Where do I begin!?  These last few days have been an absolute whirlwind…everything went well with my flights getting to Alicante, with one exception – the airline from Madrid to Alicante (Vueling) charged me 110-euros ($160) to check my second bag, which was only a small suitcase – ridiculous!  Anyways, so I arrived in Alicante at 1pm local time on Friday, and the jet lag was starting to set in.  While meeting with everyone from the program and getting some introductory info, I was really fighting to stay awake.  I managed to stay up until ten o’clock or so when dinner was ending.  All in all, it was an awesome day – I met lots of cool people and we had some delicious tapas for dinner. 

Over the next two days, I got used to the local time, ate a ton of delicious food (trying a lot of stuff I never had before – calamari, rabbit, all sorts of stuff), made some great friends, and went to my first European club.  But the best part came tonight when I got picked up by my host family and moved out of the dorms.  They seem like an amazing family.  My madre has three children – two daughters, who moved out and have families of their own, and a son (25) who still lives at home.  He’s going to be an awesome older brother for me this whole trip.  For our first night together, we met up with her daughters (who are also hosting American students) and had a big dinner at a teter�a – a really cool restaurant where they serve sandwiches and pizza but also have tons of board games for you to play while you’re there.  After dinner we went back to mi casa (which is a nice apartment in the middle of Alicante) and watched TV.  I wish I had more pictures, but so far I’ve forgotten to take my camera with me anywhere, so this one of my family is all I have.

Location: Alicante, Spain