Llegada a España y Orientación

¡Hola de España!
After my aunt and uncle and Mom and Doug dropped me off at JFK airport, I took my seven hour flight to Madrid and navigated the airport with little problems. When I got to Madrid, I was in a different terminal than the other students so I had to figure out how to take a bus to the right one, which was a little overwhelming but I finally found a big group of people from JMU and I was so relieved! We waited a while in the airport and our program director came to pick us up, and we took a two hour bus ride to Salamanca, where our madres were waiting for us!

My madre´s name is Carmen, and she lives on the sixth floor of an apartment building. She has one son who´s married, and I think she´s widowed, but I´m not sure. My two roommates´names are Maureen and Veronica, and they´re both really nice and we get along well. Veronica is fluent in Spanish because she´s from Chile, so our host mom has taken to only addressing her which is a little weird. It´s gotten a little better since we´ve been here and I think it´ll be fine once Maureen and I start speaking Spanish more fluently. She talks super super fast, and is overall pretty nice. She has some weird rules, like we´re not allowed to keep our shoes in the closet because they smell, and we have to open our windows during the day even though it´s like 30 degrees because of the smell too? We asked our professor if that was normal, and he was like uhhh no. Interesting!

We had orientation on Saturday and Sunday where we walked around and saw the buildings of the university, the doctor, and the JMU office. Salamanca is probably the most beautiful place I´ve ever been, the architecture is amazing. It´s a pretty small city but of course I get lost everywhere so I think I´m going to walk around with my map and try to figure things out when I get a chance. Also, it´s been snowing here! Our program director says that it hasn´t snowed in four years. It´s a lott more cold here than I thought it would be, so I´ve had to buy some more sweaters and a pair of boots, which is fine because there are crazyyy sales here right now. It´s like black Friday everyday for like a month. Yayy

Almost all of the JMU students went out on Saturday night (like 22 people), and we had to plan to meet at a certain place at a certain time because none of us had cell phones and not all of us have internet at our house (I don´t). It´s still pretty weird because I´m so used to always having multiple forms of communication available, but I think it will help us become more involved in things and once we get used to it it´ll be good. So we met at 11, which we figured out was wayy too early because nothingg was open. When people say Spaniards stay up late, they mean it. So we ended up just kind of hanging out in the street until about 12:30, when we went bar hopping and found a place called Jacko´s (yes, a Michael Jackson bar), where they had a shot that was no lie named the JMU shot. Apparently JMU has the same reputation here as it does at home, go figure. We ended up at a discoteca called Camelot, which was mucho fun and we stayed out until 5am! It was a good start to the trip, and I got to order my first legal drink ;)

Today we started our Intensivo class, which is four hours a day for two weeks. We took a placement exam and were divided into two groups, and I surprisingly placed into the higher level. For some reason it hadn´t really hit me yet that this whole thing was happening, but when I was sitting in class today, everything hit and I got pretty emotional. I feel so so lucky to have this opportunity and everything is just so amazing here.

I miss everyone so much! I don´t have internet at my house, and I use it when I can at the University library, but once I get the hang of things and figure out the wifi deal at the university, I´ll let everyone know when I can skype and set things up! Also I´ll post pictures soon! Amor a mi familia, Philia a mis Hermanos de PSP y besos a mis amigos!

^^^ La Plaza Mayor! (the center of Salamanca where there are a bunch of shops and cafes)