1: Spain

Spain: 1

Photos for this post: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/poci6y7xyb2l15b/AAB85UFP57GtIJrWYCtshMGya?dl=0

Welcome back to my blog everyone. It's been awhile, but I'm heading to Europe once more. This time to Spain.

I'm currently just sitting in the Victoria airport, waiting to board to Calgary, from there to Frankfurt, from there to Madrid. It will be a long journey I'm sure. Which should give me time to finish sketching and emailing in some mural designs that I need to get done by the end of today… I also have calculus homework.

At security they confiscated my leatherman squirt. I'm not surprised, but it's kinda sad because now I have to buy a new one (They'll hold it till lunch but my mom can't come get it…). However, they did let me take my apples, whole cucumber and carrots through security. I'm really hoping that continuing my current diet of no sugar, low carb will be possible, and I'll do my best but sometimes I think I won't have a choice. It's been long enough now that my tummy is not happy when I eat straight-up wheat - maybe I can stick to rice.

Now I'm on the plane to Calgary, pretending to chew gum. You forget how much of an island you live on until you fly up, and are over the randomly distributed green dots for about two seconds before the white peaks of the Rockies stretch out beneath you. Time to make use of the 1500+ songs on my nano. On a plane this small, I can't help thinking of Cabin Pressure episodes… They mentioned smoke detectors in the bathrooms, for instance. The flight attendants seem super professional though, so I doubt I'll be finding a lemon next to my cucumber any time soon.

I wish I'd brought q-tips. I forgot about earwax on ear buds. Ah well.

There's a lot of snow on the Rockies.

Now I'm in Calgary for the next 5 hours.

1 1/2 hours left. I did my mural designs. I had an engaging conversation with Emma and Ken Henderson about aboriginals in Canada. I charged my phone. Some people have started doing homework, and I really should, but I can't bring myself to do anything right now. I ate 3 apples and two carrots. I really hope they let me take my ziplock of mixed nuts and my canned tuna on the plane to Frankfurt. I don't want to waste that tuna, it's good, it has sundried tomatoes in it and everything…

I appreciate the real plants and trees in the airport. It's amazing how the flow of people never stops, there are always people on the go. I wonder if it's like this even at 2am.

I'm watching some curling on TV. It's pretty cool.

There are some Muslims praying facing Mecca.

There's a poster on the wall from Calgary Zoo about saving the swift fox from a "swift exit". There's a kiosk called "heritage trading post" in comic sans selling fox pelts and raccoon tail hats.

I think I'll do some shoulder exercises. 

We moved to the actual departure gate. I bought some salad rolls. I'm feeling a deep sense of tiredness. I hope I can sleep on the plane.

I saw the sun disappear behind us and now it's in front of us. Almost done this nine hour flight. I've lost track of all time zones. I watched "Inside Out", learned the lyrics to "Jonny B Goode", tried so hard to sleep… All I know is that I did not get as much sleep as I had hoped for. I think I lost a day but I have no concept of time at the moment. And I can never feel comfortable. They served us pale chicken for dinner. I think breakfast is coming up…

Breakfast is bread and sugar yogurt (so sweet, had two bites, too much). So I had a lovely can of tuna, garlic, and tomatoes for breakfast. Yum. I think I'll try to remember to bring something similar for the way back.

Been awake now (pretty much constantly) for 20 hours.

I'm in Frankfurt airport or "Fraport" as their buses say. It's so big. Think big, now think ten supersize international planes in five separate bays and vehicles rushing this way and that everywhere. We are taking a bus to get back to the terminal which is the size of a city.

We just got waved past a huge line of passport checking because we were "nice Canadians" in a school group. Apparently our reputation precedes us.

Everyone's so tired. 23 hours awake. Emma's wearing sunglasses. Sammy just walked head first into a pole and we couldn't stop laughing… Good times. 

We took a sky train to get to our terminal. That's how big this place is.

We thought our gate was A1, so we walked 20 min to A1. Then we find out it's actually A20. So another 15 min walk to the new gate. Huge washroom lines. This place is MASSIVE. The last hour and a half was getting from our arrival terminal to our final terminal (destination Madrid). I bought a plain beef hot dog, no bun, lots of ketchup. I've still got nuts left to snack on. I'm still so tired but it's so sunny outside.

This will be our last plane. Then I think we take a 3 hour bus. We're getting there.

Everyone's speaking German…

And I'm still in a travel coma.

On the plane reading German magazines about spiral escalators.

Now we're in Madrid. On a bus to Salamanca. It's now been about 25 hours since I arrived at the airport in Victoria. I have maybe 4 hours sleep. I'm ready for Spain, bring it on!

After I sleep.

We stopped at a rest stop: I think it's going to be pretty easy to find what I need in terms of food, I found really good lunch meat and signs advertising gluten free stuff. Cheese, nuts, meat, veggies, and fruit all are readily available. It's good, and it all tastes great too!

The weather's a bit nippy right now, 10 degrees Celsius. You can definitely tell that it's Spain: it's quite dry, it has red soil, rock walls, small whitewashed buildings, Small boulders spread around (probably left by glaciers), shrubby trees, old ruins and arches, dumps and graffiti, cows in fields, etc. It's beautiful.

I'm with my host family in Salamanca, I'm here with Erin (also from Esquimalt), we're here for a week. My host mom is called Maribel and she's super nice. We got dropped off at the centre of Salamanca, or at least as close to it as we could get with our bus. The entire centre is pedestrians only, which is so cool and it makes good use of the medieval-style skinny and randomly placed streets. I think I'm going to like getting to know this city.

The apartment that Maribel lives in is small but in a nice, cozy, homey sort of way, and 5 min walk from the drop point (Dile language school). Erin and I share a room with two mini-twin beds. I'm surprised by how much I do understand when Maribel and her adult son Alfonzo speak, I know they're slowing it down but there's still a lot that I understand. Me talking is another matter though, I have so many vocabulary words to build up. Some of them I knew once and forgot, most of them I've never heard of. But I seem to get my point across just fine, even with the numerous English and French words that slip in to my "Spanish" at times. We had a simple dinner of eggs, cheese, ham, tomato, and orange for dessert. I'm happy that my host mom understands me not wanting to eat wheat or other carbs so much (I explained this to her). But I think it won't be too much of a problem in Spain, all the food seems pretty good.

We're meeting the group again at Dile (the language school we will attend on Monday and the rest of the week) tomorrow at 10am. We will get to know Salamanca tomorrow. Tonight, sleep. A full actual night's sleep after about 30 hours awake. Goodnight.