Day 1 en Madrid

I hate flying. Just gonna throw that out there. It's cramped, it's long, it's annoying...they made me check one of my carry-ons cuz they ran out of room in the overhead bins on my flight from Seatac to Washington DC, and of course this was the bag with the clothes Nick gave me before I left, my childhood stuffed bear, and a lot of the personal, irreplaceable items. There wasn't enough time to get them out of my suitcase and into the backpack they were letting me bring in, so I was stressing about that the whole way.

That flight was lame. Watched that Queen Latifah/Common movie that was groan-worthy bad, but at least it was entertainment. Did some sudoku and just chilled.

Landed in DC, met up with my Madrid roomie Emily, who is a big sweetheart and totally a musical theatre fan (we saw that Avenue Q was playing here, we may try to go see it if it's in Spanish), and I think we're gonna be good friends, which is comforting. Also met a couple other kids that were studying abroad, although really our whole flight was pretty much exchange students. Seriously.

The flight was awful. I am totally buying one of those neck pillows for the ride back. I sat next to a kid that did NOT follow standard flight rules, and that drove me NUTS (like didn't put the window shades up for take off, had his tray down for all of landing, turned his phone on before we'd officially landed...I was like, YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US!!! I mean, I know that's an exaggeration, but you've probably never flown with me...I'm crazy when I fly). The nice thing about this flight was our own personal TV screens to choose what we wanted to watch. I watched Glee, 30 Rock, Date Night, and Remember Me, which I'd been wanting to see, but I hated it quite frankly. I was bored, and not in the right mood to deal with the ending. I may have also cried through the mash-up episode of Glee because the mash-ups are my favorite and remind me of my Moscow friends and Nick. Food was meh of course. The landing was superb.

Got through customs, baggage claim, and arrival no problems. My luggage showed up THANK GOD, mind you a wheel had broken off my old red bag, but oh well, it was pretty light to carry. We got dropped off at our homestay, and I can tell this is going to be a good family to stay with. They are patient with our slow Spanish, but also don't speak fantastic English, so it's going to be a good challenge. They gave us some coffee, and then Emily and I siesta'd. We are sharing a room that has a view of the street, which is cool. We're living in one of the oldest parts of Madrid, a 10 minute walk from the center of the city, surrounded by blocks of tapas restaurants. :-) Fantastic! We woke up, ate some lunch (breaded fried chicken with potatoes and eggs, very tasty). I'm hoping hoping hoping I don't catch a bug or get sick from the food while I'm here!!! Something I'd rather not deal with, y'know.

The also have wireless internet, which means I will hopefully be able to a) stay in touch very easily, and b) update this frequently, but we'll see...most likely if I'm not updating, I'm out having adventures, which would be for the better anyway. :-)

I'm not a religious person, but I do believe in the power of positive thought and good will (if you want to call it prayer, that's cool too). If you have some to spare, I'd appreciate if you could send some towards Madrid. These first couple weeks are going to be trying and frustrating, with attempting to figure out how long distance is going to work, being patient with myself and others in the language, and just opening up to this new experience and enjoying it.