Finally here!

Hello again! I’ve made it to Spain and am currently in my homestay! The trip over was exhausting to say the least. We flew to Philadelphia first and then waited for about an hour for our connecting flight to Madrid. Walking to the gate in Philly took a lot longer than it should have because the handle on my carry on suitcase broke. And of course that bag was way heavier than it should have been since I ended up stuffing all of my heaviest things into it to make the 50 pound checked bag limit. It wasn’t so bad though. Lauren (the girl I travelled over with who is also in my program) and I just stood on the moving sidewalks. Anyways the next flight to Madrid took about 7 hours and left about 45 minutes late. I tried my best to convince myself to finish the book I have to read for my first class, but I ended up just watching Australia (the longest movie they offered) and a couple episodes of Sex and the City. I ended up only sleeping for about 15 minutes on the whole flight. (Partly due to being excited/anxious and partly due to the toddler who would randomly scream out for his “mama”.) Lauren and I landed in Madrid at 8 am (just in time to see the sunrise from the plane), went through the easiest customs ever (we didn’t even have to fill out a form) and got our bags without any problems. I found an atm at the airport with the best exchange rate I’d seen and got out 200 euros. We took a taxi to the Atocha train station and then got on an 11:00 train to Sevilla. The train ride was my favorite part of travelling. It was pretty spacious and very nice! I guess I’m just used to riding Marta around, but this train was so quiet! I fell asleep for about an hour and a half. The train ride took 2.5 hours total and before we knew it we had arrived in Sevilla! When we first drove into the hotel we stayed at for the first night, I must admit I was a little disappointed. It didn’t look like any of the pictures of Sevilla that I had seen.  Lauren and I checked into the hotel and then went out to do some exploring and eat lunch. Most places were closed for Siesta so we just ate at a bar pretty close to our hotel. Not only was it hard to decide what to eat because the food was all in Spanish, but as our luck would have it the menus were handwritten rather sloppily. We both just pointed to what we wanted from the Menu del Dia and hoped it would be good. For my tapas I got albondigas (which I had heard of but couldn’t remember what they were—turns out they are meatballs :/) and then I had pollo del horno. Interestingly they both came with french fries on top (something that is apparently very common here). Lauren got asparagus with an egg (that to be blunt looked absolutely disgusting!) and pollo del horno too. Everything we ordered was for some reason swimming in oil and vinegar and I soon had a terrible stomach ache.

                When we got back to the hotel I found some wifi to let people know I got in safely and went to the room to shower and nap. My roommate’s name is Colleen and she seems awesome! She’s from Winston Salem and we each ended up bring our host family Moravian sugar cookies as our gift. I think we will get along great! Anyways at 8 we met up with all the people in our program (22 girls and 2 boys…haha) and went out to dinner. It was great to meet a lot more people and that made me start feeling better about the program. When we walked to the restaurant, I was SO much happier about Sevilla. Apparently where Lauren and I had been exploring earlier was the not so great side of the city. But the heart of Sevilla is absolutely GORGEOUS! I cannot wait to start exploring more later today (Pictures to come!). We got back to the hotel and tried to go to sleep. I ended up  being too excited to sleep very well though. We had just found out which families we were getting assigned for our homestay and I simply couldn’t wait! Turns out Colleen and I had both listed our preferences to live with a family with kids and we got it! The family were staying with has 3 kids (Luis,12; Maria, 9; Carmen, 3). We saw pictures of them and they are SO cute!!

                In the morning, we ate a quick breakfast and then were called to a taxi to take us to our homestay. It is in a very nice apartment complex and our senora, Pilar, seems so sweet! She even told us that we could consider her to be “vuestra madre espanola” (our Spanish mom). The apartment is beautiful. It was even featured in a magazine for being so well decorated. I think Colleen and I really lucked out here! We haven’t met the kids yet but they should be home for Siesta soon! And whatever she is cooking smells fantastic.

                Sorry for writing so much! Turns out I had a lot to update everyone on! Hasta luego!