¡Bienvenido!

Hooray, I made it to Spain with my luggage and my sanity intact! But just barely.

My flight got in an hour early. Now, I am a person who likes to be on time, on the side of early, but an hour early? That's almost not useful. But, by the time we drove the plane into its docking station (my least favorite part, it feels so stupid when the plane is driving around like a giant winged car), walked in the mysterious Madrid airport, passed the passport people, and got my bags, I only had to wait for about five minutes for a guy to show up with my name on a piece of paper. 

Quick side note about entering Spain, the easiest county I've EVER entered. And don't take that lightly, I've entered several countries. England being the hardest.
Why am I on vacation, you surly Brit? I don't know, because it's vacation?!
Anyways, this security guy and I exchanged no words, he opened my passport, flipped some pages, stamped it and sent me on my way. I don't even know if he looked at my face. And there was no little, "Did you bring any evil fruits into our country?" form to fill out either.

I got to my host family's house and was reminded of my Spanish skills (meager). Plus, real Spanish is so much harder to understand. What you thought would be pronounced as three or four separate words, suddenly becomes one smush of a sound. There's a lot of "perdón"s happening here on my end.  

But going off of two hours of sleep and only popcorn and peanut butter for dinner didn't help my brain. (That's the part where my sanity started to come undone.) My host mother is a lovely woman and it's a cute little apartment. My window opens out on the courtyard though, so I get to hear everything that goes on. And that, friends, is why you bring earplugs. 

I have a roommate and two other housemates. The housemates are two Americans who have been here for a few weeks. I've yet to meet them though, they're currently in Paris. My roommate hasn't arrived either, so it's just me for now! 

Anyway, the thrilling details of my day. Took a nap as soon as possible to restore some brain power and in doing so broke all the adjust-to-your-time-zone rules. But two hours was certainly not going to be enough, I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed as it was. After a nice nap, I unpacked and hung about, ate lunch, had a siesta (!!), went on a walk around the neighborhood with my host mom (found that there is a lovely park around), and got the internet! And quickly downloaded a Spanish-English and English-Spanish dictionary on my Kindle and tablet. 

I'm definitely excited to get going tomorrow, because I only have 27 full days in Spain left (WHAT) and so many things to do! I must profiter, or as we shall now say-- disfrutar. Which is hilarious. Gotta take that fruit. 

On the ever weather related note, hopefully this week will be getting warmer. I was told summer in Madrid was sizzling hot. But it's barely 70, we're wearing pants and sweaters. However, there's a heat wave coming in and Thursday will be 93! What logic there is in weather patterns. 

Sorry for all the words today, I just have so many thoughts and feelings today! 

¡Disfruten, mis amigos!