Well. I made it. I'm in España.
There was a lot of freaking out leading up to this point, but things are pretty much ok now. All of my flights went well. There were no problems except having a rather short time between when the flight landed in Madrid and the next flight to Sevilla took off. We had a long and winding walk through the very unique Madrid airport. The architecture is unlike any airport I've ever been in or seen, which isn't really saying much I guess. And we had to go through the passport check and then go through security again and the Madrid airport thinks it's fun to have the plastic bins at quite a distance from the machine that you put them through so it was really kind of difficult and bothersome to put all of my stuff in the bins and then stack like three bins on top of each other to carry over to the machine while carrying my backpack and duffel at the same time. And then the lady there made me take off my sweater and scarf in addition to my coat and shoes which was seriously annoying. And then when we finally got to our gate the plane was like a half hour late boarding anyway so we really didn't need to have walked so fast and stressed the whole time.
When we got to the airport we got our bags and everything was going good. We were of course really tired but that was to be expected. Then we tried to find an atm to get some cash so we could get a taxi to our host families' homes. But we couldn't find one so we had to ask a guy and it turns out there was one up on the departures floor, just not on the arrivals floor. However, for me it didn't even matter because I the machine wouldn't give me my money because it said that the action was not authorized by my bank or something like that. Luckily Emily was able to get money so we could pay for our taxi. There was a bunch of cabs waiting right outside the airport so we got one no problem. Then we told him where we needed to go. He didn't speak english. Our spanish is very rusty and even when it's not it's slow and comes out piece by piece. So that was interesting. He also had to look up where my street was several times because it is this really small street that seriously doesn't even make it on to all of the maps of the city. And it has the same name as another street in sevilla, one of them is calle and the other is avenida. So it's kind of confusing.
But he found pretty easily and quickly I thought and my host mom, R, came to greet me. There was the whole awkward kiss on both cheeks greeting and then I had to haul my bags up this narrow winding staircase to get to my room. It's small but it has everything I need. It's really cold though. The whole house is just freezing. Except for the kitchen where there is a nice big heater. There is a heat in my room...but it doesn't work. So I'm usually wearing multiple pairs of socks and wrapped in a blanket whenever I'm in my room for an extended period of time. I unpacked and organized things the best I could. I'm glad there was a decent amount of hangers so I could at least hang up my dresses and sweaters. R was the only one awake when I got there but by the time I was done unpacking her husband J was up as well.
Emily and I had decided to meet somewhere between our houses at around 1 to try and find a church with an afternoon mass. So J gave me a map of the city and showed me how to get to a couple different churches and the school. So off I went, into the rain, to try and find Emily. Well, I thought I knew where I was going. But I never found her. All I did was get really wet. So I went back down one of the streets close to my house where there was a 1:30 mass and just went in there because I couldn't wait around any longer and I had to get out of the rain. Then after mass I went back to my house and R told me that Emily and her host mom had been there and were going to call later. I was glad that I at least knew she was ok but she never did call so we never did meet up and get a chance to walk to the school or do any exploring. But that was really ok because I was super tired and the weather was less than ideal.
By the time I got out of mass everyone was awake and we all ate lunch together. R, J, me and the two other girls living here, Hannah and Karen. They are both american and seem really nice. They are studying at the university of seville. They speak spanish a lot better than I do but they're patient with listening me as I try to quickly conjugate a zillion verbs at once. R and J are pretty easy to understand but I do need them to repeat things once in a while. But they're all really nice so things should be good. After lunch I was able to get on the internet and send some emails. Then I slept for awhile before dinner. The girls invited me to go to a movie with them so that's what I did before finally getting some much needed sleep.
And so that was day 1 in Sevilla.
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