You never forget how to ride a bike... which is not true for learning a language

The second day of class was kind of long, because we were all really anxious to get out and enjoy the city. We still had fun as we tried to explain to our teachers (in Spanish) how ridiculously expensive books and tuition are in America. The Spanish students at the University in our town pay less for their semester than we do for one class in America…………QUE??? Kind of wild, considering we have one of their teachers and its basically formatted the same as college in the states. Our Spanish professor couldn’t believe how expensive our schoolbooks are. “Hoder”, is the phrase she used lol, it basically means “f**k”. Then we explained what parties are like in the states and then when she asked me “if I like girls who wear skanky clothing”, I said…”No me gusta muchachas” WHOOPS! There it is, out in the open in the first week of class. Whatever, I really didn’t want it to come up in five weeks and have an awkward “why did you lie about that” convo.

After a very funny class we all decide to meet by the ocean and rent bikes! We take the bikes all the way around the city of Santander. It’s stunningly beautiful. The water is so blue, the sand is a very light brown and we are surrounded by mountains. A girl in our group “broke the chain of her bike”, AKA she wanted a “guapo chico”, to help her fix it. A Spanish guy jumped up immediately from the sand and fixed the bike for her. Best pick up maneuver ever? We traveled on up to a place where we could really see the lighthouse and the famous palace in Santander. 

We were climbing uphill (Sherie Renee Scott style) and finally made it, to discover that you can’t actually go in the palace cuz we are not “royal”. I started screaming that I was Kate Middleton’s third cousin once removed, therefore I am now royal. Don’t worry, I did it in a British accent so now they will totally think that Brits are the loud annoying ones, not us. You’re welcome.

We zoomed back to the bike stop and walked over to meet all the other students and teachers at a restaurant. Our group leader decided to just order a bunch of different things for us to try, which was an awesome idea! There were tamales, Spanish sausages, salmon, tomatoes, calamari and an assortment of desserts. We got the works and it was all really good. LOVE SPANISH FOOD! Totally stuffed, we all said goodbye and walked home. I got lost, cuz I’m a turd fergusson. I kind of panicked and thought I was going to die, then I literally stumbled upon my house. Later I found out that this is one of the safest towns in the world…there’s like no crime. Ever. Kinda like Detroit???

SantanDER I? Oh, I SantanDARE!

I finally make it to Santander, Spain and I’m completely exhausted but am too excited to care. My host mom was waiting for me in the airport, but because of all my last minute delays she ended up having to leave for work, so I am left to fend for myself in a place I’ve never been, where no one speaks English…I get a calamari bocadillo (sandwich basically) at the airport and immediately feel like I can do anything. So freaking delicious.

I start walking toward the bus station, which was like 2 km away…very far considering I have ALL my luggage for the next six weeks. I’m basically walking along the highway with a huge ass suitcase, backpack and very little sleep. I couldn’t take a cab even if I had an abundance of money, because this is kind of a small town and cabs are not easy to come by. Plus I have no internet on my phone and I’m basically walking blind toward what I hope is the bus station. Once I finally reach what I think is the bus station I try to ask a local woman which line I need to take to get to my street. She cannot understand a word I’m saying, nor I her. I was speaking in Spanish but my first day I was especially rusty, plus I just don’t know as much as I probably should. Her daughter pulls up in her car to pick her up and she speaks some English! I ask her which bus I should take and she doesn’t know. Sad that she can’t help me she says “Get in, I’ll just take you”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT!?! Thank God for nice people in this world. It was one of the coolest ways to be introduced to a city. The people here are for the most part really nice and helpful. It was so amazing. She drove me right up to my door for free and said “Welcome to Santander”. If she hadn’t done this I would probably be in a ditch right now by the airport cooking beans on a fire, homeless-guy-in-Dennis-the-Menace style. I said “if you ever find yourself in NYC look me up and I’ll show you around or help you with whatever you need”. She was all “sure”, but I bet she was thinking “can you just get out of my car so I can go on with my day” lol.

I wait outside the apartment for my host mom. She gets home from work, shows me the apartment and I pass out for like four hours. I wake up and decide to walk to the school so I have some idea what is going on here. The school is cool. It’s about a twenty minute walk from where I am staying, which is kind of perfect. Just long enough to feel like I’ve gotten some decent exercise everyday especially since the whole city consists of hills.

I head home and sleep through the night until the next day when I go to class. I meet up with the other students from UM and feel a lot better after speaking to some of them about how intimidated they were by all the communication barriers. School is good, but I have more trouble than most of the other students understanding people. It has been YEARS since I have taken a Spanish class and though I studied a lot on my own before coming to Spain it takes your ear a while to get used to the accent and the incredibly fast speaking. Besides the fact that I can tell it will be challenging, I like both my professors and I go to a local restaurant with one of the girls in my class. We get traditional Spanish tortillas and drink white wine for stupid cheap. All the wine by the glass in Santander is like $2.20 and it’s actually really good. We drink, people-watch and talk about how a day ago we were surrounded by chain restaurants, lot’s of obese people and multi-tasking galore. If everyday is like this, we might never leave Spain!

F(l)ight for your life

The adventure begins with me getting to the airport with PLENTY of time and after sitting around Cleveland-Hopkins for a few hours/delays, American Airlines cancels my flight! Mass chaos. I’m freaking out, the other people that need to be on that plane are freaking out and the AA staff is not caring. I feel they have deleted the word “help” from their vocabulary and replaced it with the phrase “this isn’t our fault (subtext: suck it customer)”. 

There is a huge line of people trying to speak to the ONE AA attendant at the gate so I have to leave the terminal and talk to someone at the ticket desk because the lady on the customer service line was doing a lot of “ooooohhhh, yeah, that’s no good. I wonder if there’s anything we can do”. Terrifyingly stupid. So the guy at the ticket desk gets me on a plane to NYC (my connecting city) through Delta but that plane gets delayed and I have to decide whether to have someone drive back to Cleveland, pick me up and try the whole thing again two days from now (all flights to NYC were booked…??). I decide to just take the late plane to NYC, spend the night there and fly out tomorrow, but first I go through security AGAIN (it’s really just torture to have to do that once, but twice!?) and then spend 10 hours…yup 10, in the Cleveland airport. At least there were lots of pictures of the Rock’n’Roll hall of fame. If you want to know how many triangular windows are used in the front of that building, I’m totally your man. At least Delta gave me money vouchers for another trip, even though I was never booked with them (love Delta, hate AA). I get on the plane and the pilot tells us we have to wait even longer before taking off. Girl behind me freaks out. I stifle my desire to turn around and punch her while yelling “approaching hour 11 in this place”.  

Finally land in NYC, but the train goes into Manhatten from JFK and THEN back to my apartment in Queens. Can’t and I won’t. Decide to take a taxi…the line is over 100 people long to hail one. E-Que me? No. I weasel one of the private car guys down to a really good deal, he takes me home and I wonder if it was a good idea to just get in his car without checking if he is legit or a gypsy cab or just a mugger. All is well. I end up at my apartment with my roomie and subletter, sleep and head back to JFK ready for SPAIN! 

Whoops, the nightmare hasn’t ended. I called AA the night before to make sure everything got changed to my new itinerary after missing the flight to Madrid the night before…oops, it’s a requirement that you must be incompetent to work for American Airlines and that guy at the desk the day before DID rebook my flight to Madrid, but the next flight to my final destination (Santander) he booked for the wrong day. If he was a candy he would not be a smarty. Or even a nerd. He’d be a dum-dum. I just deal with the fact that I’m going to get to Santader over 24 hours later than I was supposed to and I just keep trucking…But there are those gosh darn AA employees again, ready to stop me. I go to check in and the system does not let me! It keeps saying that I missed my flight (which I did but I was putting in the code for the new flight I was on and supposedly already checked in for). It said that I had to speak to an attendant. You know how I love them and how many of them are readily available. The only person by the 20 self check-in machines helps two people who were not waiting as long as I was and when I said “I just have a quick question” she snaps “these people were here first!”  I say, calmly (probably not lol), “No they weren’t”. She says, “if you want help you have to wait”. I’m just relieved to discover they DO know the word help. 

After twenty minutes of waiting, not knowing if I even have a flight to Madrid, she finally listens to my question about my ticket and says “Oh…you need to be in that line over there”…………………steam is literally spewing from mi cabeza (I wish that when I got angry I broke into fluent Spanish, but I think that only happens for people who are…fluent in Spanish). I rush over to the other line and the woman there FINALLY “helps” me. She gets my ticket and makes sure I’m checked in. Then she tells me my bag is overweight. I take things out and when she is not looking put them back in. I get on the plane and next stop SPAIN!!!!!!!