Jet-lagggggggggg

I am jet lagged. And it sucks.

But before we get to why I am here, in Granada eating a ham and cheese sandwich and watching an old episode of lost in Spanish. (in case you were wondering, the Australian-Spanish accent does not exist. Or rather, it does not exist well.)

My flights here were more or less uneventful, if a bit convoluted. I flew from Cincinnati to Chicago on Monday at 1:35. I then flew from O'Hare to Heathrow at 4:40 Central Standard Time. It was a really nice flight, and I had a nice, long conversation with a friendly woman from Colorado. She is planning to move to Croatia, so we chit-chatted about the U.S. versus Europe.

Unfortunately, I arrived at Heathrow at 6:00 GMT, which meant that it was 1:00 am EST. So when I would normally be going to bed, I was instead having to travel across Heathrow to get to my gate to go to Madrid. Fortunately, security was efficient, and I found time to first buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's finest for my host family in the duty free. I bought it in euros, but they gave me change in pounds, so I went to a little faux french cafe and settled what I suppose was a case of late night munchies masquerading as breakfast. The croissant was excellent.

I boarded the flight to Madrid at GMT 8:40 and arrived at Madrid-Barajas at noon, about 20 minutes later than scheduled, but I didn't mind because it gave me time to sleep, if only 2 hours. Madrid, for the record, is GMT +1, meaning it is officially 6 hours ahead of you guys back in Cincinnati and Boston.

Madrid-Barajas is perhaps the coolest airport I have ever been in. Very modern, very clean, very well organized. Following my intuition, I was able to get to the check-in counter for my flight to Malaga in good order, and with 4 hours to go.

Unfortunately for my potential enjoyment of Madrid, I was still deeply rooted in EST and my layover in Madrid was prime sleeping hours for yours truly. I couldn't very well take a nap for fear of being robbed blind, so I had to find ways of keeping awake. I paid 2 euros to e-mail Mom, Dad, Katherine, Henry, and Marina. I bought a small lunch. I read the European edition of the WSJ. But I still struggled to stay awake. I got a merciful hour of sleep between Malaga and Madrid, but all the same, when I arrived at the hotel around 7:30, I could barely think straight.

I took a very long, very welcome shower, got changed, and sent an e-mail before bed. Just before I was about to get ready to go to sleep (hungry), I got a call on my room phone from a fellow Brandeisian asking if I wanted to get some food. I agreed, because I didn't really want to miss a chance to see Malaga, and thought that getting some food would make up for the passing up on the sleep.

Well, the food was good, but it was expensive. And I was too tired to really make conversation. So I finally found a way to leave and I finally, finally got some sleep, around 11 local time.

Unfortunately, 9 hrs of sleep has not cured my jet lag. And today hasn't helped. We sat through 6 hours of orientation and lunch was uninspired. We arrived in Granada around 7, and I got picked up by my temporary home stay family at 8.

I will describe them more in detail in a follow up post tomorrow.

This one has been pretty factual, so I'll give a better sense of the details when I've shaken off some of this jet lag.