¡Estoy en Madrid!

Well, the flight to Spain was anything but fun. I sat next to two wonderful people who will be in Cadiz with me but unfortunately we were surrounded by horribly behaved children and parents who probably couldn't control a patch of dandelions. I slept for about an hour if you add up all the times I dozed off but once we got off the plane, I was determined not to sleep until it was time to go to bed last night. When we got to the hotel, our rooms weren’t ready yet so we just put our stuff into a couple rooms and went to explore the city. Aitor, our resident director, only speaks to us in Spanish and warned us the street we were about to be on was where all the prostitutes stand around. It was a pretty funny sight and since prostitution is legal (and acceptable) the girls had absolutely no shame in wearing practically nothing and twirling around in the streets waiting for clients. We ate breakfast (ham sandwiches?) at some little coffee shop and continued to walk around the city afterwards until our rooms were ready. A couple of us went and bought cell phones to use while we’re in Spain. They are the most basic phones and do not even have t9. I went with the purple Samsung flip phone. So far Madrid has been pretty interesting. Before the trip we were warned that Spaniards dress rather conservative… which I find to be extremely untrue. Maybe the adults do, but the teenagers/young adults definitely do not dress very conservatively. After a pretty gross dinner, I took a shower and went straight to bed. Some people went out to the clubs but they don’t open until midnight and I was way too tired for that. After sleeping 14 hours last night, we went to Starbucks this morning where the baristas instantly picked up we were American and spoke to us in English. Although my Spanish is not very good right now, it’s not going to get any better if people don’t speak to me in Spanish. Most people in Spain do not speak English though so for the most part it won’t be a problem. One thing I found hilarious was their inability to spell our names. My cup said “Blave” on it. When I handed him my card he looked at the name and gave me a big smile, said oops, and that he was sorry. It was pretty funny and I told him it was like the Blair Witch Project, which he recognized. One thing I do find extremely odd is the amount of pregnant women smoking cigarettes.  I have been to Europe before so I was not amazed by the prevalence of cigarettes but I’m pretty sure it is well established that smoking cigarettes while you’re pregnant is not acceptable.  We head to Cadiz tomorrow to meet up with our host families and start getting acclimated to our new home for the next 6 weeks. We laid out all of our plans for the trip and it’s going to be extremely busy and I’m sure we will all be taking advantage of siesta ( built in nap time- more on that later) every day. The bus ride to Cadiz is 9 hours, which is longer than our flight here. At least we’ll be on a comfortable bus ( with wifi!) and we’ll get to know each other even better. So far the group seems really fun and active and I’m excited to spend the next 6 weeks with them.

¡Adios!