Día de Viaje

Gabriele and Antonio saying goodbye!

Hola from Granada! These past two days of travel have been insane for me. I also apologize ahead of time if I’m lacking detail or a little scatterbrained. I’m talking on the side with my host parents at the same time that I am writing this.

First off, the transferring of flights worked out unbelievably well, I was cutting it close a couple times, but I managed to make all of my flights. There was one road bump between Milwaukee and Chicago went my flight got delayed; I was already on a bit of an emotional roller coaster, so when the said they were putting me on a bus to Chicago I panicked. Luckily it all worked out and I met up with Peter in Chicago, his familiar face made all the difference and I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was previously.

On the flight I sat between two guys both in their 20s who will be studying abroad, one in Scotland and the other in Spain about 6 hours away from where I am J It was entertaining talking with them about their plans and how we were all excited to start this adventure.

After we landed in London I headed to Madrid, before flying into Granada. (I wont bore you with how I ate a turkey sandwich out of the vending machine and instagrammed the ceiling)

We landed across a street from the entrance to the airport and walked along a sidewalk and through some doors to get to baggage claim.  The taxi drive Jose (hired through our program) picked me up from the airport and (very speedily) drove me to my new apartment. I’m not sure if he didn’t speak any English or if he didn’t want to enable me on my first day abroad, but we spoke only in Spanish. Ironically the radio was playing Mariah Carey. 

We talked about the weather,  my host family, school, and the Spanish language. It’s nice that I’m absolutely forced to use my Spanish, it doesn’t matter how bad it is or if the words aren’t exactly what I mean. The point is that my broken Spanish is understood much better than any perfectly fluent and grammatically correct English sentence would be. Jose got to my house and was blocking the road outside of the apartment so he quickly dropped me off at the door of the building and pointed to the apartment number my host family was in.  This absolutely terrified me because I didn’t really understand what he was telling me and I couldn’t for the life of me drag both of my suitcases at once. I set my suitcases against the wall as I tried to think of how to deal with the situation. Luckily my host dad appeared and helped me transport myself and my luggage to the 3^rd floor. From there my host mom (Elba) and host dad (Juan Miguel) showed me around their apartment and gave me some fresh fruit to eat and tea to drink. They were incredibly patient with me and would re explain things in different ways (or look up the translation on their smart phones) to make sure I understood what they were saying. I feel really comfortable here already.

After eating a plantano and drinking my té verde, I tried one of their wrapped cookies. I feel a little ridiculous, but the cookie was in between two sheets of paper, at first I thought you were suppose to eat the paper, but then I tried it and it was really bland and tasted just like actual paper. I began the tedious task of picking it all off (which should have clued me in) before Juan Miguel told me “todo todo!!” he was saying to eat the whole thing. Anyways I’m off to bed. Sorry for the lack of entertaing stories and city description!