Tuesday, September 23, 2008

My 20 Hour Flight...

I'm finally here in Spain! The flight here was very long and interesting, I barely made it on my flight from JKF to Frankfurt, Germany on Tuesday. My flight from SLC got in over a half hour late and I had to get all my bags and get to the International terminal to check in for my next flight (because I fly standby) and I didn’t think I was going to make it in time. So I'm running around trying to get there and I, of course, get on the AirTrain that isn’t running. For some reason the one ahead of us was stopped and we couldn’t move anywhere so I had to take the other one all the way around the airport to get to Terminal 1. It took me over an hour to get there, so I knew there was no way I would ever get on my flight that left in less than 30 minutes. And the people at the counter didn’t speak English very well, so it took them forever to check me in and get me ready to go. I ran through security and up to my gate to find out that they put me on the wrong flight! With that flight, I wouldn’t get into Madrid until midnight and Rogelio was picking me up at noon so it would be a disaster. So I walked around looking for the gate from which my correct flight was leaving from and I luckily found it! They were just about to leave but they waited for me to get on and got my bags off of the other flight and I was on my way to Germany! It was really a miracle that I got on. But there were so many different kinds of people on that plane (all of which are on Linsey’s team, by the way) it was so funny to hear everybody speaking different languages and see their different cultures. The airport in Germany was pretty cool, it was super nice inside but I was only there for a short time. I did try to read a newspaper in German while I was waiting without much success, I mostly just looked at the pictures. When I finally landed in Madrid, I couldn’t find Rogelio and Brienne anywhere, so I wondered around forever and tried to get some euros to call them. But I must have gotten the wrong number because a Spanish lady answered and hung up on me when she didn’t know what I was saying. I couldn’t help but laugh at my situation…. I was alone in the airport with all my bags and couldn’t speak to anyone. I didn’t have any euros and I hadn’t slept for a very very very long time. The only hope to finding Rogelio was to call him and when I thought that would work, my lack of Spanish worked against me and I was helpless again. Great. I was so tired and just wanted to sleep but I just kept walking around until I finally saw Brie, it was a very happy moment for me. Between Brie and I, we had 6 bags to fit into two of the smallest cars I have ever seen. It was hilarious trying to put down the seats so that our stuff would fit but we managed to shove it all in there somehow. After the airport, we just went back to Rogelio’s house to met his parents and unpack everything. So the flight was long but it could have been a lot worse, I'm just glad I made it to Madrid in one piece!

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