familia de acogida y mi casa

     My host family consists of Beatriz, Ivan, Raul, Sara and my roommate Nikki.  My host mom is Beatriz (Bea) and she will be the reason I dont lose a single pound in Spain.  She hasn't stopped feeding us comida rica or smiling since we've arrived.  She also gets excited and starts talking very fast and is the only one I really have to ask to repeat what she says. The husband, Ivan, has been verrryyy good at slowly explaining to us what we don't understand.  The kids, Raul and Sara, are shy but they seem excited to have us.  Whenever Nikki and I can't come up with a word, which is more often than we'd like to admit, they get excited and try to guess what we're saying.  Its like a constant game of Charades! 
     
      Our first night here they walked us around the city of Granada and bought us ice cream :) already a good fit for me right?  The language barrier will probably start to be overwhelming, but for now I'm doing alright with understanding and responding.  I tell them "Entiendo" after they speak so they know I understand.  Ivan has already picked up on the blank facial expressions i've made when Beatriz goes rapido on me.  

Donde Estoy

     For the month of June, I am studying abroad in Granada, Spain with Eric.  We are both taking intensive spanish classes that meet Monday through Friday at the Universidad de Granada.  We fly from Charlotte to Philadelphia, from Philly to Lisbon, and from Portugal to Madrid.  Each flight was delayed by at least an hour and once we arrived, our luggage had been lost.  Dont worry!  That didn't dampen our moods but we definitely appreciated that we werent alone wandering around a foreign airport by ourselves...


     Once we arrived in Madrid, we met up with our ISA (international studies abroad) group we toured a couple of museums and got to explore the city a little bit.  Madrid was very modern and other than the language difference, I wouldnt have noticed I was in another country.  Other than not getting carded at a restaurant of course...


     Granada is 5 hours away from Madrid and on the way, we stopped for one night in a town called Toledo.  Probably one of the most breath-taking I've seen, and what you would immediately picture when you think of Spain.  It was beautiful, and we toured the streets and Cathedral for a majority of the day.  That night, Eric, I, and a few friends, took a taxi and went back out to the town square to enjoy the antique town feel and experience more culture than we had in Madrid.  After Toledo, we headed towards Granada, where our host families picked us up from the bus stop and this is where my experiences as a visiting student, not a tourist, really begin...