Day One

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Today I woke up around 5 A.M. to catch a 7:30 flight. The previous night I did not sleep much due to the fact that I have never traveled outside of the country before. I was somewhat nervous of traveling for my first time, but I flew with a friend so it calmed my nerves some. My plane ride was about 4 hours to JFK and then after a 2 hour lay-over I was off to Madrid. I flew threw Iberia, a Spanish airline. This was began my first culture shock of the day. Everything on the plane was Spanish, including the captain and flight attendants.

After seven, long hours, we finally landed in Spain. I was somewhat nervous about going through customs, because they controlled whether I got into the country or not. Surprisingly, they simply looked at my passport and told me to go through. In the airport the signs were fairly simple to read to find where we needed to go. We decided to take a taxi to the hotel. The Taxis were very organized outside the airport and there were so many. During our car ride from the airport, I noticed all the different logos and signs on the freeway. One thing I realized was that many advertisements like to use bright and flamboyant colors in them. Our cab driver did not speak English at all, which led us to be dropped off at the wrong hotel. I was quit scared that we would not find our hotel and be lost in Spain, but thankfully the clerk at the front desk of the wrong hotel helped us get another cab and get us to the right hotel. Another thing I observed while riding in the taxi was that people here are crazy drivers. They change lanes when they want, force their way over and so on and so forth. I’m surprised there are not a lot of accidents.

After I got to the Hotel and settled all in, Cesar finally came and took us all on a tour of Madrid. The tour was absolutely amazing. The statues, architect of the buildings, the people, everything was just gorgeous. The streets look old, but they are quit clean. One thing that I thought was very interesting was the street signs. They were usually paintings because a long time ago, many of the people of Madrid could not read, so they needed a way to tell which street they were on. My favorite thing about Madrid was the back streets with the brick walkways. Another cool thing I noticed was that there was a mass amount of newsstands. It seemed that there was one on every corner.

After our long tour, we all went back to the Hotel. We had all been up for what seemed like forever and not one of us lacked bags under our eyes. We all decided to go out to eat at the Hard Rock, which was quite funny because we would get American food the first night. We all order a few drinks, which I loved based on the fact I can’t order drinks in the U.S. Our group clicked very well and we had a great time at dinner and walked back to the hotel afterwards. It seemed like in five seconds after putting on my bed time clothes when I passed out from my eventful day.

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