Wow, we're finally here! After arriving at the Madrid airport, along with both of my pieces of luggage (yay!), I found my way to the Food Gallery where I met up with all of the Iowa State students. There we sat and chatted about our flight experiences, our lack of sleep from the previous night and what we anticipated this semester would bring us.

I arrived in Madrid at 10:05am, 3:05am states time, and we left by 1:30 when our advisor, Toni, arrived to greet us. She is from Spain and has been corresponding with our advisors from Iowa State to make this program possible. She, along with two other students from the Universidad de Extremadura, helped us load our luggage onto a charter bus that would be taking us to Caceres.

The next four hours were spent drifting in and out of sleep, while simultaneously avoiding any Kodak moment that could result from the well-awaited slumber. We also stopped for lunch where we were introduced to the first of what would be many new food items.

When we finally arrived in Caceres, we were pleasantly greeted by our host families. I am living with another student from Iowa State, Kathryn, in a beautiful house that is about a thirty minute walk from the city. Carmen, our host mom is 62 and such a sweetheart. She doesn't know any English, but we find that more often than not, we are able to get our point across already. Her daughter, who is also named Carmen, lives here as well. It is quite typical for children to live with their parents until they marry--no need to worry Mom and Dad ;). Little Carmen, as Kathryn and I have come to call her, is 28 and a great help in our conversation as she reminds her mother to slow down when speaking to us. :)

We were told that another student would be living with us until the beginning of February when he finished up his program here in Caceres. We were ALSO told that he was from a spanish-speaking country so he would not know English.

We arrived at our house to meet Paula, the family dog. She greeted us at the gate with a lemon in her mouth, which is a typical scene for her when outside. We walked up to the front door with all of our luggage and looked at the place we would be calling home for the next four months. The house is beautiful and quite large for just a woman and her daughter.

We walked up the marble staircase to put our things in our room, and as we did, we ran into Bengt, the other student living with the Carmens. It is customary to greet people here with a kiss on each cheek, so we did as we introduced ourselves; in spanish of course. :)

We asked him where he was from, and when he responded with "Soy de Michigan," Kathryn and I exchanged the same expression. We then continued our conversation in English as we told him we had been informed that he only spoke spanish. We all got a good laugh out of it.