At last!

I am finally here! These past 36ish hours have been the longest hours of my life. I have been stressed, excited, panicked, angry, tired, and anxious. I will start from the beginning: My flight from LA was an hour and a half late, making every connection flight from then on late too. So basically instead of arriving in Madrid at 12 noon I didn’t get here until 7 pm. Being my first trip abroad ever and being by myself this was a really stressful for me. Especially since 3 of my layovers were in a different country! This was my flight schedule: LA to Detroit to Amsterdam to Paris to Madrid. Kind of crazy right? Oh and I also had to SPRINT to all of my gates because they were so close together in time. Leaving me with bruises on my feet from my stupid loafers and I’m pretty sure I have shin splints now.

As if that wasn’t enough when I arrived in Madrid of COURSE my bags weren’t there. So the airline will deliver them tomorrow morning. Until then I get to wear the same clothes I have been wearing for about 36 hours.

But the most important thing is that I am HERE! I met up with the group at the Plaza Mayor and we had dinner there all together. It was nice to meet up with Cal Poly people but I still don’t have any close friends in the group so I’m still pretty out of my element.

I didn’t take any pictures today because I was by myself almost the entire day and I didn’t want to stand out like a tourist because I figured I was kind of an easy target. Tomorrow we are going to Toledo and will be there the entire day. I will take lots of pictures there of course!

All in all it was a good learning experience and I feel like now that I have done that by myself I can pretty much do anything J

Hasta Luego!

Abby Mathis