Estamos Aquí (We are here)

My oh my what a journey! Arriving to Spain the second time around was much more difficult than two years ago when I went through a well established study abroad program.  This time around, we were all on our own. Yikes!

As I predicted, with numerous connecting flights chances of something going wrong were pretty high.  Unfortunately, our plane took off an hour later than expected from Dublin, Ireland.  Therefore, we arrived in Madrid, Spain just as our final flight to Porto, Portugal took off. By this point, we had been traveling since 8 a.m. on Tuesday and it was already afternoon in Spain.  The airline representative said that there was another flight to Porto, Portugal at night.  For this flight, we would've had to first fly from  Madrid to Lisbon, Portugal (wayyy south), and then take a connecting flight from Lisbon to Porto only to arrive very late at night making for probably around 48 hours of traveling. Uh no thanks! I was almost in tears.  This woman was not very helpful, so we walked across the airport to another customer service stand and I pleaded for them to get us on a flight to Santiago de Compostela. It worked! This was a sweet deal since Santiago was only 50 minutes away by bus from our final destination whereas our Porto (where we were originally going to fly into was 3 hours away). The only reason we didn't originally book a flight straight to Santiago (the smartest option) was because the prices were astronmical.  Gracias a Dios (Thanks be to God).

We are so thankful to have arrived safely. Thank you for your prayers. I can't say I wasn't nervous during turbulence. Robin was as calm as a cucumber of course. We are very fortunate to have met wonderful contacts since our arrival.  My teacher, Laura, is just wonderful! She invited us over for dinner on Sunday and even drove us to an island with her husband and Beagle, Brownie.  This dos is seriously loco (crazy!).  Laura has also accompanied us during the great apartment hunt. She makes sure to ask all the important questions.  For instance, does the apartment have heat? Gracias, Laura! We went to sign the contract with Laura today for the apartment we loved; however, it was just rented out today :(

We start classes tomorrow. We can't wait to meet our students who we've been told are very excited to ask us many questions about America. Laura took us to see the schools the other day. Although we are living in a hotel in the city center now, the schools (both elementary) are located in the outskirts. I personally love the area the schools are in. They are both so green. We passed a few donkeys and goats that live right by our school. At least we know we'll make some friends in Spain :)