I made it to Oviedo! It's a very beautiful area. Everything is green because it rains so much here. It's cloudy and rainy right now, and feels a lot like Seattle. I live with an elderly couple in an apartment a few minutes away from the University, and they're very nice. If I understood correctly, they've hosted 10 students so far, so they had a printed list of rules ready for me when I came. It's much easier to understand written Spanish than spoken Spanish. Rules include meal times, how many showers I can take a day, how many rolls of toilet paper I get per week, and I have to make my bed every day! It's nothing unreasonable, so they must have had some problems in the past.
The food here is so different, but much better in Oviedo than in Madrid. This morning for breakfast my host-mom set a bowl (cereal bowl sized!) of hot milk and some little shortbread-like cookies down in front of me. I had no idea what to do with the bowl of milk! I tried to ask, but she didn't understand me and just asked if I wanted chocolate in it. So I ended up just dipping my cookies in it and spooning the rest, and that seemed to be correct...
A lot of the words I've learned for things are not used here. Today I learned "ordenador" for laptop, instead of "computadora portatil." They also say "marido" instead of "esposo" for husband. The "th" sound on c's and s's and z's is very difficult to understand after learning only Latin-American Spanish! But it's been less than a day and it's already getting better. Crossing my fingers that it gets easier!
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