The Adventure Continued

As the clock clicked to the final minutes of departure from the Parisian hell-hole I had come to inhabit, I found myself anxiously walking about the airport, searching for some way to burn off this last 20 minutes. I decided upon a small French convenience store where I had purchased my bottled water. After aimlessly looking through novels I could never hope to read, I saw that they had a selection of tablets at the back of the store. I walked over to them, and immediately started investigating one. After turning it over a few times, I accidentally unplugged it and caused the store’s security system to go off.

This is why I can’t have nice things.

Then the manager came over and turned the alarm off, after I was apologizing profusely. Shortly afterwards, she shook her head and walked away in disappointment.

Later, as my mind drifted away from being stuck in the same chair for almost 6 hours, I realized it was past my time to board, but the droning automated French voice didn’t say so in the language of the free and the brave. I scampered frantically to my flight, and after checking in to what looked like the broom closet of gates, I walked across the hot tarmac to the little iron tub waiting to take me to infinity and beyond.

Earlier, I was telling my father how I have a hard time sleeping on planes, and that I would just be sleep deprived when I got to Spain.

I didn’t even make it to when the plane turned before I was out. I only vaguely remember a Spanish flight attendant looking atrociously bored as he performed the safety speech and demonstration in 3 languages.

            After touching down, getting my bags in a stupor and being thrown into the back of a van with the one other student who was staying at an apartment in town, I was dropped off at a streetcorner and told to wait for my landlord. Eventually he came out and helped me carry my things to my room, where I met one of my roommates who ran me through some of the “rules” of the house, which mainly consisted of not Skyping and hogging the bandwidth while he plays his computer games.

Simple enough.

After unpacking and feeling homesick for an hour or two, I got a call from a UMW friend Sarah, saying that she and Scott were downstairs. Those gringos were a sight for sore eyes. We walked over to the Universidad, and I felt like I was in Hogwarts. Giant statues, a huge open area, and stairs that were hundreds of years old at least. Or just really dusty. Either way, it was amazing, and after that we walked across the bridge and wandered around over near the fabled Guggenheim Museum. After making a sort of loop, we settled down at a little café down the road from my apartment and had 2 euro glasses of high quality red wine, and I ordered some tapas, being the only real food I’d eaten for probably 14 hours. Afterwards, we went to both Scott and Sarah’s apartments, and cooked a pasta dinner that is to be a weekly tradition for us as gringos. My sadness for Scott was high, as he had no roommates there yet and no wifi to contact his family. After dinner, I walked back to my apartment in the dark Deusto streets, keeping a weather eye peeled for any sort of trouble that could come my way.

            I did such a good job, in fact, that I walked right by my apartment and spent a good 15 minutes wandering around the streets until I finally found the building, double checked with a woman walking into said building, and took the elevator up to my floor. I shortly realized that I could not figure out the weird lock on the door, and was stuck outside my door attempting to open it for a good 5 minutes until I fumbled upon the door bell (since apparently hall lights turn out after 30 seconds-really). Then my roommate Mauro, the one who showed me the ropes, opened the door, and showed me that all you had to do was slightly pull in on the door and it would open normally.

Of course. Of course it was that simple.

And that ended the 36 hours I had been up (minus one for the Spain flight) and my first official day in another country.  My brain may still be absorbing Spanish left and right, but my veins still course with the red, white, and blue.