Bienvenidos....NOT

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Well, I made it to Madrid. So far, it's only shown me the ugly side. I had a VERY bad 1st day experience.

Where it all began...

First, I got to DFW airport fine. I had to sit and wait there for around 3 hours. Finally I boarded the plane and got an aisle seat and nobody next to me, so that was nice, but it would have been nice to talk to someone. I watched a lot of movies and TV shows. I read some magazines and the airline food was so-so. After 8hrs. of flying we arrived in Amsterdam (7am there, like 1am in US). Here, I was supposed to take a flight to Madrid at 10am, but for some reason my boarding pass said 1pm, so I just sat in the terminal, actually at the gate from 8am to 1pm. I WAS SO BORED. Finally, I boarded the plane and had the middle seat between 2 guys. I started talking to the guy on my left, Pablo. He was really nice and gave me some advice.

We arrived in Spain at 11am (Madrid time). Because my flight was different than the iternary I had, the man that was supposed to pick me up from the airport couldn't so I had to find my own way...BY MYSELF. The stupid self that I am, I decided to take the Metro...be cultured! WRONG CHOICE. Not only did I GET MY WALLET STOLEN. I also about broke my back trying to lug 4 big suitcases around from track to track. I had to take like 4 different routes to get to where I needed to be. There were a lot of stair to climb with no ramps...it was horrible!

I finally got to the stop of Rios Rosas, where my apartment is, but I had no idea how to navigate around the street, so having an address like 31 didn´t help me at all. Finally a guy helped me find it and I got to the apt. The lady is MUCH older than I expected. and the apt. is VERY OLD. We don´t have internet, we have a very bad TV, and my room is probably 7X5´...tiny!

I met my new "roommate". She wasn´t Columbian like Adelante had told me, but she´s very nice and speaks English! so that really helps. Funny thing is, she reminds me of Jerusha. We really get along, and she wants to do a lot of the same things that I want to do while I´m here, so that´s exciting! She´ll be here for 4 months, but she started talking about leaving to find a different apartment, one that didn´t look like the Adam´s Family and had internet, but I told her she couldn´t leave me there alone.

So that night, we went out just walking down the streets. We knew we had walked far, but didn´t know how far. We found a nice place to sit and talk and after a half an hour it started sprinkling, so we decided to head back. Unfortunetly, we didn´t know which way was ¨"back". So we just went where we thought was back...again, WRONG choice. We walked FOREVER until we realized that nothing looked familiar. Finally we asked the front desk at a hotel where our street was. It took them awhile to find it on the map, but we finally got our bearings. We started to walk back...but we were still lost, so finally we optted for the Metro.

***We later found out we walked clear across the CITY!!! from Plaza de Colon to much farther west.

So...that was my first day in Spain. Nothing that I expected. But I am here. I am safe. And hopefully it can only get better.

¡Hasta luego!

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