Jet Lag, Metro, and Smiles

Whether we like it or not, jet lag is often one of our first experiences abroad. No matter how well we plan, it is guaranteed to hit for us at least a day. This is always the case when I return to Madrid. I admittedly did not get much sleep on our flight from Dallas to Madrid. How could I, honestly? I was flying with nearly 40 students to my favorite place in the world—more on that later. Excitement was high, and you could tell. Fortunately, jet lag did not hold any of us back.

My tips for avoiding jet lag are:

• As soon as you get settled in your seat on the flight, change your clocks to the destination time. So instead of it being 4:45pm in Dallas (or 5:45 pm in Philadelphia), tell yourself that it's 11:45 pm.
• Sleep and rest as much as you can on the flight over.
• Stay up that entire next day, and do not nap! Go to bed at a regular time.

I shared these tips with our travelers, and I think that they tried to follow them for the most part. However, no matter what, I myself even always feel a little off the next day. No matter how tired I am from travelling, I always seem to wake up early that next day. After setting my clocks to Madrid time, trying to sleep on the plane, and staying up all day until bedtime, I woke up with eyes wide open at 5 am on Monday morning. I decided to take advantage of this and take a walk around downtown Madrid, After all, I would be showing my favorite city to the students in my group. The "golden hour" light was perfect for taking pictures. I took the Metro downtown, and I walked around soaking in all the sights I had missed since the last time I was here.

I have to say that our students have been troopers dealing with jet lag and adjusting to a new city and culture these first couple of days, too. Today their enthusiasm and exciterment were high in their online class, during our in-person meeting at CIEE, and our afternoon activity exploring Madrid. Whenever the masks come off for bites of snacks or sips of water there are always smiles. Today one of our tasks was that my students had to figure out how to get us to a spot of my choosing. I picked a park overlooking the western edge of the city along with the Royal Palace. My group worked together to successfully read the Metro map and guide us to our destination: el Parque de la Montaña. There we had a snack and checked out the Templo de Debod (an ancient Egyptian temple that was dismantled and rebuilt in Madrid). Tomorrow when we meet again in class, I can't wait to hear from the group how the rest of their afternoon went.