Playing Catch-up

So, I have been in Spain since Sunday the 24th, but I just now decided to start the blog. To catch up, my trip started out at the Detroit airport, where a woman completely biffed at the end of one ofthose moving walkways and was all distraught because she had no cluewhere she was going anyways, so I (and some others) helped her out.

Lufthansa is an amazing airline, on which I flew from Detroit to Frankfurt. Comfortable seats, more legroom than normal. Each seat has their own screen and you can watch like 20 movies, a few popular TV shows, check on the status of the flight, all in like 10 different languages, and the flight attendants speak fluent German and English.

In Frankfurt, I talked with a woman who was a high school Spanish teacher in Madrid and the person who was sitting next to her on the previous flight, a 20 year-old Danish kid who was just coming back from doing conservation work in Arizona. She didn't speak English. He did, but he didn't speak any Spanish. Very interesting.

My flight to Madrid was actually operated by Spanair...Yikes! But I made it. It took me a while to figure out in Madrid that my flight was leaving from a completely different terminal. But I still made it with 2 and a half hours to spare. They don't even announce what gate you're at until an hour before the flight.

So that was my amazing travel story. There are 32 other kids here from the Universities of Michigan, Penn, and Cornell. Only 9 guys total, though. We have been staying at the Hotel Becquer. It’s a nice place. It really is. My roommate here is Daniel Wong, who is actually Brazilian. Weird…yes!

We have cultural and grammar classes everyday. Juan Munoz teaches them both, but our cultural discussion is led by Ana, who is 26 and has a very strong accent. Pretty much everyone is Seville has quite the accent that leaves out a few letters or syllables every now and then.

The food here is pretty good. Tapas are good and cheap. We’ll see what the host family cooks though (it should be better than these restaurants).

We meet our host families tomorrow. Mine’s name is Loli Sanchez. Can’t wait to meet her!

Abrazos y besos-
Marcus