I'm Here!

I can’t believe I’m already in Spain! It seems like yesterday that I was speed reading travel books, saying goodbyes and racing the timer to fit all the pieces in my suitcases before it popped. As my plane flew over Boston Harbor, I remembered lying on the beach in Southie with Charlotte and Caitlin, only a few weeks earlier, when the summer was in full swing. While I lay there watching the incessant flow of planes take off and land on top of us, I kept reminding myself that in less than a month I would be on one of those planes, leaving Massachusetts for an entire year! I tried to imagine leaving but couldn’t picture myself inside that plane. Now, I’ve been in it. I can see it clearly. I have the entire emergency row to myself. The screen in the headrest in front of me shows a plane that’s way too big for the map that it’s charting the flight on. I’m eating a really delicious cranberry chicken salad sandwich from Bents. I look down trying to find where I would have been but everything’s too small. In what seems like 10 minutes, Boston is out of the picture and I’m landing in New York.

The somewhat scary idea that I’m pretty much on my own, hit me at baggage claim. With about 150 lbs worth of junk and no idea where to go next I understood the true meaning of the word LUG-gage. Eventually I got to the terminal and only 4.5 hours later I was sitting in the ugliest and most dated looking plane ever, and listening to a never-ending loop of 5 songs over the loudspeaker, courtesy of Iberia: “You’re Beautiful”, “Everybody’s Changing” “Angel of Mine” and two other weird ones. There was an hour delay taking off, but besides that and the Opus Dei guy I sat next to, the flight was uneventful, and before I knew it, Pilar, the housing coordinator, was the waving a BC pendant at me, Michele, and our new friend Victor!

It didn’t dawn on me that I was actually in Spain until I was in my chic modern hotel room with purple ceilings and chrome fixtures looking out from the balcony at all the old fashion European buildings across the narrow street. I realized I was in a place whose history reaches far beyond the US’s.

So after a second or two contemplating the history and culture and all that that. I decided to take advantage of being the first one there and take a shower. But when I went to turn on the lights, I couldn’t find a switch. I tried every switch in the room. None of them worked. Just as I was about to give up and shower in the dark, I noticed a weird square thing on the wall next to the door that looked perfect for sticking my key card into. So I did. And then there was light! A lot of people warned me about culture shock, I don’t know about shock, but this might have at least been some culture confusion. Conserve electricity? What?? Before you start thinking we have a lot to learn from the Spanish about saving energy, let me tell you about my first night. Our program treated us to a delicious paella dinner. We got to try five different types of paella. They were all really good. One of them was called paella negra since its black from squid ink. For desert we had sweet wine that you have to hold in a bottle over you head and pour straight into your mouth. Everyone was hesitant to try this except for a kid named Teddy who said he’d done it in Peru (shout out to Lucia). Finally my table, tucked napkins into our shirts and gave it a try. It was pretty funny to watch. I was one of the few who didn’t dribble or get it too close to their mouth and stab themselves with the spout. After that we walked around in a loud and obnoxious, but fun pack of Americans looking for a nonexistent pub where they would be playing the BC football game.

Before I went to bed I went back to the balcony. It was the same balcony but a totally different view. The sun had set on the old buildings and the neon lights of the clubs illuminated the crowds of people lining up to get into “Joy Eslave”. (It was 3 am and they were going IN to the club, no wonder why they need to save electricity during the day, the city is awake all night!)

Site of a moorish fortress built in 852, epicenter of “la movida”, and Spain’s largest city with a population of over 3 million, Madrid does both past and present to greater extremes than any city I have ever been to. My first night in Sol, the center of Old Madrid, was a perfect preview of the juxtaposed cultures of history and cosmopolitan atmosphere that I will be living in this year.