University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras: The Beginning

Today is my second day in Puerto Rico and I like it much better than yesterday already. When I first arrived, I was completely overwhelmed. First, the accent of Puerto Ricans is much different than that of Spanish speakers from Spain. Here, they drop the end of their words—for example, they drop all s’s pretty much always. Like the Spanish word, “Vamos”, which means, Let’s go, Puerto Ricans say “Vamo.” So, when they talk fast and drop the end of words so much it’s hard to understand. Also, they speak so fast and with a mumble almost. Anyway, it will just take time to adjust to the speaking here.
So, Treavor and I met a few other exchange students at the airport, along with the coordinator for exchange students and we went straight to our dorms from the airport. Our dorms, Torre Norte (Picture on the right), are the dorms for exchange students (there are only maybe 75 of us) and other local Puerto Ricans. But it is definitely considered the worst of the dorms on campus because it is soooo old and extremely dirty with NO air conditioning!! And it is about 90 degrees and very, very humid too! I have not stopped sweating since I have been here probably. I feel lucky at least that I do not have cockroaches in my room (yet) like another girl I was talking to that lives here.
So, today we had orientation bright and early in the morning with all the exchange students. We toured the campus, which is extremely beautiful and lined with palm trees and some kind of fruit tree that I haven’t figured out what it is yet. The campus is clean and the buildings are very pretty with some spanish colonial style influence I think. In the orientation I met a ton of other exchange students—probably about 20 from the U.S., and the rest from all over the world. Considering the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras has 20,000 undergraduate students, 20 students from the U.S. is not many either! Anyway, it was really neat to meet new people from Austria, France, Spain, Switzerland, Jamaica, Brazil and probably more places I can’t remember right now.
After orientation, Treavor and I met an exchange student, Andreas, from Madrid, Spain who we talked to for a long time, and then he invited us to the beach with him and about 20 other students from all over Spain. They were all extremely nice and we spoke solo espanol the whole time at the beach! We went to the beach in Condado, which I guess is an “area” of San Juan about 4-5 minutes away in a taxi. The sand and water were beautiful and clean. The water felt like bath water too, it was so warm!
Anyway we had a great time at the beach and came back around 7pm. By that time it was dark already, which it is hard to get used to it getting dark at 7pm I think! We ate dinner at Subway because it seems that only American fast food places are around our dorms and campus. On campus we have Burger King, Pizza Hut, Sbarro, Quiznos, Church’s Chicken, and Subway! It is weird being somewhere with all these American businesses, shops and restaurants, like Pep Boys, Blockbuster, Curves, Baskin Robbins, Foot Lockers, etc., when everyone speaks another language and no one is truly American!