Spain Update

Thursday, January 8, 2009—
Day one-
4:00PM- I was dropped off at Sea-Tac Airport and checked in and went to my gate, S10. It was Mara, Marisa, David and I at first, when we got to the gate, where we met up with Rachael who flew in from Portland. From there, some more people started coming, like Nick, Nicole, Sarah, Samantha, and Maral. We took off at around 6:30PM.


Flight to London-
The flight to London was about 10 hours. I didn’t sleep a wink. I tried to drink some alcohol to put me to sleep but it wasn’t working. I drank 3 little bottles of wine and it didn’t work. It also didn’t help that there were two kids (not babies, like three or four years old) screaming almost the whole flight, fuck those kids. I ended up reading about half my book, No Limits by Michael Phelps. I also listened to some music and watched the in-flight TV.


London Airport (Heathrow)-
We landed in London at about 12PM local time (1/9/2009) in London (about 4AM in Seattle). We all had a connecting flight to Madrid and so we went to our gate. We sat, talked, drank some water, and slept. As more time passed, we were informed that the airport in Madrid was closed due to snow! Mind you, this isn’t Sea-Tac, people told me that Madrid hasn’t seen snow in a LONG time. This is probably comparable to the snow in Vegas this winter. Anyways, we went around the airport in London (biggest airport I’ve ever been to, took 15 minutes to ride a bus to another terminal) trying to find a British Airways ticket office to change our flights and our flight to Jerez (City where we would take a taxi to Cadiz). Once we finally had our flights changed to the next day when the Madrid Airport would reopen, we ate then contemplated the idea of either sleeping at the airport or going to a hotel. This discussion started with eight of us. Then two decided to find a place in the airport to sleep since they didn’t want to spend money. Then another two left for the same reasons. So that left four of us, Marisa, Mara, Samantha, and I. We decided to get a hotel since nobody really wanted to take the chance of having their stuff stolen while sleeping at the airport, plus we all REALLY wanted to shower. So we went to this hotel called Ibis and got two rooms, showered, slept and back to the airport. (1/10/2009) We checked in and went to our gate. Thank God the flight wasn’t delayed because we had all been tired of Heathrow. We flew to Madrid (two hours) landed and went to our next gate…


Madrid Airport-
Once we got to the airport in Madrid, we were looking for our next gate. We had about a four-hour layover and you would assume they would know what gate you would be at…. NOPE. We should have known this to be a bad omen as we posted up near the departures board waiting for our flight to be listed with its gate. We waited, waited, slept, and waited. Our flight was supposed to take off at 4PM and it was nearing 3PM and still no gate. The flight was listed at gate HJK and in Madrid, the gates are something like J10, H33, K34. So what was gate HJK? That’s just a way of saying that our flight was delayed until 7PM. Finally a gate number appeared, we went to our gate and waited there… We were flying with Iberia and the day after this flight, the pilots went on strike. So we finally boarded and flew to Jerez.


Jerez-to-Cadiz
Landed, got our luggage, a lot of people had lost their luggage. We went and took a taxi to Cadiz. The taxi driver was very entertaining but once we got to Cadiz, he didn’t know his way around or anything, he had to stop a few times to ask for directions. BUT we finally arrived at our host family’s house and here, all the homes are apartments. I went into the foyer of the building that my family lived in and they greeted me there. Both are retired and love to watch TV. Their names are Pepe and Charo. We went up stairs and they fed me, I showered, and went to bed around 12 midnight. I woke up around 6AM and thought to myself, “There’s no way I can go back to bed”. I ended up sleeping until 4PM (1/11/2009). Woke up, ate and went to explore a little of the town.


Cadiz- 1/12/2009
Monday, we had a little review class at the University here from 9AM-1PM. After that, I went out with a group of people and we found some free WiFi (I don’t have any at the place I’m staying.) then found some shops and went shopping. I didn’t buy anything besides a Spanish cell phone number. Then back home for “lunch” at like 3PM. Then we went back out and walked around some more then back home around 9PM for “dinner”. I’ve heard that they usually eat a little later around 10 or 11PM but I think they changed it to accommodate us Americans. The mom here feeds me HELLA food, even for me. Last night we had some pasta and some type of pork and I had to tell here that I was full.

Some quick hits that I forgot and am too lazy to find where they go:

The house is all marble flooring so good thing I brought my house slippers.

The house doesn’t have heat and it’s usually not this cold but this year is extremely cold for Cadiz so now its FREEZING in the house and I always just wear lots of layers.

This town is super small, to put it in a Seattle perspective, the old part of town (where I live) is if Niketown was the center, it would go to about the other side of Pike Place Market and think of that distance 360 degrees around. No hills either. There is a new part of town but I haven’t been there yet. On the map it looks like a strip comparable to Alki.