Many adventures later, I arrived safely in Sevilla

Highlights, post-Germany:

- we never would have found our hostel in Madrid unless we had met a red-headed British man (whom we fondly named Richard) who happened to live in a flat nearby
- we learned how to eat tapas the real Madrid way with Fernando, a family friend and former foreign exchange student in my cousin's house
- a day-trip (on the fast-train!) to Segovia to see the ancient Roman aqueduct
- 4 days in Granada (oops actually 5 because we got our dates wrong for the last four months, thinking our program started a day earlier), during which we met many international travelers staying at our hostel. The most memorable one was an Aussie named Dave (read: Dive) that cannot speak a word of Spanish whom was somehow dating our hostel owner Lidia that could not speak a word of English. Nice.
- many free tapas in Granada, as every time you order a drink you receive a free tapa (a great way to get dinner for under 4 euro)
- a marvelous rendezvous with high school friends in Granada, both of which I hadn't seen since graduation
- a trip to the Arab baths, in which you soak in pools of many different temperatures and receive a wonderful massage (and we could justify spending the money because we got it for 2 for the price of 1!)
- after hiking for the afternoon in the hills above Granada, we stumbled upon a gourmet Spanish BBQ and tapas restaurant that overlooked the whole city - since we had arrived too late for lunch, we returned the next day for one of the best lunches of our lives!

After a wonderful 12 days of travel, a week of which was in Spain, I have arrived in my new home city of Sevilla. The red-eyed travelers on my program, many of which had had flights canceled in Madrid, forcing them to journey here on the four-hour train ride, add up to close to 200. We are separated into 10 different orientation groups. Here we go! Orientate me!