madrid day 1

i made it! spain is amazing. my roommate jenny was on my flight over, which was pretty crazy, and even crazier, nobody was sitting next to me so we sat together. she's great. maricel, the program director was there to greet us & took us over to our house which is on the fourth floor of a building about 10 minutes walking distance from the center of madrid. we absolutely lucked out with our homestay--the location, the family & the house itself are ideal. we met the three girls we're living with and the dad when we arrived this afternoon around noon--catalina is 21, olivia is 17 & ana is 15. we unpacked and got to know the house, and they prepared lunch for us ( a little earlier than usual ). in this photo you see jenny showing off our room--standing in front of our balcony, and the other photo is taken from our balcony!

jenny & i showered and took a nap at around 2 thinking we'd get up at 4 to walk around. didn't hear the alarm if it went off! so olivia, woke us up at 640 thank goodness because we had a meeting at 7pm at plaza del sol, which is at the center of town. we met maricel there, and she took us to the ISA office (that's the office for the program we're in) and then a tour guide took us around that center area showing us the most historic stuff in that area--city hall, a bunch of monuments & palaces. so many names i can't remember. i'll post photos, though. they were amazing. the city is amazing. oh and we met the third girl of our program--katie. it's only the three of us for the next 2 weeks doing this session of the 1 month of intensive spanish language learning. it will be so much fun getting to know the city together and having some time to ease into things before all the rest of the students come in our program to start classes. after we walked around, we met maricel and carlos who took us to tapas--at this point we were super hungry because it was 10pm & we'd walked around for an hour & hadn't eaten since 1. we're gonna have to get used to it! carlos and maricel are so much fun -- very outgoing, friendly, fun & helpful!!

this is a photo of city hall at night. gorgeous.

we can pick up a wireless signal in this area, so we have internet in our house which is super lucky. this morning (saturday), jenny & i woke up feeling like we've been here for well over a day. we already feel really comfortable in the house. we got to sleep in & walked over to el corte ingles, which is the hugest department store & has everything and anything...we made it out with only what we went in for-adapters. we also exchanged some cash for euros today...gahh we got ripped off. luckily from now on we will only be exchanging our money via banks & atms, so no more exchanging cash for ridiculous rates... today, we're off to el prado museum to see the picasso exhibit, as it'll only be around for a couple more days. photos to follow!

miss you all. everyone download skype. even if you don't get the headset, i can talk to you. hah. and you can type. or we can both just type. excellent.