January 7....and it begins...

This morning we left from Hostal Persal, our hostal in Madrid to take the train to Granada and we will be meeting our host families in a couple hours. In Madrid, it seemed like everything we did was such a learning experience. The flight into Madrid from the U.S. went pretty smooth although we were completely exhausted. It has been difficult to get used to the 7 hour time difference but we are getting better. The first night we stayed in and the next morning we had a meeting with Accent. We learned a little about Spain and were taken to go buy cell phones if we wanted. A group of us went shopping at El Corte Ingles, which is the top department store in most of Europe. We enjoyed walking around the streets of Madrid and then went out for a dinner. We came back and got ready to go out to check out the nightlife.
We went to several bars and discotecas. I went with 6 other girls and felt safe although I could immediately see a difference in Spanish and American males. They were very social and aggressive. Many of them insisted on kissing our cheeks, besas, and they were good dancers. They were dancing salsa, I think. We went out around 12:30am and were nearly the only people at the bar. It didn’t get busier until after 1am and we didn’t get back until 3am, although it seemed like the party was just beginning! The Spaniards were extremely interested in talking to us because they wanted to practice their English. They humored us with their English phrases, “Don’t worry, be happy” and one guy on the streets tried to sing Akon to us, “I wanna love you..” Everyone was very kind to us and helpful when we walked around to find La Catedral, El Museo Del Prado, and La Besilica de San Fransisco. Monday night was especially busy because they were celebrating the Epiphany, which is most like a mix of Christmas and New Years for us. Children got gifts in the morning but they had big fiestas with their families and drank a lot. On Monday night, there was a huge parade celebrating Los 3 Reyes, the 3 Kings. Tuesday, most stores were closed so we walked around to site see.
There is a smaller group of us that is anxious to start planning our trips to other cities in Spain and Europe. Right now, we want to go to Morocco, Italy, Valencia, England, France, Portugal, and Ireland. We take our placement test tomorrow and hopefully I will go skiing with Matt at the Sierra Nevada next weekend. Sitting on the train, we are all very excited and nervous to meet our host family where we will be living for the next 5 months…..