IES has a strict "No Hawaiian Shirt" Policy

The first three days in Spain have been packed with orientation, walking, exploring, speaking spanish, and trying to remember the names of 78 new people, and have seriously lacked all things involving eating, excessive drinking, sleeping, bathing, organization, and fluency in any particular language.

We had to wake up really early, like 8am, which is of course 2am at home, to have breakfast and start orientation. We split into two groups for the day, and we started with Javier, who is the cutest most helpful director to ever exist in the history of study abroad programs. We first talked with him about cultural differences between Americans and Spaniards. For example, in America, it's rude to walk in front of someone when they are looking at the peanut butter in the grocery store. In the words of Javier, there is a relationship with the peanut butter, and it is not to be interrupted. For Spaniards, personal and public space are virtually nonexistent. For example, a Spaniard may bump into you four times in 2 minutes and doesn't need to say anything, like sorry, or excuse me, or anything. In America, people have a personal space bubble. In Spain, this bubble does not exist. At all. Furthermore, in America people wear sports clothes and no shoes, probably 50 per cent of the time. In Spain, people only where sports clothes when they play sports, and also shoes must be worn in the house at all times. It's the opposite of the U.S., to not wear shoes is almost insulting. For Spain, they have a very strange relationship with the floor, not with the food in front of them. After an hour of that, we had a quicker talk with Natalia about health safety and well-being. Thankfully, Granada is a very safe city, and apparently as long as we're safe we shouldn't have any problems. Also, Spaniards don't really drink in excess. Here, alcohol is associated with eating and with being social, and not with getting drunk. In Spain, people don't get drunk ever. And if you are drunk people are very concerned about you and your overall health. I think that it is actually a pretty good policy.

After a quick snack in which Rogo, Smiley and I hid in the corner because we were too tired, jet lagged, and antisocial to attempt to hold a conversation with anyone, we returned for more meetings. Again, we met with Javier to continue discussions about what we will be doing in the next week and about Spain in general. After that we had another meeting with Natalia about homestay protocol before having lunch, and waiting to get on the bus to Granada!!

Smiley and I were both on the blue bus, which was the last to leave, and so we and Madeline decided to walk to the beach, on the Mediterranean, because I didn't get to see it after my flight from hell. The beach was only a ten minute walk from the hotel, during which of course I made everyone speak Spanish. I do not think they appreciated it.

Also, it is true that the beaches here really are topless. Not completely, but kids, old ladies, teens, whatever, everyone is pretty much topless, and very open about it. It was certainly interesting. And I'm sure we were actually the ones looked strange in our shorts, white shirts, orientation folders and flip flops. We returned after about 45 minutes of sitting awkwardly with such limited vocabulary that we passed most of the time in silence. Finally on the bus to Granada, I started to feel better although I was terrified about meeting my madre.

After an hour and a half bus ride, we arrived to meet our familias. Our madre is amazing. She's a 54 year old widower with grey hair and always a big smile. She's thin, loves walking and speaks slowly so that we can understand her. We passed the rest of the night eating, checking out the city from the roof top terrace of our apartment complex, and unpacking enough to function. We stayed up late, being unable to fall asleep the second night (as it was 6pm at home) and talking, in Spanish about how excited we are.

But for now, it's time for lunch and having slept through breakfast this morning, I'm super hungry. So, until soon.

Yours.