School, Scenic Views, and Swings

In my second week, my life in Madrid has become a lot calmer than the last. The exploring and adventuring continued, but with classes also starting up, I've needed to tone down the fun just a little.

This past Monday, we had our first chance to sign up for classes! I know at VCU, class registration is always very hectic. Everyone is always prepared exactly at 8 am with their classes in the shopping cart so all they need to do is refresh and submit. I initially had no idea if class registration at UC3M would be as competitive as VCU. Over the past weekend, I had checked how many seats were available in each section of the classes I was taking. Measuring Instrumentation and Biotransport Phenomena, the third year classes at UC3M, had plenty of seats open. However, Biomechanics and Systems/Signals, the second year classes at UC3M, weren't as available.

Brennan and I wanted to avoid having classes Friday evenings, so that we could travel on weekends, on both ISA trips and independent trips. One section of Biomechanics, however, was from 5 pm to 7 pm on Fridays. The section on Thursdays only had 3 seats available. On the other hand, Systems and Signals was already full. We could get an override if no one ended up dropping the class, but we would need to wait until September 11th for that. So at 11 am on Monday, we met the other students in the ISA program and signed up for classes. When I tried to log in to the portal, however, I was unable to. There were so many people attempting to sign up, the portal couldn't handle it. At this point, I was getting very stressed. I knew that there weren't many seats left for the classes I wanted, and I didn't want to have to rearrange my schedule. There were also only a limited amount of classes I could take abroad, as others hadn't been approved by VCU. However, Brennan's portal worked. So he signed up for his classes (the same as mine), and let me use his computer after to register. For some reason, this worked! We were able to sign up for all the sections of classes we wanted, except for Systems and Signals.

After this, we stopped by at a cash exchange so Brennan could get more Euros but he didn't have his passport so we decided to come back later that day and instead go to Leganés, the engineering campus, to pick up our student IDs. We joined up with Hayne and Jayci, the other two engineering students in the program, and took the metro to Atocha Renfe, where we could catch the Cercanías, or short distance trains, to Leganés. However, as soon as we got on the train, we realized that we needed our physical passports to get our IDs. A copy of our passport wasn't enough. This was super frustrating because we would need to return to Atocha and run back to the house for our passports. We ended up getting to campus around 1:15 pm, only to find a long line of other international students also waiting for their IDs. To make matters even more frustrating that day, the office closed from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm. We made ourselves comfortable and made some new friends from Canada! We were finally able to get our bright orange IDs around 3:45 pm and made our way home. By the time we got home, we were absolutely starving. Zaida showed us how to make bocadillos, or sandwiches, and we were able to eat. We spent the rest of that day relaxing, as we were thoroughly tired, from the heat and the events of the day.

View of the plaza from the ID office at Leganés

Tuesday was a day of more exploration. We wanted one last day of adventure before classes started. Corey and Megan, other friends from the ISA program, suggested going to Casa de Campo, a huge public park northwest of the city. There are so many attractions, from a zoo and aquarium to a lake and theme park. The four of us met and took the metro to Casa de Campo. We first spent a few minute at the lake taking pictures, before walking around on the trails.

Casa de Campo also had a huge playground for kids, and incredible tennis courts. There were more than 20 full tennis courts available for the public to use! The trails were wide and plentiful. We saw so many bikers and joggers! It was a huge difference from the rest of Madrid. The city itself is so lively and bustling. Casa de Campo, which is technically still in the city, is much calmer. You feel like you've escaped all of the people and noise and have gone into the forest or into the mountains. You can be detached from the rest of civilization, while only being a street away from the rest of the city. While walking on the trails, we were also able to get incredible pictures of the city. We walked deep into the park and decided to take the teleféricos, or cable cars, back down to the entrance. I have a huge fear of heights so the cable cars were not my favorite part of the Casa de Campo trip, but the views definitely distracted me from my fears.

Wednesday marked the start of classes. We only had 2 classes then, both in the afternoon. Our first class, Biotransport Phenomena, started at 1 pm. Our professor actually started off the class by giving us Coke flavored (and shaped) gummies! We reviewed some physics principles, including kinematics, and talked quickly about differential equations. Our next class, Systems and Signals, was at 3 pm. Since the class was overfilled, the classroom didn't even have enough space to accommodate all the students! Our professor had to leave for 5 minutes and try to find more chairs so that everyone would be able to sit down. Once we were all settled, we talked about continuous and discrete time functions. Most of this was review for me so the first day of classes went really well! Thursday was even easier. We had our first lab, of two, for Biotransport Phenomena. The hardest part was actually trying to find the lab! Brennan and I walked down a hallway and looked around but couldn't seem to find the room. It took us about 10 minutes to actually do so. Half the class performed the fluid flow lab, while the other half performed the diffusion lab. We were in the diffusion group, but we'll do the fluid flow lab next week. We had to record our experiment so we ended up using Legos to prop up a phone.

Our second class on Thursday, Bioinstrumentation, only lasted for 30 minutes. Our professor reviewed the syllabus and let us go. However, this is the class I'm most nervous about. It's much more detailed circuit work, which isn't my strongest suit. The prerequisites also include topics that I haven't studied yet. Some of them are Circuits 2 topics and some are even more advanced! Since we got out early, and our Biomechanics class wasn't until 5 pm, Brennan and I came back home to eat lunch and relax. Biomechanics was also a short class - only 1 hour. We had a basic introduction to the topic, but so far it looks like the first part of the class will be a review of Statics.

Since we didn't have any classes on Friday, it was a much lazier day. We slept in and finished our homework for the first week. We then decided to go back to Retiro Park because we hadn't been able to explore the whole area. We went searching for the Crystal Palace, which was part of the Reina Sofía Museum. It was a glass building that housed incredibly detailed sculptures.

This week, we also had our first ISA excursion of the trip. We spent a day in Toledo, one of the oldest cities in Europe! All the students in the ISA Madrid trip took a 1 hour bus early in the morning. When we first got there, we picked up our tour guides, Mario and Enrique, and went to a scenic overlook outside the city. Toledo is backed by a mountain, surrounded by a river on three sides, and has a wall to protect its last side. The architecture is still incredibly well preserved.

Toledo is super famous because it was a city in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims all coexisted peacefully for centuries. It also used to be the capital of Spain! Our walking tour of the city included a visit to the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, Synagogue of Santa Maria La Blanca, Church of Santo Tomé, and Cathedral of Saint Mary. We visited the Monastery and Synagoge before taking a break for 20 minutes. The architecture and interiors of both buildings were incredible. We then visited the Church of Santo Tomé, which housed El Greco's masterpiece: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. Unfortunately, photography was prohibited in order to protect the painting, so I don't have any photos. However, I was amazed by size, detail, and quality of the painting. It was some of the best artwork I had ever seen. Our last destination was The Cathedral of Saint Mary. This Cathedral was one of my favorite sites because it was simply awe-inspiring. It was much larger than I had ever imagined and the interior was simply beautiful. Words really don't do it justice. Even the photos I took don't do it justice. The French Gothic architecture, the details and the finesse of the interior was unlike anything else I had seen. All of these sites made me gain a new sense of appreciation for the fine arts and the masterminds that created it all.

After our formal walking tour, we gathered in the Plaza de Zocodover to eat lunch. We were also able to walk around the streets of Toledo to explore and look for souvenirs. While I didn't get any souvenirs here, Brennan was infatuated with a lot of the swords and daggers. We went into probably 6 or 7 souvenir shops before Brennan picked out a souvenir. I was very close to picking out one of the dog head pillows though.

My favorite place in Toledo however, was definitely the park we found. It had incredible views and swings, a must for every good playground.

We spent the last half hour of our day here and relaxed before our bus ride back. It was the perfect weather and I could have spent hours on the swing.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ee0372_001b6e9f4af54ab8a796412ef75910d2/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Overall, it was a really great second week! I'm a bit sad that I won't be able to explore as much now that classes are going to ramp up more. At the same time, it will be fun to dive back into the BME curriculum! Zaida's (our host mother) nephew, David, is also living with us now. David is completing his master's degree in Robotics so he will be super convenient resource to have in the house. It's been great having another person to practice Spanish with but now I'll also be able to David about engineering and sports!

This week has been full of both exploring and classes. That balance will most likely shift more towards classes but I'm still really excited about Spain. I'm having tons of fun! Stay tuned to see how next week turns out! Hasta luego!