travel, trials, tribulations, and tapas

hola!

i am currently in granada, spain where we are taking a language intensive course to prepare us for our life here in madrid. i am writing from a spanish computer without english spell check so please excuse any errors. i can already tell there are going to be a few. i arrived in europe on the 7th, madrid the 8th, and granada the 9th, so it has been quite a hectic transition.

lauren and i left the states on the night of january 6th and arrived in london for our connecting flight exactly on time. the little tv screen in front of each of our chairs showed the path from new york to london complete, yet we flew around in circles for another 20 minutes after arrival only to find out from our pilot that all of the london area airports were closed due to weather and that instead we would be landing in edinburgh, scotland! lauren and i talked to the spanish man sitting next to us on the plane and asked him if flights flew out of this airport to madrid; he seemed to think so while our flight attendant thought otherwise. while we tried to extrapolate the rest of our travel plans for the day, the captain came on and said that the edinburgh airport was not able to take us for landing, so instead we would be landing in east midlands, uk (don´t worry - i had no idea where the hell this was, either). when we finally landed in east midlands, the captain told us to sit tight while they figured out what the plan of action was. we did as he asked and sat tight - for four hours - until finally they told us that we were going to be taken in buses to london heathrow. we got our bags, went through customs, and got on the bus, where, being the resourceful american students that we are, called my parents to book us on the next flight out to madrid so that we could avoid the chaos when we arrived in london (thanks dad!). we arrived at heathrow (in the wrong terminal of course) and took a cab with all of our massive luggage to the right terminal, only to find out that our flight to madrid had been cancelled. british airways so kindly put us up in a hotel in central london. we stored our big bags at the airport and took the tube into the city. we rebooked our flights, saw a few friends from wash u studying in london, and went to bed. the next day, all of our travels went smoothly and we finally arrived in MADRID.

from the airport, we were taken to the home of our host family. our señora, maruja, is the sweetest woman and doesn´t understand why we don´t eat more (she is used to hosting boys). we took a walking tour of madrid with our grupo and came home and crashed after our long journey. the next day, we took a train to granada, where we are now. we have seen a lot of the islamic culture that still exists here today, and we ate a big middle-eastern feast (it felt good to eat something besides ham, because that seems to be the only thing people eat here. our teacher, ramiro, told us in spain there are two religions that people practice: 1. catholicism, and 2. ham). there is a really cool street right by our hotel that is lined with tapas restaurants where we have been going to eat dinner, but we still haven´t exactly figured out what everything on the menu is. we have found that it is best to ask a waiter what he recommends and order that instead of relying on our rusty translation skills. and of course, every meal starts with a plate of complementary ham.

in a few hours we are going to the alhambra, the old muslim fortress just outside of granada. we return to madrid next monday, so look for pictures after that!

hasta luego y les echo mucho!