Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passportphoto. -Al Gore

   It is so nice to be in a bed I can call my own. We had to travel so long to get to this point. I can't distinguish the differences between the days. This has all been so surreal that I can't even comprehend it still. 

           The airport in Zurich was beautiful. It had tons of really nice stores and cafés. It also had little chocolate shops with an extensive array of chocolates.

              The orientation in Madrid ended up being at a really nice hotel called Hotel Auditorium. I think it is either the biggest or nicest in Madrid. We got there at 2ish and got to rest until dinner at 9. Then we had our orientation at 10:30. It was nice to finally meet the people that we had all seen on the Facebook group and a couple more as well. You could definitely tell that the majority of people hung out with people from their country or that spoke the same language. 

              Katrina, Lucia, and I got to be in a video interview that talks to the students before they have officially started their journey. AFS Spain seemed really cool about everything. We didn't have a super long boring orientation, and they were reasonable about sleeping and rules.

             Finally it was the time to meet the host family! It seemed like lots of the students hasn't talked to their host families much and were really nervous, but I was just excited! It was a little weird having to meet them in front of everybody. It was just the parents at first and they took me home to the girls and grandparents.

          My two sisters, Ainara and Nerea, were very excited for me to come, but Ainara was very shy at first. After a siesta, she was running around the house in underwear, screaming. I gave the family their presents. For the girls, bathing suits, milk straws, and coloring books and a book I made about my life and cupcake tins and mix for the whole family. They really liked the gifts. 

         The coolest thing so far for me was the  coffee machine. We have those electronic coffee machines in the US now where you put the container thing in and it make you that flavor of coffee one at a time, but this was even cooler. You could choose cup size and intensity. It was so delicious. I know what I will be having every morning now. 

            The family went on a walk to show me around the city. Mom had to go because he had to help a friend. Apparently she does beauty classes and sells Mary Kay as a hobby. The dad and niñas walked around with me and showed me the schools. Mom picked us up in the car because it was really late, and she and I went to the grocery store. We walked home from there because a huge shopping center is right next to the house. When we walked through the door, there were balloons and flags everywhere, music, and a welcome home sign. It was a really great feeling to know how much they cared about me and that they had this planned out the whole time. We had a bunch of tapas. After dinner, they brought out this huge box with a bunch of presents for me: keys, a blanket, something for storage, a calendar journal, my own coffee cup that talks about how much I sleep, and a pen.  My sisters already want me to stay para siempre and I am so happy and thankful.

"How quickly things fall apart that took so long to put together"

         I am not saying that it is over yet, but I am starting to feel like it is pretty close... My passport was stamped and we received a letter from the consulate of Spain. We were so excited and assumed this must be my visa. My family and I had a celebratory dinner and planned out my going away party. Maybe two days later, AFS called and said that it was actually a rejection letter. We couldn't read it because it was very formal Spanish. They said that we should get this all worked out in a week and that I should be leaving on time. Apparently the lady who we gave the papers to forgot to send one to Spain that said I had a school. The consulate called me a week ago and said they were just waiting on an email back from the school. I emailed the school yesterday, and they replied today asking if I was going to be a teacher or a student at the school. This seems promising. We have two business days left to get this done because the visa has to be her 72 hours before my departure. We will get an email if it ships out, so if it ships by Friday, we should be in good shape.

           I'm not quite sure what will happen if I don't get my visa on time. I guess I would leave as a late departure, but I'm not sure how all that would work out. I just hope it gets here in time, so I won't have to worry about all that. 

On a lighter note, I had my going away party Sunday night. We had it at our family's favorite Thai restaurant here. We had about 35 people, from family to friends. It was great to see everybody before I left. We had mini-cupcakes in the shape and color of the Spain flag with baby Spain flags in them. 

           My host mom and host dad now have a group chat. It's really funny because we are all becoming so close. I'm just casually texting my family throughout the day, and it can become quite comical. 

         

We Skyped the other day, and the connection kept messing up. They couldn't figure out how to say that the screen was frozen in English, so I thought I said it in Spanish. They died laughing, and I just assumed that frozen did not translate very well. Later that night, I was thinking about it and realized I told them the screen was boiling. You can't make this stuff up.

"The journey itself is my home." -Matsuo Basho

 

Ainara and Nerea

                 I will never have the excitement of one day seeing an AFS email in my inbox and finding out that I've gotten a host family. Don't worry. It's not as depressing as I've made it out to be. It's actually a really confusing story... When I return from Spain, I would like to Au-pair somewhere in Europe. I was thinking of doing this after my Junior year and maybe a summer in college sometime. I made an account on Aupair.com just to find out more about it and see about pays and different types of family. On my bio, I explained that I couldn't do it this year because I would be a foreign exchange student in Spain. A family in Spain emailed me and they loved that their children could meet me before I would have to spend a whole summer with them sometime in the future. The family Skyped with me, and then they asked where I would be staying in Spain. I explained to them how the process worked and that nobody had chosen me yet. Then the weirdest thing happened. The lady was like, "Okay, we call the AFS agency on Monday and speak of you." Long story short: THIS IS MY FAMILY!!! It took a while for all of this to become official because they had to go through the paper work and then AFS USA I guess had to filter through the paperwork as well. I just can't believe it all worked out. I have Skyped several times with the family already and adore them! My two little sisters are 2 and 4, Ainara and Nerena. They are the cutest things! I will be living in Paracuellos de Jarama which is 30 minutes from Madrid, and I can take the metro there! They are still working out my school because they would like for me to go to the school Nere and Nara go to, but they don't know if there are any spaces open. The grandparents also live in Paracuellos and apparently I will be spending a lot of time with them. Also, the other set of grandparents live in Seville, and we will go there for Christmas and a festival(Feria de Seville). I literally am counting down the days until we leave, and I would love to just go right now.

                 And so this is where the journey begins. I have a new home. I am going to have a new life. I am going to have new friends. And I am going to make new memories. It's such an interesting thought to me that right now, I have no clue of what is in store for me, but in 3 months or so, it will be just normal. And then a year from now, I will be about to leave, and I will look back and wonder where all the time went.