Ready, Set, GO!

The stress has finally hit me... but it has slowly been falling back into place. I was going to wait to finally start my final blog once I got over there, but there have been some changes to my life over in Spain. My phone lit up this morning and my roommate had written on my wall and all I saw that the message said was, "Sooo...don't know if you noticed.." and I knew it was not a good thing to start something out like that. I quickly went and read the rest of the wall post on Facebook and she had gone to write down our family's phone number, but the number was not the same number as last time and all the information had changed. Turned out, my study abroad company had assigned us with another family, which we just found out about. Luckily, we are still roommates so that is good and the way our new family is described seems like everything will be okay! My new family is a single woman named Martinez Pons who lives closer to the University of Granada, only a 15 minute walk to school rather than a 20-30 minute walk. Señora has 5 grown children who do not live at home but the information says her daughter comes over for dinner a couple of nights each week. Another good thing about being switched to another family, she has air conditioning! It literally put a smile to my face seeing those words on the overview. I am still looking forward to meeting my family and know it will be a great experience!

Another stress I encountered today was learning that I should bring Euros with me over there rather than getting there and exchanging it at the airport. I scrambled to call my bank and ask what we should do and the customer service lady said it will take me 3-5 business days to process and get the Euros sent to the bank. I could only get mad at myself for waiting till the last minute to call the bank, but I handed the phone to my mom and of course she worked everything out and we are going to be able to get Euros! If you have been watching the news you have seen the outrageous amount the exchange rate is right now. I can pay $198 to get 130 Euros, pretty insane! I am just glad everything is falling back into place.

Until my departure at 10:00 A.M. on Friday I am running last minute errands and packing everything into an extra large L.L. Bean duffle bag, which I counted everything up that I put into the bag (shown below) so  I packed pretty light, but still could not help myself to add a couple of extra things, just in case! My extra large suitcase consists of:

-8 pairs of shoes

-10 pairs of shorts

-2 purses

-1 scarf

-2 pairs of jeans

-6 dresses

-6 sweaters

-ONLY 4 t-shirts

-ONLY 2 Nike shorts

and drum roll....

-24 shirts....

Yes I know, the amount of shirts I packed was ridiculous, BUT I do believe it makes up for the t-shirts and Nike shorts because that is my usual attire. The good thing is, it ALL fits (with extra room)! I only have to fit the gift I am giving my host family in there, and have extra room for shopping while I am over there! Can't wait for my next blog to tell all of my readers about how Spain actually is!

This bag does not look that big but I measured it to be almost 3 feet!

While packing, I caught this one starting to look a little sad, going to miss my sweet Gracie!