First week in Spain

Hello to all! Sorry it has taken me so long to make my first post, but our first week here has been kind of hectic. First of all, we missed our flight to Madrid Thursday night, due to air traffic in JFK from Obama's administration leaving after the UN stuff during the week in New York. The next flight was exactly 24 hours later, but thankfully we were able to stay with friends and made our flight the next evening. So we finally arrived to Madrid about 7:30 Saturday morning. We made reservations at a hotel very close to the school I will be teaching at and quickly discovered that I would want to live somewhere more toward central Madrid.

Alcala de Henares is where my school is located (for those of you who like Google maps). It's a very nice place, but seems to be more residential, whereas the center of Madrid is closer to everything. They say it's like the Times Square of Spain. So fortunately, during my orientation for school, I met a girl who had an extra bed in her apartment right in the middle of Puerta del Sol, which is at the very center of everything that goes on in Madrid! It's very small and we are sharing a room, but I couldn't ask for a better location. It will be a little less than an hour commute to school taking the metro and train, but I will only be working 4 days a week so hopefully it won't be that bad.

As far as my job goes, I don't have many details as of yet because I haven't actually started, but I'm really excited. Technically, I'm only working 16 hours a week, but it will entail much more than that -- kind of like teachers in the United States. At school, I'm only allowed to speak English to my students. The education system in Spain is moving in a direction in which many, many schools are bringing children up bilingually, which I think is awesome!!! I'm not sure exactly which age group of kids I am teaching yet, but my school goes from about age 3 up to the sixth grade. I'm supposed to bring things for my kids that shed light on my culture back in the States so if anyone has suggestions on what kinds of things I could get my Mom to send me when she gets back home I would love to hear them!

Also, we found a very small church that is about two miles away from my apartment (so I can walk to it!!) that seems pretty similar to my church back at home. My mom and I went this past Sunday and we were overwhelmed with the generosity and kindness of everyone there. I really think they are going to be like a second family to me while I'm here. There are about 20 or 25 people that attend the church and only one can speak much English. He and his wife invited us over for lunch last week with their family, which was probably the best food I've had since we've been here (I'm not too keen on the Spanish cuisine, in general). We spent most of the day over there and had a great time getting to know the family. I also met a girl who is around my age, maybe a little older, who is not working now and offered to show me around Madrid, grab a coffee or just hang out. She speaks almost no English so getting to spend time with her should help my Spanish tremendously and she seems very sweet.

I guess I will quit blabbing now. I had a hard time for the first several days because things weren't really going too well, but now I'm so excited to see what Spain has to offer and I think I'm going to grow in so many ways while I'm here! If anyone has any questions or comments please feel free to leave them and I'll try and respond as quickly as possible. I'm sending my parents my address and I will get them to give it to whoever wants it as soon as we can. Can't wait to hear from everyone and I will keep you posted on things coming up!!