Friday January 11, 2008
Our journey started out at 9:15am in the morning where the 22 people on our trip met with our parents, luggage and aspirations for our upcoming four months in Spain. After we all received our packets with information and checked our luggage it was time to say our good-byes and head on our merry little ways. I couldn’t help but become nervous, excited, happy, sad…and many other different emotions at that time. It was finally hitting me. I was going to Spain, and I was well on my way. After getting my bag search through by TSA, apparently a 5’4 blonde girl is really threatening, we left from our airport in Des Moines and then headed to Atlanta, Georgia. There were thunderstorms on the way so our flight came in late and we had to hurry to get onto our next flight from Atlanta to JFK in New York. We had a three-hour layover in New York and we got the chance to explore the airport and buy some food. Although, we got there at about 7pm so there weren’t a lot of options still open. After taking down a salad, large Coke, and a BK dessert, I was ready to go. We left from JFK at 9:45pm and then started the long flight across the ocean. Our flight was approximately 7 hours long, dinner and breakfast included. The flight wasn’t too bad but the whole not sleeping thing was starting to wear on me. After a few choppy naps, some in-flight movies, airline food, and a surprise 3am essay in Spanish (yeah, not so easy) we finally made the decent into Madrid…and the Spanish began! We went through immigration, found our luggage, next was customs, literally a door marked customs…guarded by two Spanish Ken dolls in green. After waiting around for a while, we found out that we had to meet our driver at the bus station. We left the building and headed to the bus parking, all in the rain. Later our host mom, Encarna, will tell us that it had been sunny, then cloudy, and now that we were there it was raining. Our bus ride to the train station wasn’t very long but it was really interesting to be able to look around Madrid with all of the different housing, buildings, roads, signs…everything. We once again we hauled out all of our luggage and then made a massive mountain of suitcases by a row of seats in the station. We finally went to get our first meal in the train station, it was gross, but the good thing about it was the fact that I got what I ordered. After freshening up the in bathroom, at one point we had all of this sinks filled with girls from the trip brushing and primping, we were ready to board the train. The train was the nicest form of transportation that we took, and the most comfortable. If we had traveled any other way we it would have taken us six hours, but by train it took us 2 hours. I slept most of the way but woke up a few times to take-in the countryside. We arrived at the train station in Seville at 4:00pm and met David, the on-site director or coordinator for the program that we our in through Centro Mundo Lengua, and he took us to meet our host families. You could tell that they were all really excited. One host mom who had a male staying with her from our trip saw him and said “ohh, tengo un esposo nuevo,” – “ohh, I have a new husband.” Apparently she was really impressed with his looks! They were calling out names and they finally came to Emily, Allison, and Sam. Our host mom Encarna (short for Incarnation) hurried over and kissed us all on one check and then the other, which is customary in Spain. Then we hauled our luggage once again through the rain to her car. Imagine this…if you have ever seen the movies or shows or at the circus when there is a freakishly small clown car and 20 clowns pile into and out of it…that was us, plus luggage. So we played “How do we fit all of this” for a while and finally found the winning combination. While Encarna drove she pointed out a few different things in the city that are important, like churches, stores, and where she works as a teacher. The traffic here has no regulation. It’s a surprise that they don’t all die in car accidents; because they like to speed around and they definitely don’t follow many laws for traffic. The streets are really small too, so that doesn’t help. As we drove I explained to Encarna how much bigger the cars and streets were in the United States and she thought that was something else. We finally drove down a quaint little road and came to a huge wooden door. Encarna stopped the car in the middle of the road and we unloaded all of our stuff. After unlocking three doors, we finally got to the top of the staircase, which was a lot of fun to haul our suitcases up. When we arrived we meet Rocio, Encarna’s daughter who is 27, and her granddaughter Angela who is 5. After our introductions we were shown our room, which is right inside the front door. For Spain the rooms are large and the house is large as well. My roommates and I are sharing an icebox, I mean a room, and there is one set of bunk beds and another bed. There is a dining room, kitchen, salon, a patio with many plants, two bathrooms, and at least 3 other rooms in the house. I haven’t gone to the back part of the house where Encarna and her daughter Rocio live because she didn’t show them to us on our house tour, I just assumed that we weren’t supposed to go back there. Encarna was really nice to us and showed us around the house and showed us how to use the bathroom and how to lock and unlock all of the doors. All of the simple things that you take for granted and do everyday are different here. Besides the language barrier and second most frustrating thing is probably not being able to use and figure out the things around us. When you have to spend 5 minutes figuring out how to use the toilet you know that things are different. We got some time to ourselves, with which we unpacked all of our things. After a while Encarna made dinner, which consisted of a fried egg sandwiches, vegetable mush soup (mainly squash which was pretty gross), water and chocolate pudding for dessert. We went back to our room to organize a little more and Encarna and Angela came in to talk. We showed Encarna pictures from home and explained them and then gave her our gifts. Encarna saw the page about Coke in my scrapbook and told me that she loved Coke and that she always bought and drank it and from that moment on, I knew things were going to be great. I think I even told her that I loved her. Overall, things seem to have gone over well and her granddaughter was really enthused with the corn and tractor shaped chocolates that Allison brought. After that time we all got ready for bed and finally got to sleep after 26 hours of travel and around 6 more getting to our new home, eating and getting in bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment