Peluquería

peluquería = hair salon

(I figured out how to change the size of my pictures, so these are a little bigger than usual.  Also, you can click on them to view them at their original size, which is pretty ginormous thanks to my super-hi-tech-awesome camera.)

Oh boy!  I went to Segovia today!

Bet you've never heard of Segovia, huh?  I hadn't, either.  It was sort of a last-minute decision.  It's not very far at all from Madrid—our train took about twenty minutes to get there (Madrid is forty-five minutes from Alcalá).

We were delayed slightly when we got to Madrid and realized that the train to Segovia departed from a different station in Madrid, and by the time we got there, we had to wait an hour for the next train to come.  We got into Segovia around noon, at which point Rick Steves told us we could walk into town, so we did.  It was mostly highway, and it took us about an hour, but we stopped to (try to) feed a horse on the way and it was a nice walk.

Once in Segovia, we found our bearings and were able to locate the aqueduct.  In case you don't know, an aqueduct is an ancient Roman structure used to transport water from the distant mountains into a city.  The whole thing is built with a very slight angle downward toward the city, and the water flows through a channel at the top.

This is what the aqueduct looked like when we found it:

 

This is what it looked like after we followed it into the city:

 

It was so. big.  I was totally in awe.  I took almost two hundred pictures while we were in Segovia today, using up all the memory on my card, and I think at least a third of them were just this aqueduct at different angles.  It was so cool.

We also saw the Cathedral:

...and the Palacio:

We also tried a famous Segovian dessert, called ponche.  Imagine this: a thin layer of sponge cake, a layer of crême brulée (including the burnt sugar), another layer of sponge cake, the whole thing wrapped in what i think was like a marzipan fondant, and some apricot jam on top.  It was basically delicious.

 

The day was mostly a lot of walking around and not very long, but really, the aqueduct made it worthwhile.

In other news, I need to look into a peluquería because I realized today that my hair is far too long and riddled with split ends, and if I chopped off six or seven inches it would STILL be really really long, which means that should probably happen as soon as possible.

Aaaand all of this took place yesterday.  I only got around to posting it today.  Whoooooops.

Lots of words of the day!

agua de grifo = tap water
la nevera = the fridge
una moneda = a coin
un monedero = a coin purse
¡quítalo! = leave it!
un pincho = a thorn/spike/pinch or a small plate, like a tapa
escurrir = to strain (i.e. food)
un puerro = a leek
salmón ahumado = smoked salmon
la yema = egg yolk
¡ta-chán! = ta-da!

Today, I went back to Madrid with a few friends.  We checked out El Rastro, a huuuuuge flea market held every Sunday.  We knew pickpockets would thrive in such a packed environment, so ahead of time, I made sure nothing was in my pockets (not even my chapstick), put it all in my purse, and zipped the zipper very shut.

At one point, my friend and I were walking side-by-side, and someone kept bumping into me from behind.  She sort of glanced at me, and I realized the same guy was "bumping into" her, too.  We squeezed quickly forward through the crowd—and he followed us and bumped into us some more when we had to stop again.  It took me until then to realize he wasn't trying to feel us up—he was checking our pockets.  And continuing to check our pockets.

At that point, we sped up again and ducked into one of the tiendas, facing out with our bags clutched to our torsos, and stood there until the guy disappeared.  The rest of our friends caught up with us a minute later, and I learned the phrase ¡quítalo! from a girl who was here last semester.  Next time, she said, make a beeline for the nearest police officer.  Good advice, year-long girl.

After wandering around the flea market for an hour or two (and not actually getting anything stolen from us, great success), we headed for the Reina Sofia, a big ol' art exhibit.  I took this photo of a HUGE mural by Picasso:

Apparently, though, we weren't supposed to take pictures in that particular room.  Neither of the (two patrolling) security guards saw me, though, so, yes I could!

We had tapas and wine in Madrid before heading back.  I left the house at 9:30 am and got back around 4:00, so it felt like a solidly spent day.  I celebrated with a short siesta.

When my host family got home, Ana showed me how to make Spanish tortilla.  It's verrrrrrry easy.  I helped her make a "small" one to share with me.  She peeled and sliced three russet (or similar) potatoes, then fried them in olive oil (and a little salt).  Bastante olive oil, she said, which literally means "enough" but is used here to mean more like "a healthy amount."  Anyway, there was about a cup and a half of olive oil in that frying pan, I kid you not.

She fried those for several minutes over medium-low (suave) heat until they were very mushy, then escurrió out the olive oil and discarded all but enough to coat the pan.  We mixed the potato mush with about four beaten eggs until they were fairly well blended.  She said, "Sometimes, you need to add more salt."  And then do you know what she did?  She took a small spoonful of the raw-egg-and-potato mixture and put it in her mouth.

And then the National Guard swooped in, and the entire household contracted salmonella, and babies died and the whole world exploded.

She deemed it not salty enough and added bastante more salt.  And has not died from consuming raw eggs.

Yet.

So then the eggy potatoey goodness went into the (still-hot) frying pan, cooked for oh maybe five minutes, got flipped, barely cooked on the other side, and was done.  ¡Ta-chán!

We chatted (in Spanish! whoa!) while making the tortilla.  Bonding time.  Which was good, because I felt much less awkward over dinner tonight.  We talked about the euro and how everything in Spain is like 50% more expensive after they converted.  We talked about food.  She shares my love of every kind of food everywhere—including mariscos (seafood) and sushi!  She even has a little package of dried seaweed for rolling her own, though she says she doesn't like to buy raw fish—she uses salmón ahumado and gambas (shrimp).  She'll eat raw sushi at a Japanese restaurant, though—her favorite is tuna.

I explained over dinner that muy rico sounds weird to me because to say a food is "rich" (meaning tasty) is a very British-English thing to say.  We don't say that much in American.  At least I don't.

Ana also told me about a little flea market that goes on right here in Alcalá every Monday morning!  It sounds like it opens about half an hour before I have class, but they're supposed to have a ton of food and some clothes and bags and things, so I might check it out one day if I feel like getting up early.

Grabar

Grabar: to record.  As in, when my host mom was on the phone with the internet company and they told her that, even though my internet was doing funky things and we suspected something had happened to up the price, that was perfectly normal and she definitely wouldn't have to pay any more than she already was, I said, "¿Has grabado la conversación?"  Did you record the conversation?  So you can present it later in court when it turns out they were lying to you?

Apparently, the internet companies here are all crooks.  First of all, there are about seven companies in total.  Of those, there is only one that will allow you to connect by cable—the rest, like what I'm using now, feed off the magical 3G network, the efficiency of which depends on how close you happen to be to a Vodafone tower.  They had a cable modem set up when I got here, with a little wireless router and everything, and that worked swimmingly.  But since that company has a monopoly on cable internet, they can do ridiculous things to their consumers, like make my host family sign a year-long contract with them and not tell them about it until a week after they had bought the damn thing.

Obviously, they weren't going to sign any year-long contract just so little ol' me could have my precious internet for four months.  I wouldn't want them to.  What a rip-off.

So they went with option B, Vodafone 3G.  It has only kind of been giving me problems, but a couple of the other girls in the program still don't have internet in their houses, which must be horrible, so I can't complain.

My host dad showed me the contract they wanted him to sign for the cable modem, and there was literally a page of fine print.  From what they've told me, it sounds like the people in the store will lie outright to you about what they're doing and what you're getting.  And my poor host parents don't know the first thing about the internet, and I don't know how to talk about the internet in Spanish, so the whole thing has just been a major pain in the you-know-where.

Anyway.  The internet is working now, so I shall take advantage of it.

On a side note, I miss the sound of my coffee maker.  Of course they have coffee here, but the apparatus they use is like... a little tea kettle.  The water goes in the bottom, the coffee grounds go in a sieve-like thing in the middle, and then you screw on the top half and put the whole thing on the stove.  The coffee ends up in the top half when you're done.  I'll take a picture of it.  Maybe this is a Real Life Percolator?  I don't know.  But I miss Mr. Coffee.

Here are a couple of pictures for your visual entertainment.  They are up on Facebook, to which I believe all of my current Loyal Followers have access, but in case you didn't notice them, these are the highlights:

My street.  I live way down at the other end, but all the houses look pretty much the same.  I'll get a close-up one day soon.

Plaza de Cervantes in downtown Alcalá.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Madrid.  I think it's a fountain, but it could just be a monument.  Anyway, I love it.

I'm going in search of botas and school supplies today, and I think I'll be in Madrid again at some point this weekend.  Lots more pictures to come, so don't touch that dial!

Rebajas

(El Internet copped out as I was writing this last night, so I'm posting it this morning instead.)

I miss my straightener that I got for Christmas and have used like twice and to which I'm already really attached. The one I'm using here is clunky and snags my hair, but I guess it's better than blowing up my host family's house, so, I suffer.

Today's word of the day is rebajas. I see it all over the city in store windows. It means something like "reductions" and is used to mean "SALE." Muy bien.

I still haven't bought school supplies because nobody wants to explain to me how to get to Carrefour, the school supply store.

That's not exactly true. Allow me to rephrase. I'm directionally challenged as it is. Add to that the fact that we're not allowed to speak any English, and it's taken me a week and a half to get to the point where I think I might have an idea of approximately where the store is probably located, more or less.

No class on Fridays, thankfully, so I have time tomorrow to wander around Alcalá. All I want is a binder and a classy pair of boots (hopefully with rebajas).

Have I mentioned that everyone here (all the ladies, anyway) wear boots? Well, they do. Once I get my magic pair of boots, I just know I'll fit right in.

York y queso

Yesterday was my first day of Monday/Wednesday classes. I'm taking "Cervantes y su obra" and "Historia del arte." We'll be reading selections from Don Quixote in addition to other stuff Cervantes wrote (apparently he wrote other stuff). Art History should be fun, too. I've heard the professor is a good one, and he talks v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, so he's easy enough to understand.

So far, my favorite thing about Spain is the way nobody does anything between the hours of about 1:30 and 4:00 pm. I came home from school today, had lunch, and took the most glorious nap of my life, and nobody thought anything of it.

We had tortilla for dinner last night. It was muy rico. They say muy rico here for "tasty." It still sounds really awkward to me.

For "brunch" between classes this morning, I bought an "empanada de York y queso" (an empanada is a kind of sandwich) from a pastry shop. I didn't know what York was, so I asked the lady behind the counter what was in the York-y-queso empanada. She gave me a strange look and said, "Como, York y queso."

Thank you, lady behind the counter. I asked my host family later. I guess it's boiled ham.

The empanada was rico, anyway.

When I came downstairs for lunch yesterday, Adrián was telling his mom about a word in English: "hen." He said it was a gallo, which is a chicken—albeit a male one. His mom was like, "A gallo (male) or a gallena (female)?" I cleared that up for them and explained that the word for a male gallo is "rooster."

Ana said, "Ah—"rooster"—that's like, roast chicken? Roaster?"

I explained that, no, "rooster" and "roast" are two completely different words that have nothing in common except that you can do one to the other.

We're thinking of going to Madrid this weekend. Hopefully, I'll have some slightly more interesting things to share with you after that.

Yesterday's word of the day was tirita, which is a Band-Aid. I wanted one to put on my ankle to stop my shoe from chafing it, so I asked Adrián how to say it and then asked Ana for one. I thought it would be awkward to ask Ana, "If I have a cut, and I want to put something on it, what do you call that?" and then say, "Oh, okay. Can I have a tirita?"

Today's word of the day is actually two words, and they're actually from yesterday.

I hate to miss an opportunity to show off my vast wealth of knowledge, so when my Art History professor asked yesterday what bronce (bronze) was made of, and nobody else in the class seemed to know, it was killing me that I didn't know how to say "TIN AND COPPER, you morons" in Spanish. He kept saying, "¿Nadie sabe? (Nobody knows?) ¿Nadie sabe?" But I knew.

For future reference, tin is estaño and copper is cobre.

Tapas americanas

I'm back!

My host family got me a modem (it plugs into a USB port) that taps into the Vodafone 3G network. It doesn't always get a terrific signal, but it's the internet, and I can take it just about anywhere, which is very cool.

Fortunately, not much went down this weekend. I was so tired! I slept until 12:30 yesterday (Saturday), which is late, even for me.

We did take a field trip to Madrid on Friday. The city is so big! I don't know how it is compared to like New York or Chicago, but it's so wide open that it looks much bigger. The streets are wider and the buildings aren't as tall, so it seems very broad.

We didn't spend much time in any one place. Fausto (one of the CIEE program leaders) led us around the city pointing out places of interest so we might know where to go when we return. The trouble, of course, is that it was all in Spanish, so I still don't really know what we saw... but there was what I'm pretty sure was an art museum that I'd like to return to. We also learned the metro system, and they left us in Madrid to figure out how to get back on our own (which we did, successfully). I was going to try to go back this weekend, but I was just out of energy. Next weekend.

Apparently, it's very common to have cookies for breakfast. That's what Adrián has all the time, and that's what Ana always offers me. "¿Quieres algo de comer? ¿Una galletita?"

Tonight, I met a few American students who have been here since last semester. We went out for tapas (basically small plates, like appetizers) and drinks. It's common here for them to bring you a sampling of tapas when you order a drink, so we ordered a round of drinks (there were about ten of us), and they brought us some tapas. One plate was Spanish jamón, salchicha, and tortilla on hamburger buns, and the other plate was piled high with hot-dogs and ketchup. It was kind of hilarious.

Since Friday, I've decided to learn a new word (or phrase) every day. Friday's word of the day was quedar. Not to be confused with quedarse, which means to stay or remain, quedar means to meet up (with someone). If I want to tell my family I'm going out, I can say, "Voy a salir," which means, "I'm going out," or I can say, "Voy a quedar con mis amigas en el centro," "I'm meeting my friends downtown," which is more specific, and therefore preferable.

On Saturday, I learned arreglarse, which is like to get ready for the day (literally, to fix oneself). Now, after breakfast, I have something informative to say when I leave the table: "Voy a arreglarme."

Today's word is subir. It's not very exciting; it just means to go up (i.e. upstairs), but it's something I've been wondering how to say for a little while.

More classes tomorrow! Art History and Cervantes' Work. I haven't had them yet. I hope they're interesting (and that I can understand what's going on...).

Hasta luego.

Day 4

It'd be great if this "speaking Spanish like a pro" thing that I'm told will happen eventually could hurry up and happen.

We met a girl who was here last semester with CIEE. She said she had taken Spanish all through high school and a little bit in college, but that even after a semester she didn't feel like she really spoke the language.

Greeeaaat.

I've been able to get by. It's just a little bit awkward at times sitting around a table with people who aren't my family but who I'm supposed to pretend are my family and having nothing to talk about. I don't know what kinds of things to ask them. We got most of the introductory stuff out of the way yesterday.

I'm in the middle of "Angela's Ashes," and I decided to read it in the living room so I could pretend I was being social. I didn't know the word for "ashes," but when I explained them to Ana, her face lit up and she said, "Ah, ¿Las cenizas de Angela?" She had seen the movie, but couldn't remember who played the title character. I bet my mom knows (she knows everything). I was just thinking today, "If they ever make this into a movie, it will be absolutely heartbreaking." Guess They beat me to the punch.

The internet has been kind of sketchy today. I'm typing this on a Word document, trying to get the wireless to work. I could just plug in the ethernet cable, but then I'd have to sit on the floor. I restarted the router and it's booting up now... We'll see if it takes. Urgh.

Adrián told me a joke over dinner. I'm pretty sure I've heard it before in English. It's about these three guys who go to a hotel one at a time, and each time the only room left is supposedly inhabited by a monster. When they get to the room, they hear, "¡Te quito el piel y te como!" (I'll peel off your skin and eat you!) The first two guys get scared and jump out the window, but the third guy opens the closet where the voice is coming from, and inside is a monkey with a banana saying, "¡Te quito el piel y te como!" as he peels the banana.

Ja ja ja.

I'll write more later. My wireless isn't working very well right now. :(

Day 3 (part iii)

Apparently, there was a lot to write about today.

I met up with the other CIEE students at five and we went to a big mall, Alcalá Magna.  We spent about an hour touring the supermarket inside, which we all thought was kind of silly.  It looked like just a regular supermarket.  Toward the end, they very discreetly split up the girls and the boys, and Cristina showed us where to find the productos femininos.  I don't know what the boys did.

Then we had an hour to ourselves, and I was able to buy some shampoo.  After fifteen minutes of studying labels, I came to the conclusion that Spanish conditioners are typically the kind that go in after you shower, and I didn't know how well that was likely to work on my hair, so I went with a 2-in-1 champú y acondicionado.

We browsed some other shops but I didn't buy anything else just yet.  We go to Madrid on Friday (no Friday classes!  Yippee!), so I'll probably buy some things there.  My host family left out some reference books for me—a couple dictionaries, 501 Spanish Verbs, and a tour book (they've hosted several students before me—I'm the tenth).  The tour book names a couple of shops in Madrid that are supposed to have stylish boots and clothes for very competitive prices.

Everybody here wears skinny jeans and boots.  I want a pair of boots.  Drool.

I brought gifts for my family, but I haven't given them to them yet (what an ugly combination of pronouns...).  I couldn't think of a good time.  Tomorrow.

I'm pretty shy around my family, but I think we'll get used to each other soon enough.  Shortly after I got back from the mall, Adrián came upstairs (after calling, "¿Se puede?") wearing a sombrero de vaquero (cowboy hat) and a parche de pirata (an eyepatch, like a pirate).  I tried them on, and he laughed at me.

My host dad, José, got back from work around eight.  He's very nice, just like my host mom, and they're both very good at speaking slowly so I can understand.  When they talk to each other, though, suddenly I have no idea what's going on.

Adrián and I watched Bob Esponja before dinner.  He is very good at explaining things to me, too.  He breaks up his sentences so I have time to digest each phrase.  He explained that Bob Esponja is the protagonista, and that he and his friend Patricio are muy tontos and are always bothering their neighbor, Calamardo, who doesn't like them very much.  Plancton is the villain, and Don Cangrejo only likes dinero.

It's funny watching a familiar cartoon in Spanish.  I can understand most of it, but it's written for children so maybe that's not much of an accomplishment...

He had a little Goku action figure, and he seemed pleased that I recognized the character from Dragonball.  He's also very into dinosaurios.

Oh, I learned something about CULTURE today!  One of Adrián's toys is a dinosaur that he got for Christmas from los tres reyes, not Santa Claus.  I assume the reference is to the three kings that brought gifts to baby Jesus.  I remember learning about the three kings at some point back in middle school, but I didn't realize they were the ones who gave gifts instead of Santa.  That kind of makes more sense, actually.

Lunch today was pasta and jamón, which didn't feel very Spanish to me.  Adrián put ketchup on his.  Apparently he really likes ketchup.

Dinner was much more Spanish.  My host mom (Ana) made croquetas, which are like little fried ham-and-cheese nuggets (and really tasty).  She made a salad with granadas (pomegranate seeds), which Adrián pointed out had the same name as Granada, the city.  There were chorizo and salchichón (two kinds of Spanish sausage) and manchego and queso azúl (cheeses).  There was also a cranberry marmalade (mermelada de arándanos) that went on the cheese and was very good.

We had turrón for dessert, which I actually recognized.  My eleventh-grade Spanish teacher brought some back for us.  It's a Christmas dessert made out of almonds and nougat.  It tastes almost like peanut butter (or almond butter, I guess).  They also let me try a kind of marzipan cake, which was extremely tasty.

I was expecting lunch to be much bigger than dinner, but they were really kind of the same size.  Dinner was more nibbly things while lunch was one big dish, but it was the same amount of food.  José doesn't have time to come home for lunch because he works in Madrid, about an hour away, so I guess lunch isn't as much of an ordeal.

I told Ana that I really like to cook, and she's going to show me how to make Spanish tortilla tomorrow.  Hopefully I will learn some recipes I can take back!

I have three classes tomorrow from 9:00 to 2:00.  At some point, I need to figure out where I can buy things like notebooks and folders.  I haven't heard anything about that yet.  Maybe they'll touch on it tomorrow.  Maybe they don't take notes in Spain.  They don't have Santa Claus, so who knows?

Day 3 (part ii)

Only a few days here, and already I'm thinking in Spanish.

I guess it's more like... I think a thought in English, and right away I'm like, "How do you say that in Spanish...?" and it can take awhile for me to remember that I'm allowed to think my own thoughts in my own language.

My host mom didn't bite my head off, so that was a relief.

She is really really nice, and the house is awesome.  This is my room (well, part of it):

(Click the picture to see the enormous version.)  I've got a few more pictures, which will be up on Facebook shortly.

The house is a tall, slim townhouse, called a chalet.  There's a garage, then you go upstairs to the first floor, where there's the kitchen and the living room.  On the second floor are my family's rooms and a study, and above that is the loft, where I live.  It's HUGE, and somehow she guessed all my favorite colors, and my favorite pattern (rayas).

There's a desk, wireless internet, my own bathroom, and even a little balcony!  Add that to my new like-seven-year-old little host-brother and I'm in Toodamncuteville.  The floors are all tiled, so it's a little chilly, but the air temperature is very comfortable.

It's rainy out today and "cold" (42°F, according to weather.com).  Apparently it "never rains or snows" here—except for the last few days, when that's all it's done.  That's fine by me.  It's still a fair sight warmer than back home.

We had lunch around two, and we're having a descanso right now, which means "rest."  At five, I'm meeting up with the group again to figure out where I need to go tomorrow morning (¡clases!) and to do some shopping at a centro comercial until seven.  Dinner will be around eight or eight-thirty.

Classes start tomorrow!  I got all the classes I signed up for, so that's good.  I have a few days to "shop around," but I think I'll probably stick with my schedule unless there's really a problem with one of my classes.  I'd only have a few days to communicate with my advisers back home about credits transferring and I don't really want to try to deal with that if I don't have to.

I might take a quick siesta before going out.  Is it cheesy that I keep inserting Spanish words?  Well, I don't really care.  They kind of keep sneaking in there.

Day 3 (part i)

My dreams are rarely very exciting, but that doesn't mean they can't still be terrifying when they want to be.

Last night, I had a dream where I was sitting with my host family having dinner (or actually lunch, probably), and I couldn't speak a word of Spanish. They were all yammering away and I was just sitting there trying to catch a familiar word. It was scary.

They're picking me up in ten minutes. We're all really nervous. I know it'll be okay—and in real life, I speak more Spanish than I did in my dream—but still.

Day 2

I meet my host family tomorrow!

I'm nervous. I hope they like me.

We got more information about our families today. I have a host little brother. His name is Adrián, and he's seven. He's going to speak better Spanish than I do, and it's going to be embarrassing.

I'm a ten-minute bus ride from the university, which is nice, and I know two girls who are living near me, so we can go places together.

We did a lot of talking today. We got our class schedules and went over all kinds of general information about health and being nice to our families and not getting drunk and passing out in the streets of Madrid. We also bought cell phones. We can call each other for five (euro) cents a minute. This was my first purchase here.

In summation... nothing interesting happened today. I can tell you more about my family when I meet them tomorrow. All of the families have internet access, which is nice.

Going to bed now. I have to get up early enough to have breakfast and meet my family at ten. (You have to eat breakfast here... they don't have lunch until two or three.)

Day 1

I am so tired.

The layover in Newark went much better than I expected. I didn't have to go through security at all. I just hopped off of one plane and got a shuttle bus over to a different terminal, where I hopped on another plane.

I slept a few hours on the plane and got into Madrid around 9:45. By 10:30, I had my checked bag (which made it, thankfully) and was through customs. The CIEE folks showed up at 11:30, and I met most of the other students in the program. We went back to the hotel, where I got to take about a half-hour nap before lunch. Then we had two hours before our next excursion, so I did some internet things and took another half-hour nap.

Around six, we went out to explore the city of Alcalá, and I learned lots of important and exciting facts. For instance: the leading cause of death for Americans traveling in Europe is being hit by a car, because they don't stop for you in the crosswalks. I mean, they will if they have time, but I think they're not as paranoid about hitting a person as we are here. And I knew that already, but not the Leading Cause of Death part.

Miguel de Cervantes (the guy who wrote "Don Quixote") is the most important person in Alcalá. The people are very proud to say he was born in Alcalá and lived here until the ripe old age of four. Everything is called Cervantes This, Cervantes That, and there's a big statue of him in the middle of town.

We learned the difference between a farmacia and a droguería. A droguería does not sell drugs, contrary to what one might infer from the name. Instead, they sell toiletries and things—shampoo, soap, etc. The farmacia sells the drugs.

We passed this pastry store that looked amazing. It was almost all Alcalá specialty sweets. Goal: get my hands on some fig marmalade by the end of this trip. Yyyum.

We went inside a convent to buy some almendras de Alcalá, or Alcalá almonds. The nun traditionally doesn't look at you as you buy the almonds. There was a little rotating door, like a lazy susan, and our guide (Cristina) and the nun talked through it. Then Cristina put money on the shelf, the nun spun it around, and there were our almonds! They are indeed quite tasty.

We ate dinner and returned to the hotel not long ago. I am exhausted.

We figured out how to use the trains to get at least from the hotel to Alcalá and back (we're just a couple minutes outside the city, I believe). It's very straightforward.

I have the name of one member of my host family: Ana Benito. That sounds cute. I hope she likes me.

Our host families come to pick us up on Wednesday, there's a little more CIEE buddy stuff to get through, then classes start on Thursday. Whoooo.

Time for bed now. I am falling asleep at the keyboard.

Day 0

I'm sitting in the Detroit Metro Airport right now, waiting for my flight to board (which will happen in approximately one hour and fifteen minutes). This plane will take me to Newark, where I must haul ass across the airport and through international security to make my connecting flight. I'm told my suitcase will bypass Newark and go straight on through to Madrid, which would mean I wouldn't have to find it at baggage claim and check in all over again, which would save me quite a bit of time. Hopefully they're telling me the truth.

From Newark, I fly to Madrid. If I can sleep on the plane, I sleep on the plane. Assuming everything goes smoothly, I get in at 9:30 am local time (3:30 am our time... yuck) and sit around for an hour or so—find a calling card, find an ATM, find some coffee—until my ride shows up at eleven. The CIEE people (the Council on International Educational Exchange—the program I'm studying through) will be rounding up students from various flights between eleven and "thirteen-thirty." Then they take us to a hotel in Alcalá de Henares, home of the Universidad de Alcalá. They hold orientation at the hotel and I find out some important information, like maybe where I'm living.

I managed to get everything into one huge suitcase, one small rolling backpack (that I had stashed in my closet from after seventh grade when it stopped being cool to have a rolling backpack), and one real backpack (for your back). I hope I didn't forget anything. I don't think I did. I checked my master list like nine times.

I'll be in Alcalá all semester. Depending on my class schedule (which I should get at orientation...?), I'll be returning in either early May or late June, with a bigger and better vocabulary and a really cool experience behind me. Check back for updates. I'll try to post often. ¡Hasta luego! :)