WARNING: for those of you who have not read this yet it is long and riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. I wrote it over the course of 3 days and threw it all together without editing. I am not going to take the time to make edits now. This is me appologizing.
Well it has been 4 days since we left the states and things have finally settled down. I have on different clothing and have been able to brush my teeth with a real toothbrush for the first time in nearly a week. Rest assured I had a toothbursh but it was like something you would find being handed out to children in a country where the average life span is equal to the percent of the population with AIDS (about 29, to paint a picture for you). Anyway, Our trip started at about noon on Saturday the 17th. I had just finished packing and was loading the car to head for the airport. I arrived a few minutes before kyle and got in line to check my bags. Apparently it's $50 for your second bag now, and an additional $125 if your bag exceeds 50lbs. Lovely - I have no spent $175 so my bags can fly along with my to Spain.
Our flight from Cleveland to Washington went off without a hitch. This one our flight was the only part of our travel plans that went as such. We were delayed leaving DC for unknown reasons. Since volcanic ash does not delay a flight for three hours any guess is as good as mine - I like to think the pilot forgot the keys. Eventually we got in the air. The plan was packed and within five minutes of sitting down I was reminded of the fact that my travels would in no way be pleasant or easy from this point forward. This reminder came in the form of a screaming baby. Why people bring babies anywhere is beyond me. I can say with confidence that when I have kids I will not take them on vacation until they are old enough to drive. As the flight pressed on over the Atlantic there was redeeming aspect - our flight attendant. Now let me stop you all right there. Unfortunately it was not a hot young girl, that would have been nice but sadly not the case. However the dude who was working our section did have one good trait - he gave us free liquor. Also, the airline we were flying was "Aer Lingus" thanks Ireland. As we pressed on and Murpheys law really had time to kick in. Our flight into Madrid landed as our flight to Barcelona was supposed to be departing. As a result we were not too worried we just figured we would grab the next flight. It was at this point that we realized the Barcelona airport had been shut down due to volcanic ash - thanks Iceland - and we could not get a flight at all that day.
We wondered around the Madrid airport in anguish over the 100 yard long lines to talk to someone. Things could not get any worse, or so we thought. With McDonalds being the only option for food, I felt my balls getting destroyed by another kick from God. We ate some food and tried to formulate a plan. Once we finished we went back to check out the lines. It appeared as tho there were two really long lines heading in opposite directions. Then we noticed that for some reason there were two counters open that no one was going to. We walked up to hopefully just get some answers and walked away with a bus ticket to Barcelona, estimated lenght of the bus ride: 7 hours. As we watched this young spanish girl try to control a crowd of raging spaniards, crying women, screaming children and disgruntled old people spirits sank lower. Frankly we wanted nothing to do with this bus nor the people on it. This girl had no idea what she was doing, and she was so small people were just yelling at her, plus she was a moron. Getting 40 people on the first bus took over an hour. It was like the BMV.
If it was not clear, we opted out of riding on the first bus. The second one that came was run by the same girl and she did not learn anything from the first go around. We ended up getting on the bus and luckily driven to the trainstation. The airline ended up buying us train tickets which shaved about 4 hours off our travel time. Unfortunately we had to deal with little kids fainting in the train station and little kids screaming on the train. Some dude was on there with his wife and son. I have never seen a kid that was such a sad excuse for a son. The kid would just wine and cry all the time. or he would run around and yell. I had some pretty graphic thoughts going needless to say.
We finally pulled into Barcelona around 9:00PM Sunday night, barcelona time. That wound up being about 24 hours of traveling and we got in about 12 hours later than we were supposed to. A girl picked us up from the train station and shuttled us, sans luggage to the place we will be staying for the next 3.5 weeks. I forgot to mention, since all fligths into Barcelona were cancled we went without luggage for 4 days, I had been waring the same thing for 5 - kill me. Luckily the woman hosting us had some really ghetto toothbrushes and sleeping outfits (think Charlie Kelley - picture soon). Anyway its Wednesday afternoon, I finally have my luggage and and just finished teaching for the first time. Things seemed to have calmed down a bit. Anyway I realize my misery may not be the most entertaining read, however most of you - people i call my friends - probably get some sort of sick satisfaction out of my pain, love you guys.
So with that I´m going to sign out. Our first weekend is fast approaching, hopefully that will yield some more entertaining stories. Stay tuned, its going to be a big year.
P.S. sorry for the typos im sure are littering this and any future post. Spell check on these computers only catch spanish errors.
