My first two weeks in Madrid have been exciting as I adjust to the Spanish culture. The biggest difference (after the language barrier) is how walkable the city is. I have two different grocery stores within 100 yards of my apartment and pass about 10 cafes on my half-mile walk to the metro hub. Because of how old the city is the street grid is a little confusing but the streets have interesting facades and plazas that make every trip into a new area an adventure.
The class structure is very different from A&M. Each class has 1.5-hour sessions twice a week with the first class being a lecture and the second being a practical class where the students work problems from what they learned in the lecture. It is difficult to adapt to the length of the session since I am used to shorter lectures but I appreciate the added structure of separate practical and lecture classes.
I have mostly adapted to Madrid’s late mornings and even later nights. The sun doesn’t rise here until 8:15am so madrileños have a slow start to the day. Many coffee shops don’t open until 9am and restaurants are open until 1am which pushes all their meals back. Local bookstores and hardware stores near the university campus in Getafe don’t open until 4pm! I have a class that ends at 9:15pm and I’m starving by the time I leave campus, but the dinner rush is just starting for restaurants.
Outside of class, I have enjoyed running in the beautiful urban parks and playing ultimate frisbee with the local club. Parque del Retiro has become my go-to spot to run. It used to be a recreational park for the royals and now is home to some beautiful fountains and buildings. I joined Diskatus, a Madrid ultimate frisbee club, which has provided continuity as I play ultimate in College Station. The game is the same, but the practice is run entirely in Spanish which has tested my Spanish from high school classes. Apart from that, it has been easy to navigate the city with primarily English.