This week has been nothing less than insane, in a good way of course! The internet at our hostal (where I’ve been staying since Wednesday before we meet our families) has TERRIBLE wifi connection so I decided to wait to update… this could get long just to warn you...
We flew out on Tuesday from Chicago to Madrid where I turned 21 six months early… let me tell you it was a great feeling. I did sleep most of the way to Madrid where we had a 4 hour layover in the confusing airport. Good thing there were about 70 of us to figure things out. We boarded another plane to Granada where we finally arrived after only an hour flight, nothing compared to the other one.
When we got to the airport Miguel Angel our resident director was waiting for us to bring us to Hostal Atenas where we’d be staying for the next few days. We took huge coach buses to the hostal and checked into our rooms. Imagine 70 Americans lined up on this busy Spanish street with all our luggage, definitely got some stares. Not to mention Diane pretty much packed me to live there for the rest of my life so I had two 50 pounders to lug around. The hostal was really nice minus the wifi and incredibly small rooms! I roomed with Caroline and Lauren, two of my best friends from college who are also in my sorority back at school.
Wednesday night until tonight (Friday) are such a blur already! We’ve done so many crazy things that I can’t even begin to describe. On Wednesday night we decided to keep it low key, especially with jet lag kicking in, so we went to a tapas bar and ordered drinks. Granada is special for their tapas bars; you order a drink and they bring you an appetizer complimentary! It’s a pretty sweet deal and super cheap. I got some Sangria and the waiter brought us out bread, olive oil, tuna and roasted peppers. Not my first choice on new food, but wasn’t too bad.
We woke up the next morning and got breakfast next door which was just a croissant… their breakfast meal is extremely light here so that’ll take some getting used to as well. After breakfast we met the group and Miguel Angel to go to orientation about the city. He talked about cultural differences and basic “do’s” and “don’ts” about the city. Then we met our director for our new university called Cegri. Let’s just say this man talked for about an hour on what should have taken him 2 minutes. We all wanted to gouge our eyes out by the end of it and we were SO hungry. We broke for “siesta” at 2, the typical Spanish break during the day. This is when business owners close for a few hours and are able to go home and get lunch. We ate at this restaurant that had “plata del dia” which means they let you choose a 3 course meal from a smaller menu and it’s at a discounted price. Lunch is definitely their biggest meal here so we were stuffed leaving. We had salad, salmon with rice and fruit for dessert. A big group of us wandered around the city for a little bit and then returned to Hostal Atenas where Miguel was waiting to take us on a tour of necessary places in Granada. We saw our new school, the police station, grocery stores, etc… basically things we’d need to utilize during our stay. All of us were on internet deprivation, so we grabbed our laptops in search for some free wifi. We found an Irish place called Hannigans where again we bought some wine and got an internet password for free – great deal J later we ate some more tapas, went to a small liquor store and bought cheap wine and drank with our program group in the hostal lobby. We got to know each other so much better and of course made a run for drunk Spanish food at 4 am, typical Americans. People stay up SO late here, they’re typically out until 7 or 8 am… naps much?
Today was more low key and we had a lot more free time. We went to a housing orientation (again for do’s and don’ts of living with a host family) and then broke for free time. Caroline, Lauren and I visited Cortes Ingles (English Court) which is a huge department store. Picture Macy’s on crack and you can visualize what this looked like.. they had EVERYTHING. On our way back to the hostal we ran into a bunch of the guys in our group and decided to get some lunch. We found a small pasta restaurant, run by Italians, which made their own fresh noodles and gravy each day – Nonny would be proud I’m sure J Miguel Angel had another 2 hour tour of the city planned of us, but this was for more of the touristy parts. Probably some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The Alahambra (fortress) is absolutely breath taking and I see cathedrals and gorgeous buildings every day on my walk to class… sure beats the cornfields of Champaign. I’ll definitely post some pictures when I get more settled in, I think I’ve taken a million already. We all got our Spanish cell phones (REAL old school Nokia’s haha) and exchanged numbers so we could actually communicate in the city. Then all of us went out for a big group dinner that our program planned on our last night staying together (so weird time is already flying!)
Tomorrow my host mom comes and picks me up – AH! Then it’s strictly Spanish for the next 4 months. I seem to have been getting along pretty well so far and people know we’re students so they tend to speak slightly slower to help us understand. I can’t wait to get my school schedule and see how classes actually are starting on Monday. I’ll definitely blog more often than this, I had to leave out so many good details :(
Miss you all! xoxo
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