Bienvenidos A España

WOWZERS. Yeah, today has been crazy and it's only 3:15. I'm wishing it was 9 o'clock so I could justify going to bed, though. I. AM. EXHAUSTED. I left Salt Lake International yesterday at 11:15 am, and arrived in Madrid this morning at about 10 am. We had a gnarly layover in JFK last night (but what else would you expect from JFK?) and I had a hell of a time trying to sleep on the plane to be jazzed about roaming the beautiful city of Madrid today. I'm anything but jazzed. All I want is to sleep and get caught up on everything today, and then explore tomorrow, and I'm doing everything in my power to stay awake right now.

So I made it to Madrid without problems, but only to the airport. Once in the airport, I ended up with the wrong group of people from the program and was headed to the wrong hostel, so I went back to find the other crew only to discover that they had JUST caught a taxi to the right hostel. So, I caught my own taxi, and had fun paying for that. My taxi driver was really awesome though, showed me where things were as we went, pointed me in the direction of good restaurants, and called me "Lady Estella" the whole way. "No problem, Lady Estella!" The only problem is I have no idea how to convert feet to kilometers, or Fahrenheit to Celsius. I asked if 18˚ was "calor" or hot, and got the response, "CALOR?! Noooo, 40˚ es calor! 18˚ es nada!" Whoops.

Then once I got to the hostel, I realized that I had forgotten to account for the fact that I would arrive the 19th instead of the 18th and didn't book a room for saturday night, but booked one for last night instead (that I still had to pay for...whoops again). Fernando (the cool spanish dude working the desk), told me that they were full that night and I panicked. Where was I going to stay?? What a rookie mistake... DOH! But then, he looked again for me and realized that (whoops on his part this time), there was a bed that was open. PHEW. So I still have somewhere to stay while I'm in Madrid. What a relief, eh? So here I am, sitting in the lounge of Way Hostel on Calle de Relatores, in Madrid, Spain.

I'm not sure that it's quite hit me that I'm here yet, but I'm sure it will once I wake up. Now I just have to figure out how to charge stuff, because I SWEAR Spaniards have a thing against electrical outlets. Once I figure out how to do that, I'll post the few photos I've taken, and I'll start taking more!

Tonight, at 19:45 I'm taking a TANGO LESSON! jajaja! And will take photos of that as well :)
That's basically my first couple hours in Europe. No bigs. I'll post as I get time, happy readings!




**THIS POST IS NOT FOR COURSE CREDIT**