off to Toledo and some pictures!

We found a Haribo gummy bear store in Madrid!

Our first store in Spain!!

The beautiful Palacio Real

Margi and Cecilia at the bottom of the stairs of El Prado

At the Botanical Gardens near El Prado

Our sneaky picture of the yellow room in the Palacio Real, absolutely stunning

These are just a few pictures. It takes a while to upload them, so we'll only do a few when we have good wifi.
We left Madrid this morning after a delicious breakfast and lots of coffee. We rode a bus to El Escorial, another palace/monastery. It was beautiful and there were so many courtyards and beautiful tiles on the walls. And HUGE tombs of all the past kings. We learned alot about the history of each royal family in Spain and how each family has impacted the cities we will visit. We ate lunch at a little place outside El Escorial and took lots of pictures! (Which will be uploaded soon!) We left El Escorial and had an hour and fifteen minute bus ride to Toledo. We arrived at our new hotel and had our second orientation meeting. We discussed our academics in Granada and talked about what our plan was for the next couple days. We left the meeting and drove into town on a bus and walked around. We ate with some of our friends and then we walked to see some of the shops but they were all closed! We took taxis back to the hotel which was a fun experience!! Tomorrow we are taking a walking tour of Toledo and then we have a free afternoon and evening after another orientation meeting! Toledo is super cute and the streets are so windy and fun! Definitely would've gotten lost if we weren't all together. They said it was built like that in case of invasion a long time ago. The history of all these places is so interesting and we love learning about it all!

Our First Royal Adventure!

Hello all!

Our first day in Spain has been both amazing and exhausting.  We are still jetlagged, but its getting much better after our well deserved night of rest!  To start the day off we had a fabulous breakfast at the hotel with delicious/ unique choices like salads, funky breads, pasteries and much more!!  We walked around the corner from our hotel to the Reina Sofia (queen of Madrid) Contemporary Art Mueseum.  We saw paintings by Dali, Picasso and other surrealist artists!  We even saw Guernica,  it was HUGE and amazing!  Our tour guide spoke ONLY spanish, which was interesting, but we surprisingly knew/ understood a lot! We couldn't take any pictures in the museums, but we snuck a few.  Next, we went to the Royal Palace, which was outstanding!! Every room had walls covered in silk and intricate designs, but the internet is being annoying so we can't upload any pictures at this moment.  After we toured the palace we took a long walk through Madrid and saw famous plazas throughout the city.  We ended up walking for a total of 8 hours, so now our feet hurt quite a bit!  Our first day in Spain has been great and we can't wait to tell y'all more about what we have done, but right now we are off to eat dinner with our new friends and hit the hay!

Spain, we have arrived!!

greetings!
after a gruelingly long travel experience, we are finally in Madrid! We flew to Newark and then had a two hour delay. we met a few girls and this one boy who was going on a backpacking trip! We finally got on the flight nearly three hours later and we set off for our overseas adventure! We watched movies and attempted to fall asleep, but failed miserably. We arrived in Madrid seven hours later and met our group and directors. After arriving at the hotel, we got our room assignments and then we went to explore! There is such beautiful architechture and we went to a Botanical Garden! Took lots of fun pictures and explored around the El Prado museum. We plan on going there tonight, when its free, before our panoramic bus tour and orientation meeting. We can't wait to see what all is planned! We'll blog again soon!!

And the adventure begins...

On June 25, 2011 we are leaving for our big adventure to Spain.  After a long flight we will land in Madrid and explore the city with our group.  We depart after a few days and travel to Granada where we will meet our new family.  We will be taking classes and trips to different cities in the southern part of Spain including Sevilla, Toledo, Nerja, the Alpujares Mountains and much more!  We can't wait to learn and explore this new place and culture and we look forward to sharing it with you!  We will update as often as possible, so check back on the progress of our grand adventure!

Hasta luego,

Hanna and Margi!