FINALLY in Spain :)

It is now 17:43, or 5:43 p.m. in Spain. I am sitting on my bed relaxing after hours of traveling. After a quick lunch at Cozymel's, my parents came with me to the O'Hare airport in Chicago. It was hard to leave them- they are so important in my life and I will miss them terribly. They waved goodbye until I passed through a reasonably short security line.

I arrived at my gate over an hour ahead of my 4:00 p.m. boarding time for my 4:40 flight from Chicago to Madrid. When Kristen, my Chi Omega sorority sister, showed up, I was glad to turn off my music and catch up with her before getting on the airplane. The flight to Madrid took about eight hours...none of which I was able to sleep through. Luckily I sat next to AliciaKae, a girl going to study abroad for eight months in a city near Madrid. We talked about ourselves, our programs and our colleges to pass the time.

Unfortunately, our flight was late and Kristen, Laura, my roommate in Spain, and I had to run through Madrid's airport to barely catch our connecting flight to Sevilla. We were all exhausted but extremely happy to make it on board. This flight was only an hour long and filled with anticipation for arriving in Sevilla. We met some other CC-CS students on the way and stuck together when we went to get our luggage.

Disaster struck when my checked bag, along with Kristen and Laura's, did not show up at Seville. We had to wait in a monstrously long line to give our hotel address-hopefully our luggage will come tonight!

All of the CC-CS students were glad to meet CC-CS employees arriving at Seville's airport a while later to take us to the hotel. The time difference between Spain and Illinois is 7 hours ahead so it was now about 12 noon. At home it was 3:00 a.m. and everyone was feeling jet-lagged and cranky.

When we got to Hotel Bécquer downtown Sevilla, we received a lot of important info in folders and were told to wait for our room keys. I had a lot of fun chatting with new faces until Laura and I received our keys. The two of us spent time online contacting our parents and checking our emails before crashing for 20 minutes and heading down for lunch (served at 2:30 p.m.). Lunch was delicious! The first course was a salad taco with meat, cheese, corn, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce and dressing. The next course was chicken and french fries. The fries were very tasty, although we weren't sure what to make of them being served in Spain at first. Desert was strawberry gelato with a chocolate stick...yum!

In about an hour we have a meeting followed by dinner (served at 8:00 p.m.)- I hope it is as good as lunch :) I think I will try to catch a nap beforehand.

I love being back in Spain. Although we haven't really done anything yet, I feel at home.