Jennifer has made it to her destination, alive but exhausted!

I'm finally here! To the left is a picture of the view from my hotel in Rota! It's so surreal when I realize that this is where I will be living for 8 months! Everything went fairly smoothly too. The most stressful occurrence, believe it or not, was getting through the Atlanta airport. Lufthansa is a nice airline. The flight attendants come by about every 20 minutes with water, wine, and scalding hot toilettes to wipe your hands! But I was very cramped in my seat and I couldn't sleep for the duration of a 14 hour flight due to a crying baby ALL night. But I finally made it to the Madrid airport and waited in intense anticipation for my luggage. The airline mixed it with about three other flights so, of course, my luggage would be the last of them all! I then went to try and exchange my USD for euro, but as it was siesta, the whole airport was completely dead, so I just went to the ATM. I called out for a taxi to get to my hostel and I nice little old man pulled up. Unfortunately, he had never heard of this hostel and couldn’t find it on his map. On top of Friday afternoon traffic, he had to stop and read the map again for about 10 minutes, which ended up costing me 38 euro total! But, my hostel, Residencia La Luna was very pleasant and comfortable. Finally, I took a train, which was really nice, to Seville and a bus to Rota. When we pulled up, my very sweet and welcoming supervisor, Maria, and her daughter recognized me from my photo and introduced themselves to me with the typical Spanish cheek to cheek kisses! She was so helpful. She had already booked a place for me to stay right on the coast of Rota. It's so beautiful here. She also has some apartments available for me to look at tomorrow. I also met my American coworker, Jerry, who did this program last year and had a lot of helpful information. Well, that's the most exciting news for now, I will try to post some pictures I have taken so far and I will update you later!

Thanks for reading my blog!

Thanks, for all those who left comments and are actually reading my blog! I feel so important and welcomed into the blogging circle! I probably won't blog for a while as I am leaving for Madrid tomorrow from Atlanta at 6:00 PM. Yeah, a late flight! I should arrive in Madrid at 2:00 PM Friday. I'll spend one night there and then take a train to Seville. Finally, I will take a bus from Seville to Rota where I will meet the supervisor of my school that I will be teaching at this year. I will then go to my quaint little hostel by the seaside and sleep for a very long time. I will then start looking for an apartment the next day and will start school on October 1st. Therefore, in the midst of my challenging but exciting first couple of days, I probably won't have much time to ramble on about my daily routine in my blog. I will try to keep you updated, however, on the interesting occurrences as often as possible. Until next time!

Packing for 8 months in 3 little bags....

...is impossible. Even with space bags and eliminating ALL of the fun things I want to take it's going to be difficult to pack it all in! However, it's just stuff and it's really not that important and it's really amazing what you can live without and still have a good time. Just ask my friend and former roommate Nicole, we basically lived an entire year off of nothing. To survive, it took many packages of ramen noodles and cereal, choosing to check out the small selection of LIBRARY movies instead of spending money at a real video store, helpful and loving parents, and convincing ourselves that the thrift store clothes were just as good as the new ones except they were subjected to charity because of annoying reasons such as a severely scratchy material, an unexpected stain, or the instructions: DRY CLEAN or HAND WASH ONLY or LAY FLAT TO DRY. Ugh, three of the most annoying laundry instructions ever! Anyway, we still had a wonderful time on our limited budget as I'm sure I will in my 8 months in Spain as a "North American Language and Culture Assistant." I will be assisting English teachers at a high school in the small city of Rota, Spain until next May and I am so excited. I'm leaving this Thursday and I will try to keep everyone updated about my experiences and adventures traveling and teaching!