2 Days in..

Hola amigos! I am very excited for my first post en Espana. I just got here 2 days ago and I'm already having an awesome time. Lets begin with the flight stories.

So basically I didnt have the best flying experience because A) its impossible for me to navigate in airports (especially the one in Madrid), B) I apparently can't sleep on flights, and C)I am paranoid about crashing. Anyway, I got to RDU and ran into a girl who is also from App, traveling to Alicante for the semester too. Her name is Caitlin and we had been friends on facebook because of the program so when we saw each other we stuck together. It was crazy because we happened to have two of the same flights and let me tell you, she is soo helpful with getting around. Once we arrived in Madrid, we split up and I met Kira at the airport outside our gate. It took a while to understand where I was supposed to go because the gates for your flight arent assigned until closer to the departure time so I was walking around aimlessly for 40 minutes trying to ask people where I should go. Oops. Anyways, it all worked out and when we arrived in Alicante and once we got outside we had this awful cab driver who was really rude and didnt understand that our flats were actually located in Alicante and not the location of the university. He kept (SLOWLY) typing in San Vicente del Raspieg which is where the school is and got mad when I said Alicante hahah. Anyways, Kira and I just got out at her stop and paid him and  went to her apartment. We met her landlord who is this crazy lady who tried to help us walk to my apartment (which is like a 2 minute walk from Kiras) and turned it into this huge fiasco where we were asking people on the streets while dragging my two huge suitcases around.

So once we arrived to my flat, I realized I was living in a tiny, old, but cute apartment with three other girls. They are all really nice. Desiree is from Spain and is a math teacher. She doesnt speak any english so it's awesome because any time its just us in the house, I HAVE to speak to her in spanish and its really helpful. I also had the longest time understand what her name was because you can only imagine how weird the name Desiree sounds in spanish. Cristina is also from Spain and I haven't really seen her much but she doesn't speak any English either so we have trouble speaking and apparently my accent isn't the greatest when it comes to some words but oh well. Finally, Eva is the last one. She is from Poland and has been here for almost 2 years. She speaks almost perfect english and spanish (i think) but she has been very helpful with everything and its a good break for me to speak to her in English.

After we all met, Caitlin, Kira and I went to a restaurant at the plaza near us. I can't remember the name of the plaza but its about a 7 minute walk from my apartment and it's really pretty. There's a huge fountain in the middle with statues and a ton of restaurants and shops. We ate dinner at this restaurant in the plaza that served pizza and drinks. How spanish... haha I'm kind of embarassed that my first meal was pizza but we accidentally ate too early (6:45) so they were confused as to why were were ordering. Anyways, we had some Sangria and pizza and went back to our apartments and got some much needed sleep due to the jet lag.. Ughhh

The next day, we decided to go to the university and sign in. This time, Caitlin's roommate, Margaret came along. She is an erasmus student from Latvia. I asked her if she knew who Arturs Irbe (the former goalie for the Canes but I think she thought I was just asking about a random person that lived in her country). She is quite hilarious because her English is a little broken but she understands just about everything that we say. So we caught the bus that takes you to the school and that took about 30 minutes. Once we arrived, we went to the office for international students to check in and find out when our orientation time was which is tomorrow (Friday) at 10 AM. Then, we walked around some more and found the cafeteria and other buildings. The campus is gorgeous. It hasn't been sunny much since we got here but we got lucky when we went because the sun was shining making the campus look even prettier. There were palm trees everywhere and the buildings look really cool compared to App's. There were also lots of orange trees which I loved and if you didn't notice, I had to take a picture of them. Also, we noticed that many of the students were drinking wine when we went into the cafe around noon. Wouldn't that be nice if App's cafes served beer or wine during classes. hahah anyway, we ended up taking the bus back to our little part of town and decided to go the beach for a bit. Margaret decided to go back and sleep and it was the funniest thing, when we parted our separate ways, she yelled out, "okay see ya monday" and we were very confused because we had just been planning to make a trip to the TAM office (where you get your bus card) the next day. It was hilarious.

So we walked around the older parts of town which are near the beach, walked on the boardwalk, and saw many cute little restaurants that sell tapas. My mom would love them because she is obsessed with appetizers and fresh, crisp air by the beach. It was a little chillier at the beach because of the wind but it was beautiful and you can see the whole castle from almost everywhere on the beach. Loved it. Anyways, so we all walked back and decided to go back to our houses and hang out for a bit during siesta (we realized that everything is pretty much closed around this time). It's kinda annoying but who wouldn't like the idea of taking a break from working and taking a nap every day. Needless to say, I will be taking full advantage whenever possible.

Later that night, we decided to meet up with the boys, Devin, Daniel and Kyle. They are all really nice and so we went to this restaurant that was pretty much a regular sports bar and of course soccer was playing on the tv (incluyendo David Villa, mi amor). I had a rollo de pollo which was very hard to order because I kept saying Pollo de Rollo. It's weird. Anyway, after that, we went out to La Havana where all of the students were invited to for a welcome back party. They listened to the exact same music we do. I even heard Ke$ha playing at one point. And I'm guessing a lot of them had no idea what she was saying but they were singing along anyway haha. So we stayed there for a little while and drank some beers that only cost 1 euro and took advantage of some free sangria (girls got free sangria from 11-12 so it didnt last long). Then, Kyle told us that his roommate, Luigi knew of a bar over by his apartment called El Concierto. It was much nicer and we almost didnt get in because the boys shoes werent nice enough but eventually we went in. And no Luigi! But Kira and I ordered these crazy drinks that were poured from this hugeeee bottle of grey goose and they were extremely strong but only  4 euros. It was a good time.