Dorm Life

Courtney and I moved out of our home stay and into a university dorm. It was something we had been thinking about doing for a long time. Courtney and I lived with an elderly woman in her apartment. She was in very poor health and had to visit the doctor sometimes up to three times a week. She often stayed in bed all day and we could tell it took all her strength to make meals for us. Many times I had to go into her bedroom to wake her up in the morning because she had slept through all of her alarms. It was difficult to ask for anything because we felt like a big burden to her. She also brought up money issues often and her opinion that our program didn't pay her enough. Overall we just weren't happy living there and weren't having a positive experience. Even after two weeks of living there we were already discussing whether or not we wanted to stay. We gave it some more time and after the fifth week we left. Telling our host mom that we were moving was hard because we didn't want to upset her, but for the most part it went well.

We moved to a university dorm. There isn't a central campus like in the United States. Instead there are university buildings and dorms scattered all over the city. Our dorm is right downtown on the best shopping street in the city. If you were walking down the street our building would look like any other city building. The top four floors of the building are dorm rooms. We eat in a cafeteria with the other residents. There are 6 other American girls living here, 4 Spanish guys, and a whole lot of Spanish girls. At mealtimes I always try to talk with the Spanish girls I'm sitting by. They're polite and answer my questions, but they don't ask me anything back or initiate conversations. It's a little disappointing but it's still nice to be around young people.

Courtney and I share a double room and we have our own bathroom and a large terrace. The terrace overlooks the busy shopping street and from it we can see the cathedral and the Alhambra. It's amazing. We also have roof access. A lot of the girls go to the roof to sunbathe. We're much happier here and are glad that we made the decision to move.