So here I am, having completed my first week of school in Madrid. In celebration of an exercise from one of my classes, I decided to share a few culture shocks from my transition from Los Angeles to Madrid. You’d be surprised how different it is here. First of all, it is very different getting to school. Back in L.A., I was lucky enough to live in an on-campus apartment that was five minutes away from all my classes and on-campus jobs. Here, I have to commute by taking the metro and switching from one line to another in order to get to school, which takes about 25 minutes. Luckily, I got a few practice tries when my roommates and I had orientation my first week. I was getting pretty confident too commuting to and from school and my Madrid home. And then, on my way home the second day of school, I got lost on the metro. This was accompanied by me marching back and forth in the metro tunnels, spinning around in circles a couple of times, and running back and up the metro stairs. Basically I looked like a mix of a chicken with its head cut off and a lost American. But, after back-tracking to the stop where I began near school, I was able to find the right metro and proceeded to take the correct route home and make it to dinner on time (barely).

That’s another thing. Everything here is late in Spain. Dinner is usually eaten around 9 or 10 – although my host mom, Ana, mercifully has dinner ready for us by 8:30pm – and everyone goes out at no earlier than midnight (which is still early for them) and returns home as late as 6 in the morning. That is why a siesta is so important. My roommates and I usually take our siesta before dinner, which is typical in Spain. Although I stopped taking siestas after I realized that it only messed with my jet-lag and sleeping schedule more (one night I woke up at 3 am and stayed awake until I had to wake up for class at 8). Anyway, back to dinner, our dinners here with our host parents are usually characterized by all of us girls sitting at the long dinner table, Ana sitting in the remaining seat at the end of the table speaking to us in Spanish, and our host dad walking around the table either giving us a kiss on our heads or playing “Airforce Juan” and airplane feeding us with our dinner when we haven’t eaten enough on our plate (and Ana likes to give us enough food to feed an elephant).

Not only does Ana like to feed us in large portions, but I’ve noticed that, unlike the vegetarian and gluten-free conscious Los Angeles, meals here consist of lots of meat and carbs. At first I thought this would mean Italian Belly Round 2 (referring back to my summer study abroad in Rome). But then I realized that after a long day of walking around and climbing multiple stairs, with only a small breakfast and lunch to support me, a heavy and large dinner is much needed – and I often scarf down my dinner shamelessly. Thank God Ana is a great cook.

Another interesting difference here. Back in America, its illegal to drink on the streets, and even when transferring a bottle of alcohol from one place to another, it needs to be covered. Here in Spain, its technically illegal to drink in public, but it’s socially acceptable to drink on the streets or in parks. In fact, it is part of Spanish culture for people to drink in public. Instead of gathering at a house to drink before going out, people meet out and drink together outside. It is actually strange for people to gather in a house to drink, reports Ana. After being told this, my roommates and I decided to test this out and proceeded to gather around a bench on a street and drink wine. We were slightly paranoid – not being used to it – and tried hard to be discreet, but that seemed to attract even more looks from passerbys. It didn’t help that we were Americans (and were speaking English) and that two of us were tall and blonde. Interestingly, while we were drinking at our bench, we saw two Spanish men saunter down the street with a uncovered bottle of whisky that they casually passed between one another. Turns out publicly drinking is much more conventional than we thought. After our very Spanish pre-drinking, we decided to go to a very non-Spanish bar at Mauna Loa, where we had a ladies night with our leis, flowers, umbrellas, and mile-long straws.