"Agua, agua, eh, eh, eh"

Estoy en Granada! Since finally leaving PHL, I have been to Madrid (briefly), Malaga (for one day), and Granada (since yesterday). It took me a grand total of 25 hours to get to Malaga from my house on Vashon, and I definitely almost missed my flight from Madrid to Malaga, but I did safely arrive. The Madrid airport is SO BIG that I actually had to take a bus on main roads and highways to get from terminal 1 to terminal 4. It took maybe ten to fifteen minutes. How absurd is that?

Upon arriving in Malaga I got lunch and a cellphone. This took hours. All of the lore about the Spanish taking long lunches -- it's true. And now I have a very odd cellphone as well. It has such weird commands and options -- I have a directory (address book), profiles (volume settings), in order to answer a call you must press "options" and then "answer" and everything is in military time. The following day (yesterday) we had orientation which was boring, but important I guess, and then went on a bus to Granada! Meeting my "parents" was quite fun! My roommate and I went back to their apartment and it's very cute! Que linda. We each have our own room and we're about 20 minutes from the Centro (the IES center, where my IES classes are) and also close to the University of Granada, though there are many "faculdades" (departments) that are located in different places. My Spanish is already improving, but is still nothing compared to my roommate. She is a brilliant Spanish speaker comparatively. This is extremely helpful for me because she helps me understand our padres (Conchi y Rafa, short for Rafael) and takes off pressure for me to formulate grammatically correct thoughts constantly. Brava Leah!

My family is extremely nice and wonderful, though. They are so supportive, always telling me I am so good at Spanish (lies) and that I have good pronunciation (truth). I can roll my "r"s so that helps a lot. Today, Rafa started singing Umbrella in Spanish (abajo de mi paraqua, aqua, aqua, eh, eh, eh) which was the most hysterical thing I have heard in about a year. I was in tears. He was also trying to do the macaraena because he thinks that´s what we do in America. He is very silly and jokes a lot -- very similar to a small, amiable child. Conchi is very nice and understanding, speaks slowly and is taking classes to learn English. She is so wonderful! And also la jefa (the boss) haha.

I have to go hiking with my group in aa neighborhood in the hills that overlooks the Alhambra and much of Granada which I'm sure will be beautiful and thankfully now it is warm and not 40 degrees like this morning.