The airport and flight were obvi great fun, but 7-13 hours later (depending on how you look at it), I was finally standing in the Madrid airport! It turns out that the process of going through immigration and customs in Madrid is as simple as having a security look at your passport and stamp it without asking any questions or even looking at it. I could tell I'm going to like it here already.
A ton of people from the program were on a flight that landed right after mine so I got to see a lot of familiar faces while battling the masses to grab my massive (rainbow-strapped) bag from the belt at baggage claim. After finding my lovely roommate amongst the crowd, we watched a our taxi driver literally jumped up and down trying to shove all of our bags into the trunk to make them fit. (Note: he did. We were thoroughly impressed.) He dropped us off at a street corner and pointed to literally the sketchiest looking building I had seen thus far (complete with a mud-splattered door and walls) and told us that this was our destination. We tried to make the best of it, and ended up making fools of ourselves (gotta start off on the right foot.) Obviously, it was actually the nice looking building next door, and obviously every single person within our range of sight was staring at us while we dragged our "dead-body-sized" bags to the door, and made a desperate intercom call to whom we hoped was our host family.
When we finally arrived I was so pleasantly surprised to meet Angeles and Emilio! Angeles is a feisty 70 year old who you would swear doesn't look a day over 50 (I would've taken a picture of them, but I don't think we're quite on that level yet), and Emilio is her perfect counterpart - he's a seemingly crotchety old man who's actually be sweet as can be!
Of course, the first thing they want to do is feed us. For breakfast, Angeles made us eggs over easy, toast, fresh squeezed orange juice, and coffee. Everything was wonderful and I don't even like coffee OR orange juice. I did my best to distract myself by unpacking and such to prevent from falling asleep afterwards. I actually have my own bedroom which is cool for the space, and it expands the English speaking areas of the house to two rooms rather than just to the one I figured Erin and I would be sharing. I have a balcony off of my room which is beautiful! It overlooks the river and you could see what I believe Emilio said was la iglesia de San Francisco. Along the river there's an awesome path that Erin and I have already decided we'd like to run.
After lunch and dinner however, we're thinking we might have to run it more than once a day! Lunch consisted of generous portions of paella, salad, bread, and spanish tortilla - a dish made from eggs, onions, and potatoes. I suppose you could say this was much more than a taste, but it was delicious!
After lunch, we decided to take a walk around the river to digest a bit. We ran into a girl from Duke who's living on the 8th floor of our building with another family! We came back and relaxed for awhile, spent an excessive (really, really excessive) amount of time figuring out how to get the internet to work on my computer (success!), and tried to keep ourselves awake until dinner. Angeles had assured us that dinner is a very small meal. When the time finally came (10PM!), we discovered that "small" means 3 pieces of pork (each!), bread, pasta salad, and a banana. Duh.
I'm actually here. In Madrid. Right now. Tomorrow, it's off to the university to remind us that this IS in fact real life.
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| Iglesia de San Fransisco |
Adios!
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