Hola!

So we have officially been in España for 2 full days and it is so incredibly different. After what seemed like a week of traveling, the plane rides are finally over. We left Minnesota at 545 p.m. on Tuesday Jan 24th and got to Madrid on Wednesday Jan 25th. Our first flight was from Minneapolis to Chicago and lasted 54 minutes, not bad at all if you ask me. When we arrived in Chicago, a girl from our group, Lauren, found out she had a different flight time than us and had to run all around the airport to find out that flight was still in Ireland and she was on ours. Thankfully everything worked out and we boarded the second, and longest flight, to London Heathrow airport. Once on the plane, I was seated next to two British boys, and the girls in my group were very jealous, offering to switch seats with me. I attempted to ask one of them a question, but found it rather difficult to understand his accent, which seems weird since I love speaking with a British accent. Anyway, after 8 hours of flying, we successfully landed in London and had another 4 hour layover until we boarded the third and final flight to Madrid. The mountains and lakes we saw out the plane windows were beautiful. The short two hour flight landed us safely in Madrid, where we ran into the first of the few problems we've encountered so far. Because Lauren's carry on was rather large, they required that she check it back in Chicago and unfortunately, it didn't make it to Madrid with the rest of us. So we had to use our Spanish, and with the much needed help of Christina (another girl in our group whose parents speak Spanish at home), we were able to figure out that they would deliver the bag to us in Cáceres. We then were taken to the hotel and found that it was beautiful. We ordered dinner and called it a night rather early.

The next day, we went back to the airport to meet up with the group and found it another rather difficult task to figure out where we were supposed to meet. After a little while of searching, we were able to find our group and grabbed a quick breakfast in the airport. Around 1 p.m., Raquel y Miguel came to pick us up and take us to Cáceres. We boarded the bus and took (what was supposed to be a three hour bus ride) a four hour bus ride to our new home. We stopped in a city to grab a snack along the way and smelled some rather nasty pig farms. Alice and I were a little grossed out. After riding the bus the rest of the way, we arrived in Cáceres where we met our host mom. Lola is a cute, middle aged women, who works in the social security office near our piso. She is spunky and talks oh so incredibly fast. Alice and I share a room and have a host sister, Mara, from Kalamazoo, who will be moving out in two weeks to find her own apartment. We also have a host prima, Susana, although she really isn't related to Lola in anyway.

This morning, we meet at the post office (el correo, a.k.a. the meeting point) and walked to get our bus passes and library pass. In a few hours, we have to go back to el correo to go purchase our phones. Mara is also going to take Alice and I to buy converters because we would like to plug in our electronics. It's rather rainy and gloomy today, and as Alice continues to tell me, it's freezing (it is 50 degrees today). We're hoping to do some shopping this weekend and start classes at 10 a.m. on Monday! That's all for now, but I'll be posting more later or tomorrow :)