Flights and 1st Sights (Week 1)

After boarding our flight to Philadelphia and settling down, the nerves calmed down a little bit. This was happening, and there was no backing out now. The first flight was short - I'm pretty sure we spent more time taxiing to the runway and the gate than we did in the air. But that didn't prevent me from taking a quick nap. The plane seats were surprisingly comfortable, or I was just that tired. Upon landing in Philadelphia 15 minutes later, I quickly gathered my bags and Brennan and I walked across three terminals to visit the USO lounge. We refueled with a couple snacks and walked back the same three terminals to our new gate.

You would think that our second, much longer, flight would allow for much better naps. However, I had a much harder time sleeping. Our view during takeoff was incredible; we were able to see the coast of the United States, as well as the outline of several states, like Massachusetts. After crossing over completely into the Atlantic, I attempted to pick out a movie to watch before sleeping. The selection was so large, I took almost 20 minutes to pick a movie, in the process of which, had my screen malfunction. I ended up watching Aquaman. The first half I watched in Spanish, hoping to brush up in the few hours before landing, but with the quality of headphones on airplanes, that was a tall task. I switched over to English and had a much better experience. I nodded off close to the end of the movie and proceeded to nap while waking up every 20 or so minutes.

My first impression of Spain was simply "Wow!" It was incredibly beautiful. Even the airport architecture was simply amazing.

We quickly moved through immigration and customs, collected our baggage, and attempted to find our program staff and the bus. We realized that our group was meeting in Terminal 1, while we had landed in Terminal 4. We grabbed our luggage and caught the bus to Terminal 1. The most surprising part was that Terminal 4 was separate from the other 3 terminals, requiring a 15 minute bus ride on the highway. Once we met up with others in our group, we waiting for everyone's flight to come in, and made our way to the bus. The first thing on our schedule was to meet up with host families!

Our host family includes Zaida and Gines! Gines is retired but he stays fairly busy. He's been teaching us about basic finance and economics topics in Spanish. We've learned about activos y passivos (incomes and expenses) and ingresos lineales y ingresos residuales (active and passive incomes). Zaida is incredibly nice and is a Spanish-English tutor. She has been helping us improve our Spanish, no matter our level. Zaida loves to cook and has been using fresh ingredients to make us authentic Spanish dishes for every meal. We have had Pisto y Arroz con Ajo (mixed vegetables with garlic rice), Tortilla Española (omelette with potatoes and onions), bocadillas (sandwiches) among many others. All the ingredients are incredibly fresh and look delicious. We buy fresh bread, fruits, and vegetables for each meal. Meals tend to be a lot later than in the United States. Usually lunch is from 2:30 to 3:30 and is the largest meal while dinner is from 9:00 to 10:00 and is lighter. However, we have been eating lunch as late as 5:30 and dinner as late as midnight sometimes! We have also eaten out sometimes, getting Chocolate con Churros and 1 euro sandwiches at 100 Montaditos!

Our first couple days in Madrid were filled with both orientation and exploration. With the ISA program, we needed to go over basics of Safety, Housing, Academics, and Cultural Activities. We have lots of excursions and activities planned for this semester! Our first excursion was on a walking tour of the city but other activities planned are tours of the Royal Palace and famous art museums like Prado and Reina Sofía, day trips to Toledo and Segovia, and weekend trips to Salamanca and Granada. On our walking tour, we saw Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, Catedral de la Almudena, Royal Palace, the oldest restaurant in the world, Mercado de San Miguel, Chocolatería San Gines, and Calle Gran Vía. Since then, we have independently also explored Retiro Park and watched the sunset from Templo de Debod!

We have also visited both campuses of our University. We are going to be attending Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, an internationally recognized university. They have 2 campuses, Getafe and Leganés. We first visited Leganés, the engineering campus, to find our classes. Leganés is a tiny campus, with only 4 or 5 buildings, but is extremely pretty. Getafe is much larger but also just as pretty. We will only be going to the Leganés campus since all of our classes are STEM. To get there, we take a short distance train, called Cercanías. It takes about 25 to 30 minutes on the train to get to campus, for a total commute of about 45 minutes each way.

We register for classes on Monday. I'm signing up for Biomechanics, Biotransport Processes, Systems and Signals, and Bioinstrumentation. I'm planning on signing up for Biomechanics first because there are only a few seats left in the section we want. We want to avoid having classes Friday and the other section has class Friday evenings from 5 to 7 pm. If we didn't have class then, we'd be able to spend Friday exploring other cities as well. Personally, I'd love to visit Barcelona, Seville, and Valencia!

In my first week, it's unbelievable how much I've seen and learned. We've been walking anywhere from 8 to 12 miles per day, and exploring everything we possibly can. We've primarily been using the Metro to get from one part of the city to another. I'm a huge fan of all the access to public transportation Madrid has! With our transportation card, we have unlimited use of any metro, bus, or short distance train in Madrid! Classes start Wednesday so we probably won't be able to explore as much after that, but for now, we're enjoying every moment. My control of the Spanish language has been returning in massive waves. I went from struggling to remember how to say basic phrases in the United States to being able to understand and communicate ideas about complex topics fairly decently. The other night, Zaida, Brennan, and I talked about the homeless problem in Madrid for over 2 hours, completely in Spanish. Although I definitely need to practice my tenses and conjugations, I'm learning at an incredible rate. My vocabulary grows every day. Since I got here, there is an incredible difference in my mastery of the language. I can't wait to learn more and I hope I can be fluent by the time I return in December!

As we move into week two, I'll leave you with a slideshow of photos I couldn't fit into the rest of this blog post! Hasta la próxima semana!