Grad Student Lunch

In the afternoon around 3:15 I met up with 11 of the grad students in the Spanish department to go out to lunch. They were all really really friendly, which was such a relief. We met on campus and walked over to a Mexican restaurant near the Nuevos Ministeros stop. It was a nice walk because it was a sunny afternoon and we took a detour through a pretty park.

 Chatting and walking through the park on the way to lunch

I asked them how often they do this as a big group and they said like never! There isn't much of a graduate community here, because there's just these 12 in Spanish and then 3 in English, and that's like all the grad students. They're hoping to start a GSA at SLU Madrid, and asked me to come to the meeting on Monday night.

Check out my tiny margarita!

I'm so glad I joined them for lunch. It was a lot of fun and so nice to socialize with some American grad students. I hope to see more of them during my time here. As some might say, "I'm not here to make friends" ;-) but it never hurts. They seemed interested in hearing about and fostering a stronger connection with the SLU home campus. They invited me out for more drinking but after such a long day I was ready to head back to campus and then back to the apartment. 

One of the grad students, Tyler, walked me back to the metro after lunch, which was nice. Again, nothing but good things to say about the Spanish metro - so clean! And check out this weird bird art!

Back on campus I wandered around with my new map to check out the stores next to SLU Madrid. Didn't buy anything but it was nice to know what's near.
Then home, shower, dinner, and a bit of updating and chatting before bed. Gotta stay up to talk to Casey about how Grand Jury Duty went today. Hopefully okay.
Tomorrow, hopefully learning more about libraries! :-)