Estoy aquí!

So long, so long...

Greetings from Valencia! We have finally arrived! I feel like I could write a book solely on our first day! To make a quick run through: Our flight out of Fayetville was delayed by 3 hours, which made us miss our flight to London. Our new flight to London was supposed to depart two hours later than what we had originally planned, but then it also got delayed because they had to deice it (However, we ended up with an entire row to ourselves, which made for plenty of room to lay down and sleep!). We made it to London, navigated through London Heathrow (Everyone speaks with such charming, cute accents!! We cherished the last bit of English language a great deal!), and caught our flight to Barcelona. I slept most of the way to Barcelona, but when I woke up as we were landing I was in awe of how beautiful it all was. I got my first glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea, which was green and lovely, and there were mountains in the background that looked absolutely perfect. I definitely can't wait to go back and do some real visiting. We didn't spend much time in Barcelona, though, because we had to catch our flight to Valencia. The flight to Valencia was the first time we were totally immersed in Spanish, and while it was kind of cool, it was also a little overwhelming. The airport in Valencia is small, and as soon as we got here, we went to an Iberia station and made a claim for lost luggage. They had told us in Chicago that our luggage was still on its original route, even though we were not, so we basically have no idea where it is. Hopefully it will arrive within the next few days!

After calling Lucia, our mentor, and some confusion, we finally met up with her and her boyfriend. Lucia speaks VERY little English, so it was time to break out the Spanish. It was confusing at times because she speaks soooo quickly, but we made it through. The brought us to our hostel, and they will pick us back up tomorrow to help us look for apartments, get a cell phone, etc. Our hostel is... well, it's a hostel. The room is very small (it's smaller than a Scholars House room for you MSU people), and there are 3 sets of bunk beds in it. The building itself is very nice, and the staff is very friendly, which is good! The best part is that our friend from Mexico, Abril, made it in, and she's in our room with us! I am very impressed with her English, and she's trying to help us with our Spanish. I know it's only the first day, but I can tell that I'm really going to like her! She will be accompanying us in our errands tomorrow, and hopefully we will all find a place to live relatively soon!

Of course, we wouldn't be Allison and Emily if something didn't go wrong right off the bat. With no surprise, something messed up. Emily's computer randomly died while she was using it, and now we can't get it to turn back on. I'm proud of my little friend for dealing with it so well. I know I would be freaking out, but she's surprisingly calm. Please pray for that situation!! Hopefully it's nothing major.

It's 1:20AM here in Valencia, so we're heading to bed. It sounds like we will have a full day ahead of us tomorrow. Please pray for us as we search for housing, deal with missing baggage and a dead computer, etc. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have pictures to post of Valencia! Miss you all! Talk to you soon!

...front foot leads the back one.