All Beginnings Start with an airport (or four)

Before you read: Sorry, this is about a week late. I never really got around to posting it and it's been sitting in my draft folder. So, a week late, but here is the first post. I'll get to making a more updated one ASAP.

I am going to live in Spain (at the time of this blog, I already am.).

It will be for five months.

I am a little freaked out (nerves have calmed by posting).

Wat?

To get to Europe, however, one must embark on a series of horrendous bureaucratic nightmares we call flights. My particular experience started in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. From this smaller airport I transferred to the behemoth, Chicago O'Hare. With a four hour layover, I had some time to sit around.  With the next two hours sitting on a delayed plane, I had too much time to sit around. Yes, I suppose de-icing the plane is kinda important, but can't I still be impatient?

Regardless, we eventually departed, a mere two hours after our scheduled time. The seven hour flight went about as well as it did the last time I made the journey, meaning long, because I don't sleep on objects 39,000 feet in the atmosphere travelling at 600+ miles per hour. 

Seriously, technology these days. Last time I flew this way, I got a Miley Cyrus movie and elevator music!

To those of you in the Midwest, it always could be colder nearly seven miles up over the Atlantic Ocean! (but not much)

Alas, even this magnificent journey ended, this time at Madrid-Barajas Airport. It was also here where I realized my connecting flight to Granada had left nearly an hour ago. Wonderful.

Spot the end of the terminal. That's right, I couldn't either. In fact, our flight's on the other side of the airport.

But to my pleasant surprise, the airport had already made up for it. Turns out I wasn't the only one in my CEA group on that delayed Chicago plane; there were about a dozen or so other (all female, may I add) estudiantes from Illinois State University left behind with me. A representative of the airport issued us all new flight tickets and a meal voucher, free of charge. Of course, the next flight was nearly eight hours from then at about 3:30 PM. 

So alas, we bonded, we ate with our voucher, where I had my first legal Spanish beer, and we slept. Oh, we slept.

Thus, the natives played a game called "Spot the Americans in the international airport".

 Eventually, our time arrived and we FINALLY took off. YIPEE!

Of course, Granada's Airport is a tad smaller than Madrid's, so we walked to the baggage claim and sat there for another half hour for our bags to arrive. Amazingly, mine was transferred without issue. That wasn't the case with another girl, though, as she had to go to the police and have them find it (it was on the plane, just not where it was supposed to be.). THEN, we took the bus ten minutes into town, met our host parent(s), and took a taxi to our homes. 

And that pretty much sums up how I got here. Next post, what it's like.