I have really bad Spanish...

And I am not kidding when I say that. So far I am doing OK but the language is hard (no duh) and I am only OK at speaking... But I am getting better. It helps that my host mom speaks English pretty well so she can tell me what people are saying. But I might get her to stop so I have to figure it out by myself so I can learn. We'll see... But so far it has been great! Here is a recap of the past few days:

Leaving Seattle!

One Wednesday morning I caught my flight to New York. There we 3 other AFSers on my flight (only 2 I knew about during the flight) and we switched our seats around to sit next to each other. It was a pretty average plane flight and we made it to New York with no problems. We arrived at the orientation and sat and talked for an hour and a half until we started and hour after we were supposed to start. It was really great to meet everyone else going to Spain. We were the loudest group and every time it got to loud during the orientation they would yell, "Spain people, be quiet" and it would get pretty quiet. The orientation itself was OK... It was a little repetitive but we survived. The orientation finished at about 2 so we had 3 hours until we left for the airport at 5. I had a great time hanging out with Erin and Julia and making fun of Erin's Minnesotan accent (she pronounces flag FLAY-guh and bag BAY-guh). It was quite fun.



HUGE NUTELLA!

At 5 we left for the airport, all 30 of us and our Chaperon. The line to check our bags took FOREVER (because there were 31 of us) but we still had an two-ish hours until boarding started for our flight to Zurich. I hung out with Erin, Julia, and Caroline in the airport. We had dinner at "B Dub's" (Buffalo Wild Wings) (I think) and the server lady was really annoyed at us (and we didn't do anything wrong). We boarded our flight and in the jet way we had a lady take our picture. It was really funny because she couldn't find the button to actually take the picture and she finally figured our she was holding the camera upside down (I know, right?). It was really funny. The flight was only OK, mostly due to the fact that I only slept one hour. But it was better because they had the little screens to watch movies and all of the movies and games and everything were free. I was really surprised because they had the Avengers and recent movies and they were FREE! That made the flight a little better, and also they gave us chocolate at the end (we flew Swiss Air) which was GREAT! And hot towels, which I found funny because we were in coach. We finally made Zurich and went through customs (if you are wondering why, it is because it was our "Port of Entry" into the EU, I think) (either way, we didn't have to go through customs in Spain)(Also, I can say I have been to Switzerland because I have the stamp in my passport that says Zurich). The Zurich airport is REALLY NICE and has the coolest bathrooms I have ever been in (which is weird because it was an airport). They had automatic door and everything was super nice and clean. It was really cool. Anyway, the airport also had lots of chocolate stores and really fancy stores to buy clothes and stuff, which I found quite interesting. Also the duty free store had these super huge things of Nutella. THEY WERE HUGE! It was super cool.

Some Swiss city

The Alps!

Our flight from Zurich to Madrid was pretty uneventful. It was probably the oldest plane I have ever been on and everything creaked when we took off. The Swiss and French Countryside was pretty but I slept for about half of the flight. On this flight they gave us more chocolate (YAY) and little sandwiches which we pretty lame and didn't satisfy my hunger at all. I had been hungry since we landed at Zurich at about 1030 in the morning and I didn't get to eat until about 830 that night. It was bad. Anyway, we landed in Madrid and got our bags then met the AFS people who took us to the hostel where we had the orientation.


A large lake north of Madrid

The orientation was, to say the least, different. We play at least two games that would never have been allowed in the US and the rooms were mixed gender. The weirdest game was dubbed by the Americans "the Kissing Game." Everyone stood in a big circle and one person was in the middle. Everyone got either a number or a letter and the person in the middle would call our a number and a letter. The people whose numbers were called had to race to kiss the person in the middle's cheek. Whoever lost was in the middle and it started all over again. I had a really common number (10) so i was called into the middle at least 4 times.  But the orientation was fine and was more fun than the one in the US. It took me an hour to fall asleep which was annoying because I was SUPER tired but at midnight I was like, "Everyone at Bear Creek is just now getting out of school!" It was quite a weird thought.

I finally fell asleep and then woke up around 800. They gave us breakfast and we basically hung out all day until about 100 when we got to meet our host families. I am really glad I am staying near Madrid because all of the people going elsewhere had to get up way earlier so they could meet to get on the bus to go to the bus terminal. Anyway, we got to meet our host families around 115. We were all super nervous because they led us into a room where all of them were and we had 2-3 minutes to think about it before we actually got to meet them. I wish they had just walked out to where we were all sitting and given us no time to think about what was going to happen. And then they made it more nerve-wracking because they would call one host family up and they one student up at a time, so you had to meet them in front of everybody. It was pretty scary (and for those of you going "yeah, right" you have no idea). But we met and they are SO NICE! The car ride to their house was a little bit awkward but not as awkward as I thought it was going to be.

Yesterday after I got to the house we went swimming in the pool down the street. We came back, had lunch around 3 (the food is really great), and then i unpacked. Today we swam in the pool, went to church (which is really different from Mars Hill, discluding the fact that it was in Spanish and I understood about every twentieth word), and then went to the pool again. We had lunch and I played Play Station for a while with Pablo. The weather here is really nice, yesterday it was around 32 and right now it is 29 (This is in Celsius, I need to practice). Apparently they do wear shorts in Spain (we were told otherwise at the orientation) and I am having a really great time.

Wow, that was really long. Enjoy!

Adios!
Benjamin