Hola!

Hi all! As of yesterday, I am in Madrid! After a ridiculously long day of travel, I arrived at my home for next four or five months...an adorable apartment right near the center of town. My homestay mom, my senora (for some reason it won't let me put in the special characters...) is wonderful. She's very sweet and helpful and patient with my lacking language skills. Also in the apartment is her son, who's in his late 20's and there's also another student studying in Madrid from Cordoba, Spain who's about my age but not very social (yet, anyway).

Madrid is absolutely beautiful! It is such a vibrant city with gorgeous buildings and parks and the people so far have been friendly and helpful. Today was the first official day of the program and after meeting at the school (which is a convenient 5 minute walk from my building) we spent the entire day touring the city. We took the metro and buses to familiarize ourselves with the public transportation (which is very extensive and organized). We saw a ton of the city, although it was very hurried so I'll definitely need to revisit all the places we hurried past. In typical Spanish style, we all had a long, leisurely lunch at a restaurant in town around 2 o'clock. The food's good...I'm still getting used to it and haven't had a big meal at my house yet so we'll have to wait and see how the cooking is.

This whole week is orientation. I'm not sure exactly what we will be doing but probably more touring the city and getting to know our way around. Classes don't start until next week so it will definitely be nice to have some time to get used to the Spanish way of life. As far as the language goes, I think I'm doing decently well. My family doesn't speak any English so it has really forced me to practice my Spanish and I think I'm getting my point across even though I struggle a lot. They all speak so fast that it's definitely hard to follow but hopefully my ears will adjust. Haha.

Anyway I'm going to head to bed because I'm still ridiculously jetlagged. Damn 15 hours of flying and the huge time difference! Hope everything is great in the states! I would love to hear from you either by email or comments or something!

Adios!