A gentle introduction to the theory of schemes, emphasizing examples. We assume familiarity with quasi-projective varieties, maps between quasi-projective varieties, some basic awareness about manifolds and their homology, and the language of commutative algebra. Time permitting, we formulate the main results of intersection theory and discuss their applications. The primary references are Vakil's note 'The Rising Sea' and the book of Hartshorne 'Algebraic geometry'.