The Journey Begins...

Getxo, Spain

Music: Julieta Venegas—Realmente lo Mejor

¡Hola a todos!

This blog is about my study abroad experience with a program called University Studies Abroad Consortium  (USAC) to Bilbao, Spain. Bilbao is located about an hour from the French border and right along the coast in what is known as the Basque country, or el País Vasco. I have already been on the program and in Europe for about seven days now and am finally getting this blog up and running! The good news is that to catch up on the past several days, in which are many stories and experiences already, I am smart enough to have saved all my emails to family and friends and to have done some diary-keeping. From those emails and notes I am constructing a sort of post-report on my time here thus far. But from here on out everything should be up to date!

Email #1

To Mom, to Dad, to two best friends.

“Okay, so I have finally arrived in Madrid, am finally in my hotel room--and its only 7 pm. I was supposed to be here around 4 pm, so 3 hours late, haven't eaten anything since the airline "breakfast" I ate around 9 am en route to London, am running off a couple hours real sleep--and to top it all off, the airline LOST MY BAG. Actually, everyone's bags and it is actually rather funny to me. They assure us that our luggage should arrive at our hotel by tomorrow, but we'll see.”

--Clearly this was a tiresome start and I was babbling it all into an email. I had to let my parents know I was alive and well anyway, and an email was the easiest option since using my international calling card is still something I haven’t figured out. The flight had been exhausting simply because on the ten hour non-stop flight from San Francisco to London, it was incredibly hard to get any quality sleep. Even after I had put in ear plugs to block out the shrieking baby and the wailing kid a row over, I was still shoved and bumped by a cute two year old in the seat next to me. He said nothing, but moved incessantly. I was sound asleep on the flight from London to Madrid, but we did not take off for a long time. Turned out that we were actually an hour late on that flight for some reason, and that late departure meant an hour late arrival, and yes, to top it off our bags apparently did not make the flight with us.

Email # 1 contd.

“Aside from all that, the fun should now be starting. I get three whole days of Madrid museums, sites to see and touring. Can't wait! Our orientation for the tour is at 8 tonight--then we eat. Thank goodness I am starving!

Anyway, I'll try to call you guys, mom and dad, here shortly perhaps after dinner, from the hotel lobby phones.

By the way, the elevators in this totally amazing and awesome hotel are about 3 feet wide by 3 feet deep (ie, that's one hell of a tiny elevator :) ) I already think Madrid is awesome, but tomorrow I'll really get to experience it.

I'll keep you posted.

Love,

Caity

In reality, those elevators were more like four feet by four feet. A friend that I made on the trip and I measured it. Still, they were tiny and claustrophobic. It was much easier to use the stairs and lucky me, I was on the second floor (which in Spain is actually the third floor). And that phone call in the lobby just never happened. The hotel in total was really nice. I took pictures of the lobby just to remember (and to show off later) what a great lobby we had!

That first meal provided after the orientation was funny too, because they served us first a delicious Italian dish, then a piece of baked or boiled chicken with, of all things, French fries. We were all questioning that. This was our first introduction to Spanish food? Not really. Interestingly, though, it turns out that French fries are actually common here. Dishes with potatoes are very popular, but I much prefer the patas ali-oli served in Getxo.

Journal Entry #1

January 13, 2011
Madrid, Spain
Regina Hotel

Yes! My luggage arrived today at the hotel. I am so happy!

So last night I went out with a group of kids who wanted to experience "Spanish nightlife," but we just wandered around not knowing where to go. I was not terribly happy with this group probably because I was so tired, cranky, and I just didn't really know any of them. We had no idea what to do since no one had a plan of where to go or who to follow, so we ended up just the four of us. But just as we were making our way back to the hotel in the weird slow way, where no one is really admitting that they are giving up, a random Spaniard guy came up to us and offered us free shots at a local bar. The funny part there was that my companions, so ready to go partying or having fun at first, were about to decline understandably thinking that maybe this was a shady situation. For whatever reason, maybe because I was fed up, it was me who just jumped right in and said "sure." I started following the guy, maybe a year or two older than me and kept checking to make sure my buddies were behind me. I even spoke some Spanish to him since he struggled with English.

We all went and it turned out to be a really cool bar. It’s a contradictory bar: a serious Irish bar in the middle of Madrid called La Fontana de Oro. Pretty cool. The downstairs part was totally like being underneath a monastery. So another irony--we wanted Spanish nightlife, and so we got a tourist/Spaniard packed Irish joint, and all the music was American. Although that's common, even the discotech we went to after the bar had nothing but American music and silent videos projecting onto the walls of Michael Jackson dancing. Weird combo but it worked and we had fun. I managed to get over my irritated mood enough to say that my first night in Madrid was not bad at all.

But yesterday was a very long day and I wanted to go home early--not at the ungodly hour of say 3:30 in the morning, while running on just a few hours sleep (Remember, this evening out was my first night in Madrid, ie, after the flights, after the luggage fiasco, after the orientation and after dinner). So of course I overslept this morning (I woke up at 8:42) and missed breakfast, but still made it to the tour on time (tour commenced at 9:00 o’clock sharp). The day was awesome; we went to the Prado museum, had a guided tour, then went to the Royal palace and had another whole tour. Those ended around 2 in the afternoon, so my new group of friends and I went exploring all over the local parts of Madrid. Shops, and streets all over. My feet hurt after all that wandering.

The best part was that I found the place I had really wanted to the find, the Chocolateria de San Gines, famous for hot chocolate and churros! I was really proud to have found it. And to my happiness, my new  friends want to go with me tonight, especially Kate, who I am glad to have met. I had actually discovered San Gines’ location the night before, but couldn’t go with my current crowd who had no interest in chocolate to my dismay. So going tonight makes me happy. We also plan to go to a local bar to watch a huge soccer game that is happening tonight in Madrid between two Madrileno teams—the Madrid Real and Madrid Atletico I believe are their names. It’s like a scrimmage.