Well! It has been a very interesting time thus far. Here’s a (fairly) quick recap. Nick and I had a 1 hour 50 minute layover in Dulles. However, our flight in K-Town was delayed 1 hour 30 minutes, thus presenting a few problems. By the time we got to Dulles we had exactly 20 minutes to make our connecting flight to Madrid. But, we ended up sitting on the runway for about 10 of those minutes. After exiting the plane and waiting for our checked carry-ons we had about 5-7 minutes to book it from gate C1 to D21…yeah. So, Nick took our rolling checked items, I took our bags and his laptop and we just started sprinting. I will never, ever laugh at people doing that ever again…ever. I was a bit ahead of Nick (I wasn’t carrying like 75 lbs. of luggage…) and when I got about to D1 (halfway point) I noticed the Arrival/Departure board and next to Madrid it said Closed. Well, we kept all out running, and when our gate came into sight, there was no one there except the lady who takes your tickets. She asked me if I was supposed to be on the Madrid flight and after I wheezed out a yes, she went running. She told them “they’re here” and asked them to open the doors back for us! For real. So, we made it. Right about that time, we realized that if we had hardly made it, our luggage definitely hadn’t. No good, but we were just so thankful to be on the plane, we didn’t care much.
All of that running was probably in vain because we sat out on the tarmac for about an hour. For all of that excitement, the flight was very uneventful. We played Who Wants to be a Millionaire and watched some movies, nothing too exciting. When it finally landed and we had made it through the Madrid airport maze, we got to the luggage conveyor belt. We were kind of dreading the whole experience because we could only imagine that trying to explain lost luggage in a foreign country would be no fun. However, our luggage was literally the first two pieces that came out (LIFO? ha, accounting joke). We kind of freaked out. Y’all must have been praying hard because…that’s just awesome! After we excitedly grabbed our luggage, we headed over to the pay phone to see if we could figure out how to call our hotel and get the shuttle to come pick us up. Right then, this sweet airline worker came up, showed us how to use the pay phone (don’t judge, it was confusing), called the hotel for us, AND told us where it would be picking us up. It was fabulous.
Once we got to the hotel, we had to wait around till check-in time. Nick dominated me in Phase 10 and UNO ( I was obviously tired and not on my a-game…and I did beat him in Life and Scrabble on the plane). We got checked in, cleaned up, and decided to head out to waste some time before going to bed. Our goal was to stay awake till 7pm to see if we could start getting our bodies adjusted…but we only made it till 5pm. I then slept til 3am (~10 hrs) and then again from 4am-10am, so I was in pretty good shape. We ended up calling a taxi to take us from our hotel by the airport to the one ISA had booked for us and immediately checked in. That’s when all of the ISAers started flooding in. We not only started meeting people from our group but also from the Salamanca and Sevilla groups. Super fun! The San Sebastian team took a bus tour of the city and then had a quick meeting. After that, Nick and I and our two friends grabbed some dinner (lomo con queso, yum!) and headed to bed.
Sorry for the long post...it’s just been so exciting thus far! Tomorrow is another day in Madrid and then the next day we head to Toledo for one night. From there, we will take a 7 hour bus ride to San Sebastian. I love Madrid, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy Toledo, but I am so ready to be back in San Sebastian!! :) Please continue lifting Nick and I and the other students up. I love you all! :)
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