I Made It!

After more than 24 hours of traveling I made it to Oviedo. It was an extremely long journey full of flying and waiting in unfamiliar places. Turns out I'm not the biggest fan. You know how people always talk about how plane food is so unappetizing? Well I conquer. For dinner the options were lasagna or chicken. I couldn't tell you which choice I was served, but I do know it looked exactly the same coming up in reverse. I was able to forget my stomach's battle with bad food once I got to my gate in Paris and found about ten other students from my program there. We rode out the last leg together and then took buses and split taxis (my first taxi ride!) to the program's headquarters. Thankfully, on the first day everyone spoke English to one another. Later on, after some mingling and bonding, our host parents were to come pick us up. My host mom either didn't have a car or wasn't able to come get me, so I had to take a taxi to her apartment (my second taxi ride!).

Ok enough play by play, time for some descriptions. My host mom (Pilar) is adorable. She's shorter than me, which is really short, with some kind of blondish brownish hair. She's very nice and speaks Spanish to me like I'm fluent, which I'm not. I do a lot of nodding, smiling, and agreeing. She has a dog too. His name is Samy and he's a siberian husky. I've already gone on two walks with Pilar and Samy and they seem to know all the other dogs and their owners around town. It's neat. Pilar has an apartment on the sixth floor with a beautiful little terrace. The apartment is all very compact, but cute too. My room is her son's old room and it has lots of random boy things in it. For instance, there's a giant train set hung on the wall. Oh, and it turns out Pilar has hosted many students before me. It's insane. She has pictures everywhere of previous students. Overall I like my host mom and the house.

My university is only a ten minute walk from the apartment. It's a beautiful campus. Today we had an orientation and a walking tour of the city. I don't have any classes this week, they start next tuesday. During the walking tour we went to a Cathedral and a park called San Francisco (SF shout out). I was talking to a woman who works for AHA and lives here about my hometown, and after I told her it's called San Ramon she laughed because Ramon is a very common name for men and she found it odd to be the name of a city. It would be like having a city in the US called Saint Bob. Anywho, today was also a day for meeting my peers from the program. Everyone is really friendly and we all talk to one another and bond over common feelings of nervousness. Thus far all of us have been speaking in English- except for the token showoff who talks to everyone in Spanish, but she's still nice. Some of the girls live near by me and tomorrow we're going to meet and walk to the University together, which is great because I already got a tad lost today.

I could conjure up a million more stories, but for now I'll give it rest and head off to bed. I can't believe it's only the end of my first full day!

Hello World

So this is blogging, eh? I'm new to it. I've already given up on the gadgets aspect. Anywho, there's a purpose behind my new-found-blogging. I'm going to Spain, Oviedo to be exact. I leave in approximately 34 hours. I'm nearly packed (whether I forgot anything or not is a different story). I have no idea what to expect in the coming three months, but I'm anxious to find out. So far I know that I'll be living with a host mom and her dog in an apartment. Also, I'll be taking Spanish courses at the local university. One more thing I know is that I have a lot more Spanish to learn and a lot less English to speak. I invite anyone and everyone to join me on this journey of upcoming adventures through the method of blogging. Enjoy!