Arrival in Spain

(I just found out I have Internet access [which doesn't really belong to me but which is available to me] in my apartment. I'm on my way to school now so I can't update about all that happened yesterday, but here's an update I wrote up the night I got here. More later today.)

Jan. 22 – Madrid

Well, I got here. It took about a million hours but I got here. I literally traveled I think 24 hours straight from the time I left Wimberley. More than that, in fact. Anyway, I really like Madrid. After I got in and took a nap, I and the other 36 AU students who are here for this program went on a tour with one of the teachers of some of the buildings nearby. For some reason people and books had given me the impression that it was kind of droll and the architecture all came from Franco’s regime when everything built was cheap and functional and boring. But there’s quite a bit of history in the few things I’ve seen. There’s the gorgeous Plaza Mayor, built during the time of the Austrian kings, the Palacio Real, (Royal palace) built under the Bourbons (who are still in power), and a lot of other historic buildings. (Of course this will all be augmented with photos tomorrow when I should have a chance to get pictures while it’s light out. Also I might have gotten some of that history wrong. We’ll see).

After that tour we all went as a group to a nice tapas restaurant, where I had my first authentic Spanish meal. Tapas are small, appetizer-like things that you order several of for a meal, except they had this one pre-planned I suppose. So we went and sat down, there was bread waiting for all of us, and then they poured water and sangria and started bringing out platter after platter of different tapas – there were cheeses and breaded sausage and vegetables and calamari and all sorts of stuff. They just kept bringing it out and we kept eating it for about an hour. Then they brought out the main entrée – veal cutlets. It was pretty delicious. After that it was ice cream (or gelato, probably) and some kind of weird spongy pie and dessert shots – something syrupy and licoricey. Anyway, it was really interesting and made me look forward to a lot more Spanish cuisine. Also, smoking is fine inside restaurants here, even though I’m pretty sure they passed a ban on it.

We meet our host families tomorrow at eleven – I’m probably going to get up before that and try to find Internet access (which, if this is posted, I found) and also go around and take some pictures of Madrid (which, if such pictures appear, was a successful endeavor). I guess we’ll be staying with our families for most of tomorrow, Monday is orientation day, and classes start Tuesday. Then Friday we’re taking our first trip to Toledo.

That’s all for now. I’m tired and jet-lagged.

Russ