First Week of Classes

So get this, originally I thought I started school on Monday Oct. 1st but as it turns out I didn't actually start until today Tuesday Oct. 2nd. Why is that you may ask? Well, no one in Granada had school yesterday because apparently it was ANOTHER holiday..yes another holiday, surprise surprise...at first I thought maybe it was a continuation of the Sunday Patron Saint holiday or maybe it was a bank holiday or maybe it was a different Granada cultural city holiday but no, we all got the day off school because it was literally a holiday to celebrate the beginning of the school year...I'm serious. BAHAHAHA! Only. In. Spain. So yeah, that's pretty much just how this place works. As was further proven to me today when I had my first classes.
The ridiculous story of my first day of classes...

As always, I had the fun of dealing with ridiculous Spain/CLM disorganization early this morning. Basically, I was suppose to have my Italian class at 10:30am-12:30pm and then my Spanish Conversational class at 12:30pm-2pm, I get to the Italian class and it turns out it's the 1A level class and I'm suppose to be in 1B class which is at 12:30pm but I had that other class at 12:30pm, so I had to go to the secretería to try and sort out all this nonsense. Originally when I had made my schedule the guy had just told me there was 3 italian classes at whatever times and put me in the one at 10:30am because it fit the best in my timetable, apparently the 3 classes are all different levels, moron. So anyways, leave that 1A italian class like 20mins in and then go to get a number for the secretería line up. My number was 82 and it was currently at 57, I knew it was going to be a long wait so I actually went grocery shopping, then brought the groceries home and had some cereal and then went back to the CLM, it was still only at number 76 when I got back there so I still ended up waiting around for like 15mins to get into the secretería, ridiculous or what? AND THEN the admin woman put me into the 12:30pm italian class but for some reason didn't see that it conflicted with my other 12:30pm spanish class, so she had to go back and fix my schedule a second time, luckily I noticed the mistake before I had left the office... So now I have only Italian on tues/thurs from 12:30pm-2:30pm and have my 3 Spanish classes mon/wednes 10:30am-12:30pm/12:30pm-2:30pm/4pm-6pm. So today all I actually had was my first italian class, tomorrow should be more organized and interesting with my actual spanish classes, I hope aha.

As a totally random little side story, I just want to say that I have noticed that just like in North America, pretty much all the convenience and dollarstores here in Granada are run by Asians. I'm not trying to make any kind of racial or stereotypical comment here, obviously since I'm Chinese, it is simply an observation. At first I was kind of weirded out, and then all I could do was laugh and realize how similar our world is sometimes. On a little more of a racial note, I found it mildly offensive and politically incorrect that the locals here call the dollarstores (or Bazars in Spanish) 'El Chino' which basically translates as 'china man'..anyways there's a weird little fact for all of you.

Oct. 2