Saying goodbye is the hardest thing to do when traveling, whether that's back to school or to another country. My parents dropped me off in the Richmond airport Tuesday 14th of January around 10:00am. After a moment spent with hugs and tears, I was finally on my way to Spain. Richmond to Chicago was an easy flight but as usual you can't fly into the Chicago airport without waiting at least an hour for another plane to leave your gate. I met this man named Mike on the flight over to Chicago, he was on his way to Germany because that is where he is stationed for the military. We both had a long layover in Chicago so we decided to grab some food and waste some time. As lunch progresses, he starts explaining about his life and duty when in Afghanistan. It turns out that Mike's job is defusing bombs around the city. I made the immediate connection to the movie, The Hurt Locker, which is a little different than what he actually does. I asked the question, which any civilian that has no idea what the military is like would ask, "has anything gone wrong during one of your missions?" He ellaborates on this whole mission where they misjudged where the bomb actually was and long story short the bomb blows up very close to him and his team. He ended up receiving three ribbons, one of them being a Purple Heart for the injury that was sustained to him. It truely is amazing the people you meet and I was fortunate to start off my journey with this first encounter.
Chicago to Madrid was the longest and most difficult flight for me. The movie selection was fantastic as well as the food, but the mixture between food, turbulance, and motion sickness soon resulted with me spending a good hour in the bathroom yelling outside the door, "Lo siento!" I was able to get back to my seat and sleep/watch Somos Los Miller (We're the Millers). I arrived in Madrid today at 8:00am and was lucky enough to follow another friend I met from the Canary Islands into a McDonalds. The picture above is one of the tables you eat on, and in case you get bored talking. You can play touch-screen games on it such as pong, fruit ninja, and air hockey. It was very easy to find study abroad students in the Madrid airport because we are the ones with the look on our faces saying, "Someone who can speak English please come help me". I met some other students and we eventually got onto our flight heading south to Seville. We arrived in the Seville airport around 1:00pm and waiting for us outside the baggage claim was our program leaders. Then my roommate Chris and I took a cab to the house in which we are staying. Along the way we dealt with the usual craziness of cab drivers and European driving but what was perhaps the most interesting was the cab drivers choice of music. The CD consisted of all American break-up and love hurts songs. Let's also be clear this driver knew no English whatsoever so I guess he just enjoys the beat and melody? I am now sitting comfortably with no internet in my Spanish home with what seems to be the nicest señora, that's what I think at lease I can't really understand what she is saying to me. Until next time ¡adiós!
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