Arriving in Madrid

I finally had some time and a solid internet connection to sit down and create this blog. It is currently 8:00 am in Seville (pronounced Sevilla), Spain. I arrived in Spain on September 1st, landing in Madrid. I had been told that Madrid was a lot like New York City...very populated and crowded. As we pulled into the city, I was very surprised at what I saw. The buildings were small and the city seemed very clean. Our bus pulled up to our hotel and let us off at Hotel Moderno.

This is the view from my hotel room. 

There are building height restrictions in Spain, which makes Madrid have a very cool feeling to it. There are no sky scrapers...they build out instead of up. In the distance you can see a church. Religious buildings in Spain are the only ones that do not have height restrictions. 

After settling into the hotel we all met as a group (API) and had dinner. There were about 50 kids in the group, and at this time I knew none of them so I tried to get to know as many as possible. The majority of the kids in the group were from somewhere from northeastern US...mostly Massachusets/Connecticut/New York. Apparently I have a texan accent, but I think that their Boston accents were way stronger. After dinner, the group went to an outside bar type area to have some drinks and get to know each other. Most people slowly trickled back to the hotel due to exhaustion from jet-lag. Those that weren't too tired went to a bar called Dubliners. The bar was an Irish bar, where we were drinking Mexican and Dutch beer (Corona and Heineken), and talking to a group of Australian, Austrian, and Scottish people...all while in Spain. Pretty weird combination if you ask me, but it was fun. When I got tired I made my way back to the Hotel Moderno for a good night's sleep in my tiny hotel room. More to come later...