A little rant from Madrid

October 1, 2010, Madrid, Spain

We arrived yesterday morning at 7:00am. The flight was hard, I had flown out of Hayden at 6:30am, so had been up with just a few “hours” of sleep on the flight. “hours” being the time I dozed off and on every other ten minutes while bored on the plane, or avoiding the awkward man from Wisconsin who kept trying to talk to me on the flight from Denver to Hayden. He was really special. I always wonder why people on planes feel the need to be your temporary best friend forever for the two hours you spend together on a plane. But then if you are the first one to put in your headphones, you are the first one to say “look, nice talking and all, but leave me the hell alone.” I am always that person. Usually I am secretly freaking out about leaving, and/or dying on the flight, and prefer to do so without having to pretend that I enjoy the company of the stranger next to me. Unless that stranger is a hot guy, in which case I’ll hate it because I always fly without putting in an ounce of effort, and then I am the creeper and he would undoubtably put in his headphones first, leaving me, as I leave weirdos, feeling like the jackass who just got shut down for as a plane BFF.

I flew into Denver and had a really stale bagel for breakfast, and then got on the flight to DC. DC is probably the ONLY airport that doesn't have free wi-fi.... so I spent a really nice five hour layover reading and debating if a pumpkin spice latte was work six dollars (it wasn't, but it was the last starbucks I was sure that would be available so...). Anyway, then I met up with Whitney in the DC airport and we boarded the plane. The flight was seven hours of nothing worth talking about, so moving onto Customs. Let me warn anyone planning to go to Spain: the airport doesn’t have escelators. So if you are like me, and are: a klutz, weak, a wimp: don’t pack anything in a carryon. (we’ll get to elevators in a bit, but escelators are under-appreciated in America.)

After my adventure trying not to fall down the stairs and get my passport stolen, I greeted the custom officer with a “Hello!!!!!!” He didn’t really appreciate my over-enthusiasm, or my English, and corrected me with a super friendly and rude “HOLA.” And then an “ADIOS.” I don’t think he even looked at my picture, he was just ready to get me out of his sight. It’s about now in this that Mrs. Conlon would ask me what “out of his sight” really means, as it is a cliché and therefore shouldn’t be used. So more specifically, was eager to stamp my passport and remove me from his line of vision.

So then we progressed to wander around wondering if the signs pointing towards customs, or exit, were for us. I think it is kind of pointless that they have customs signs AFTER you leave customs, because you just came from there, so unless you left without your passport (which I think they’d arrest you for) you would not want to go back to see our little Spanish grouching friend. At least I wouldn’t. There was a cute man working in the other line (typical) though so maybe some fabulous and beautiful American woman will return there and they’ll fall in love and get married! but that’s unlikely. After figuring that if we left and we weren’t supposed to, good for us for skipping a waste of time getting our bags searched for non-existant drugs, we attempted to find food. Which was cookies/croissant ish looking things or fruits I didn't recognize. I was kind of hoping for meat, bread, bacon, a bagel, or something of substance, but settled for a Fanta and bag of chips, since that was the only salty thing available. (by now you are probably all like, Michelle stop talking about food/weird people/nothing exciting)

We met up with our group around 9:30am, after I passed out (not literally passed out Mrs. Conlon, fell asleep) on a table after eating a bag of lays and a soda for breakfast. We had that awkward everyone is sitting in a circle not talking moment, until I thought it was a good plan to start telling stupid stories and making a really fabulous first impression. Blah blah blah more boring things happen and then we got on the bus to go to the hotel. Oh, there’s a forty ish year old man here to study in Salamanca. Totally weird/creepy, but props to him for going on a study abroad trip consisting of college kids here to speak Spanish and drink Sangria. Maybe he is here to get a wife. Who knows. So we arrive at the hotel and the driver pulls into the bus stop and starts like throwing bags out on the sidewalk. Here is where I start really impressing everyone; I have two huge 49.5lb bags, a probably 30lb carryon, and a briefcase. Pulling these three bags and my briefcase in proves to be impossible and a girl (who is married?) has to pull one for me. Then we realize that the elevator is probably big enough for one and a half obese Americans, or four tiny girls. But not for any huge suitcases. So Whitney and I, who are rooming with Hannah, try to get our bags in, which fails due to my inability to even move all my bags and then get them into the room once we get off. I am already dreading trying to move them all tomorrow. It’s going to be a disaster. I know that somehow they strap together, but I haven’t figured that out yet. I will probably try after this. So I stop looking like a retard. (Don't worry though, after the second day of struggling like a moron with my bags, I realized the tiny one clips onto the top of the big one. Nice logic, Michelle. Well planned.)

So we unload and meet a few people and then go down to walk around for the afternoon. We basically walked to the plaza, bought a few bottles of wine, drank beer, at lunch (fyi, paying 10e for eggs, nasty packaged ham and salad is a bag idea, you can find way better for way cheaper) and then drank the bottles of wine in a park. We had a meeting that I slept through, thanks to that being my like 47th hour straight without sleep and a few glasses of wine, and a warm room with a comfy chair and a boring lecture, and a bus tour that I slept through, had dinner and then bed.

Today (I am re-reading this and I think this was our first day in Mardid.... well our day that we got to sleep before, that is) we woke up and had a delicious breakfast. They had CHEESE so of course I was super stoked, and ham, other favorite. We went to the Prado Museo I think it is called. It was superbly boring. The only cool part was that Greco painted a few pictures that look 3-D cause he was so good. The rest sucked. (Sorry Mom... it just did) We went to the royal palace next, which rocked. I got a Starbucks on the way (which was worst than the airport one, but my only Starbucks thus far in Spain, so I shouldn't complain) so I was in a stellar mood. The palace was actually really great, there were crystal chandiliers all over in every single room, which I love. The Spanish king isn’t permited to move anything or redecorate because the palace belongs to the people, which I thought was pretty cool. I snuck a picture of a violin made in 1709 that is used three times per year for ceremonies. There are two violins, a cello, and a viola. The viola was made in 1678 or something. I love the group too, the guys were all really impressed with the violins and can carryon respectable conversation. We all got lunch together, which was hilarious and delicious. Then three girls and I went shopping to H&M so I could get something to go out in, since jeans and hoodies don't really fly over here, and then we stopped to get drinks and rest. We got something called Tinto, which is 2e and is wine with fresca, so basically it tastes like soda. So much better than wine.

Now I am going to take a nap and then we are going to plan something for tonight, TGI-viernes J