After 18 hours of travel from Chicago through Sweden and Norway, I finally landed in Alicante at 3pm on Saturday, June 6th. Once I picked up my bag and got customarily screwed on the exchange rate, I hopped in a cab and headed towards my host family home.
As we drove down the sapphire blue ocean coast, I was pleased to see rows of palm trees, modern Spanish-style architecture and clear skies. My host family’s apartment is situated near the center of the commercial part of the city with lots of shopping, restaurants and public transportation. I’m staying with a woman named Carmen. While she doesn’t speak a word of English and my Spanish is at the level of a two year old at best, I think she said she is mother of grown children who have settled in various places including Pennsylvania. Her place is a three bedroom, two bath with separate kitchen, laundry and communal rooms. Once I unpacked we tried semi-successfully to chat, and I took a nap before heading to my first activity.
The host families walked us to a modern hotel to meet each other. There are 24 students in my program taking classes at various levels. Some are staying one month, others two like me, and 3 are in an internship program. Two other girls come from Columbia and the rest are from various schools mostly on the west coast. One girl is from the Yale school in Singapore, and might be the only one taking beginner Spanish with me. We had a welcome dinner of tapas (croquettes, tortas, burgers, fries, liquid salad, etc.) and chatted among ourselves. I noticed there are only 5 guys out of the 24 of us, and one of our advisors said it was typical for there to be much more women who study abroad in their programs. Dinner ended at 10pm.
Not a super exciting day, but pics to follow tomorrow during our campus tour!