Bienvenidos a España..sort of.

Since I am new to the world of blogging, I'll keep my first post short-ish.  As many of you know, I did not want to go to Spain for an entire semester by myself.  I was honestly terrified - I still am, actually - but I am trying to make the best of this once in a lifetime experience..maybe.  Ok, I am lying.  I really don't want to be here at all.  Call me an idiot, but I would give anything to be back at Concordia with John and all of my friends.

Saturday, January 28th - Sunday, January 29th

On the flight from Milwaukee to Chicago, I sat next to a gentleman, who is from Texas but lives in Kenosha; his parents are both Mexican, so he could speak Spanish, which was an interesting coincidence.  However, he swore like a crazy man and didn't shut up the entire way (taxi, take off, actual flight, landing, taxi).  I think he said his name was Leo, but that might not be right.  Anyways, although he was very friendly, he got progressively more annoying.  He even invited me to get a drink with him after we landed, and I was thinking to myself, "wow, this is getting slightly creepy," so I politely declined.

Then, while I was waiting at my gate to fly from Chicago to Madrid, I was reading my API packet of information when a girl came over to me and asked if I was going to Spain.  We came to realize that there were about eight or so of us from API on the flight to Madrid, so it was nice to have some people to talk to.  The flight went by fast because I fell asleep after dinner and woke up an hour before we landed, so I got about nine hours of sleep.  I normally can't sleep on planes, so I was very fortunate.

Once we finally maneuvered our way through the Madrid airport and got our luggage, we had to wait about two hours to get picked up by API at 11:00 am.  Waiting became the theme of this day.  We waited at the airport.  We waited on the bus for twenty minutes.  And then some of us had to wait for almost an hour for our hotel rooms to be cleaned.  I didn't know waiting and doing nothing could be so tiring.  It is.

I met one of my housemates, Nicole, took a nap, met my other housemate, Abbie, and then went to an orientation meeting, which was followed by a walk around the plazas by our hotel and dinner.  I took pictures of my dinner - they are on facebook if anyone wants to see.  Yum..fried vegetables (said with a sarcastic tone).  No, it really was ok, but I had to eat a lot of bread to fill myself up.