have had no problems conversing aside from the occasional loss of words, etc. But I am already picking up new words, slang, etc. everyday. Hopefully by the time classes start I will be well prepared. Tomorrow I will be heading to the language class to see if I can still get in despite missing a few days. At the least I hope they will let me sit in, even if I don’t get credit.

I have a big list of things to do and buy. So I’m going to work on getting a plugin to list them here so I can keep better track (I am horrible with lists, etc.). Well that’s all for now.