Day Two - Thursday

BIENVENIDOS A ESPANA

(this section's photos will be pretty hazy, which just goes to show you that I truly had not slept at all on the flight)

Flying over Spain was the coolest sensation – seeing land and knowing that it wasn't American soil was completely surreal. The gentleman next to me (mid-50s, rather tall, very friendly, even more gray-haired) asked about my trip and if I needed help with my carry-on suitcase, and we chatted animatedly about Madrid and his life there with his family while we waited to leave the plane for the terminal. Apparently, he has a much younger sister that married an American man from DC about three years ago, had just finished dealing with Immigration, and his parents, aunt and uncle, and a family friend and he visited her for about three weeks and seeing the sights. He was over the moon, because she had announced that she was pregnant! His eyes lit up as he talked about how he planned to whisk his niece or nephew away to Madrid for a month or two during the summers, so that she or he would understand their heritage and know what it meant to be Spanish. Probably the funniest part came when I asked if she knew the sex of the baby: “it doesn't matter. A Spaniard is a Spaniard, no matter where they live. But I do hope for a girl, because that way I can be the mean old uncle that won't let her go to the discotecas until the proper age. Too many girls don't have mean old uncles or fathers to tell them what is proper. I did it for my little sister, and now I will do it for her child.” I was so touched by his very honest response, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The following conversation was conducted entirely in Spanish.

Gentleman: “So, you are here to study the culture and the language? Do you have much exposure to Spanish where you are from?”

Me: “Yes and yes. I know something of the culture, and I have a lot of exposure to Latin American culture and their variations of Spanish-”

G: makes a disparaging noise “That is not the same thing at all, miss. They are completely different from us.”

M: “In what ways, specifically?”

G: “Well, in all of the ways that matter. Living, speaking, thinking... we are distinct cultures, identities. Like fruit, as you Americans say – we have apples, and we have oranges. Both are good, sure, but very different. You should learn a lot, oh, in just a day or two about how very much you have yet to learn. Not to scare you, or anything. Just know that you are not as prepared as you think that you are.”

Insert cultural and linguistic anthropology geeking out here. Did I mention that I'm thrilled to be on this trip? Because holy geez I am so freaking excited!!! At this point, I'm grinning from ear to ear and have almost forgotten how very tired I am. Almost.

We disembarked from the plane and walked as a herd through Terminal 1, down an incredibly long hallway completely surrounded by glass so that you could see out all sides. I saw so many cool-looking airlines around us and knew that a lot of them didn't do a lot of service with the airports in my area, so how cool was it that I got to see them now?

Next, Customs – my first passport stamp! The wait was only about five or ten minutes, nothing to worry over, and then it was my turn to get my passport and embarkation card checked out. No one on this side of the ocean gave me guff about my passport's validity... clearly, Americans have a sick sense of humor.

The bag carousel was fairly straightforward – our group re-grouped (everything's funnier on lack of sleep, I'm so sorry for that attempt at humor) and gathered up all of our bags to take farther into the terminal to meet up with the rest of our group mates. It turned out that we were the first ones there (at 7:45am, so no surprise there), so we camped out at a cafe inside the airport by some of the flight monitors and snacked on some bocadillos and tortas. I had some bizocho that was just delightful! About five hours later, we were all accounted for and had to get on to the bus to Salamanca!

PREPARE TO DIE

We took a bus from Madrid-Barajas to Salamanca through this bus company with the following name:

Sound like a movie character we all (should) know and love?

Yeah, I giggled too, don't be ashamed.

I'd love to show you more pictures of the ride, but I passed out asleep within ten minutes of the ride, as did the entire busload of people (apparently, only one person got any sleep on the flight). I woke up conveniently right outside of Salamanca and managed to snap just a few photos of our ride in.

We arrived at the Plaza de Gabriel y Galan, a small area near the Fuente de Zamora where we disembarked and met our host families. This small woman with bright (and I do mean BRIGHT) red hair came forward, grinned at Chelsea and me, and introduced herself as Pepita, our madre! She has two much older sons, she said, and she was so excited to meet us. She attempted my name, and just like most Spanish speakers, it's a bit too Germanic to say naturally, so I just told them I went by Daniela or Danni. She seemed fine with it, but kept saying Jenny. Ah well, we'll straighten it out later.

She grabbed one of our suitcases and told us to follow her home, that it wasn't far away at all. No kidding – about two minutes later, we were at the base of her apartment building! Just off of the Fuente de Zamora on la Avenida Italia, we now called home. We walked inside to one of the smallest elevators I have ever seen (three of us with our luggage did not fit, and the very idea was hilarious) and up to the sixth floor, where Pepita's apartamento was.

VAMOS A LA CASA

Here is the basic layout of the apartment:

And they don't have apartments this big and nice in the Mill, why?

Chelsea and I share a room with two twin beds, a giant closet/dresser, and a medium-sized desk/table with two chairs. The room is a fairly decent size, very clean, and there are (God only knows why) Halloween decorations still hanging up on some of the walls. Yeah, I don't get it either. We quickly split up the beds and dresser/closets and got to work unpacking.

While I was unpacking my suitcase, I found a completely unexpected surprise – a manila envelope with papers inside. I opened it... and four letters and a very nice watercolor painting of a lizard fell on to the bed! It turns out that someone had snuck them in the previous morning while I was frantically packing. Totally awesome surprise! They were from two friends of mine (Hi Emily and Gretchen!), my grandparents (love you Nannie and Pop!), and two family friends (hey there, Larry and Shirley!). It totally made my afternoon perk up so much.

I'm sure that we had something to eat, but I can't remember what it was... almost immediately after a very late lunch/dinner, Chelsea and I passed out...