Traveling sucks. Haha, well okay so I don’t really mind all that much I guess. =) But this was my first time flying alone so that was pretty cool. I took the 8am flight from Jacksonville to Atlanta. The 12:20 From ATL to New York JFK and then the 7:30 (which turned into 8:30) from there to Malaga, Spain. SPAIN!
I guess I don’t really have much to say about the flying. Maybe a few quick points?
1.) Waking up in Jacksonville at 5am is not fun. :/
2.) Terminal T in Atlanta is soooo long and is located before A, NOT after all the other letters. Weird.
3.) Turbulence can be both a plus and a minus. Plus: it is sort of like a fun ride at a park, ya know? Minus: They don’t serve beverages when there is too much of it. =(
4.) We flew in circles around Atlantic City because they wanted to stall our landing at JFK. DISLIKE. We stalled at exactly that level where your ears start popping really badly. It was soooo painful!
5.) JFK is NOT on my list of favorite airports. It was really crowded and confusing as well as really expensive… though there were not actually any good food options to choose from, of course.
6.) Sitting in the middle seat in coach is not exactly what I would call ideal on an overseas flight. Yes (mom) I did sleep some, but not well.
So, when we finally got to Malaga, 2 out of the 5 of us that managed to meet up did not get their luggage. On top of that, we had no idea what exactly we were supposed to be doing. Eventually we found Dr. Thompson (here on in, probably Dr T or just Thompson) and went to wait until 1:30 for a bus to Granada. Did I mention we were tired and starving? It was about 10am by that point (or 4am Florida time).
Granada is about an hour and a half away from Malaga and there were maybe about 10 of us on the bus. THERE ARE SO MANY OLIVE TREES IN SPAIN. I mean, I guess that is not weird, but they really were everywhere on the way to Granada.
 |
| The huge Bulls that are everywhere in South Spain! |
When we arrived, the bus driver dropped all of us off in front of this little Mall and left. We had addresses to our places but, in case you don’t know, their addresses are a lot less specific than ours are. We got a road name (not pictured on the map) a number and a floor level. Yeah, we had no idea where to go. We asked a guy working in the mall if he knew and he sort of gave us an approximate location to head to which was about 15/20 minutes away.
We set off. It was myself, of course, my roommate, Monique, and two other guys in the program, Jeff and Alex. We stopped for directions again at a Mercado and found out that we were only a couple streets away. That is, we, the girls, were only a few streets away. What the boys found out (a little bit later, and after a a few more direction stops) was that their apartment was actually very close to where we had been originally dropped off! I do not envy them!
Let me just take a moment here to describe the streets of Spain to you: old and uneven. Okay, to be honest, a lot of them are fine, but they have patterns and grooves on a lot of the sidewalks. Normally, this would be something I wouldn't pay much attention to. My suitcase (and the hand that dragged it) however, said otherwise. I had blisters forming by the time we were halfway there! I also want to add, just for the record, that it was HOT out!
So when we finally found our street, we decided the number after the street name must be the building number of the apartment. We knew the floor number, but this is very different in the USA. Their floor numbers are written as degrees. After that, there was a ‘C’ which we guessed was the specific apartment. There were two apartments, though, that were on the sixth floor and letter C. We guessed wrong the first time. When we got into the building, though, it took us three tries to find the room, because there were 4 elevators…. And they were extremely small.
 |
| This is the Apartment Building! Home sweet home :) |
It was somewhere around 5pm when we reached the apartment and we were STARVING. It is too bad they don’t eat until 9:30pm in Spain.
So our host, who told us to call her Conchi, took us around her apartment. It has a lot of space. There are three full bedrooms as well as one room that seemed to be more of a study, though it looked like it might also have a bed. Our bed room has two small beds, a window, a long desk with two places and a large closet-like dresser. There is a bathroom right outside the door. The kitchen area consists of the kitchen, a place for her ironing board and a window that opens out to where she hangs her clothes to dry. It also has a wooden table with wooden booth-like seats. Connected, is a small living room. Branching off from the main entrance is also a Dining room and a more formal living room… or I guess you might call it a Den? Everything is decorated beautifully and VERY clean. She STRESSES cleanliness (hope you are happy, mom).
 |
| This is our room. I took the bed by the window. |
Let me list some of Conchi's rules for keeping things clean:
1.) No bare feet. The house is entirely tile and she thinks that feet are dirtier than shoes, apparently. Thankfully, Flip Flops are okay.
2.) When we sit on the wooden booths at the table, we must sit on pillows if we have metal or plastic buttons on the pockets of our pants so they won’t scratch the wood.
3.) When we sit on the bed or put stuff on it that is rough (or basically anything not pajama/comfy clothes), we have an extra sheet we are supposed to lay on top of the other sheets.
4.) After we shower, we should spray the tub mat down to make sure there is no build up and check to make sure no hair has been caught in the drain. We also must hang our towels up.
Those are four rules, for starters. Now, in actuality, they are not really specifically extreme, but imagine trying to keep up with all of this in Spanish after just arriving from our travels and not having eaten anything since what little breakfast they gave us on the plane. Whew.
By now, it was probably closer to 6pm. Three and a half more hours till food. We milled around in our rooms and bathroom. Monique, having left her luggage in New York, did not really have much to unpack, but I put most of my stuff away. Conchi has a lot of books about Spain in our room so we sort of mulled over those as well as the Grammar book, Verb book and Spanish Harry Potter book that I had brought. Two and a half hours until food. We laid down (a feeling not experienced in MANY hours, now) and I, at least, was out like a light.
I woke up from my nap right around 9pm. Dinner finally. Monique and I went down to the kitchen where Conchi was cooking. Her two sons were also there. I am not exactly sure of their ages but the oldest one was named Miguel and he looked like he might be in his early thirties. The younger son was named Nachos and he was probably upper twenties. Both of them could speak a little English, but not much. They didn’t even stay for supper, they left to play basketball. So Monique and I sat down to our first Spanish meal. Are you ready? Cauliflower. That’s right, I said Cauliflower.
It had some sort of Alfredo-like cheesy sauce on it. It...wasn’t bad, but let's just say I will not be willingly eating it again. She also gave us this grilled cheese sandwich thing. It was completely breaded on the outside and had cheese and thin strips of ham on the inside. Thinking back, it was probably more closely related to a cheese stick with ham inside. I was super impressed by her cooking skills to be able to have managed to get all that stuff inside the breading, but then I saw the box of them inside the freezer and was less impressed thereafter. Despite the "not-really-the-home-cooking-I-had-imagined" part, the dinner was okay. To drink, we had water. There was no ice, but it had been in the fridge beforehand. After eating, she gave us some fruit, cherries for Monique and a pear for me. We also tried some of what we think were apricots. All in all, it was pretty good, I guess…though I was not really a fan of the potential apricot or the cauliflower. After dinner, we showered and were in bed by 11.
No comments:
Post a Comment