We've GOT this!

Alright! I have been in Madrid for...about 14 hours now. I absolutely love it! To recap... we left Birmingham about 4:30 (Our flight was originally scheduled to leave at 1:00 mind you), which got us to ATL with seconds to spare to make our connection. While waiting in the airport I caught up on my Grey's, except I only finished 1/2 of the 2nd part of the finale... and now I cannot find a place that will let me watch it internationally! Alas, I will have to wait 5 weeks to finish it. Oh well, haha. Anyways, the flight to Madrid was pretty uneventful. However, my luggage did not make it with the rest of the Atlanta crowd. Still I can feel my inner Spaniard being released as I did not worry about it at all! Está bien! I kept saying. Thankfully I had a great Mommy that helped me pack and I had a change of clothes and essential toiletries in my backpack (Not to mention the free delta survival kit I got. Someone's getting a great souvenir! :) ). My suitcase should arrive at our place tomorrow. Alright, so we arrive in Madrid. It really must be true that Americans are loud, because the airport was SO quiet! I mean silent! But anyways, we then took a bus to meet our families. Erin Holman and I are rooming together and our Madre's name is Carmen. She was so excited to greet us and walked us to the Metro station where we rode to her apartment. She spoke very quickly but made sure we understood and took the time to point things out while we were walking. She also took us by her wig and shoe shop. I have never seen so many shoes! She then took us to her apartment. It is so nice! She also has two other girls from Austin Peay that are here for another week (but gone for the weekend). Still, each of us have our own bed, and only the other two girls are sharing a room. All of the students also have their own bathroom! She has been so welcoming and wanting to make sure everything is ready for us. She talks very fast, but If I say I either tell her I do not understand or ask her to say it again. You can tell she really wants to help us learn. She also has a PUPPY!! His name is Lucas and he is precious! He is black (like TIPPY!) and adorable and comes and rests his head on my lap. For the most part today we really just relaxed, ate, and explored. When we first arrived we realized I needed towels, so we went on an adventure to find those, then came back for a little snooze. I experienced my first real taste of the lack of time priority as she said we would eat lunch around 2:30 and we at about 3:30, haha. No worries though! It will be great for me, for sure Lunch was great though! We had penne pasta with tomato sauce with a bit of ham and some really good cheese. We also had some baca (which she explained was bull) as well as salad with lettuce, tomatoes and a bit of vinegar. I'm not a huge tomato person but I ate a few to be polite, and I know they are good for me. Our Madre then went back to work and Erin and I went exploring some more. We enjoyed a nice coca-cola and literally sat outside a little bar drinking our cokes for about 2 hours. It was so Spanish of us. Seriously though, we watched as people simply talked and relaxed. They seem to do that for hours! It's so relaxing! The title of this entry comes from the fact that we kept saying "Oh yeah! We can do this! We've got this!" Ha ha. Also, Madrid really has not been as overwhelming as I thought it would be. Yes, it is a very big city, however, there are not skyscrapers like I normally associate with large cities. The architecture is beautiful (more like Charleston maybe), and very close together. It's a really neat city and I cannot wait to explore it some more. For dinner we had soup with chicken broth and noodles, as well as papas fritas (french fries) and these fried things that looked almost like mozzarella sticks but they were with chicken and ham. They were friend, with almost a paste-like texture in the middle...not my favorite to be honest but I ate half of them. I do not remember what they were called but I will try to find that out. The soup was fantastic though. Then we talked with our Madre about our dogs, singing (apparently there is karaoke nearby! SCORE!), and where we could go on our free weekend. We also met up with some guys from our trip and explored the town at night a little and picked up some gelato! It was SO good! The weather has been beautiful as well. We were told it would be chilly at night but it is perfect! It is so nice to have less humidity. Tomorrow we are taking placement exams for our classes tomorrow, as well as taking a bus tour of the city. I'm hoping I'm ready for the test (I crammed a whole lot of verb tenses in my head as a review on the airplane). Creo que es todo!

Just a bit of encouragement for all

"And you, my child, will e called a profit of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace."-Luke 1:76-79. The path of peace :)

ADIOS!

p.s. I apologize for any grammatical or spelling errors.