I'm in Madrid! And I made a point of charging my camera battery before I left so guess what is still on its charger at my place in Atlanta: that's right, my camera battery. I bought a third party battery and will be hunting for a third party charger- till then, iPhone photos will have to suffice. Most of the people I have interacted with here speak some English, with the exception of my cab driver and a waiter at the café we went to, who thought I wanted a caffe de leche when I was really trying to remember how to say ATM. The cab driver pointed out landmarks and repeated their names over and over until I pronounced them correctly. It may have been sort of a rip off, but it ended up being a boon when I was dragging my jet-lagged butt around and suddenly realized I was a bit lost. We aren't far from the Prado Museum. (Or the "Praaaah-doh.")

We don't have anything to do for three hours, so I am fucking around on the internet and trying to figure out my phone situation (I may just buy a cheapo new phone since this SIM keeps telling me something in Spanish that goes, "I'm sorry SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING Bye!") and my roommate is sleeping off the jetlag. A bunch of us went out for coffee, so my pre-trip worries about loneliness seem to have been unnecessary and my jetlag is minimal, despite only two hours of sleep on the plane. I am not really ready for food, though I haven't eaten since 7 or 8 local time. We've been blessed to get a hotel room with a giant bathroom attached, but I would trade it in for a working air conditioning unit in a heartbeat.