My First Post (a Short re-cap...kinda)

I want to apologize for the length of this post. I tried to keep everything brief but summarizing three days in which I've moved to a new home halfway around the world proved to be relatively difficult. Anways, here it is...
Wow, so much has happened since I first left Cupertino four days ago. Obviously far more than anyone reading this would care to know so I will try to keep this first recap entry short and sweet. My journey to Granada was exactly as painful as I had assumed it would be. My journey took me from SFO to Chicago to Copenhagen and finally to Madrid. From Madrid I had meticulously planned my two short metro stops and memorized how to ask for a ticket to Granada at the Bus stop. By the time I made it to Madrid it was late on Sunday night, meaning I had been up for 24 hours at this point, i got on the first metro, got off at nuevos ministerios as planned, only to discover the metro line i needed next, linea 6, was undergoing construction and was not running. I was very close to panicking, to get this far and then be completely stuck.... but i managed to decipher the bus routes, made it to the bus station, and six hours later was in Granada.

My advisor Jaime was there at six in the morning to pick me up. He took me to his home and let me shower before making breakfast. I then took a nap and at 10 my host mother Elba came over. I just want to quickly say how lucky I am to have an advisor like Jaime, most of the other programs do not recieve the personal attention I have gotten, and after almost two straight days of travel, it was extremely nice to see a friendly face waiting for me at the other end.

So after ten my señora elba came to collect me. She speaks absolutely no english. At first I thought this would be scary but it is actually just a lot of fun. Her apartment is just around the corner from Jaime's and she has four other students living with her at the moment. That was a great relief to me, to know that I was not the only one and could sort of rely on the others to help me out when i had difficulty with the language.

This post is already pretty long and I have to leave the computer lab so I wont go into much more detail about the last few days (I'll go into more detail in future posts), except to say that, even with my extremely limited knowledge of the spanish language, coming here and especially staying in a homestay have been two of the best choices I have ever made. To anyone considering it, you will be surprised how much you actually know and the señoras are well versed in the universal language of hand gestures. All in all I've had a great time so far, just took my placement test for the languages classes which start on Thursday. Ok, gotta go, Hasta Pronto!