Palm trees and sweat

To continue the saga...so we get on an Air Europe flight to Malaga, and it is so much smaller than the jet to Paris. I wonder if that's how big domestic flights are? But yeah. It was really warm on the plane, and everyone's energy was really faded. Only a few people had slept on the Air France flight, so everyone fell asleep on this one. It was for the best, because I don't think anyone would have tolerated the 2.5 hours otherwise.

So we land. And we start walking. It's a trudge at the most optimistic. We finally find baggage. Then we find where our baggage really is, in a glass room. I wait, and after standing around 15 minutes, I see one of my bags! I yell out that it's mine, another Dickinson girl tackles it, and I learned how to hunt luggage. I pounced on my next one. Then we wandered out towards exit signs, after deciding that they could track us down if they wanted to scan our luggage, and found a Dickinsonian who was coming to help us. It was a beautiful moment. Until the other professor joined him, he gave rapid instructions in Spanish, and started calling names and handing out envelopes (bus pass, map of Malaga, map of house, welcome letter, 20 euros). He gave me instructions, and I understood him saying that the car could not go to the door of the house. I thought for some reason this still meant the taxi would help me with my luggage....wrong.

So I wander out with my taxi partner to find said taxi. I have not slept, since the flight attendant* kept bumping me on her way down the aisle. I realize the taxi driver doesn't speak English, which should have been obvious. I repeat my address, in faulty Spanish, 3 times, till he takes a map from me and looks skeptical. We start driving. My taxi partner is unfortunately rather fluent already it seems, but I'm too tired to be jealous. I stay quiet, or make small comments in Spanish. Then things got increasingly stressful, and I started speaking English again, probably stressing out the driver further. It seems he really can't drop me off anywhere near my house, because cars can't go that way. So we drive around the block again and again, running the meter up when we only have 40 euros to pay him with (it was at 25 euros, and my partner had to be dropped off). So I tell him to drop me off at a corner close by, thinking, this will suck because I have literally, 94 pounds of luggage....but I will manage. So he does. And then drove away. And I realized I was alone, spoke very poor Spanish, and was greatly encumbered. I walked for 5 minutes down one street...didn't meet terribly many people, but they all stared. Then I decided to backtrack, go up and loop around...So I walked alongside a rt 202 type road, with no sleep, millions of pounds of luggage, sweating like I'm something that sweats a lot...and then I decided to make another decisive move and went onto basically a boardwalk. I made a great spectacle, at the very least. So much stress though.

I finally found it after a total of 30 minutes wanderings....and my host mom is great. She doesn't speak any English, but she's good at picking out words I do know. She has an 11 year old daughter, and a 20 year old daughter (what a great coincidence!). So as I ate lunch with them, the older daughter's two friends tried talking to me, and realized I speak terrible Spanish. Luckily, her friend speaks English really well, and she translated between all of us. My host mom told her to talk to me in Spanish, because I understand Spanish, and she was like Relaaaax it's her first day. And I was glad, because even though I was cheating, it was so nice to be understood, and to not stutter for an answer. I understand a lot of what they say to me, I just don't know how to answer. When they speak to each other, I only catch things every now and then. I'll get better...it's just a completely overwhelming situation. The food is good though! We had a rice and vegetable thing for lunch and a toast and cheese sandwich for dinner. Some of you know this, but for those that don't, lunch is the biggest meal of the day here, and meals are set later in the day. We ate lunch close to 3 PM I think, then I went to my room under the pretext of unpacking (when really I was going to sleep for 5 hours), and my host mom woke me up at 8:30 or 9 for dinner. There was pizza and salad at lunch too, I was just too tired to eat, so I only ate about half of my rice.

So they do live on the beach. And it's beautiful. And I have internet! They even drew me a map of where the bus station was. The house has a million levels, and at the very top is a terrace that looks out on the Mediterranean...with a table for me to do my homework. My room is pretty small, but really, why would I want to spend time in there anyway?

I kind of just went back to my room after dinner, because I didn't know what to do with myself, and I was tired of the charades for me to understand the conversation. But then Dickinson kids showed up at my door, and we went on a walk on the boardwalk type thing (and spoke Spanish to each other). We're going to the beach tomorrow, and starting orientation.