The First Week in Madrid

Staying on the lazy side first I copy one of Monika's letters... :)

It was quite a week, to be honest I hardly had time to update even my mom, which is essential as she keeps me calling on my mobile if I don't do that, which costs me a fortune! But it seems that the coming days will be more relaxed and enjoyable and I can even make contact with my friends!! (...)

So... Madrid seems great! :) It's amazingly busy and HUGE! What I like is the elegancy of the buildings, the numerous parks, the diversity of the different districts... I think it's a great place! The hotel where we stayed the first week disappointed us greatly... There was no internet!!! Can you imagine? We chose that place because of the internet connection they offered in HostelWorld... :( And we desperately needed internet connection to look for a place to live. So this way I had to spend most of the days in internet cafés, 6-7 hours a day... :/ It was exhaustive. I think I checked at least a thousand ads, I wrote to around 40, and I got only about 7-8 answers, most of them rejective... :( During the week we could visit only 2 flats!!! Can you imagine?! But at least one of them was good. We had a look at it on Friday evening and moved in Saturday morning. In the last minute... :) Friday was the last day that was paid by the company, so you can imagine how relieved we were... 

Although we didn't have too much choice, I think we have found a good place. We share the flat only with 2 other persons (there are 3 rooms apart from the living room), a Columbian guy and a Spanish girl, which is great for my Spanish... :) The guy seems nice, but we haven't met the girl yet. She is from Andalusia by the way... :) Oh, and there is a cat as well!! :)) Last night it was chasing a moth in our room for hours! It was funny. Our room is big enough, we have a big bed, a writing-table, a built-in wardrobe and bookshelves. We miss some other shelves or night table, so we'll go to IKEA next week to buy some cheap stuff... :) The living room and kitchen are huge and great and we have our OWN bathroom!! :) The flat couldn't bee more centrally located and.... we have wireless internet connection!!! :) So, it seems quite all right so far. However it's pretty expensive...

(...) I'm so happy that it's over and I don't have to look through more ads that I just don't care anymore! :) It's done, let's look ahead! Which means that finally I can start looking for a job!

And about my job. I work for one of the biggest video game producer companies as a video game tester. It sounds good but considering that you actually don't play video games but testing them - checking hundreds of test cases - it is a usual job. Though I don't play video games it's really a discoverable new world for me in which a happily plunge into if they pay for it. I still keep it as an almost perfect job considering my non-existing Spanish. Well there are recreation rooms with consoles and huge LCD TVs, a pool table and darts… And what makes it even better - my colleagues. They are from all over Europe, young (28 on the average) from around 15 countries. The atmosphere is very easygoing, friendly. On my first day I over clothed in shoes, long trousers and a nice T-shirt... :)

You are only a small piece of the machine... :)))