We have been in Spain for just about a week, and what a whirlwind it has proved to be! Without further ado, here are some details about week one:
Lost in Translation: The first day we arrived in Madrid, Aaron and I were so tired from the 22 hours of travel, the intense heat, and navigating to our host Mom's apartment with our heavy luggage. We met Marli, our lovely Brazilian host-Mom, and she helped us with our bags. As she showed us our room with two twin beds, she asked me (in Spanish) if we were siblings (Eres hermanos?). In my exhausted state, I misheard her and thought she asked, "Tienes hermanos?" which means "Do you have siblings?" As many of you know, I do have siblings, so I answered, "yes." As a result, the entire first day we were here, Marli thought Aaron and I were brother and sister, and she was very confused when she noticed that we pushed the two twin beds together in our room.
Exploring the city: After arriving on Wednesday, July 27th, we had a few days to kill before our TEFL class started on August 1. We recovered fairly well from jet lag, and managed to do quite a bit of walking. This included a walking tour of the old city, starting in Plaza Mayor and stopping to see the Almudena Cathedral and the Royal Palace. We are staying very near the center of the city, and are in walking distance to Puerta del Sol (the location of El Oso y Madroño, a rather confusing sculpture of a bear and a strawberry tree that supposedly embodies the spirit of Madrid). We live on Gran Vía, a major cross street that is home to a lot of retail shopping. The lack of air conditioning in our apartment meant that we spent several more hours than necessary lingering in the climate controlled stores.
Memorable meal: Thanks in large part to our wonderful host, we have been lucky enough to enjoy many fabulous meals. All of them contain meat (usually multiple varieties), and some kind of salad or pasta dish. It's hard to pick just one meal to highlight, so this week I'll select the lunch we were served at ttMadrid on the first day of our TEFL course. This was a mix of various cured meats (notably chorizo and jamón), manchego cheese, potato croquettes, tortilla (what the Spanish call an omelette), strawberries and chocolate cookies for dessert.
Who's coming to dinner: Every night since we've arrived and Marli has been here, she has had a guest or two over to the house. This week, the most compelling figure was Antony - a student who lives in another apartment our host/landlord manages. He is from Russia, just finished studying computer science in Madrid, and he speaks 5 languages (Russian, Spanish, English, Italian, German).
En la clase: What a week it's been in the world of TEFL school! For those who don't know, TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language. We both knew our course was said to be very intensive, but I don't think either of us realized just how heavy the workload would be. A typical schedule this week has us in class from 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM, and most every night we have stayed until 8 or 9 working on homework. After receiving just five days of instruction, Aaron and I are both scheduled to teach a 50 minute lesson to a class of actual students this coming Monday. Despite the rigorous curriculum, it is safe to say that neither of us feel prepared for this task! As Friday draws near, we look to the weekend for rest even as we anticipate spending many hours working on homework and lesson planning. Today in class we discovered that a fellow student, Matt, shares the exact same birthday with Aaron - even down to the year! Hopefully some kind of celebration will ensue to offer us a reprieve from our studies, as Aaron and Matt turn 27 on Friday.

Final note: One of the most interesting parts of the whole experience so far has been the people we've met! I expected to meet a lot of Spaniards, of course, as well as a number of people in our class perhaps from the U.S. and the U.K. Instead, I think we have met more people from places around the world other than Spain. Below you can see a map in which the yellow sections represent the home countries of people we've met either through our TEFL course, or through our host mom:

Until next time, adiós!