We Made It!

¡Hola a todos! After about 16 hours of traveling I finally made it to Córdoba! My first flight from Houston to Atlanta went smoothly aside from running out of space in the overhead bins. I honestly thought people were going to throw down in the aisle and flight attendants were yelling, but after that was settled and we took off the rest of the flight went well. Upon landing I had about 40 minutes to traverse the entire Atlanta airport but I made it in plenty of time to board. I can't tell you much about my 9 and a half hour flight from Atlanta to Santiago because it seems that I have not lost my gift and pretty much passed out for the entire flight. It helped that my seat partner also seemed to possess the same gift; needless to say, we made up a pretty boring row. After we landed I was faced with my biggest challenge thus far: tackling the Santiago airport/customs. First of all, the airport was SOO cold! I had been in South America for about ten minutes and I was already freezing! I went through multiple checkpoints and had some confusion with where to go to catch my next flight, but thankfully I had a two and a half hour layover and got everything worked out in time. When I finally made it to the gate I met up with some other UT students, and it was great to have people to talk to. We finally landed in Córdoba about 12:25pm (10:25am Texas time), picked up our bags, and headed to customs together. Going through customs made me realize how glad I am to be here; although I can understand most people around me, as soon as I open my mouth to respond my Spanish seems to fly out of the window. We met up with Roxana (the program director here) and a group of 5 or 6 other students who had flown in from Buenos Aires and all took a bus to the King David Hotel. From what we saw on our way over here I already love the city! However everything seems really dead right now. Roxana told us this weekend is Argentina's bicentennial, so in celebration most places are closed for a four day weekend. When we got to the hotel we checked in and dropped our bags off to head back down to the lobby for lunch. Apparently many people had major flight issues (I'm one of the few lucky ones who didn't), and there is a whole group from Dallas stuck in Atlanta overnight, so even though there are supposed to be three of us together it's just me and my roommate Dakota right now. Now we are resting before our first orientation meeting at 7. Our rooms are nice, and free wi-fi equalled a happy Kyndal! Tomorrow is a full day of orientation, and we all can't wait for the city and UNC campus tours! Introductions to host families come Tuesday after lunch...I think that's what we're all most excited about!