Oh Yeah... We are Here for School Too

First Week of School!!!

Syllabus week is never that glamorous so I will just give my first reactions of my classes.

Art history of Madrid: Yeah, I know. Not your typical Erik Hoaglund kind of class. My art skills are quite lame and primitive, but I needed an art elective and I thought a history class would be interesting and would save me the embarrassment of having to draw. All jokes aside, I really enjoy this class and it might be the class that I am most excited about going to every week. The teacher is really nice and passionate about artwork and the history of Spain in general. I have also found it to be super interesting in getting to learn about Spain's history and how the power in Spain has transferred quite often. First you had the Romans, and then the fall of the Roman empire led to Visigoths claiming their stake in Spain. Then you had the Arabs who were on their mission to bring and spread Islam, and then finally the Christians retook all of Spain after 8 centuries. Pretty interesting stuff in my opinion. Also, I had to laugh on the first day because she showed an example of a famous abstract painting by Picasso and called me out and asked the stereotypical art question. "What do you think of this picture?" All I could muster was "interesting" because the painting was all over the place as only Picasso could. So my art knowledge was already being put to the test. Theresa is also in this class which is fantastic cherry on top of an already sweet class.

Cross Cultural Psych: Probably the class that I have the least amount of strong emotions towards. I really love Pscyh, so I really find any psych class to be interesting just in its own right. The teacher is really nice, but her presentations lack a certain pizzazz which tends to make class seem a tad long. John is also in this class which is a huge plus. Always nice to have friends in classes.But yeah it should be a good class and should definitely learn a lot, but nothing super interesting or exciting to report as of yet.


Introduction to Global Health: This class though. Wow this class has already been a crazy adventure. First of all, after switching my major to public health last winter, this was officially my first class in public health ever. So I was ready to get rolling. Ready for anything. Just wanted to get my public health life started! Well I walk into class and what do I see… about 10 girls. Yup. Erik and the ladies as per usual in my life. I have just grown to expect that I will most likely be surrounded by women regardless of whatever I'm doing. Just a truth of life. Haha no complaints. Anyway, I sat down next to a girl named Melissa and got chatting with her for a bit before class and I learned that she was from Uganda. World is a pretty small place. Crazy. Well the teacher finally arrived and we went through introductions and everyone was surprised when they heard the deep voice say "here". Yup thats me. The dude. haha As the teacher got talking about the class, I soon realized this was gonna be a super interesting class, but also super intense. The teacher was really into transformative learning and having us lead discussions for the whole class and figuring out the readings on our own. All about being able to adapt and think on your toes in this ever changing. I thought this was an Intro class? Sure didn't feel like. We were gonna be jumping in to the deep end. No floaties. I was a little nervous, but hey always up for a challenge. BUT, all that being said, thats not even the crazy part. I came back the second time for class, and half the class was gone!!! What?!?!? Never have I experienced that. Now there was only 5 people left including me. The whole dynamic of the class changed. I was so surprised. Guess everyone else got scared off. Their loss. I'm still super pumped for this class and eager to learn!


World History: I have had such a mixed bag with my history experience. I have had the best of the best experiences with APUSH and Panderson and then have had history 111 at SLU which was just dull and dry lectures. Definitely interesting, don't get me wrong, just not presented in the most exciting way. So I was going in hoping for the first experience and I was not disappointed. While he's no PAnderson, he is definitely much closer to him on the spectrum of history teachers. He is this crazy guy named Kevin from Scotland and find him to be a lot of fun. He came in and gave us this quirky questionnaire that asked questions like, if you could go meet anyone in history, what would you ask him? What would you want written on your gravestone? Just weird, fun stuff like that. To top it all off he called me Erik the Viking the first time he called on me. He understands the k. Good man. So that made me happy too. Also, Theresa was able to transfer into this class too so I get to enjoy his awesomeness with her. Woohoo!!!




Last but not least, Public Health and Social Justice is my last class. This class is unique because it only meets one time a week, but… unfortunately that one meeting is three hours long which can get to be a bit much. But this was my second public health class so I was again bringing a positive mindset. Class is only eight people, but I have Micah friends as well as friends from my global health class so I was just fine. The teacher is a bit strange and has a pretty good accent so he isn't always the easiest to understand, but he seems to be fun enough. The format of the class is that he gives a pretty lengthy reading for the week and then we come in on Thursday and give student led presentations on the readings and topic of the week. The first class was pretty bizarre because it took us what seemed like an hour to figure out how to divide 12 weeks into 8 students. So that was pretty ridiculous so the teacher dynamic and the fact that it is a thursday evening class should make for some fun times. All I know is that the first reading was incredible. It was all about community and how true community is achieved. I thought it was incredible. More readings like that please.

So yeah thats the classes. Not too shabby. And no Orgo in sight. Thank goodness.


I'll finish this post with random thoughts and happening of the first week in Madrid.

I craved lemonade. I don't know why. I don't even drink that much lemonade when I'm home. Just nothing sounded better than a cold refreshing lemonade.

The sweat life was real. Temperatures were touching triple digits and I could barely walk outside without starting to perspire.

I have grown to appreciate water here more than I ever have in my life before. I get so dehydrated here so fast. One of my first purchases here was a water bottle at the super cool 7 floor shopping mall close to our house where the whole 7th floor is sports gear. Such a valuable purchase.

Lots of bball was played. John and I played basically every night of the first week. That court close to our home is super sweet. We even got to play with locals a few nights and got to talk with them afterwards so that was fun and they didn't tease us too much about our lack of Spanish.

Dinner with the host family has been pretty hit or miss. First couple nights were great. Meat, rice, potatoes. But then one night of the week, we just got a giant bowl of beans in broth… uhhhh that was a rough dinner lol

Had my first sips of Sangria. Pretty tasty

SO MUCH BREAD. Bread everywhere. It is fantastic.

My lunch has consisted of getting a loaf of bread, pack of gouda cheese, some pepporoni, apple, and a powered from the local supermarket named super sol. It is simple, cheap, and delicious.

And lastly Thursday night we ventured out in search of gelato with our friends Amanda and Gretchen for a great end of the school week treat. I finally got my lemon fix when I got my lemon gelato. YUMMMMMMM soooo gooddddddd

Found a New Balance store in honor of my my Dad and I's love of new balance

Victory Arch in Moncloa near my house. Built in honor of the Spanish Civil War. Learned about it in my art history class!! SO COOL

Orientation Day

Monday Morning.

Can't believe it's already that time of the year for school again.

Isn't crazy enough that we are abroad?!? Do we really have to do this school thing?

Ok so it wasn't that bad. It was just orientation day. And actually I was really looking forward to the school year. Spring semester had really left a bad taste in my mouth. Orgo and Bio nearly drove me insane. Abnormal psych quickly became a joke of a class, and stats and social psych were okay just not the most exciting of classes. So yeah I was really looking forward to my new schedule. Plus physics this summer went really well so I had gained back some of my student mojo. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Orientation day.

So getting around Madrid, a city I did not know whatsoever was going to be a challenge. I had my phone data turned off for the semester so when usually I would just whip out my handy dandy notebook, just kidding iPhone (blue's clues reference) to find directions, I could no longer do so. The night before I had made sure to take a picture of the directions so that we would have a fighting chance of finding the school for the first time. So John and I embark on the endeavor of finding the school for the first time. We start walking in the right direction and then make the first turn with no problem, but then we start walking and find ourselves at an intersection with a lot of different options of where to go and I can't find the road that is on my directions so it was definitely an "well shoot" moment. Two American guys with no clue where to go. Luckily John still had access to his map on his phone and got us going in what we hoped was the right direction. After a few turns and small roads I was very turned around, but luckily we found groups of students being led by people in the famous SLU blue polos so we felt like we were in business. We tagged a long for the last leg of journey and finally saw some friendly faces in Theresa, Sarah, and Steph. We had made it to school haha. We grabbed a sticker that told us what room we were in, mingled for a little bit outside, and then in we went.

For those that don't know, SLU Madrid is a fairly small campus that consists of just three buildings named Padre Arrupe Hall, Padre Rubio Hall, and San Ignacio Hall. For the orientation we were going to be in Padre Rubio Hall which I consider to be the main building, not sure if it actually is, but it's in the middle of the three, has most of the classrooms, and houses student life.

So I was expecting orientation to be really informative because I had no clue what was going on. I had just gotten off a plane in a completely different country just the day before andI didn't really feel ready for anything. I also figured since it's SLU, everything is going to be organized and make sense….

Well not really, orientation wasn't that great or helpful. Went over a lot of basic stuff like logging into your account and how to work blackboard, the SLU online homework site, which being a billiken. I knew all about. It was definitely more towards students that did not attend SLU, but it was ok. I remained patient and got through it.

The weirdest part though was that they said there was going to be a snack, so I was thinking yes finally a chance for some water or lemonade… but no. all they did was dump out a bunch of chocolate bars. Chocolate was the last thing I wanted. One thing about Madrid at least for me, is that I get dehydrated so fast. I don't know what it is. Either the dry air or the fact I'm walking everywhere, but I am always wanting water it seems. And not knowing anything like I said, I did not pack a water bottle among the 80 lbs of luggage that I probably brought with me. So no water for Erik or lemonade which is something I soon started to crave here.

So with the presentation being over, that was basically the last organized orientation thing I took part in… yep thats all folks. The nice thing about the rubio hall is there is this awesome patio in the back that is very good for chatting, relaxing, chilling, reading. It is very pleasant. So everyone ended up milling around there afterwards not really knowing what to do. They did have a table set up for grabbing your Id and health insurance card so I did that and then just mingled, meeting new people, talking with familiar faces from SLU.

Strange thing happened. Me and John had just met this girl and mentioned that we liked basketball and then out of no where this girl says, yeah I know someone that knows somebody on the US team….
We were both like who?!?! and she didn't know which was lame, but the even stranger part was that she offered us free tickets to go to the championship game in Madrid… What ?!?!?!? We had just met this person. It was nuts either she was being ridiculously nice or had no idea what she was offering. But in never panned out… dang would have been sweet.

We got some lunch in the cafeteria and then decided to go to this public health and physical therapy meeting that was on the schedule to see what they had to say. It was kind of sill though because they had nothing prepared and were just staring at us to see if we had any questions. Nobody did. But they did talk about this unique hands on/shadow experience that I believe John and Theresa are going to take advantage of so it wasn't a complete wash.

We (John, Theresa, Sarah and I) then broke off from the rest of the group we had been walking with so that we could go in search of school supplies. We found this place near SLU called Carlins which had a ton of stuff to choose from. SO that was a clutch find.

After that I believe we headed home and rested for a bit as we waited for dinner. And then the night was finished with another basketball session. First full day of Madrid in the books,

Next up SCHOOL!

Here are some shots of my new school!!!

Good Morning!… no I think you mean Good Evening...

Sooooooo yeah…..


We passed out.

After a crazy day of traveling and not sleeping on the plane and I think being up for about 23 straight hours if I did the math right, the crash was definitely well needed and deserved.

I think we ended up sleeping for about 7 hours. So much for not having jet leg. It was now 6 pm and we were staring at each other, trying to come up with the courage to go chat with the family that we just met briefly before falling asleep. Team effort we both head out to the family room and see whats up. We meet the younger brother Guiellermo and his friend who was over watching soccer, or futbol. Gotta call it the right thing or people will get confused. We chatted about sports for a bit and then they headed out to meet with some other friends. So John and I were just chilling by ourselves in this new house. No one else home No sign of the Mom. She told us before we fell asleep that dinner would be at "ocho". It was about siete now so we decided to go for a walk and see if we could find the park that we knew was really close to us.

However, after shutting the door behind us, we realized we had no way of getting back into the house…. nor did we know at the time how to get out of the gate…

So we were stuck walking in circles for 5-10 minutes, contemplating whether or not to jump the gate, but luckily someone finally came so we could get out.

Boom. There we were. First time walking the streets of Madrid. Pretty crazy feeling. We walk down a little bit and see this huge park. It looked very intriguing . However with dinner being at ocho, we decided we didn't have enough time to explore the park and had to head back home. We luckily saw a guy going through the gate so we were able to get by without a key once again. However, when we rang the bell for our place, no one was home. So we sat on the step for a while until we saw our host Mom come home. She kind of looked at us strangely and then realized we didn't have keys. When we got inside we were able to get our keys so we weren't trapped inside anymore.  YAY FOR KEYS!!!
She told us dinner would be ready in five minutes…. so a half hour later we started eating lol. Having a hard time thinking back to what the meal was. Pretty sure it was a meat with rice on the side. It was really delicious I remember that! These two girls kept hassling us when we were going to be free and said they were really really excited to see us. Imagine that :) It was SARAH and THERESA!!!! So finally we were done with dinner and were going to go see them. They are literally right around the corner from us. How perfect is that?!?! sweet deal. So we finally met up with them at the corner. There was a lot of skipping, some giggles of excitement, and of course huge BEAR hugs all around. WOW that was such a happy moment. So great. Four great people with one great place. Pretty incredible.

We headed back towards the park that John and I scoped out a little earlier in the night and decided just to lay down in the grass for a while and just look up at the stars. We got to hear about some of the Germany adventures Theresa and Sarah had. It was crazy to hear those stories and think about how I was soon going to have my own!! After laying down for a while, we went deeper into the park and found a ball court! WOO HOOO!!! So John decided to run back and grabbed the ball and we played a little two on two action.Theresa and I vs John and Sarah. It was super late, but we still had a great time playing. Sarah and John took round 1. Bummer. haha still fun. And then after that we headed back, said goodnight, and went back to our places. Our host mom had a rule of no showers past 11 since the bathroom is right next to her room. So we had to air dry that night and look forward to morning showers. It was a very hot night. No air conditioning here so it was a true battle. Even with the window open, tough to stay cool here. So after a lot of squirming and tossing I was finally able to fall asleep.

ORIENTATION TOMORROW!!!

The day that just kept on going

Game Day.

Well ok, more like Travel Day.

Day starts with Dad and Casey (the dog) barging into my room around 7 am. All happy and excited. They always get up early and go for walks together. Nothing new with today. I have heard that people that get up and start their day earlier are generally happier people. My Dad and Casey would definitely prove that to be true.

So I finally roll out of be around 7:15am and stand up, look in the mirror and say "Well, this is it."
I start going through my morning routine of brushing my teeth, taking a shower, and start thinking this is the last time I'm going to be doing this here for a long time. I saved packing up my backpack for the morning of, but I at least had everything I wanted to bring somewhat in once place. As I start putting things in my backpack I start thinking, dang my backpack is starting to get heavy. Note that I was shooting for a relatively light/empty backpack so that if the opportunity to buy fun things abroad were to happen, I would have a lot of free space. But somehow my backpack filled up so I will have to get creative packing up because I'm bound to at least find a few cool things while abroad.

Backpack is ready to go which therefore signifies that Erik is indeed ready to go. It's a little after 8 and the plan was to leave at 8:15am so I am right on time. I do the nostalgic closing of my bedroom door and saying goodbye to my room that I will not see for four months and head down stairs. My parents are both ready to go. Well physically. Emotionally probably not.

Do a couple last second checks. Make sure I have the ever important passport and into the car I go. Mom, Dad, Erik, and Casey on the way to the Airport. I don't really think I had any noteworthy thoughts or feelings on the drive. Just tried to soak in that last drive with the rents. Enjoying petting Casey for the last time in a while. Thinking about how crazy it was that I was going to Madrid. Thinking how crazy it was that my summer was over and that the day to leave was finally here. My parents were making sure that I was going to contact them as soon as possible. No tears from my Mom though on the ride there. Proud of you Mom.

O'hare airport. Oh baby what a place. We pull up to the departure gate and the car stops. Giant exhale from me and I open my door to get out. One last, huge hug for both my parents and smile and I head out on my way. I do the classic look back as I walk through the doors to go into the airport. Wave one more time and off I go.

So not to brag or anything, but I feel like I am a pretty beast traveler. Whenever I'm at the airport with my family, we always make it look like a breeze never any problems so I was feeling pretty confident strolling up to the sign in/check bag station. So I go to put in my reservation number and quickly get an error message saying my itinerary does not match my ticket. I laugh at myself and think wow not even a minute alone and I already have a problem haha.  However, it really was nothing. I got help pretty quick and the lady said that my return flight had changed so thats what caused the error. I said ok and continued on.

Security had a few more bumps. A lady started talking to me about my boot when I was trying to get my stuff ready to go through security and I got distracted and forgot to take out my computer and plastic bag full of liquids so my bag had to get searched. Whoops. Oh well not to big of a deal, but I think I lost a few points on my beast traveler meter.

SO I was in. My first order of business was to find a gift for my host mom. I was going to make a picture frame and decorate it with things that I like, but I unfortunately ran out of time and had to create a nice gift from the airport. I think I managed fairly well with some classic Garret's popcorn and a nice postcard of Chicago with Buckingham Fountain and I wrote a nice note as well.

So la la la I make my way to the gate. Eat a breakfast of champions that consisted of a pepperoni pizza and a Sprite… ehh not so good, but it sounded good at the time haha.

I make my way onto this tiny plane. The smallest one I have been in a while. Luckily I got this super great guy that sat next to me so I got to make a friend. His name was Amir and he is from England. So that was pretty sweet. We got talking a little bit and he asked if I could help explain American football and baseball. YESSSSSS!!! Spent pretty much the whole flight, granted it was only an hour and half to DC, diagramming football and baseball with airplane napkins and cups. It was quite perfect :) He even taught me about cricket. Makes a bunch more sense now! We landed in DC. We both looked out the window in search of the White House. No luck :( We wished each other well as we both moved on with our adventures and off he went. When we got off the plane, we exited onto the ground, something I have never done before so that was exciting.

I made my way into the DC airport, now knowing I had 4 hours to chill, waiting for my plane to Madrid. No worries tho. I found a Wendy's at the airport (score!) and had a nice lunch. I then talked to my parents for a bit, called my bank letting them know I was leaving for a while so that my credit card would work over here, and listened to a lot of the fray :) so great. Magically all that time passed and it was getting to close to boarding…

I SEE JOHN!!!!

Finally I got to chance to say hello to somebody instead of goodbye. Such a great feeling to see him and know that we were going on this adventure together. Last second bathroom break, a little food for John, a little bit of a delay to fix some oxygen tanks and we were off to Madrid!!!!! HOLY COW!!!!!!


The plane was a 757 and I got the middle seat… #roughlife. But not really. It ended up being fine. We sat down and another husky gentlemen such as John and I sat down beside of us. I would put a lot of money on our row having the most total mass haha. But besides being elbow to elbow and everyone in front of us reclining… come on now, we were seriously pampered on the plane. Couldn't believe it. We got to watch multiple movies of our own choosing. We got got a free dinner and a free snack towards the end of the flight and the drink cart came by at least five times. I couldn't believe it. I gotta do this international flying more often haha. So all in all the flight was really smooth. Didn't sleep, but it went by pretty fast. Well as fast as a 8 hour flight could go.

Before we know it, we are landing in Madrid. WOWOWOWOWOWOW. We were here. I think we spent a good portion of the walk to the baggage claim laughing about how crazy it was and joking about the time deference and how it was morning. Got our passports checked with no problem even though John thinks the security guys were making fun of him. haha who knows. We picked up our bags and then set off to find terminal 4. We started following signs and then ended up outside and realized there were no more signs… thankfully we asked someone and they pointed us upstairs. We then realize that terminal 4 isn't even part of the building and that we have to take a bus all the way over to T4. So we do and hit the roads of Madrid for the first time and finally make our way to T4. We spot the SLU madrid guys and they sign us in and fetch us a cab. Next thing we are in a cab going to our house. So crazy. I still think the cab driver was trying to cook us in the backseat. SO FREAKING HOT. We curve and wind around a bunch of city and finally the cab driver says this is it. We both stare at the building and have no idea how we knew it was the right one.

I somehow manage to press the right button for the apartment. Everyone lives in apartments here. No houses. Interesting difference. We get through the first gate and then we hear this mysterious male voice say "press it again". So we do and we are finally into the building and I knew we were on the right on the bottom floor.  The door was open so we walked in, praying it was the right house.

We receive a very warm greeting from Pedro, one of our hosts Mom's sons and then we we meet our Mom Isabel and exchange hugs and kisses. We somehow manage to fit our bodies and all our stuff down the tiny hallway to our room which we are sharing for the semester. After just sitting down for a second and taking a breath we are quickly called into the kitchen and shown are breakfast options. John and I then sit down to have some cereal, which was quite delicious. After finishing up, we get called back to our room and our shown where we should put everything by Isabel. So we get unpacked, get our clothes hung up, get are desk organized and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz