Día 2

Quiero escribir solo en español porque aquí hablo solo en español y necesito practicar siempre, siempre, siempre. But, I want you all to understand me, so english it is.

I am 20 years old and I have never before been out of the United States. Yes, it's true! But right now I am sitting in my spanish room, in my spanish apartment, living with my spanish mother! I have to speak spanish all the time, at school, with fellow students, with professors, etc. I've only been here 2 days and I'm already thinking in spanish. Did I mention that I love it here?

I arrived in Toledo yesterday morning with 22 other UofM students. Let's just say I did not enjoy the flights...7 hours is far too long to be stuck in the same seated position. But I did enjoy getting to know my fellow compañeros since we spent so much time in the airports, on the plane, on the bus, etc. There are more students from MN, as well as Puerto Rico, Notre Dame, Denver, 2 Japanese girls, and a few other random people. 94 students total!

First walk through Toledo!

That first day we did a lot of orientation-ing, tours of La Fundación (the school, herein called "la fund"), and those of us staying with host families were picked up by our family. The families came at 5pm and everyone sat in the cafeteria with their family to have coffee, snacks, and to chat....except for me! Mi madre worked later, so I got picked up at 8:30. Little orphan Hannah. But of course she came, and we walked through the cobblestone streets of Toledo with my big suitcase and my backpack to my new apartment.
(FYI Toledo is an old "walled" city; most of the host families live outside of the city in suburbs and students take a bus into the city for classes. My apartment is in "el casco historico," or the old city, which means I am a 7-10 minute walk from school, depending on how lost I get.)

A is La Fundación, B is my house

Today we took a placement exam for classes, picked our classes, got cell phones, and had an information session and a welcoming fiesta! We had lots of time between events though, which meant lots of free time for wandering Toledo, exploring la fund, and Nolan and I even skyped with Emilie!!

Getting a coffee (or tea) at la Plaza de Zocodover

At 7pm we were showered with information about the program, traveling, safety (essentially all of our stuff will be stolen when we travel) and afterwards there was food in the courtyard and a surprise appearance by a mariachi band!!

This one's for Emilie!

There was much dancing, but the ratio of guys:girls was apparent very soon... there were a lot of girls standing and all the guys were forced to dance!

La música!

After this wonderful fiesta, I had to walk home for the first time alone, at about 10pm. I was kind of afraid that I'd get lost, so Nolan walked with me halfway. I thought I could figure it out the rest of the way... turns out I couldn't. No one knew where my street was, so I went back to the fund to get a map. When I returned, another girl from my program was also lost in the same area! So we found our way together to my house, and then she was able to find her house from there! Yay teamwork!

That's all for now, folks! It's very late and I need to sleep! (FYI, there are more photos in my Picasa album!)