Day 5 of Classes

     I finally got my monthly metro pass, yay! Claire and I woke up early this morning to make it to our appointment with the metro people to get our transport card. We got a little confused when we were trying to find it, but we finally did! After we found it, the process took like 5 minutes for each of us. So, we got the card and then went to put money on our card for one month, or 30 days. So we can ride the metro as many times as we want! I have the urge to just get off at each stop and then get back on again, it is so nice! Instead of little ticket things that you have to worry about losing,  you just wave your card over the ticket taker and then you're in! It is so great!
    For classes, today I had Spanish, art history, and Global Change. It is really different hearing professors talk in English with Spanish accents...sometimes I want to respond to them in Spanish! Our Spanish teacher keeps giving us papers (since we don't have a book, yay!)...so I might have to get a folder to put all the papers in. Europe has different sized paper than in the U.S. - it is a bit longer so it sticks out of the notebook I brought from home! Art history was really interesting today, we learned more about pre-history art...like Stonehenge! I have always been fascinated by Stonehenge (like a lot of people), it is just so bizarre. No one knows how all the stones got into the middle of nowhere (apparently no remains of former civilizations have been found near it), who put them there, or what their purpose was (calendar, worship deities, tombs, all of the above?!). Maybe if I go to London I can take a trip to Stonehenge. We also talked a little bit about ancient Egypt. In Global Change we talked about the solar system, woo! I love learning about outer space because it is just amazing how everything came into existence and how old everything is. Oh, and apparently the U.S. and Europe have different amounts for billions...I don't get it. According to Wikipedia (assuming its correct), some countries use a short scale and others use a long scale for numbers...so U.S. uses a short scale, and Spain uses a long scale so that makes some of the numbers they use different, like 1000s of 1000s vs. 1,000,000 of 1,000,000?? Here is the link if you want to check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales. 
    Tonight for dinner we had rice, fried eggs, bread, and fried bananas. I have never had fried bananas before, but I tried them and I wasn't much of a fan...oh well, at least I tried them! 

 

So I might have been singing this song in my head in Global Change when we were talking about the Sun.

And this is how I feel about the world...such a great song! Thank you Discovery Channel.

Things I have learned in Spain:

• Spain uses different amounts of numbers than the U.S.....?
• It is annoying to have paper that sticks out of your notebook because it is a different size
• Long coats that go to the middle of your thigh are a thing in Madrid.
• Spanish people just know you are American. Even if you are not talking, they can usually tell. I heard one girl say when she walked into a shop a little boy started chanting "USA! USA!"....It is really wierd.
• I am quite a rock nerd. Claire and I were looking at things to do in Ireland and we found a tour of the Cliffs of Moher that includes seeing limestone formations (rocks) and I got really excited. And when we went to the Aqueduct in Segovia I was trying to identify what kind of rock it was made out of.
• I want to see my horse! Maybe my parents can Skype with him like they did with my dog - except my horse is way too big for my mom to hold up in front of the camera!

¡Adios!