Wow! Much has happened in the last few days. I just realized as I'm writing this that's exactly one week ago, at this time, I was in the Portland airport getting ready to leave on the plane to Newark. Weird! Time is going fast but at the same time, it feels like I haven't been home in forever.

As of now, we're moved in with our host family and settling in. It's so nice to be able to come back to the same place every night and I'm beginning to have somewhat of a routine even though thus far, classes have been kinda scattered at different, random times. In the afternoon on this past Tuesday, my roommate, Kathryn, and I, took a taxi with all our stuff to what we thought was our host family at the address the program provided us with. We had actually walked to look at our house earlier that day which was lucky because it turned out that the construction near our house prevented the taxi driver from being able to drop us off at the door so we had to walk a few blocks with our stuff to get there. Since we had seen it earlier that day, however, it wasn't a problem. Anyway, so we arrived at the house, expecting it to be our host family, but it turns out they actually moved like 4 days earlier, so we actually had a different address. The family who lived there, however, must have been expecting us to show up there because they explained to us that our family had moved and that the daughter would come for us soon. (We didn't really get this at first because they were speaking really fast and our spanish wasn't back up to par at that point but eventually we got the picture.) But then the daughter, Paula, and her boyfriend came to pick us up. They greeted us with 2 kisses--one on each cheek (I'd forgotten they did that)--and we walked to the new house. It was only like 3 blocks away so it wasn't a big deal.

The houses here are very interesting. Most people live in apartment type things but they actually own them, but nearly everyone lives in a complex attached to other "houses." Our house is pretty big, by Spain standards I think. It has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, a small kitchen, and a living room and dining room. It basically just consists of one really long hallway and then all the rooms branch off the hallway.

When we arrived, we greeted our Madre, Choni, and talked with her for a bit about the travels, etc., and she showed us our room which is really big compared to what I was expecting. We each have our own desk and closet/dresser and it's all color-coordinated and fairly roomy. Very nice!

The first night, we pretty much just had dinner and then our madre told us we should go to bed. The next day, we had orientation at the Centro de Lenguas Modernas (Modern Language Center or CLM) which is about a 15 min. walk from our house. Choni took us there. We met with 4 other people and their Senoras at a Plaza nearby and the 6 of us students plus the Senoras walked there together. At first it was a little intimidating to get to the CLM and see all the other students in our program, but it wasn't too bad. I know everyone was nervous like us. Basically, that first day of "class" was just orientation--we got more information about the program, filled out some forms, etc. We also got some hw too which wasn't nice, but it wasn't bad and it was interesting--an article about bull fighting and we had to answer questions on it. (Remember, 100% of the work we do here is in Spanish.) We also had to take a big walk/scavenger-hunt type thing around Granada, looking for the locations of certain places and answering questions about them on a worksheet.

Yesterday, the second day, we had real class in the morning, talking about the history of bull fighting, and then in the afternoon we went on a really neat walk/tour around Granada. I got some pretty neat pictures which I'll put up. It was really neat to be able to see more of the city in an organized outing and to learn a little about it's very extensive history and such.

Today, we had class again in the morning where we talked about some of the politics and geography of Spain. It was interesting, and it's getting easier and easier to understand what's being talked about which is obviously good. I think my roommate and I are going to go out later for some gelato or something and just wander around the city and take it all in and enjoy it. It's so beautiful here. The architecture is amazing and so beautiful and old. There are fountains everywhere! It's hot but that's why you stay inside and take siesta during that part of the day. I'm definitely enjoying my time here now that I'm settling in, and can't wait to find my favorite haunts. The spanish is going well. I'm trying to speak in spanish all the time although there are some things that I have no idea how to say but I try anyway. It's a bit frustrating, though, because the majority of the other people in this program will speak spanish during class, but as soon as class is over, they stop and start speaking in English again. I want to get to know lots of people but I don't want to speak English with them. We came here to speak/learn spanish, so when they talk in english, I always answer in spanish. It's getting much easier to understand locals, though, and I feel like my spanish has already improved so much already, which is great!

Well, I think we're going to go out soon, and I'm exhausted even though it's only 4:00 pm here, so I think I might take advantage of the siesta today. Hope you are all doing well. Talk to you soon!

Adios! :)

Estamos en Granada!

Hey!
First of all, sorry I haven’t really written at all since we’ve arrived here…I’ve been insanely busy trying to get from one place to another, etc. and it’s been hard to find a lot of time to actually sit down and write on my blog. That said, I’ll start from today so I don’t have to recount pages of things that we did in Madrid which would take forever. To put it simply, basically all we did in Madrid was sleep and walk around a little, since we were so tired and jet-lagged. But today, we took a 5-hour bus ride from Madrid to Granada. It actually wasn’t bad at all since I slept a lot of the time, and there was pretty countryside to look at. It was a relief for all of us to finally get to Granada and to know that we’re here now, and can maybe sort of start to get into a routine in the near future. We’re staying at a cute little place called Hostal Antares in Granada. It’s like a 10 min walk from the Alhambra. I haven’t been out much to walk around Granada yet since we just got here, but I know I like it way more than Madrid, which is more or less just like any big city, although there is some really neat architecture. We were going to go our for tapas tonight but were so hungry from our travels that we went out around 7:30, so there wasn’t much in the way of restaurants open, and the tapas places we checked out didn’t look too substancial. We found a little sándwiche shop instead which had yummy turkey and cheese sándwiches for 3 euro.
The Spanish-speaking is going alright. I’ve been trying to be good about asking locals things in Spanish and it’s definitely getting much easier, but it’s often still really hard to follow what they’re saying. Hopefully it gets better, though. Tomorrow, we’re off to meet our host familias—this will be both scary and exciting I think, since we don’t know what to expect at all. Hopefully, however, it will be good, and we can begin to settle in. Well, I think we’re all going to head off to bed soon. It’s actually Only 9:45 here but we’re all completely exhausted. Adios! Take care and talk to you soon!

We're here!

Hola from Espana!
Well, it's official. We arrived in Madrid this morning and are about to head out this evening to just explore a little bit of the city. (It's 9:00 here). This is a super short post and I'll fill you all in with more details later, but I just wanted to let you all know that we arrived safe and sound in Spain. :) Thanks for your support! More to come soon!
Adios!!