Where Am I Going?

South Africa

I might be a World traveller

There's a class here that allows for two weeks of "in the field work."  What that means is you study abroad for two weeks after taking a class on the subject.  There are several places you can travel to.  The catch? You have to apply.

Well, apply I did.

Accepted I am.

As promised...

Yesterday I promised more interesting things.  I have a pretty exciting update, but that's going to wait a bit longer.  So two interesting things happened today, and one as I was typing this up.

Interesting thing number one:  My dinner.

So as a college student I'm trying to finish all of the food in my fridge before I go shopping again.  I've had frozen ground beef in there since late August.  I decided to make sloppy joes.  I got adventurous.  I found blueberry waffles in the freezer.  I started to wonder...

It wasn't even that bad.  My tummy felt a little wierd afterwards... but that could have been the pickle...

Interesting thing number two:

See anything missing?

It wasn't working, so I pulled it off.  I thought it would snap back on.  Apparently not.  Oops.

Cuba

I was sitting in my Intro to Latin America and Caribbean Studies class today and we were talking about Cuba.  This reminded me of a story.  Its a short one this time.  And not exceptionally exciting.

My family and I went to the island of Tortuga (if you'll remember in Pirates of the Caribbean, this island is kind of a big deal).  In real life it was just a prison.  In this prison was held President Lincoln's murderer.  While at this island we learned that if any citizen from Cuba successfully lands a boat onto the Key West soil (american soil) they would essentially be immigrants and given some nice things.  If the boat has trouble out at sea, and someone has to help them to land, they get sent back to Cuba.

I saw people on a boat land on American soil.  I thought it was pretty cool.

More interesting things tomorrow or soonish.

I'm an awesome cook...

Living in an apartment is awesome.  The downside? I have to cook for myself.  This is what I've eaten for the past three meals (and I still have leftovers....).  If you can't tell from the pictures, the ground beef isn't exactly ground.  I thought it would be a great idea to defrost it on the stove.  Turns out, that's not such a good idea...

21

How I got to Paris - Part 2

*** continued from yesterday ***


We're the first people on the bus.  As we sit on this bus we start to laugh uncontrollably.  We were next to the place where our Paris bus most likely was waiting for us.  And not one single person could have even thought to mention, oh there's an annex to this place.

Christina and I decide to take turns falling asleep.  We no longer trust these buses as we did when we were in Granada and we did not want to miss our stop.  We start asking people around and there's only one stop.  Christina falls asleep in about 5 minutes.  I refuse.

I am now the only person awake on this bus, and I get a phone call.  Its my mom.  I talk normally, these people are either drunk or something else.  They can deal with a little English conversation.

3am - We pull into our connecting bus stop.  We find out next bus.  We changed all of our luggage to another bus.  We figure the bus company doesn't run that far south.  We're back on an ALSA bus.  These buses we trust, more than the other ones.  We talk to the drive and he tells us that our ticket actually gets us off at the airport.  We tell him we have a flight at 7:45am.  He tells us that we'll get to the airport at 6:15.  We're three hours from Madrid.

3:15 - The bus hasn't left yet.  We're still waiting on another bus from Pamplona.

3:30 - We leave.  I don't sleep much on this leg either.  There are actual stops now and we have to get off at the airport.

6:00 - The bus lights come on.  We're nearing Madrid.  I wake up.

6:15 - We are at the airport waiting for the shuttle to take us to the terminal that has the cheap flight.

6:35 - We get to the terminal and find EasyJet.  We buy the ticket and the lady tells us not to worry we have plenty of time.  She tells us to go directly to the check in counter so we can check our luggage.

6:50 - We're standing in the line we were told, but the lady won't take us.  We go to the normal lady.  Christina's bag is overweight.  She tries to lighten it while I get my boarding pass.

7:00 - A guy starts asking who's going to Paris.  We yell we are, and the lady who wouldn't take us before yells at us for standing around for half an hour.  Uhm, she said we couldn't go to her...

7:10 - Christina's bag fee gets waived and we run to security.  The line is short.  We'll be ok.

7:15 - There's a girl in front of me with liquids.  She didn't understand the 3oz rule (in this case the 100mL rule).  The security girl has to go through her luggage and take out everything.  By hand.  This girl doesn't understand.  I can see my back pack.  Its just behind the glass.  I could reach out and grab it.  But this being an airport, I worried that they would tackle me for reaching behind it.  So I waited.

and I waited.  I tried not to let my anxiety show, not to piss of the security agent who was going to let me pass with my liquids.

7:20 - She looks at my bag.  Makes a face, and then hands it to me.  I was prepared to tell her to throw it all out.  I needed to make a plane.  There were no problems.  Now Christina had to get though and then we had to find out what gate we were supposed to be at.

7:22 - I was so frazzled trying to get everything back into my backpack quickly, I didn't take the time to make sure that my computer was all the way into my backpack before I started to zip it up.  I zipped it.  It started to split.

7:25 - My backpack is now broken with a laptop and crazy important travel documents hanging out.  It now becomes a frontpack.

7:30 - I find the gate number.  I find Christina.  We start off towards the gate.

7:35 - We find the gate, and there's a line.  They're still boarding.  We even had time to go to the vending machine while we were waiting to board and buy a bottle of water.

7:45 - We're on the plane in our seats.

I don't remember take off.  For that matter, I don't even remember taxiing out of the terminal.  The second I sat down, I fastened my seat belt and went to sleep.  When I woke up, we were in Paris.  We even beat the bus we were supposed to take there.

How I got to Paris - Part 1

As I promised, here is the first of hopefully many stories I will remember.  Remember that crazy festival where people were sleeping out on the streets and drunken people ran in front of bulls and tried to slap them?  Remember it was called San Fermín?  Well, that was Pamplona.  It was my first stop on the three weeks after my program and we were going on to France from there.

All the people I talked to before going to Spain told me the bus system was wonderful.  So when I was planning my trip with my friend Christina, we thought, good bus system, its cheap, let's do it!  So we booked a bus ticket from Pamplona to Paris.  We printed out extra copies and everything.  We didn't even lose those papers after about two months of craziness.

Our bus to Paris leaves at 11:06pm.  At 8pm we decide to start mosying over to the bus station, we get out luggage that we checked into the left luggage room and grab a bite to eat.  No need to rush, we have plenty of time.

10:15 - We start looking at the screen, all dressed and ready for a long bus ride to Paris.  We're no longer dressed in white and red like all the other San Fermin fiesta goers.  There's a bus that leaves at 11:03 and none after that.  We decide to wait a little bit more, maybe the bus isn't on the screen yet.

10:30 - Still no mention of the bus to Paris on the screen.  We start asking bus drivers.  Christina gives me custody of her luggage and she starts running to 30+ drivers.  Most of them won't give us the time of day because its San Fermin and most everybody is drunk.  Any answers we did get was I don't know that bus company and try over there.  We asked some police officers and they were slightly more helpful.  As we get closer to 11:06 we get more and more frantic.  The bus station is in the shape of a horseshoe and we ran back and forth several times.  Guys started yelling at me because I had two backpacks (one in back and one in front) and two rolly suitcases.  He was making fun of me.  Thanks, drunk spaniard.

11:04 - Christina got behind a restricted area and started talking to the person who directs the buses in the bus station (this person tells them where to park and let the passengers off).  We find out that that particular bus picks up on the street.  The person asked Christina when the bus leaves and she said now.  The person laughed at her.  We did not appreciate that.

11:06 - Christina comes running to me and tells me breathlessly that the bus is on the street.  We are in an underground bus station.  We have to go up a flight or two of stairs.  In the hurry, Christina forgot to grab her backpack from me, so I go running after her, lugging not only my backpack and luggage but her backpack too.  3/4 of the way up the stairs I thought my heart was going to explode.

There was an explosion, but it wasn't my heart.  (Thank god)  Remember that festival that was going on with all the drunk people?  Well, they have a fireworks show at 11pm.  And, apparenlty, the best place to have this show is at the bus station.  Why?  Maybe because it was a large open field, maybe because the bus Gods wanted to have fun with Christina and me.

We get up the stairs, I force Christina to take back her backpack (which I would have died if I had kept carrying it).  Now we start forcing our way out to the street.  There are easily 10,000 people there, all watching the fireworks and making some lovely PDA.

We take off in the direction of the street, searching for a bus.  All the while, we're thinking that this was the stupidest place to have a bus pick up.

There's an old lady in our way.  I yelled at her.

We get about 100 yards from the exit and there's not bus.  Its 11:08.  Even if we found the bus, it probably wouldn't let us on.

We stare at the street for a bit.  We don't even notice that there are still fireworks going off.

We turn around and head back to the bus station.  Maybe the bus is down there for some reason?

We're still in a hurry and very stressed at this point.  We start pushing our way back to the station.  There's a couple kissing.  They're in my way.  I yell at them.  I think they we're more startled than upset that I interrupted their smooching.

We get to the escalator and there's an old man standing in the middle of it.  Christina tell him to move.  He doesn't move.  She pushes on.  She rolls her luggage over his foot.  He yells at her.  We don't care.  He didn't move.

We get down the stairs.  We look for the bus ticket station.  Maybe there's another bus?  The next bus for Paris leaves at 11:06pm the next day.  We have no hostel.  We need to leave tonight.

There's a bus that leaves for Madrid at 1am.  We decide to buy it.  Christina's credit card doesn't work.  Her debit card doesn't work.  My credit card doesn't work.  My debit card doesn't work.  The machine doesn't take cash.

There's another machine.  Luckily this one takes Christina's credit card.  We buy the tickets.  We have to transfer buses.  That's ok.

11:30 - We're sitting at the bus station, trying to get on the internet and look up cheap flight to Paris from Madrid.  Our plan?  Get in at Madrid.  Get a taxi to the airport.  Buy a plane ticket to Paris.  Land in Paris that day and continue with our plans.  We find a cheap flight that leaves at 7:45am and we pull into Madrid at 6:45am.  We're going for it.

12:15 - The lights start going off in the bus station.  It looks like its closing.  I start getting worried again.  We need to get our bus to Madrid.

12:30 - A securtiy guard comes and tells us that the bus station is closed.  BUT WE HAVE A BUS AT 1AM.  It picks up on the street.

Now there are two reasons we're are upset about this.  1) We couldn't find the street before.  2) We were told that this bus station never closes.

12:35 - We begrudgingly get up and start towards the street.  We clearly can't stay here.  We start asking people where this bus picks up.  A woman overhears us talking and says Oh, its probably the annex!

Annex?

She leads us out of the bus station and over to this other entrance.  We find a guy who is also going to Madrid and follow him.  We take an elevator down to the -2 floor and dognabbit, there's a freakin' bus station here.

Lots of buses.  They all say the destination we want to go.

We start looking for our bus.  Our bus driver ends up being the same guy who didn't know where the Paris bus picked up.  Uhm, hey bus driver, maybe in this annex????

*** to be continued tomorrow ***

Happy Labor Day!

Break out that grill and start eating lots of food!  Oh, wait, that's 4th of July.  But 4th of July has fireworks... and so does Labor Day?  I never really understood this holiday except that I get a day off of school.  So how am I celebrating?  I'm waiting for Mr. Maintenance Man.  Yes, I am making someone come over and work on the day no one is supposed to.  Oops.

To be fair, however, my window won't lock and I'm on the first floor of my building.  Dangerous, you say?  Well, yes, hence Mr. Maintenance Man.

Since sort of restarting this blog I've been remembering lots of things about my time in Europe, and more importantly for you, I've also been realizing that I didn't tell you lots of stories.  So its become a win-win situation for you.  I get to remember fun stuff, and you get to read my crazy stories.  And yes, there are some crazy/ridiculous ones in there.

I might be building it up too much.  They start tomorrow.

What's that 9am?

This was taken last spring in the Chambana area.  These trees bloom for about a week and a half.

Well I'm back from a much needed rest.  I don't know what I'm resting from.  But to anyone who's been looking for updates, I do apologize.  I'm back at school in the good old US of A.  I was sitting in my spanish class last thursday and after 50 minutes, the teacher ended the class.  I was confused.  I got so used to my classes, that were conducted in Spanish, in spain lasting for an hour and forty minutes.  Not to mention I had them three times a day, four days a week.  50 minutes just seemed too short to learn Spanish (and that class is only twice a week).

Long story short, I miss my long days of Spanish classes.  Who would have ever thought I would say I liked 6 hours of intensive Spanish classes?  I definitely prefer those Spanish classes to my 9am this semester - Biochemistry.