Bienvenidos Espana!

It is now my second day in Spain, and I finally have the opportunity to sit down at my computer. The past 4 days have been some of the craziest and most wonderful times I have ever experienced. After what it took to physically travel here, learning Spanish and a new culture looks like the easy part!

On Wednesday morning, around 4am, my family, Cassie, and I drove to the airport so I could catch the 6am to NY, which was where the AFS Students from the USA were to spend their first night. Unfortunately, the San Diego Airport had a minor security problem...so minor that they closed down the entire airport for a bit over an hour. I was one person away from making it through security, and being in the area with a nice Starbucks and news stand, however, I was instead sitting on the floor of the security line. Much Fun.

Upon arriving at the hotel in NY, I met the other 35 or so students traveling to Spain, as well as the 50 something going to France, Austria, Russia, and South Africa. We spent the day, night, and following day at the hotel in conferences and listening to the same rules we had heard from the first day we signed up. Don't drive, don't do drugs, don't get pregnant, etc.

The 7 hours to switzerland were great fun, considering there were 30 kids all sitting on a HUGE plane together. Needless to say, we didn't sleep at all, however, we would live to regret this. Within the first 20 min of being in the Zurich airport in Switz, half the kids had started smoking in the smoking lounge, and the other half went off to buy their first legal Hienekin beer. After 3 hours in the airport, we boarded our last flight to Madrid.

Arriving in Madrid, the majority of us had not slept for 2 days, considering we were on planes most of that time. The first thing I thought was "What country am I finally in, and what language am I supposed to be speaking?" Despite my belief that we were getting picked up by our host families that day (Fri) it turned out that we were to spend the night in a Youth Hostel in Madrid.

The hostel was the best part of the trip by far! We met up with over 100 student from everywhere in the world, all of whom were doing an exchange in Spain. Because the rooms themselves were tiny, crammed with 2 bunk beds, and one step above camping, we spent most of our time outside meeting new people. My assigned roomates were three boys, Mac from the US, Gonnar from Iceland, and Reo from Japan. I became close with Gonnar, some Austrian girls, as well as some kids from the US.

Picture Below; My new Icelandic best friend/roomate, Gunnar

The next morning (Sat) everyone traveling to host families outside of Madrid left on busses, later to travel on trains or airplanes. I, living in Madrid, stayed with about 13 other kids at the hostel awaiting our families ot pick us up. In the meantime, a few of the US kids taught the card game "BS" to a bunch of European kids with minimal understanding of english.

I was picked up by my host mother, Cristina, and taken home to meet my host siblings, Cristinita (10) and Antonio (13). They live in a very close knit community where everyone walks into eachothers homes, which is amazing. My family had a large barbeque wih the entire neighborhood for them to meet me, and visa versa. It was actually a costume party, which made it twice as interesting. Apparently dressing up as Hannah Montana and HSM characters is popular EVERYWHERE.

Picture Below; some of the neighborhood kids and my host sister. They offered me a flamenco dress for the party, which of course I wore.

Cristina (mom) is amazing, and sweet as pie! Although her english is very minimal, I can almost always understand her spanish. She has been beyond helpful, and I feel confident that I will e happy here. Cristinita is also very helpful, and I find myself spending the majority of my time with her, mostly watching disney channel (en espanol) or going to the pool (she thinks the life guard es "muy guapo"). Antonio (my brother) is very shy, but he reminds me a lot of Daniel, so I think it will be ok. Today we played Uno, which was amazing because although we didn't talk a lot, he acknowledged my existence. Demitrio (father) is also very very nice, and doesn't believe me that it gets to 105 degrees in SD, and that we have green beans (people in Spain think the USA doesn't have beans).

Love, Chloe