The flight over was not too bad...despite the fact that I had the center seat for the first leg of the flight. Coincidentally, the man sitting on my right was a Hoosier! (I flew out of Dulles, keep in mind) He told me that he lived in Marion, Indiana until attending IU for undergrad...now he works in DC as a lawyer. Anyways, I watched the movie "How to Alienate People and Lose Friends" on the plane and I highly recommend it! When I landed in London for my layover, I was lucky enough to run into five girls who are studying abroad in Madrid with me! We all were on the same plane flying into Madrid.
It was absurd how tired we all were when we finally arrived in Spain...all we wanted to do was sleep and eat...unfortunately for my roomates and I, our hotel bathroom had a leak in the ceiling so we had to handle that before anything else. At night, our whole group went on a walking tour of downtown Madrid. It reminds me a lot of NYC. The one thing that really stuck out to me on my first night was how much the people in Spain LOVE to eat!! I think I'm going to come back 50 pounds heavier from this trip from all the carbs they eat here...they served us bread 3 times during dinner our first night! Haha
On Sunday morning, it was time to meet our host families. I completely had forgotten that I requested a woman to be my host senora...and as it turned out, I got her! Her name is Cristina Lopez and she is the sweetest woman. She lives with her 14 year old daughter who is also named Cristina. Her "piso"(apartment in Spain) is gorgeous and she keeps it very neat. It encourages me to keep my own room neat while I am here...I don't want them to write me off as a messy American! She cooked lunch and dinner for me and I struggled to finish most of it because I did not want to look rude...finally I had to tell her that her portions were a bit too large and i couldn't eat it all! Later that night, Cristina, myself, my classmate Jessica and her host mom took a walk around the block together...it was a lot of fun! We were also walking with Alex, Cristina's dog! Oh, the other thing about food in Spain...or everything for that matter...is it happens much later than in the US. Lunch is not eaten until around 2 pm and dinner not until 9 or 9:30 pm!
Today, I woke up around 8 am and got ready to go to school! I took the metro with Jessica. The metro system here is very advanced and very convenient...much more so than that of DC. We don't start classes until next week, so today was just the beginning of orientation. We took a LONG lunch around 2 pm...it was quite the event...3 courses and everything! (I have a feeling this blog is going to focus a lot on food haha)...anyways it was a great day....until the ATM ate my debit card...oh well I guess worse things could happen....I got a great opportunity to bond with little Cristina tonight..she is a doll...and we are both reading the Twilight books which I thought was funny! Alright, I'm gonna get to sleep...I have to be up early in the morning to go to the bank whose ATM swallowed my card...good night!!
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