Made it here with my luggage!!

So when they tell you the flight is 7 hours they are lying.  Badly.  I left the US at 7pm and I arrived in Madrid at 8:30am this morning.  Even though I was in the air for only 7 hours I feel those 13 hours that have passed since I have set foot on land right now and the jet lag is already kicking in pretty bad.  The flight was overall pretty okay.  My ears usually don’t pop on planes so I guess it was normal that they didn’t start now.  But once we landed the pressure went away pretty quickly and I am doing very well now.  When I got off the plane, Liana and I went through customs, grabbed our bags, and walked out the door.  I tripped as soon as we got off the plane and was waaayyy close to spraining my ankle within 10 minutes of arriving in true Flynn fashion.  However all was good and we met Kristina and Michael right outside the doors.  Perfect.  From there Liana went to her host family and I went with Kristina and Michael to our apartment.  19 metro stations and about 200 stairs later (with my two 50lb luggage bags in tote), we were out of the metro and on our way to our place.  The apartment is about a half mile from the station and Kristina and Michael each grabbed one of my bags so that effort (on my part) wasn’t so bad.  Thank God we live in a building with elevators so going up to the 3rd floor wasn’t horrible.  Once inside our place I was totally impressed.  There are 3 bedrooms, a huge living room with major windows, 2 bathrooms and a kitchen.  It’s great and we entered into a lease with the landlord today.  I would say we “signed a lease” but that would be a lie.  We are renting from the cutest little Spanish man I have ever seen and he is still getting around to the paperwork.  For now it’s just cash for the rent and a word that the place is ours until he decides he’s ready to draw up the lease.  Since I am my father’s daughter this obviously makes my heart stop to think that we don’t have any documentation that we actually are going to be living here and paying rent to this man.  However, when in Spain... right??  After we dropped my things off and double kissed Luis about 30 times we decided to do a little exploring around and get some basic needs for the apartment (food, soap, alcohol...etc.)  We went to the grocery store and the chino place near by and got our goods, dropped them off, and then went out for food.  We went to the cafeterias (what they call the little bar/food places) near our place (YES, literally everything is right by our place.  Que bien!!) and got some canas.  Canas are beers and then you get tapas for free.  The good news is that for the beer and tapas it’s only about 1.35 Euro total.  The bad news is that you don’t get to pick the tapas that you get so when we got mayo/ham/noodle salad I wasn’t as impressed.  When we finally got home we decided it would be best for me to stay up as long as possible to get rid of the jet lag easier and go to bed at the normal time Spaniards go to bed.  Naturally, the best idea we came up with to pass the time was to drink a little bit and get to know each other.  We have no internet or TV right now so it only seemed logical that booze should be involved.  About 3 hours and muchos bottles of alcohol later: here I am.  Totally spent and a little toasted.  Ready for my first night’s sleep in Madrid.  Buenos Noches :)