Just dance, gonna be okay...

Let me just start out by saying that I arrived in Barcelona safe and sound! There were zero problems and all in all, it was pretty uneventful. If you care to know more details, read on.

Anyone that has talked to me in the past couple of weeks has known that I've been pretty nervous about coming to Barcelona.  I'm never comfortable in situations where I don't have an exact plan or know exactly what is going to happen, so this was a huge step outside of my comfort zone.  I didn't really start to get excited until I saw on the screen on my flight to Frankfurt that we were flying over London.  London! Then walking through the Frankfurt airport I got pretty excited as well. Never having been to Europe, everything was new for me.  Although I can say that two phrases everyone should learn in every language are "Excuse me" and "Sorry".  I kept wanting to say those things to people as I was walking by them, but I had no idea if they spoke English!  Anyways, I pretty much just passed out on my short flight to Barcelona, I was so exhausted.  After my flight, I was walking towards baggage claim and I passed a shop that was playing music. I heard, "Just dance, gonna be okay..." blaring from the speakers.  That's when I knew I was going to be right at home in Spain.  Any country that plays Lady Gaga in their airports is all right with me.

Speaking of airports, Barcelona's airport is huge. Absolutely monstrous.  I've been in my fair share of airports, Appleton, Green Bay, Chicago, Detroit, LAX, Honolulu, Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Frankfurt, but I have never seen an airport this big or this nice.  It looked more like a mall!  The taxis here are really clean and nice as well! It made a very nice first impression.

My apartment is fairly small, but nice.  The best part about it is that I have a balcony right off of my room and we're on the top floor of my building.  It looks out onto a courtyard type area, so I can't see too much, but it's still really nice. We have a little table out there so when the weather gets a little warmer (it's in the 50s right now) we can eat out there.  I only know one of the girls that I'm living with so far, her name is Theresa and she's from Pennsylvania.  The other two people I'm living with are from the Czech Republic and Venezuela.

I did get to take a nap this afternoon before orientation started, but I'm still exhausted. So it's off to bed for me. We're taking a bus tour and some other stuff around the city tomorrow morning so hopefully I'll have some great pictures for everyone to see!