¡Hola España!

Ay de mí. En serio. Madrid, here I am! I arrived six days ago and what a six days it has been. Let’s start with a brief summary of the flight over here…
It was supposed to be so easy: Albuquerque to Atlanta to Madrid. But no. There were mechanical problems with the plane and several international fliers had to be rerouted through Paris in order to reach their destinations as close to their original arrival times as possible. Don’t ever get lost in the Paris airport if you can’t speak French. Not a fun experience. So there were a few speed bumps along the way, but in the international traveler check-in line in ‘burque I met an incredibly nice and genuine man named Gary who helped me through my first international flying experience. He made sure to watch out for me. There should be more Gary’s in the world. And to Gary in Munich, thank you.
As soon as I arrived in the Madrid-Barajas, I managed to find my luggage right away, and it wasn’t long before I ran into other students in the same program. Good thing, because I couldn’t figure out how to use the phones. We were then quickly bussed to Alcalá de Henares where we were promptly whisked away by our host-people, not to see anyone in the program for two days.
The senora that I was assigned to turned out to be strict, unreasonable, inflexible, manipulative, difficult to deal with and psychotic in general. How do I mean? Well, first off, let me say that the room she prepared for me and my roommate was lovely. Two decent beds, shelf space, a closet and a number of drawers, a nice window and even a television. The room was a small but perfectly comfortable living space. But it didn’t take us long to realize that she had unreasonably high expectations of us. She kept repeating to us that her home was not a hotel and that we had to respect the rules (“Tenéis que respetar las reglas!”), but we had given her no reason to lecture us, as we had had no opportunity to behave any certain way, having just arrived, and furthermore, we were profusely (and sincerely) thanking her.
The first day, when my roommate got out of the shower, our senora followed her around with a mop, and she came into the room telling us that we had to keep the closet doors closed. When we left the building, my roommate and I left the piso very clean. We both had unpacked, and I tried to organize my things on the shelves provided. And I made my bed. When we came back later that day, the room was immaculately clean: everything on the nightstand had been put on our shelves and she remade my bed. The next day, we were about eight minutes late to lunch because we had gotten ourselves lost in the town and we got a lecture.
So, last night we moved in to another apartment. We live in what is basically a closet, but this new woman is incredibly nice (she’s kind of like another Gary). We can come and go whenever we please, we can use her phone, and it just plain feels good to be around her. And, of course, she feeds us—but we don’t have to worry about running late.
Oh the drama! More about Alcalá de Henares and Madrid later...