I’m taking my last 2 decongestant pills on a stomach with only orange juice and a croissant. Everything seems really slow, like it took me at least 9 hours to write my name in my notebook today but according to Local Spanish Time, it took four seconds. There is no fluid movement, only segmented pieces which take ages to process. I am off my game in terms of jokes and being obnoxious on the first day of school. I make a point to tell everyone I see today that I am not myself, just on extremely strong Spanish meds, and to know I’m not usually such a space cadet. During my “lunch” time (aka the gap between two of my classes), I go to an Italian restaurant alone since everyone else is in class. I couldn’t even finish my pasta because I was getting dizzy from twirling the noodles around the fork. I’m talking MAJOR trippy stuff. I’m having trouble stringing my sentences together; I mumble to the waitress that I’m so sorry for my Spanish, I’m from the US, and she tells me not to worry about it which just further confirms that I’m not that great at Spanish. I pay and then legitimately stumble out of this restaurant to go back to the CEA center to wait 3 hours for my next class. I’ve decided that I can’t go all the way home because if I do, I will go to sleep and wake up approximately one week from now and miss my Architecture course. I make a friend in the common area and she lets me bother her for the majority of the time. By class, the meds have worn off. However, in this class, I sure wished I had them working to shut my big mouth up. This was my Architecture and Painting class which consisted of about 20 people, two of whom were versed in the subject, one of whom was me. I’m shouting out answers to the different kinds of Roman Pillars (Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, by the way) and controversial French artists and by the end of class, my professor is under the impression that I know everything about the Neoclassical and Baroque eras. In reality, I know about the Roman columns because of a research project I did when I was 12, and about the other artists by chance, knowing they’ve all been mentioned in past lectures or conversations that I was not fully paying attention to. So now I have given this man great expectations to have of me when realistically, I think art history is boring and he just happened to ask the one question that I knew the answer to. After class, I learn that there is one other art major in the program. Her name is Olivia and we become fast friends over Italian food, shopping, and of course, art. I’m feeling like I’m finally in the swing of things after my first week of being sick. Maybe this weekend I will finally be up to trying a Tinto de Verano con mis amigas nuevas.
Hasta Luego!
Dara