Morning Drill

A typical day--let's clarify, a typical day during the school week, seeing as the weekends are far from predictable here--doesn't at first appear too terribly different from mornings waking up in good old Wisconsin and heading off to a day of classes.

But Spain is in the details.

For starters, it doesn't get fully good and light outside this time of year in Spain until about 8:30am. It's dark when the alarm blares near my head at 7:30 most mornings and I slap it reproachfully, muttering a bit under my breath as my feet touch the cold, hard floor. No carpeting here like the dorm rooms I'm used to, which renders naps on the floor, yoga without a mat, and myriad other activities a bit more difficult.

The coldness comes from the fact that every night at exactly midnight, the heat shuts off in the entire residence hall and doesn't come back on again until 9am, by which time I'm off at school in a completely different suburb of Madrid. You may be thinking, "It's Spain! What do they need heat for?" Well, tonight for example, it's only 36 degrees (Fahrenheit, I feel the need to specify) outside and overnight my room tends to drop anywhere from  7 to 10 degrees. I love having an alarm clock with a temperature gauge.

Also unlike Whitewater though, we can set our room temperatures all the way up to 30 degrees. This time that's in Celsius. So we generally crank the heat the last 2 or 3 hours of the night and perhaps suffer minor heat strokes in the swelter all so we can sleep comfortably at night. It's completely worth it. One night we went out to the club and neglected to crank the heat before hand. When we came back to the residence hall, shivering from the mid 30's (F) and chilly winds of Madrid at 7am in February, we returned to find our room only about 65 degrees. Not exactly a toasty reception.

Anyhow, I've made quite the digression, but back to the morning routine we go!

The shower is tiny. Good thing there aren't many fat people here in Spain because they wouldn't be able to function. The bathroom that houses the shower is on the right side of the dorm room (one with the toilet and the sink being on the left) and is only about twelve square feet by my estimate. However, the actual shower itself is give or take only 6 square feet, a teeny little rectangle that even I sometimes have a difficult time maneuvering about, on account of my height, which includes long arms and legs. Go figure. (Pun not intended).

After that, forget about using adapters for your hair dryer, you'll just blow out the fuse and get a nice puff of smoke--I unfortunately speak from experience--so you use the one you bought at the grocery store down the block for the reasonable price of 10 euro.

Breakfast is cereal, yogurt, and an apple along with water and a cup of coffee that has just a splash of 1% milk. At the hall cafeteria they offer 1%, 8%, or fully fledged whole milk. Fat free, or skim, milk is only offered at fancier coffee shops in the downtown. If you don't ask or specify, it's whole milk for you!

Now, with such a breakfast, I am clearly highlighted as a foreigner. The Spaniards typically take two slices of white bread which they toast and then cover in jelly and/or butter; otherwise, and this seems to be more popular, they take one of those mini loaves of white bread I've mentioned before (ellipsoids about 5 inches long and 3 wide) cut it in half, toast it, then pour first olive oil on each inner half, and then spread salsa on both sides. The salsa is only put out at breakfast and is kept in a large metal tray about a square foot in size. Many of the regulars have that same meal everyday I've noticed. Although I stick to my guns on the breakfast front too so I can't wave the banner of "Switch It Up This Morning!" without also earning the much more blunt badge engraved, "Hypocrite".

After this staple meal--and it's come to be the favorite of the day's three meals for my friends and myself based solely on its consistency--it's off to grab my notebooks and folders, stuff them into my satchel, and head off to the metro station, conveniently within sight of and only a 2 minute walk from the residence hall.

45 minutes before class starts, I head out the door. It's a necessary time buffer; the metro ride itself takes 25 minutes, but the trains are spaced 7 to 9 minutes apart in the morning depending on when you exactly leave. So you might end up just missing the train and adding 7 minutes to your total trip. Add to that the roughly 2 minute walk to the metro and then once you get off the metro, it's another 10 or more minutes to campus (depending on which side your class is on).

I am actually quite the fan of the metro now; it's a guaranteed 50 minutes of reading a day. Ahhh sweet public transportation. But that subject merits its own post, another time.