First 3 days in Spain

HOLA AMIGOS!
Well it's been a crazy couple of days. I flew out of JFK on Wednesday night and arrived in Madrid's airport at 9 am (Spain time). The flight over was... haha... way too fun to be flying. I was flying on Iberia Airlines in their business class due to some frequent flier miles pops had accumulated (gracias mucho!) And had some wine with my duck dinner, we had hot towels, seats that could recline, room to stretch my legs as much as I could, and personal screens with headphones to watch movies. I could keep going but I don't want to make anyone jealous.

So I get off the plane and soon realize that Barajas Airport is HUGE! We went down probably 5 escalators and took a tram to the baggage claim. After getting luggage and putting my suitcase in a locker I got on a Metro to get out of the airport, there were two more Metro stops for different terminals in the airport! Seriously, it's huge. I had directions to a hostel in downtown Madrid where I had to stay for a night since I had arrived in Madrid a day before the rest of the JMU group.

The Metro in Madrid was definitely the most organized metro system I had ever seen. I had to switch onto 2 other metro lines and there were always signs pointing me in the direction I had to go. I found the hostel with ease and checked in and got some sleep and read before taking a walk around Madrid. When I got back to the hostel I met some girls from UC-Pacific who had just graduated and were backpacking eastern Europe for 6 weeks. They were real cool and we ended up getting dinner together in the city.
In the morning I woke up and went back to the airport to meet up with the group. We waited for a long time before everyone's flights got in. BUT, 3 of us were walking around the airport looking for lost JMU people when we looked up and saw Spanish News cameras filming someone who was walking into the airport. When we got closer everything got ridiculous. A big crowd gathered and the videocameras filmed this guy checking into the airport... CHECKING INTO THE AIRPORT. This guy had hair like Elvis, big glasses, and a gold vest over a purple dress shirt. I figured this was a joke and the people in the airport were getting "Punk'd" or something. So, we asked some people standing nearby who he was and they told us his name was Rudolfo Chikilicuatre, and that he was muy fama "very famous". He was literally showing fans his pink plastic guitar and doing interviews in the airport.
I later learned that there is a big European music competition over here and each country gets one representative in it. Check him out, I keep asking my host family if this guy is a joke, but both of my "sisters" know all of the words to his song. We'll see how he does in the competition this week.
We finally got out of the airport and rode on a bus 2 hours to Salamanca, to the west of Madrid.
My host family has been a lot of fun. My buddy Pedro (Peter) and I live on the fifth floor of an apartment with mi madre, mi padre who owns the carniceria (meat shop) underneath our apartment, and their two daughters ages 13 and 11. The daughters are a lot of fun and really like talking to Pedro and I. The big plus about having a padre who owns a meatshop is that we are guaranteed to be eating good meat while we are here.
Pedro and I have had a lot of time to walk around the city and it is obvious that there is a lot of history in this city. I look forward to exploring further.
Last night our group from JMU went out on the town. 23 of us total, we are so American it is funny. We found some good discotecas and I even got to practice some merengue/salsa.
Well sorry for being so long-winded, but it's been fun so far.
adios.