Life is a Game we Play.

Best By: 12-27-2007

...That’s what my milk said this morning. No more boxed milk sitting on a shelf, good for a year. It’s good to be back. It’s weird to be back. It’s weird because it feels normal, like I was here yesterday.
We had a goodbye dinner and cocktail with my program on Thursday night. It was probably one of the most fun nights I had in Spain. Free wine, free beer, tapas, photo shoots... After the bar closed, a huge group of us headed to Buddha del Mar, a 3-level discoteca. We stayed there until after 5am. Hopefully that’s the last time I’ll have to hear Rihanna singing about her umbrella. No kidding, I never want to hear that song ever again! Most of us didn’t leave until at least Saturday, so it didn’t really feel like it was goodbye...but I wish it would have, because I don’t really feel like I ever actually said goodbye to some of my closest friends. We just kind of left.
It took me over 24 hours to get home. We went out again Friday night, so I didn’t sleep before heading to the airport on Saturday morning at 5am. Flew from Sevilla to Madrid, had a 4 hour layover. On my flight from Madrid to Philadelphia, I sat between two people that had also been studying abroad, so we spent a lot of time swapping stories. It was a 9 hour flight, and my TV didn’t work...but my male flight attendant gave me a couple Smirnoff’s for my cranberry apple juice. Good man. Our crew was funny, and our Puerto Rican pilot would sporadically bust out Christmas carols over the PA system. My luggage was the 2nd to last bag to come out...it took an hour and 40 minutes. This led to me sprinting through the Philadelphia airport to try to make my flight to Chicago that had started boarding 20 minutes earlier. I got to the terminal a hot mess only to find out that my flight had (probably a good thing) been delayed 2 hours. According to the weather, it looks like I was pretty lucky to even make it out of Philadelphia Saturday night. I had three seats to myself on the flight and I passed out the second I sat down. I woke up and couldn’t make up my mind as to whether or not my plane had even left the ground. ...We landed 5 minutes later.
My brother had his college graduation ceremony Saturday, so my parents were in Eau Claire for the weekend. Sounds like he's got his life all together...new house, new truck, new job...sounds like things are really working out for him.
I grabbed my luggage and hopped on a shuttle to a hotel for the night. When I walked in, I was half expecting it to be a 12-bed hostel room... My own shower, a TV? O me-o, O my-o, O Cleveland, O-hio! LuXuRy!
Since then, everything has just been an adventure of rediscovering the way things are done here. I’ve tried to push the top of a toilet because I’m not used to a lever on the side to flush...I took a really long shower (my first shower longer than 4 minutes with hot water in 4 months!!)...I drove a car...I spent hours in the grocery store...rediscovered OATMEAL...and have been running around my house turning off unnecessary lights.
I never watched TV in Spain, and I feel like that’s all I did yesterday. Mind-numbing. Spent some quality time with my parents reminiscing about funny childhood stories over some leftover chinese... I’m very much looking forward to getting back to Madison...starting to work, and saving money for a traineeship this summer!!! Shawiiiiing!
Road trip to CO in a few weeks? I think yes.
Merry Navidad. Welcome back.

posted by Erin @ 9:09 AM