I was fortunate enough to sit next to a Spaniard on my flight from Philadelphia to Madrid. His name was Carlos, and he was only a few years older than me, so I chatted him up about typical young guy stuff, you know, like sports, girls, and brew. We were talking about the different ethnic groups and Spain, and the conversation drifted towards discussing gypsies. He told me, in strong but imperfect English, essentially what follows: “Gypsies are ok. You talk to them, they play flamenco and they are like o we are so smart, and maybe you end up paying whole check or are like hey where is my watch?!” Just one man’s humble opinion on gypsies.

So far the journey has been interesting. Currently, I am so tired its ridiculous. I am falling asleep writing this. After essentially a whole day of travel beginning Monday and ending Tuesday afternoon, we got to spend the night in Malaga. We had IES guides walk us to downtown, and then they let us split up and get food. I got Tapas with four other students from all over the country, and we all came to a similar conclusion about our shared meal: there is no possible way this is actually real. There is no way we are ordering drinks and tapas from a bar in a cozy alley only a stone’s throw from Malaga’s cathedral (easily the biggest church I have ever seen and perhaps the only time I have been truly vexed by a building’s size). It felt like we were on a movie set or something. After some broken sleep, we had orientation sessions at our hotel in Malaga, then got on charter buses and headed North for Granada. Upon arrival in Granada, we unloaded our luggage, and waited for our host mom’s to come pick us up. I was greeted by Marivi and her son Louis, and we walked a short distance to her apartment, which will be my residence for the next four and a half months. It is a transcontinental, linguistic adventure that I find myself in, but Marivi is very kind and has a great sense of humor, so I think we can laugh our way through me butchering her beautiful native tongue. For now that is all, but there is much to come. Stories of food and drink. Stories of chance encounters and nights that last until sunrise. Stories of linguistic struggle and cultural growth. Stories of on kid’s futile struggles to get a handle on the vastly different culture of a country in which he is now a resident (literally was half asleep while typing these last few lines, enjoy the grammar of a semi conscious ramblings of an exhausted foreign exchange student).

I looked at this post the next day and was going to edit it for grammar. I made one change, but decided to leave the rest as is, and in its grammatical impurity, perhaps it can convey how purely exhausted, mentally and physically, when I wrote this last night. Enjoy.