Today NYU's group flight arrived at Madrid-Barajas airport at 10:15 am. The flight had a lot of turbulence, and our captain lost our confidence when he made three announcements in this order:
"Your flight will be 30 minutes early"
"Sorry, wrong data. Your flight will actually be an hour and a half late"
"Sorry, was reading the right data incorrectly. Your flight will be 30 minutes early"
We arrived right on schedule.
In the airport we had a long haul from the terminal to el equipaje, going up and down ramps and escalators and taking a train. All of us NYU'ers stuck together in what must have been a disgusting American blob to the natives, but a comforting bubble of warmth for those of us inside of it.
With the baggage we went outside and waited on a bus for an hour until all of the NYU'ers were in tow. Then we drove to a taxi stand downtown and took taxi's to our homestays.
Cordelia, Kim, and I made it to the house but realized we didn't know what the apartment number was. We used our top-notch reasoning skills to logic out that "bajo izquierda" could have been represented on the doorbells as "BI" and finally figured out which bell to ring. We then fumbled down some steps into what turned out to be a gorgeous, huge, $800,000-in manhattan, apartment. Our windows look out into an airshaft but they are huge and give off lots of light and let us see our neighbors laundry flapping in the breeze!
We then blobbed until it was time for the walking tour--which was weird and uneventful. Then we tried to get cell phones but needed our passports to buy them. By this point Cordelia and I were separated from Kim so we decided to "Rough it" and walk home. We had a pleasant, but still kind of lost, experience getting back home, and I took these pretty pictures:
Alex: Sounds (and looks like) an eventful first day. Still hard to believe you are there! I hope dinner turns out to be as wonderful as anticipated and that the NYU strategy of making you walk around helps you actually get a night's sleep tonight! What is your neighborhood like? We breathlessly await your next installment.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I admire the detail of your photos...particularly that of the bakery window.
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