Arrival in Madrid

This entry is going to be a little lengthy, as I just figured out how to really work it. But here is my first documentation of my semester in Madrid!

So Kenzie and I arrived in Madrid on Sunday at about 11:00am Spain time or 4:00am St. Paul time.  We finally figured out how to snag a taxi and were on our way to our home stay in the center of Madrid about a 15 minute cab ride from the airport.  This gave us a chance to get a first impression of the city and it reminded me a little bit of California, the greenery was amazing to see after leaving behind the mounds of snow in Minnesota.

We arrived at our host family's flat and our host mom, Mar, met us at the door.  Like my last experience in Spain, I felt a little claustrophobic as everything is built up and not out.  The elevator was similar in size to the "chokie" in Matilda without the nails (Maureen and Monica you should understand this reference.)   Right away, we met the rest of our host family, the dad's name is Nando and is a French professor at a local high school.  The grandma's name is Tata; she is about half my size and the cutest little woman I've ever met.  When I gave them the gift a brought, Tata loved the handmade cross and questioned me about my religion and invited me to attend la misa (mass) with her.  The boys are Luis (12) and Miguel (10) and are super bubbly and continuously babble to us in Spanish and run around with the Nerf guns that they got for Christmas.  No one in the family speaks any English, besides Mar who just started taking lessons.  

I am sharing a room with Kenzie and the other girls are Stephanie from Texas, Liz from St. Louis, and Dani from Miami.  Thus, the 45* temperatures here are feeling tropical to Kenzie and I, while the others are shivering.  It's all about perspective I guess!  The girls are all super nice and right away we went out to explore a little bit around our part of the city.  We are right in the heart of the city and our balcony overlooks the Royal Palace which is very pretty.  Also, our flat is right above the Opera and so there are consistently musicians playing on the street, including our favorite accordion player who serenades us during the siesta hours.  We first went to this Mercado that was huge and filled with people and food and drinks of any kind you could imagine.  We were pretty overwhelmed at this point and got a Spanish quiche and then it started to rain so we went back to our flat.  We broke the jet lag rule and took a nap after unpacking everything.  Later on, we had dinner, pasta and salad, then instead of going out like we had planned just went straight to bed.

Today, we had orientation at the St. Louis-Madrid campus and took our first Madrid metro trip there.  We navigated the metro just fine, but when we got off we walked the opposite direction of campus and had to stop and ask for directions from some locals.  Nevertheless, we made it to orientation on time and sat through a typical orientation session with FAQ's and whatnot.  Then we went on small guided tours and ate lunch.  I had ended up in a different group from my roommates and without any form of communication I couldn't get back with them.  In which case, I struck up conversation with a group of girls from Boston College and one from Loyola and we all went out together to the Corte Ingles which is like a Nordstrom's mashed with Target mashed with Best Buy mashed with a grocery store mashed with everything else you can think of.  It is beyond huge.  We all picked up some random items we needed and then since we were right by my place I just went back and met my roommates at the apartment.  

Now we are all napped and fed and it is about 10:00 so we are about to get ready to go out for our first time to a tapas bar called El Tigre which serves tapas or little snacks with every drink you order.  Tomorrow we will get our cell phones so hopefully that will make things a little easier...