This is probably going to be one of the longest posts I will ever write. If you are planning on going to Alcalá de Henares, hang in there, the first 72 hours are pretty eventful and full of excitement.
First of all, I’ll let you all know that it is currently 64 degrees outside. I was expecting a warmer weather and I’m guessing that so was everyone else on the program. I don’t think any of us really packed for it, but we’ll figure things out as we go.
I wasn’t really able to sleep that well the night before I left Florida. I was too excited and had this plan in my mind that I would make myself tired so I could sleep on the 8 hr plane ride and be wide awake when I arrived in Madrid at 7am on the following day. Well… that didn’t really work out.
I got to the Orlando International Airport early in the morning on May 28th, checked my luggage and went through security and on to the gate area with a backpack and a camera bag.
I randomly met Tyler, a guy that is also on the same program as I am, and we talked for a little bit until he had to leave on a flight from Orlando to Charlotte, the stop that we both had to make in order to go to Madrid. However, we were in different flights. He left an hour earlier and so I ate something, walked around, made some calls I had to make before I left and just waited.
The flight was very quick. I was listening to Rozalen all the way there and when I got tired I read the first three or four chapters of “Veronika Decides to Die” in Portuguese.
When I got to Charlotte, I met with Tyler again and we hung out for a few hours until we had to board the plane that would bring us to Madrid.
On the plane we ended up being on the same section. He was a row in front of me across from where I was sitting and had another student next to him that was going to study in Madrid with another program. I on the other hand, had Amanda.
Amanda is a really nice girl from Texas that is also studying abroad for four weeks. She’s studying in the city of Cadiz with another language school. Out of the eight hours that lasted the flight, I’m pretty sure we spoke for 7 1/2.
Sometimes it’s hard to find people interested in languages and education and traveling and all that, so we hit it off pretty quickly. We had fun on the plane trying to figure out what the movies were about, trying to understand what the crew was attempting to say through the speakers that weren’t really working and enjoying the humor, language and personality of an Andalusian lady that was traveling to Cadiz as well.
We had dinner on the plane and it was actually pretty good. They still do the “Chicken or pasta?” that I had not heard in years and they had a really good dessert that I’m still trying to figure out what it was. I’m calling it a “cinnamon oatmeal thingy”.
Later on, we had a snack that was pretty good as well and when we finally landed we stayed in the plane longer than necessary because there was plane traffic. As ridiculous as that sounds, it was true. We stayed on the plane until it was our turn to get off.
We finally gathered our belongings and walked out of the plane, into the Aeropuerto Adolfo Suarez Madrid- Barajas.
First thing that I noticed right off the plane is that people walk and exercise a lot in this country. The path to get to customs was really long with lots of stairs on the way.The people with large carry on luggage were definitely suffering.
When we finally got to customs we didn’t have to fill any paperwork or anything and the line was very short. There were only four maybe five people before me. The security guard that works at customs asked me a few questions about why I was there and for how long I was staying and he stamped my passport!
After that, we waited for each other outside of customs, we went to get our luggage and I had my first mini heart attack when I thought I had lost my phone, but then I found it in the pocket of my camera bag.
See, for this trip I had only two rules.
1. Do NOT lose your passport. (for obvious reasons)
2. Do NOT lose your phone. (It’s your only way of communicating with everyone back home)
We were trying to figure out where would the other girls arrive at so we could wait for them but that was a little more complicated than expected. We arrived in terminal 1 and flights from Miami arrive in terminal 4, we had to take a shuttle.
Before all of this, we needed Wi-Fi or Wee-Fee (as the Spaniards say). The Barajas airport lets you log into their internet for a period of 15 minutes, so that was the time to update Facebook statuses, send texts through WhatsApp, send Snapchats, send emails and Google where things were at, because we were pretty much completely lost. Fifteen minutes was obviously not enough and afterwards we were all left incommunicated.
Tip: For all of you that are coming to Madrid at some point, just know that if you have an Ipod, a smartphone, an Ipad and a computer, you get 15 minutes on each device, so at the end you would have an hour of internet.
Amanda ended up joining Tyler and I in the adventure of finding Jackie and Jillian. We hopped in one of the shuttles that drives from terminal to terminal with all of our luggage and arrived at terminal 4.
Inside an elevator on terminal 4 Amanda found a girl that was from her program and university and she joined us as well. She had already been in Spain for a week or so before the actual program started and was waiting for their professor, as well, to arrive at 10:30am.
As we were waiting, I bought a turkey sandwich for 5,50 euros (so you get an idea of prices for food at the airport) which considering how airport food is always expensive no matter where you are and how hungry I was, it was pretty good. It also tasted really good.
Paying for the food was a little impersonal, I believe, but it was still pretty cool. You put your euros into a machine, and the machine gives you your change. However, If you are paying with credit/debit card, you will need to show your passport to the cashier.
Eventually, we got tired of waiting for the girls and we assumed they had already arrived because that’s what the arrival board said. So we went back to take the shuttle, which took us a little while longer to find this time, and we hopped in with all of our luggage again and left for terminal 1.
If you’re going to Barajas, and you’re in terminal 4 and want to go to another terminal, planta cero is where you will get picked up at.
We finally found the girls and the rest of our group right where we were getting picked up by the staff from the Instituto Franklin and we eventually left on a huge bus to Alcala de Henares, the city where we would all live for the next month or so…
Chronicles of a Compulsive Traveler 
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