I made it!

Well boys and girls, I'm here! The time between my application to SLU Madrid and today has flown by sooo quickly and I can't believe I'm here already. After some teary goodbyes, I boarded my group flight from Chicago to Madrid. Like I suspected, I was pretty much the only student on our flight who doesn't go to St. Louis University. I was getting pretty nervous because it was like everyone else already had their best friends there with them, and I didn't know a single person. It definitely had me missing my friends and wishing they were with me... and the girl who sat next to me on the flight kept staring at me. Creeper.

One of the things I was most nervous about was actually getting to my host family's apartment. So when I hopped into a taxi and told him where I needed to go, the butterflies were definitely flying! The ride was about 20 minutes because he kept getting lost, and when we finally got to the apartment he dropped me off at the curb with an "adios". So there I was, standing on a random Madrid street staring at a random apartment building. I buzzed the apartment number of our hosts... and the guy said "Hola"... not having any idea what to say, I randomly said "ummmm... soy una estudiante..." and before I could finish what I was going to say I heard the buzz that let me in. I lugged my 130+ pounds of luggage (believe or not that final weight was after MANY rounds of elimination) in through the door and before I knew it, my host mom was down to help. Thankfully there was an elevator.

I was the last of my roommates to arrive, and she and her husband gave me the grand tour.The first thing they said was "la casa es para estudiar... no fiestas!"(The house is for studying, not parties!). It kind of had me afraid of them, but they are super nice. They pointed out the different parts of the apt and then proceeded to take 5 minutes to show me that for hot water you move the handle to the left and for cold water you move the handle to the right, whipped out a giant map of Madrid, and then left me to settle in. Since I was the last one there, I'm sharing the double room (The apt. has 2 single rooms and 1 double). My roommate, Elizabeth, goes to SLU and is from Missouri, I talked to her for a little bit and then ventured over to the other side of our small apartment to talk to the other two girls. Chloe is from San Diego (and goes to school in LA) and Danielle is from Long Island (and goes to school in Maryland).

When we were getting to know each other, our host lady brought over a Tortilla Espanola, which is a very traditional spanish dish. It was really good. Besides the leftovers of that, there was no food in our apartment at all, so we went to El Corte Ingles a huge department store to look around and buy some food. It's really close which will be sooo convenient. When we left the store it was snowing! It caught me way off guard considering snow supposedly isn't common in Madrid.

So we came back, I finished getting settled in... and then I got electrocuted!!! Turns out, there are two different kind of outlets in our room (one with holes just slightly bigger than the other). And if you put something too big in the little ones and then try to pull it out, it'll get ya. I'm not talking like a shock from static intensified slightly... this was straight up, volts of electricity raging through my body (ok just my hands). But it's probably an hour later right now and my left thumb is still throbbing. So now that plug is still half stuck in the wall, and I'm too chicken to attempt to get it out again.

Well, it's 9:30 pm here right now and I'm beat. The four of us are just hanging out at the apartment tonight...

Orientation starts tomorrow!