Mi Querido Oviedo

Finalmente, he llagado en Oviedo. ¡Estoy en España! Boy did it seem like forever to get here...Oviedo was more beautiful than I had imagined. The plane ride over was amazing. There wasn't a skyscraper in site, just beautiful rolling hills and countryside and miles upon miles of mountain range! Little villages speckling the immensity of green made it seem so real yet at the same time surreal. Asturias is truly the paradise of Spain.
So anyways, I meet one of the other girls Natalya in the airport and we pile on a bus to go to the city of Oviedo. I realize now how extremely exhausted I am. We arrive at the bus station and Dana, Ivan, Clara and my new house mom, Marta are there waiting. Apparently they had thought that I was coming two hours earlier! But Dana had forgot that she emailed me and told me to wait for Natalya. Poor Marta. No worries though...Marta seemed very sweet, she was dressed very stylishly, not exactly what I had expected. My nerves started kicking in, it was now that I truly realized I was in Spain and would be here for five months...living in a house where speaking Spanish was my only option. Phew! Breathe Sara. Why I thought that the Spanish families would be able to speak English at least a little, who knows. Marta and I got to her apartment and I stumbled over my Spanish as if I had one class of it. GAH! C'mon, get with it, YOU KNOW THIS STUFF! My brain and body were so tired. I think Marta could tell, cause after our cafe con leche (coffee with milk) she proposed the idea that I lay down before the program dinner (espicha - typical asturian meal) later that night. I guess I was really out cause a couple hours later Marta was banging on the bedroom door to wake me up and I was dead to the world. Hah. Finally I got up at about 10 minutes to 9 when we were supposed to go to the dinner. We walked to the restaurant and Marta walked me through the campus which I found out was only about two minutes from her apartment. Talk about convenient :D So we got to the dinner and I met some of the other students in the program. It ended up being a very chill night, filled with a lot of food, sidra (hard cider), sidra sangria and desserts. Everyone was going out after (minus the homestay families obviously) but I opted out and decided to go home with Marta so I could get a good night's sleep before my first day of classes. Hah...good night's sleep, I think not. Let's just say the sheets were a bit damp the next morning. I had cold sweats and was tossing and turning all night. Culture shock? Mmhmm. But nonetheless, the next day came and I made it through. Classes seemed like they'd be beneficial to my learning the spanish language...hard, but interesting. This was definitely going to be a completely different and exciting cultural experience!