We have arrived!

After boarding the plane in Toronto (late) and on the jetway ready to take off, the infamous delay announcement came on.  Apparently, there was a security problem with one of the bags.  Okay, that makes you a little nervous.  It turns the bag belonged to a passenger who never made his/her connection, thus it seemed suspicious to have a bag with no passenger.  Finally, at about 11:30 pm EST, an hour and forty-five minute delay later we took off!

Actually, I should mention that while boarding two of our students had their seats changed, but were never told.  After all that was straightened out--off we went!

It was a long 7 hours, but all went smooth.  The students seemed to be able to sleep quite a bit.  We landed in Madrid at about 12:30 PM local time (nine hours ahead of L.A.).

After confusion at customs/immigration and having to form a new line after waiting our turn, everyone collected their bags pretty easily.

Our pick up by EF Tours and the tour guide, Monica Lopez, was very nice and simple.  She was already waiting for us, our charter bus was ready to go, and off we went to the World Youth Day headquarters.  We picked up our backpacks, which contain all of our essentials (food tickets, transportation, etc..) for World Youth Day.  We finally made it to the airport at about 3:00 PM local time.  That would be 6 AM in Los Angeles, which means some of us had now been up for over 24 hours (with maybe a small nap in between).

The hotel check in went great and the students headed to their rooms for some well-deserved rest.  They are troppers--great travelers--so far!

We have a group meeting before dinner and so until the next post!

More pictures will be put up in the next post....