We arrived in Madrid at 1:15 (6:15 STL). After breezing through customs, it was off to our host family. With the help of a wonderful SLU student, Tom, we made it to our host family 2 hours later. Well why did it take 2 hours to get to out host family you might ask? Well let me tell you. After customs we headed to baggage claim with Tom. He had studied abroad for a year and was back for another semester. He was quite familiar with the airport, and even better, fluent in espanol. To save 60 euros on a cab, he showed us how to navigate the subway. So with 6 suitcases between the 2 of us, we headed for the metro. Well its not a proper start to the day without and embarrassing moment or two or three... As we were descending the elevator, my luggage slipped out of my hands and went soaring down the escalator and nailing Tom. It then nailed Tom and Corrine's luggage and mine began piling up. With some stares, we laughed the moment off, due to how slap happy we were without sleep. As we got all the luggage we noticed something, we had just missed the metro. Great start, I know. After hopping on the metro we were Nuevos Ministerios bound. Once off the metro Corrine, Tom, and I lugged the luggage about a half mile to our host family. Tom being so very generous, carried my luggage the whole way. After ringing the door bell we were greated with our host Senora Angeles! She is very sweet and only speaks spanish. Tom definitely eased the transition on our arrival. He began translating everything for us. Once Corinne and I were settled, Tom headed off to his apartment and Corinne and I passed out till dinner. With our Senora only speaking espanol, it makes it difficult to communicate. Luckily Corinne and I know some Spanish. It's weird how fast we are catching on! Im so proud of ourselves. After dinner, we headed off to bed.
This morning we woke up at 8:30 and got ready for orientation! We headed out to navigate our way to the SLU campus. Luckily we navigated the subway and the streets to SLU in one try! Yay! Orientation was pretty boring, but it was great meeting new people. After orientation a huge group of nursing students got together and we headed out to explore Madrid. After walking a while, we stumbled back to our host family. Come to find out, we live across the street from our nursing group of friends. A little later on we navigated to Starbucks. This was our first legitimate time using Spanish to order and purchase something. I ordered a caffe americano with ice. Well I new how to say everything but ice. They were very nice and understood. They told me to say frio, which meant ice. After Starbucks we headed to the subway to show one of our friends how to navigate back to her place. After we showed her, Corinne and I hopped back on the metro to Neuvos Ministerios. Well, not knowing that there are 8 locations to come out of the subway, we got lost. It actually turned out to be a great time! We were smart and used a map to navigate our way back to our host family 2 hours later. We are both sitting in our room and catching up with people. We have dinner at 8 and then we are heading to Sol with one big group. Sol is the city. We are excited to experience our first night out in the city!
Ps- Funny story. Corinne, not knowing that the converter for her laptop only took 2 whole prongs, she inserted hers that had 3. What happened? One might guess... A loud pop, then smoke. Luckily no fire! The moment doesn't sound funny, but when you have had no sleep in 30 hours, everything is 10 times as funny.
Hasta Luego!
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