The journey and first impressions

So I made it. After the longest trip of my life. We left the house at 4.30 am and I flew from Harrisburg to Chicago, where I hung out for about 4 hours, luckily there were plenty of interesting people to observe. We boarded the plane and then had to sit for an hour and then some, due to the weather in NYC, our next stop. Because of this, I was going to miss my connecting flight, but I wasn’t freaking out about it like half of the plane was. My flight to Madrid was also delayed, so I didn’t miss that. We boarded an hour and a half late and then sat on the plane for over an hour. Apparently someone checked their bags and then didn’t take the flight so it looked all suspect. But after an hour of these unclaimed bags sitting below us, they had to go and remove all of the luggage. It felt like forever before we finally took off. And then the flight was another 6 & a half hours or so. Let’s just say I’m not meant to sit in one place for that long. Especially when personal space is limited. And it didn’t help that my stomach wasn’t feeling the best for the last 2 flights.

On the last flight I found another girl from my program so we stuck together in the airport. Neither of my bags were where they should have been. One ended up in the special baggage bin and the other showed up randomly on another belt 30 minutes into me waiting in line to figure out where it went. Once we had everything we caught a cab together to the bus station & then split up cuz we got her on a bus that left right away. Then I got to wait another hour and a half for my bus. I found 2 other kids from the program on my bus. The girl is in a town that’s apparently 6km from mine so that’s cool. We’re gonna seek each other out at orientation. The bus ride was about an hour and a half (seems to be my time frame). I dozed off and on so it passed quickly. And then, I was finally here in Quintanar de la Orden, at about 2.30 pm local time, 8.30am back home. So yeah, a looong day.

At Quintanar, I waited at the bus stop for like 5 minutes and then Pilar and Manuel, 2 of the English teachers at my school came and picked me up. But while I waited, one of the first townies I see is this man who is obviously a dedicated runner, and it was a good first sign that I’m going to like this place : ) Anyways we did lunch, and like a typical Spanish meal, there was way too much food. I ate fish, since I’ve been deprived for a little while now and I liked my squid a lot more than I remembered. But it was good talking to Pilar and Manuel, they’re both super nice people and very easy to understand which is encouraging. After lunch, they helped me carry all of my stuff to my room upstairs of the restaurant. It’s a cute little room. The view to the left outside looks like Bernville. All I see are fields and trucks driving by (I’m right at the edge of town). Too tired to do much else, I took like a 2 hour nap, waking up to watch the Madrid game. So I apologize for any typos of this post, cuz I started typing most of it during the half-time but I was still distracted.

But yeah, that was my trip and my first impression. Sorry it’s a long post. Tomorrow I will go to the school and then hopefully do some exploring.

and FYI, Madrid won :)