Welcome to my blog! Here I will be documenting my experiences as I travel abroad in Alcalá de Henares, Spain for the spring 2014 semester. I am very excited, as I have never traveled to Europe before and am looking forward to enhancing my Spanish speaking skills while learning about Spanish culture. I will also be taking classes here to continue my majors of International Studies and Spanish and my Certificate in Business. I am here through the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a program called CIEE. There are 3 others students from Madison here and 11 total from the United States in my program. I will try to blog at least once a week, but I cannot make any promises. Please let me know if you ever have any questions, I would love to answer them! So here we go:
After several hours of travel, I have finally arrived in Spain and settled in to my host family's home.
Day 1 &2:
I left Minneapolis at 7:00am on January 7th and flew to Boston, where my 9-hour layover turned into a 10 hour, which then caused me to miss my connecting flight in Paris to Madrid. Once I arrived in Madrid, I had missed the group shuttle to the hotel, so I had to navigate the metro and train on my own. Air France also managed to lose my luggage, so it was getting to be a very long trip to Alcalá. Luckily, I met a very nice woman who works in Madrid and had studied abroad in Alcalá during college as well. She helped me make sense of the maze that is the metro and I arrived safely to my hotel. After relaxing a bit, I had dinner with my group from CIEE in the hotel and then got some rest.
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| My mother and I at the airport very early in the morning! |
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| My bag weighed exactly 50 pounds; I was quite impressed. Packing for 4 months is one of the most challenging things I've ever done; I am a notorious over-packer. |
Today we had an orientation session for most of the day where we covered some general rules and guidelines and received information about our classes and the culture in Spain. Fun fact: It is illegal to talk on the phone and drive at the same time in Spain! After orientation we took a trip to "El corte ingles" which is a store that I can best describe as a cross between Macy's and Target. They have EVERYTHING. We arrived back to our hotel, Hotel Campanile, and our host families came to pick us up and bring "home" for the next four months.
My host family is wonderful. There four members: Santiago, the father, Antonia, the mother, and Laura and Cristina, who are their daughters. They are all so sweet and welcoming, I could not have asked for a better family. I have my own room in their beautiful home, which is in Alcalá de Henares. The language barrier is a challenge and I am constantly asking my family to repeat phrases or to explain what they are trying to say. Of course, this is the objective of studying abroad and I know my Spanish to going to improve my leaps and bounds before May.
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| This is my room in Alcalá; I love it! |
Over the past three days I have discovered that traveling is wonderful...when everything goes as planned. A one hour flight delayed turned my trip upside-down, but it was a great learning experience! I am looking forward to sharing more and sharing my study abroad experience!
If you would like to contact me, please either messaged me on Facebook or email me at haler@wisc.edu. I am available via iMessage, whatsapp, or text free so please let me know if you would like one of those numbers.
All my best,
Victoria
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