Day 5

Not much happened today.  Although Philip and I checked out of the hotel and made our way to Hector's apartment for the remainder of our stay in Madrid.  I was glad to be out of the hotel because the heat in the room made the air so dry that you had to drink water constantly.

The biggest event of the day was I went with Philip to his school and got registered to begin Spanish classes on Monday.  I'm glad he was with me because no one at the registration desk spoke a single word of English!  You would have thought that, being a school that teaches Spanish, they would realize you can't speak it to get registered.  Oh well, Philip got me through it.

After returning to Hector's place, I tried to get through a few more lessons of Rosetta Stone in the hopes of learning a bit more before I have to take my placement exam on Friday.  I've taken the school's practice exam online and it places me either in the first level or the second.  My intention for going to school is to have fun learning and to share in Philip's experience.  However, I'm finding myself revert back to my typical mindset and am getting frustrated with my progress - and I haven't even started yet!  You have to take a written and oral exam before they place you in a particular level.  I'm worried about the oral portion as I don't speak Spanish as well as I write it and hear it.  I don't want to be in level 1 because I've learned all of the basics already so I'm pushing myself to get into level 2.  Hopefully, over the next couple of days I can just chill out and enjoy the process instead of pushing myself like I normally do.

There was a big protest tonight by the Metro union workers.  Apparently, Spain is reducing their benefits in some way.  Philip was all excited to have something to snap photos of for his blog so we went down to the street to watch it.  Having lived in NYC for years, it was a typical protest and I got bored with it quickly.  So, we returned to the apartment and he grabbed some food for us