Arrived in Madrid

It took me 2 flights to get to Spain. The first was from Chicago to Dulles. On that flight they announced any scoring for the Bears-Packers game, unfortunately it was 14-0 when I got off the flight. I was able to see the end of the first half in the airport before taking off again for Madrid. Interestingly enough, my second flight was an Airbus 330 and was gigantic, 8 seats across and I´d guess at least 30 rows; only 83 people were on my flight though. This meant that later in the flight I just put all of the arm rests up in a middle section and lay across 4 seats and took a nice nap. Best sleep I´ve ever gotten on a plane. Plus, we each got our own TV to watch movies and what not. It was very nice, I highly recommend Aer Lingus. The woman sitting next to me was from Spain and didn´t speak English so we talked a bunch on the flight and she helped me practice my Spanish, she was so friendly. Excellent way to get welcomed to Spain.

Once I got off the plane, Carlos and his friend Javier picked me up. They drove me back to the hostel so I could drop off my bags and then took me around Madrid so I could see where the university is, where I need to go for my orientation on Wednesday, and they helped me find a citibank ATM and get a cellphone. All of this was done in Spanish, but I think I´m handling it pretty well. Carlos and Javier were patient and explained things in English when I needed, but for the most part everything went really well.

Now I´m just waiting for Mel, my future roommate, to wake up and come out to the lounge. Once she does that, we are going to go apartment hunting so that we have somewhere to sleep tomorrow night. Carlos said that he would be happy to look at apartments with us if we need him to/make sure we aren´t getting scammed. So far everything is going really well and I don´t have any jet lag. I´ll let you all know how it goes!