¡Madrid!

I am in Spain!  As of right now it feels more like vacation then a semester of school, but once classes start I am sure that will change.  I got here on Monday morning, after a long day of flying, waiting, and then more flying.  We got to Logan airport in Boston around 11:00 a.m., and my plane was scheduled to leave at 1:30.  However, the women checking me in informed us that my flight was going to land at LaGuardia Airport in NY, and my plane to Madrid was leaving from JFK airport, which posed a bit of a problem.  The women switched my flight to a 12:30 flight from Boston to JFK, so after checking my luggage, going through security, and finding my gate, I barely had to wait at all.  The flight was easy, and once at JFK I was not too worried about quickly finding the right terminal and gate, since I now had a six hour layover so I grabbed lunch and explored a little.  I didn’t get really anxious until around 7:00, about five hours into my layover.  I called home multiple times, and started to think that studying abroad wasn’t really for me.

I just wanted to get on the plane so that I no longer had the option of changing my mind, and then they posted that the flight had been delayed an hour.  Up to this point I had not cried, which was something I was very proud of and also very determined to not ruin, so I stayed calm and called home once more.  After about 45 minutes they started boarding the plane.  I grabbed my boarding pass, and went into my folder to grab my passport.  I did not see my passport in the folder, so I started to go through my backpack, but it wasn’t there either.  Then I panicked and started to cry, and called home yet again.  It took me about 20 seconds to get completely hysterical talking to my parents, as we tried to remember where I had put my passport.  By this point I was making a spectacle of myself, standing at the gate as I sobbed and screamed into the phone, “I need to find my passport, I have to go to Spain, I have to go to Spain.”  A couple of nice women working with Delta and told me I really needed to calm down.  Then they asked me where my passport was supposed to be and I handed them my folder.  While one of the women went through it, Annette (the other Delta lady) told me I was far too young to cry like this.  It didn’t even take them a minute to find my passport, which was exactly where I had left it, in my folder.  Annette decided she should walk me down to the plane, grabbed my duffel bag and my boarding pass and led the way.  As we walked she said in broken English, “Come now lady, we going to meditate.  Ready? Take deep breath, like this.”  I had stopped crying by the time I found my seat, but started again when I didn’t think I would be able to fit my duffel in.  A very nice passenger helped me, and I feel asleep pretty shortly after the plane took off. 

I woke up about an hour before the plane was scheduled to land, and once we were flying over Spain, I got very excited.  We landed around 11:30 Monday morning, and there was a big group of API students already waiting to be picked up by the time I got there.  Everybody seemed very nice, and we talked until we were picked up.  After checking into the hotel, I walked around with my roommate and grabbed something to eat at a little café in the Puerta del Sol, which is referred to as the heart of the city.  We had a quick meeting, and then the whole group went out for dinner around 8.  Dinner was… interesting.  They served us a lot of traditional Spanish dishes, and I actually tried most of them.  The dishes included tortilla Espanola, cured ham, calamari, potatoes in a spicy red sauce, and a tuna empanada.  There were other things but those are the only ones I could force myself to try.  I’m sure I will get used to the food here.  It just may take some time.

The next day we all battled jet lag, and woke up for a tour of the Prado Museum at 9;30.  The Prado was amazing.  We were there for over two hours, and the tour guide showed us some of the works they had from Velazquez, De Goya, and El Greco.   It was amazing to experience paintings and artwork I have studied during Spanish classes.  Our tour guide was very enthusiastic about the paintings and was able to give us a lot of information about each, which made the paintings even more interesting and dynamic.  After the Prado, I grabbed lunch with a group of people  and then headed over to the Parque del Buen Retiro.  The park is huge.  We were there for over an hour and didn’t see half of it.  When you walk in there is a path lined with statues, and on each side trees and other paths go on for what looks like forever.  When you walk down the path, it brings you to a pond.  Across the pond, there are stairs and more statues.  I’m not explaining this well at all, I will try and put a photo up.  You can rent a rowboat and row around the pond and yesterday they were filming a movie.  We tried to use our cameras to zoom in on the boat they were filming and see who was in it, but it was too far away.  Later in the afternoon the whole group came back together, and took a tour of the Royal Palace.  The Royal Palace was impressive, what with it being a palace and all. 

Today, Wednesday, we loaded onto buses for an hour long drive out to the Escorial.  King Phillip II ordered the Escorial to be built, as a monastery and a palace.  I was not too excited about going to a monastery, mostly because a monastery does not really sound like fun.  The Escorial is located in San Lorenzo del Escorial, a city named after a Christian martyr who was grilled to death.  Our guide explained that when the Escorial was being planned, the architect designed in the shape of a grill in remembrance of Lorenzo being “roasted toasted” to death.  The Escorial was absolutely amazing.  It probably is my favorite thing we have seen so far.  The basilica in it was breathtaking.  They refer to it as the Sistene chapel of Spain because of the frescoes on the ceiling.  The frescoes were painted by an artist who would paint with both hands at once, and was therefore known for getting jobs done quickly.  Underneath the basilica is a Pantheon, where all but two of the kings of Spain since 1500 have been buried.  It was built there because Phillip II wished to be buried directly under the alter of the basilica.  There is a second Pantheon in the Escorial, where family of royalty, were buried.  My favorite part of the Escorial was the garden.  The Escorial was in the mountains and the garden set between the mountains the Escorial combined for an indescribably beautiful scene.

So there are my first few days in Spain!  I have met some great people, and can already tell that I am going to make some great friends through this experience.  Tomorrow we leave Madrid, stop in Toledo, and then head down to Granada.  I am so excited to see Granada, and get settled in.  I can’t wait to meet my host mom, and really start to experience not just the tourist attractions but the culture of Spain.  Right now I am feeling so many things: excitement, amazement, jet lag, and of course a touch of homesickness.  Each emotion and feeling takes its turn, and sometimes I get all of them at once.  I have to admit though, so far this experience is off to a much better start then I had imagined.  I have no idea what the rest of the semester will bring if all this has happened in just three days, but I am so excited for whatever the next experience will be.