First day of work

I made it past the first day! Truly, I feel accomplished. My brain hurts a little from all the Spanish but a siesta fixed that right away.
I started the day like a foooool because I got on the wrong Metro this morning. Just after I write this whole thing about how easy I think the Metro stations are to navigate. In the poor Metro´s defense, I totally just messed up. So instead of taking one Metro to work and getting off 4 stops later, I had to take 3 different ones, and probably went through 10 stops. But, luckily, I was only 5 minutes late and if they cared they did a very good job of not showing it! When I first arrived, the secretary (named "Mama") handed me off to a girl/woman (¿¿Brittney Spears??) who looks to be in her late 20s maybe and probably will be the biggest help to me at the office. She introduced me to everyone (a lot of Spanish greetings which means a lot of cheek kissing). However, I soon noticed that everyone, theres only maybe 10 people in this office, are women! And they all seemed to be super friendly and nice. After maybe 5 minutes though, the language headache kicked in, and I was exhausted from trying to understand. So, after 5 hours you can imagine how tiring it was.
At first, Rosa, my boss presumably, showed up to work (in jeans) and gave me a whole presentation on ACNUR (they just call it "ak-nur" so it`s easy). It was a solid hour of her speaking extremely quickly, all in Spanish of course, and me nodding my head pretending I understood. Tottaly what I was advised not to do, but I had no time to stop her. Luckily I had a powerpoint to guide me as she talked, but it was still a LOT of information, all at once, completely in Spanish.
Then, she just left me for a while, so I sifted through some reading that she left me that also explained ACNUR. Much easier.
About noon the other intern arrived. He has been here for 3 weeks or so, and he seems to be grad-student age. He also spoke very, very fast Spanish. And, he doesn´t seem to know much English. It was very difficult. I am happy there is another intern, but I feel so inferior compared to him because of the language gap between me and him. Hopefully he can help me with my Spanish later on.
Every day we have the task of looking through newspapers like, El Pais, El Mundo, ABC, and online news to find articles about the refugee situation, immigration, or news that could affect these, like political clashes or impending wars. I actually like this job, because I get to practice reading in Spanish and get to see the news everyday from an international perspective. Time flew after this, and I left at 2.

I will start with the bad stuff about work first so the exciting good stuff will seem more dramatic. :)

This language thing sucks. Its exciting that I am DEFINITELY exposed to Spanish in full-force, as not a word of English was spoken all day, but I am still so nervous and insecure speaking that I really struggled to comunicate. It was hard enough just to comprehend what people were saying. I know that I missed a lot of what was said to me. That also worries me. It seems like they maybe think I am better at Spanish than I actually am. I wish they would talk to me like I was a 5 year old right now, seriously! But, I will catch on somehow I presume. I guess that starting a job is hard enough in English: knowing what your boss wants, and learning what the tasks are every day. But this is a whole new obstacle besides those things that I will need to figure out later.
and....
Good news: ACNUR is awesome! I am totally getting exposed, at least I believe I will be, to the kind of thing I want to do after I graduate. It really seems like the perfect match for me, and I am so happy with the job CDS did to place me. Also, I think, I THINK, I am going to be using Final Cut once the office gets it. It was during Rosa`s briefing of everything when she mentioned it, and I didn´t completely understand, but it seems that she is going to want me to work on the video portion of their operations. AH! That would be awesome, so I am crossing my fingers that actually happens.
And lastly, on Friday, June 3, there is a huge concert to benefit ACNUR. It´s in Madrid, but when they first told me about it, it sounded like I might not be going. But I am! I obviously wanted to figure out what it was after they told me this, and I am very excited. It´s called Primavera Pop, and as you see... Enrique will be there!!! AHHH. Now, hopefully I actually understood correctly, and I am really going. Otherwise, that would be unfortunate. I guess I will find out as the week continues.

So, after work, I took the CORRECT Metro home and took off my painful shoes. Each day I have a new blister. Its day 4, and I have 4 very bad blisters on my feet. Ugh. I wandered off for food and ended up in a really cool part of town by my hostel that I hadn´t yet encounted. There were a lot of clothing and shoe stores that were oh so tempting, and of course restaurants. I am very bad at choosing where to eat here... because I am alone so every place intimidates me. After at least an hour of walking, I finally found a small place, not so intimdating, and got a wittle baby calzone to walk and eat. And then, upon returning to my hostel, a siesta.

While I´m blogging, a few more things I´ve noticed that I feel like mentioning. :)
I know that there are very upscale and nice shops here, and I have seen many,  but there are also countless stores that have prices like H&M of Forever 21. For me, that´s awesome. I need to buy clothes once I move to my apartment, so knowing there is a lot out there is a big relief. Because the population of youth living in Spain is massively unemployed (41% unemployment if you are under 30.... hence, riots) I wonder if these are the only stores that are able to survive right now. Works for me!

*intermission!* someone blew the fuse where the computers are and the computer crashed! Luckily this saved. I went for a walk and to get dinner and now they are back...

I have definitely seen the large protest that exists in the center of Madrid at Plaza del Sol. If you have not heard about these.... here is an article that puts it quite simply... article that puts it quite simply
It really is amazing. They have created a village. There are tents that cover the entire plaza so that its like a camp. It really seems to have the most energy at night, which was really cool to see Friday. Pictures
On Sunday, when I was doing the walking tour, they were having a huge meeting over the loud speakers about whether or not they should continue to stay. I believe it came out of the brutal attacks on the similar protest in Barcelona. But, from the news, I see they decided to stay. It is a really cool time to be in Madrid because of it, and I think that here the police will continue to not use violence. I am eager to see what happens next. However, I honestly dont think they will accomplish anything significant.

And lastly, all I eat is bread, cheese, jamon, and more bread, cheese, and jamon. I am going to gain so much weight.

Another long post but it is really helping to write this all down so thanks for reading if you made it to the end. Hasta luego.