Arrival in Málaga

Remarkably, my travel today from Geneva to Málaga was completely uneventful. The Iberia representative who checked me was completely taken aback when he saw how much luggage I was taking from Geneva to Málaga until I explained that I would be studying there, at which point he became very friendly and insisted that I would absolutely love it.

The Madrid airport is enormous - absolutely enormous. They had almost 100 gates for Iberia flights within the Schengen countries alone. I couldn't piece together how the airport worked, though. The H, J, and K gates were all connected in the format of one long rectangular terminal. Yet, the majority of the gates didn't have a plane at them. So I thought that maybe it just wasn't being fully used yet. But then, when I consulted the departures board, for flights even one and half hours away, there would not be a gate listed. Rather, it would simply say HJK. As the time of departure got closer, the gate would be posted specifically. It seemed odd that if the gates weren't all in use, they wouldn't be able to know that gate from which any individual flight would depart.

Anyway, upon arriving in Málaga, I ran into my colleagues from Dickinson as they were disembarking from a consecutive gate. My luggage then arrived at the wrong terminal (hey, at least it's here). Then Profesor Borges met us and put us in Taxis in pairs. On the way to the neighborhood of El Palo, where many of us are staying, we witnessed the Málaga air show, which featured all types of acrobatic flying manouevres by different types of fighter jets.

My taxi-mate Brynn's address proved difficult for the taxista to locate, and we wound up driving around in circles for some time until he finally relented to calling Brynn's host mother to get directions. About one minute after dropping her off, the taxista found my building no problem - a big apartment building on the road closest to the beach. It's right on the corner.

After I buzzed up, Señora Almansa came down to meet me and assist me with the elevator (which looked like it might have seen better days - I make take the stairs in the future). After she gave me the tour of the apartment, which features a magnificent sea-view, I unpacked for about twenty minutes. Then she set out a wonderful lunch of the typical Spanish tortilla - an omlette with potato, some bread, and chicken. Everything was delicious, especially the tortilla.

Orientation starts tomorrow afternoon.