It Starts...

When I was younger, I had a sega genesis, and my favorite game was the Lion King game. I would play every day after school because I never could get past the second level where I had to do a double jump from the ostrich (and Peter knows my problems with double jumps to begin with...)
Anyway, everytime you would turn the game on, Rafiki would say "It starts"
And thats where I am today.

On Tuesday, January 11th, I left my home in Syracuse, NY to live in Madrid for 4 months. The trip did not start as I imagined as I was planning on leaving on the 13th. Basically, because I'm the worlds most unlucky person, a huge storm came to the east coast, and I needed to pack my shit up as soon as possible and get to NYC. That involved me leaving 12+ hours early, a 12hours that I really wanted for goodbyes. I'm glad I got my last sleepover before I left. Mom, Dad, Remy, Missy and Peter came to the airport to see me off, and we checked my baggage and hung out on a couch outside of security, eating up time before I inevitably had to leave. Tears happened, mostly when my little brother hugged me goodbye. It was hard to leave them, but this will be a good experience. A few hours later I was on a plane to New York City, flying away from my horse, my school, and my entire life. Part of the dealio with the storm was that I had to just get to JFK before the storm hit, because it could be bad and rescheduling happens in the airport itself. I stayed overnight at the hotel and went to the airport to leave for Spain itself!

7 hours later I was here, and I was wired off of coffee so I was just jumping all around being ridiculous. Then I got to my house and my señora was literally the size of my suitcase and she WOULD not let me carry it! My host family is basically awesome, and I'm really happy that I'm with them. I have 2 host brothers that live with me, one more with a child that lives close, and then a sister that lives in NYC. My host brothers are not much older than I am, but they are big jokesters. For example, pretty much since the first day, they have called me Courtney Love. They even told Alberto, the child of the other brother, that it was my name!

I really like being here, walking around, taking the metro and making adventures out of everything. One of the things I've been noticing is that I'm finding "gemelos" of people that I know in the united states. Gemelo is the word for twin, and its almost impossible for me to go somewhere without me finding the spanish version of someone. It started when I got off the plane and saw Spanish George Takei (Seriously, a sight to be seen.), and its carried on every time I leave the house. It might be because I'm nervous about being here and I'm trying to find things that are familiar and comfortable to me.

I've walked around and done various things since getting here, but being in Toledo again was just incredible. I took so many pictures because it was so beautiful. I think my favorite part was when we took this random street because Alex wanted to play soccer with a kid, and then we just kept walking and we ended up in a park with a swingset and an incredible view of the cathedral. It was incredible, I want everyone to be able to see that. Toledo was great because we got to bond as a group too.

Then, after I got back from Toledo, I met my housemate Macayla, and I like her a lot. She is really smart, and she lives near Syracuse! My host brothers asked if we wanted to go out with them and I said yes because I really wanted to go somewhere where I could meet spanish people, and it ended up being a fantastic experience. I had a blast and I made lots of friends(as usual). The night started with going to bars and meeting up with various people, and I talked a lot, and everyone understood me!!!! That makes me really happy. The only time that people didn't understand me was when I was trying to explain the word "Squirrell" for the story involved there(if you don't know the squirrel story then... well its a good one). Anyway, after a few cervezas I felt confident enough to tell the one guy, Lito, that he looked EXACTLY like Ryan from The Office. I honestly wanted to yell "TEMP!!!!!" when he entered the room and I met him. I'm still not convinced that its not him... and then a few cervezas más and I was telling my older host brother that he looks like Ken Tanaka, or the coach from Glee. And then we all had más cervezas (and some that we bought in the street) and we were calling Macayla by her new name, Macayla Jackson, and we were calling Dani "El actor pornographico" because he's this squiggly bald guy and.... well he could belong there =P Everyone except Cristían, the younger brother, had a nickname that we were talking about. We all piled into Ryan's car and he dropped us off at our house, and then as Daní got back into the car Shotgun with RyanLito, I suggested that he gets the camera out and film "La Oficina: Sucio" or The Dirty Office. It was necessary.

Anyway, I've been talking to a lot of friends back home during all of this, and while talking to Jay, he brought up the idea that I've been seeing a lot of "celebrity look alikes" here, and that I should find a Ryan Seacrest gemelo, and then I thought, hey, why not do a blog-scavenger hunt like deal. In a very Barney Stintson way I said "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED" (and don't worry, I've already got the Neil Patrick Harris Spanish Gemelo) so this blog is going to be dedicated to finding the Spanish twins of people I know!
I'm going to try to get pictures in an inconspicuous way but I'm not sure how well that will go.
Obviously, the first challenge is to find Ryan Seacrest, but I'm working on a list of ones that I need to find. I'll let you know tomorrow.

That having been said, It Starts...