Beginnings: Our Home in Alcalá

We live in a suburb of Madrid (about 30 minutes away by bus and train) called Alcalá de Henares. It was the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes and is known as a university town. Good thing I read Don Quixote two summers ago because many of the murals, statues, and street signs reference characters and places in the book. We attend school at the Universidad de Alcalá, in the Alcalingua program, which offers language courses and Spanish culture courses. Monday through Thursday we attend classes from 9 until about 1 p.m. and then for the rest of the day we have time to explore, be good students and study, go shopping, take dance classes, eat, take fiestas, go to Madrid and different cities, or just relax. On the weekends we have trips planned to see all around Spain, including Aranjuez, Toledo, Granada, Sevilla, Italica, Cordoba, Segovia, El Escorial, Barcelona, Tarragona, Pamplona, Bilbao, Avila, Salamanca, Santiago, León, Penafiel, Coca, and even Portugal. We also have three free weekends to go to wherever we would like to go.