Well...here I am.

Bienvenidos a Salamanca!

So it's almost 5 pm Spain time, and I've lost track of how many hours I've been up without sleeping (dozing on the plane/bus doesn't count, haha). I've also lost any conception of what meal I'm up to, since they fed me a ridiculous amount on my flight(s) and then I got a three-course lunch when I got to the apartment this afternoon.

The flight was smooth, relatively speaking. We took off on time from JFK, and wound up landing an hour early in Frankfurt. The plane was a 2-4-2 arrangement, and I was in the middle of a row of four, sandwiched between a German couple on one side and a German guy on the other. Fortspinnung! There was a connecting flight in Frankfurt to Israel, so there were at least three huuuuuge families of Orthodox Jewish people on the flight, with like eight kids each. That was fun when they were running up and down the darkened aisles in the middle of the flight, haha. When I got to Frankfurt, the airport basically wasn't open - it was only 4:30 a.m. their time, so things were kind of just starting to open up. And I had to take the air train to my terminal, but it didn't even open till 5:30. Nice. But while I was waiting I started chatting with a girl who's studying for a year in Russia - Siberia, to be exact. (And here I was thinking that Siberia was just the place where they sent the exiles, ha!) She's a junior in high school at some ritzy private school on LI, and her school's not even giving her credit for this year abroad. She has to take extra classes next year and some last year to graduate on time. Plus apparently the day of knowledge in Russia is today (they would have one of those) so school already started, but she's late because her visas didn't go through (I feel like that's probably par for the course, no?). But yeah, so she was good company to have.

I hung out in the lounge in Frankfurt for a good hour and a half or so, waiting for my connection. I unfortunately did not order a pretzel even though I was in Germany, since I was far too full of gross airplane food. And then when it was time to board, we all had to get on a bus and get shuttled out to the tarmac, where we climbed onto the Spanair flight up one of those portable sets of stairs. And I passed an Air Namibia flight and thought of Karalyn, haha. My flight to Madrid was totally uneventful as well - I slept for most of it. Thennnn came the ridiculous part. I land, get off, find baggage claim...my baggage finally comes out after half an hour, and then I can't find this "meeting point" that's been so highly touted in all my program literature. Supposedly it's right by the Cafe Ars in Terminal 1...but I'm in Terminal 2. And so it wound up that I landed at a different terminal than they anticipated, and I had to go up an escalator, then lug my two suitcases down two sets of stairs (because the elevator was broken), and down assorted corridors, before being one of the three last to reach the group 15 minutes before the bus left. And I was pouring sweat and way excited to meet people at this point, of course.

The bus ride to Salamanca was okay...two and a half hours of dozing, basically, as we drove through a whole lot of empty land to get to this little city. Aaand then I met my host fam! Mary (which is what Rosa's actual name is, apparently) and her husband Felipe, their 14 year old son Manuel, an older guy who may or may not be their son (she talks SO FAST), and their little dog Chuchi. They're all really nice, and the older guy helped us get into the secure wireless network (YES). Plussss, Mari then served us a three-course lunch of pasta with meat sauce, some kind of pork thing, and tapioca pudding as soon as we got settled. So much food. Oh my God. So there are two separate bedrooms for me and Whitney (who's AWESOME, by the way. She's such a sweetheart and I'm really excited), one big and one small. We picked out of a hat for them, because neither of us wanted to pick, and I got the small one but I don't mind. It's really cute and it's no worse than a dorm would be space-wise, when you divide it in half. So aside from the lack of any AC/fan/way of moving air around (oh boy), I'm quite content in my living quarters.

Whitney and I spent awhile in the afternoon having a this-is-my-life, let-me-show-you-all-my-photos session. So I narrated my giant photo album to her, and she did the same for me. It was fun! :) Then we just got back from an exploratory walk around the city, during which we found the gorgeous Plaza Mayor. If I admire the streetside dining in NYC, it's nothing compared to the tables as far as the eye can see in the Plaza. And did I mention the fact that there's a gelato shop on every single corner? Yeah. About that. Heeee.

So Mary's cooking dinner right now which should be ready pretty soon...Whitney and I are doing our best with the conversation, haha, but it's a lot of nodding and hoping that we actually get what's being said. Tomorrow starts the two-week long intensive orientation - I have a language placement test first thing. Joy. We have a bunch of seminars about choosing classes, and academics, culture, etc. Hopefully I'll actually be able to understand them. Gah. But I'm going to try not to worry about that right now. Or scheduling my classes. Or anything else other than the fact that I am in my homestay, that it is going passably well, and I have not gotten lost or extradited my first day here.

Adios!!