Sam Goes to Spain!: Good Friends, No Sleep, and Long Flights

¡Hola!

So, a lot has happened since my last post. The last time I wrote, I was in one of my houses in California, feeling a little nervous about Spain. Now, I'm in my house in La Canada (I still haven't figured out how to type a tilde on my American keyboard, sorry), in SPAIN. Before I talk about España (aha! I just figured it out) let's go back to the beginning of my trip.

I started packing a week in advance, and it still took me a good four days. If you're a future AFSer, do not wait to pack until the last day. You will regret it. I had all my stuff strewn across the living room and I spent hours in there, sorting, choosing, packing, repacking, repacking again. All my efforts went to waste though, because my bag ended up being overweight anyways. On Friday, August 30, I went up to San José to have my goodbye party with my dad's family. It was good to see everyone before I left. I had to say good bye to my sister then, so that sucked. The next day I had my goodbye party on my mom's side and that was great too. My grandma had some really good party games that included money hahaha. Saying goodbye was hard, because my grandma started crying. I'm not very emotional like that, I won't start crying unless I see someone else crying, but she was crying so I started crying. And then my mom started crying. Oh my. Not fun. I spent Sunday with a good friend of mine and then with my dog and mom. When I left my dog, I think he knew something was up because he refused to kiss me. It was actually kind of funny, in a really sad way. Then I said goodbye to my mom and lalalala you guessed it, more crying. But not as much. That night, my dad, brother, and I flew to New York on a redeye flight.

I spent two days in New York City, Manhattan, before going to AFS. We went to the US Open and saw Rafa Nadal, a Spaniard, play a German guy. I also toured NYU, which is where I want to go for college three years from now. We went and saw Wicked on Broadway, and had halal. If you go to NYC and like good food, you need to get halal. And not just any halal. The best halal stand in NYC opens at 9pm (I think) and its located on 7th (???) and like, 42nd street (maybe, I don't know haha). Anyways, it's in front of the Hilton and it's amazing.

So, as you can see, I had a pretty good last few days in America. Wednesday, the day of the gateway orientation, I packed up and drove into Queens, where the hotel and airport were located. We realized that we had forgotten my passport back at the hotel in Manhattan and my dad had to drive it down later. Once we arrived at the hotel I said goodbye to my dad and brother. It was definitely less emotional than the goodbyes with my mom and grandmother, which I was grateful for. After I checked in there was still a good chunk of time until the actual orientation started. At first it was pretty awkward because the kids who had been there all day had already banded together, but then it got better and I had fun meeting and talking to all the students. The orientation part of the night was pretty dull, but then again it's purpose was to inform us really, not to entertain us. Bed check was 10 pm (how American of them, Spain didn't even have a bed check) and then it was Thursday. We had breakfast, more orientation activities, and Spain was the first group allowed to go to the airport.

The airport was NOT FUN. First we had to wait in the check in line for, like, an hour, for the attendants to even show up. My bag weighed 72.5 pounds. I'm not even sure how that was possible. My visa card was denied, Visa doesn't charge at the airport because it thinks it could be card fraud (don't you think that would've been a nice piece of information the bank lady could have told me when I mentioned I was going to Spain for a year??). After we waiting in the security line forever and almost getting to the front, they pulled us out and took us downstairs. Finally, we were at the gate and had about an hour to kill. Noor, Cat, and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings for our last meal in America. It was okay; never expect much from airport food.

We boarded the plane and began our 7 1/2 hour flight to Zurich, Switzerland. I got absolutely no sleep at all. At that point I had been up for about 18 hours. We landed in Switzerland, and I only walked around for a little time before sitting on the floor for most of the 4 hour layover. Some of the airport was nice, some of it was not. But the brief glimpse of Switzerland I did get was beautiful. Also, their airport train was cool hahahah. The flight to Madrid was a little less than 2 hours long, and I got almost an hour's sleep, which was nice. The first thing I noticed about Spain when I stepped off the plane was the smell of smoke. It hit me like a wall. I'm not sure if I've gotten used to it or it has lessened here in La Cañada.

The hotel we stayed at is the biggest hotel in Europe, and I don't doubt it. It is ginormous. I got lost more than once. The Spanish orientation was notably more relaxed than the American one, because all they said was, "Dinner at 9pm. Orientation at midnight. [(It ended up being at 10:30pm)] See you then." That gave us four hours to do whatever we wanted. I rested and took a shower, though a lot of people went to the pool. Dinner was "ehhh" but I got to to talk to the other students from around the world, so it was fun. The orientation was boring, and I think I dozed off at one point. It let out at about 12pm and I hung out with some of the other students for a while before finally going to bed around 1:30am. So I ended up getting about an hour of sleep in 36 hours. Even five days later, I'm still working it off.

The next morning we met our host families. This post is super long already so I'm going to make a separate one to talk about my host family and life, etc. Pictures below!

Adios,

Sam