My trip and first few day in Spain

So, my trip over went way better than I expected. I can be a bit scatterbrained sometimes and so I was really nervous about traveling by myself. Especially because I had never flown alone before. My parents and I drove to Dallas the night before, (New Years Eve) because my flight was at eight-thirty that morning and we live about four hours away. So for the past two years, I havn't been able to celebrate the new year :( Last year my house almost burned down because of a grass fire and we had to move everything out.. it took awhile. I got through customs without a problem and landed in Detroit at around twelve. I had a four hour layover. That was fun, I just people watched and hoped that I might see Sufjan Stevens. My next flight was to Amsterdam and it lasted from four in the afternoon to six o'clock in the morning. I tried really hard to sleep but it was impossible. You try being six-five and stuffed into kiddy seat. Its not very comfortable, so I just watched movies the whole time. I landed in Amsterdam at six and had to get through customs in time for my flight to Spain at seven. It went pretty well, except I had to deal with a cranky Dutch airport guard who worked the x-ray machine thing. She was convinced that I had something dangerous in my pockets and made me take my paper money and chapstick and hold it over my head while standing with my feet spread apart. After I finally got past Helga, I had ten minutes to find which gate my flight left from and get there. I made it with two minutes to spare. Oh, yeah.

I landed in Madrid at nine-thirty and had to wait for my friends flight to come in at around twelve. I was pretty sure that I knew their flight information but I started second guessing myself when one o'clock rolled around and they still hadn't come. I was starting to freak out but then they came five minutes later and explained that their luggage had been lost for about thirty minutes. After meeting up with them, we got on the metro to the train station and took a three hour train ride from Madrid to Salamanca. When we got to Salamanca, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was, but I really wanted to sleep so after finding the hostel and taking a shower, that is exactly what I did. The next day, we got up and grabbed some breakfast and then walked around the city. All the buildings are incredible, I'm not exactly sure how old the city is but I know that most of the buildings have been here since medieval times. Most of the university buildings are located by the two oldest cathedrals. We toured one of the cathedrals today and it was amazing. The pillars inside were probably the size of a big room in a house. I also learned today that Christopher Columbus used to live in Salamanca and taught at the university. I'm really excited, because tomorrow we move into our dorm! Nothing that unusual has happened yet, except for the food..its different. But I am looking foward to the days to come. I will try to keep this updated fairly often. I'm going to miss everyone back home and I love all of you!