Traveling to Spain

After leaving the Chicago airport it still hadn't hit me that I was on my way to Spain. The 7 hour flight wasn't too bad and the food also wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Luckily I was in a window seat and not in a row of four people so I wouldn't have to choose to wake a person up to go to the bathroom or just hop over their lap to get to the bathroom. We all know how that would turn out if I tried that. I was afraid that I would get sick from the sneezing man who sat next to me but luckily that didn't happen. After arriving in the Madrid airport jetlag already had kicked it. I wasn't able to sleep at all on the plane so my brain felt like it was the wee hours of the morning so the 4 hour layover in Madrid was rough. After my roomate Maggie and another friend and I found our way around the airport and through customs we were on our way. Everything went smoothly which was great. After just one more flight of only one hour we made it to Granada! It was surreal hearing the flight attendant say that we had arrived and I stepped off of the plain into what seemed to be 65 degree weather surrounded by mountains. Much different from my ice covered home town surrounded by corn fields.

We met with the other people from our group and luckily none of our luggage was lost! I was nervous that my luggage would be lost since apparantly it's common enough that we were sent an email of spainsh phrases to say if that were to happen. Maggie and I went to our house via taxi. The taxi driver pulled over, assisted us with our luggage, and then asked if we knew how to get to our host families apartment. We said no and he was nice enough to show us. We buzzed in and lugged our obnoxious amount of heavy luggage up a flight of stairs and then we found a tiny elevator. We took the time to try and fit it in, when our host sister Cristina who is about our age rescued us and came down and told us we were on the wrong staircase!! All of that hard work for nothing. But atleast it makes for a funny travel moment, which I am sure more will come. Then Cristina took us upstairs to meer our senora Maria. She is really nice. Luckily I have Maggie here to help me communicate with Maria and Cristina because they don't speak English. However Maria and Cristina are patient with us and understand what we are saying most of the time. I find myself lost a lot in trying to follow a conversation but it really forces me to always speak spanish and I'm sure my skills will improve. After we met them, we ate a big lunch and took a nap. It was great for me because I hadn't slept in over 24 hours. We unpacked and ate again around 9pm and Maggie and I unpacked some more after talking with Maria and then we went to bed.