Early morning, 6:40. Blurry eyed, hit snooze on my phone alarm. Trying hard to rouse myself out of a weird series of dreams but my eyelids are like magnets today. As always, half awake, I pull up my email just to see what I got overnight, which is usually not much. 9 new messages, that’s kind of a lot. Scroll sleepily through and… WHA?!? I blink and try hard to force my eyes open because I have an email titled AUXILIAR DE CONVERSACION DE PAIS VASCO. Umm, this is important! This could be it! And for the LOVE, why can’t I just wake up! I pause for a minute, let myself think while I force my eyes open. What if I got assigned to a town I don’t like? What if I’m in the middle of nowhere? Okay, time to open this email, I need to know!

What I see:
Estarás en el Instituto de Educación Secundaria (meaning I’ll be in a high school – known as a secondary school – totally cool with that!)
IES JOSE MIGUEL BARANDIARAN BHI (uhh… what? longest name ever!)
SANTXOENA 6 LEOIA (BIZKAIA)

None of this is registering, besides high school. So what city am I in? Santxoena? Leoia? Where are those? I finally remember the usefulness of Google maps and pull up a map.

Sooo… oh! There’s Bilbao. I think I’m near Bilbao. The distance key says 2 miles… oh! I’m in a suburb of Bilbao! YES! I got a city! And it’s kind of near the ocean! *Excitement and finally awake!*

That was much, much better than a coffee wake-up.

Upon further investigation, I’ve learned that the area of Leoia is on the Bilbao Metro line, maybe 10 stops from the center of the city. Also, my school is within reasonable walking distance from the metro. Sweet. And now the madness begins!