Granada!

Made it to Granada! I had no problems with customs, security, making flights, and my entire luggage made it; virtually nothing went wrong! Thank you God! My flight to Newark was a little late but I still had 3 hours before the next flight. The flight to Madrid was only half full so we were able to spread out. I was able to have a whole row (three seats) to myself. I was able to spread out and sleep pretty well during the overnight flight. After landing in Madrid at 10am (my body thought it was 3am, still on Texas time), I got off the plane and straight into the LONG line for customs. The line went fairly quickly though; I was there maybe only ½ hour (it probably helped that they had many different lines according to citizenship). When I got to the window I gave the official my passport and a form the flight attendants had given us on the plane to fill out. He was very friendly, simply asked what I was here for and how long I planned on staying, then stamped my visa and I was off.
I still had about five hours to my next flight but I wanted to go ahead and find my terminal and gate, just to be ready. This was a good plan since I had to change airlines from Continental to Iberia and the Iberia terminal was a few miles away from the main airport. After asking around I found a shuttle that took me to the correct terminal and hung out there until my flight. There were many different shops there and the first one I went into was playing John Mayer “Waiting on the World to Change!” Yay! This made me feel so much better and less stressed about life. One thing that was frustrating was that the listings of Departures didn’t tell you what gate your flight was at until about 30 minutes beforehand, you only know what terminal. However, I was able to check on my laptop and the gate was listed a few hours before then. As I was sitting at the gate a few minutes before boarding time a large group of students rushed up and were yelling, “is this our flight?” Recognizing English finally I went and asked them were they were from. They were about 15 students in my program, going exactly where I was headed!
We were all close to each other on the flight and went to get our baggage after we landed. A few people had their luggage lost, but thankfully I was not one of them. I had looked at the Granada bus schedule online while in Madrid and saw that one of the stops was right next to our hotel (our program started Sunday at noon and we had to stay at a hotel Saturday night). After getting luggage and making claims about lost luggage we found the bus (only three Euros!) and got on. Driving from the airport into the city was cool; the mountains are gorgeous. At our stop we got off and walked a block to our hotel. After showering, our group got together and just went walking through the city, and we bought slices of pizza from a little shop for dinner. At about 10pm I pretty much crashed for the night.
This morning I got up and went down to the hotel lobby to see about breakfast. It was ridiculous! 17 Euros for the hotel’s breakfast, no thanks! One of the girls and I decided we could find something cheaper and went walking outside. Not much was open since it was Sunday morning but we found a café and I was able to get a croissant and bottle of water for only 2.60. At noon we met our program director and all the other students, and we talked a little about what to expect these next two weeks of orientation. After only an hour we met our host families! I am living with another student, Whitney. She is from Central College in Iowa and is one of the girls I met last night; I think we will get along great. Our host mother is so cute! Here name is Isabel and she is about 60. She greeted us with a kiss on each cheek and started talking right away in Spanish. We both understand her pretty well, so that is encouraging! She told us we were going to wait on her friend that lives near her and was also getting two students.
The six of us then walked, with all our luggage, to their homes. It was about a 15-20 minute walk, but not to difficult to get to. Whitney and I will be living in a third floor apartment and the other two girls are on the first floor. Isabel showed us the room we are sharing and said we could start unpacking while she went to fix lunch. We ate at about 2:30pm; salad, bread, chicken, fries, and oranges. It was delicious! Now we are resting for “siesta.”