I´m here!

Flight from Detroit to Frankfurt = ok. I sat between two German couples. Quite pleasant. First meal was good, but I slept through "breakfast".



Frankfurt was wonderful. Much like Detroit - overcast and cold. I felt like I fit in with my fellow German brothers and sisters. Whenever people spoke German to me I just smiled and laughed. It seemed to work. When I first sat down on the plane a woman with a bird whistle - I´m assuming, since it was a wooden bird that mimicked a metal whistle - talked to me on and off for about 20 minutes in German and I just nodded and laughed here and there. Then she abruptly got up and said "Alveeterzain!"

I passed out on my flight to Madrid. I had the whole row to myself, except for one time I woke up to see the Pyrenees, looked to my right, and saw a rather large snoring woman in red two seats down. I´m 80% sure it was a woman. I decided the best option was to go back to sleep, which I did, and I slept through "breakfast" again.

Finally, I reached Madrid at 2:30pm. The airport is beautiful. Very futuristic. Well, Terminal 4 - the main one - is; I landed in Terminal 1, which is pretty much a pile of concrete. The shuttle I took to T4 was about a 10 minute ride down the highway. I waited for 45 minutes for Jenna to come, but a workers´strike with Iberia yesterday put all the British Airway flights today behind schedule, and it was another group´s flight that came in first. About 2 hours later the Terps were all together. Dr. Sanchez, our Program Director/Professor, took a couple of us around the airport and talked about the architecture, culture, etc. I grabbed a café con leche to keep me awake and by 8:30pm we were on a charter bus to Alcalá.

The ride was only about 15-20 minutes. We grabbed dinner at the hospital cafeteria across the street where the café con leche is even better, while our paperwork was being processed. Jenna and I live on the second floor. The room is quite cozy and delectable. Now, we´re all just hanging out, "blogging", exploring, asking the nice lady at the desk a million and ten questions...

So I did not meet my future handsome Spanish husband who is going to pay for numerous European vacations on the plane. But I did meet my German one! Ok, not really. But we´re all glad to be here safe and sound with all of our luggage. God bless Germany! (And Spain).