Bienvenidos a Madrid!

I'm finally in Madrid and all settled in at my house! It's really nice, I like it a lot here so far.

The trip was long and tiring, since I left Boston at 8:30pm, arrived in London at 8am their time (3am EST), and then got to Madrid at 2:30pm (8:30 am EST). I did sleep some on the planes, but definitely not enough. The transatlantic British Airways flight was great, the seats were really comfy, the food was pretty good for airplane food (and they gave us free wine!), and all of the seats had their own personal tv with 12 movie channels.

I was soo tired when I got here, especially after having to lug that ginormous backpack around Heathrow in London, which was a nightmare. They make you go through security at least twice, once right after you get off the plane, and again when you go into the new terminal. Of course, the people at Logan airport lied to me, and told me that I had to go to terminal 1 in London. So when I got there, my flight wasn't even listed on the screen. Turns out I actually had to go to terminal 2, which was a long walk away, that airport was huge! It was also really frustrating, because they don't tell you the gate number until 30 minutes before the flight leaves practically, so you have to sit there and watch the screen to see where it is, and some of the gates take 20 minutes to walk to .

When I finally made it to Madrid, I waited forever for my luggage, and my big suitcase never came, so I had to file a missing luggage claim, all in Spanish, and I could tell that my face was bright red the entire time! Luckily, they delivered it today. On the smaller bag I did get right at the airport, someone (TSA I guess) had taken off the lock and never put it back on , and my shampoo and conditioner had exploded in the front pocket, but luckily it didnt ruin anything . But luckily, the big suitcase still had its lock, and there was actually a second tsa-approved lock (not mine) stuck in the front pocket of it, so that makes up for the one they took/I lost!

My house is a really pretty apartment in a nice building, everything looks brand new and in perfect condition. I'll have to put up pictures later. The family is awesome, I'm really glad i chose to do a host family instead of a residencia. Cristina, the mom, is really cool. I think she likes having host students because she gets really bored not working when the kids are in school (she's a lawyer, andI guess it's really hard to find a part-time job here,or a job that has the same hours as the kids' school, so that's why she doesn't work now), so I think she likes having the company. The dad, Miguel, is really nice too, but isn't around that much because he works a lot. The two boys, Jaime, who is 7, and Carlos, who is 6, are really cute. They look a lot alike, and Cristina always dresses them in matching outfits (it seems like a lot of parents do that here, at least for the kids I noticed in the park). Jaime is really smart, and very eloquent (at least it seems so to me), and Carlos has a lot more energy, and is pretty crazy. He'll come peek his head into my room and then as soon as I see him, he runs away.

Last night, after I unpacked the first suitcase and took a nap, we watched a movie with the kids, and then Cristina and I stayed up and watched tv/a movie and ate ice cream. Today was some kind of holiday for the patron saint of teachers, so the kids didn't have school (but adults still have to work), so she took me and the kids on a walk to show me the area, and we went to that big Retiro park, and we sat and watched the boys play soccer. It's so warm and gorgeous out, I was hot wearing a 3/4 sleeve shirt, but they said that it isn't normally this warm.

Tonight we have the welcome dinner for the Georgetown program, and I'm going to go with one of the other Georgetown girls that lives nearby, so hopefully with the maps and everything we won't get too lost. And then Orientation doesn't really actually start until 5pm tomorrow, so I still have a lot of free time.

Also, the girl who lived here last semester left her prepaid cellphone here for me. I'm not sure if this will be the one I keep, cause I don't know if this will be the phone plan that everyone will decide to get, but it definitely will save me the money of having to buy or rent a phone! I just need to put more money on it, cause I guess it only has about 2 euros on it (its like 20 euro cents a minute to make a call (expensive!), so that's only like 10 miutes of talking time. I did finally get the internet set up here, too. The only problem is that it tends to disconnect every few minutes, which is annoying.

Anyways, now that I've written a novel and nobody will probably even read this far, I'm going to go and get ready for the dinner.

Hasta luego!