The Boys In Spain Annoy Mainly Because They're A Pain

Hello, hello! And most importantly Happy Friday, I've been waiting for this day since Tuesday (I didn't go to school on Monday, I took a personal day...see below) but that's quite normal, I do that every week. I'm excited for a quiet weekend in after the craziness of Carnival last week. I have to survive my private class today at 5, and then it's officially the weekend!

I have yet to update about the new apartment but I'm in love with its location more than anything. It's a very, very, very small apartment. I just realized a couple of days ago that I literally cannot outstretch my arms all the way in the kitchen, it's that narrow. I have the medium sized bedroom that has lots of drawers to keep my stuff in, but it's quaint. I like it. If I keep it clean, there's plenty of space to do what I need to do. To live. That's if I keep it clean......which is a different story. I have two roommates, a boy and a girl who are both about 24/25ish. To be honest, I feel like I live with a girl and a 16-year-old girl. The actual girl is amazing, she's hilarious and fun. She's from the south of Spain and unfortunately goes home every other weekend to visit her family & boyfriend, but she's awesome. The boy...such a piece of work. He's from the south of Spain too. He's a sports journalist, basically, who gets paid to write about different sporting events. In America this type of person would be similar to a jock or someone more...athletic. My roommate is the biggest nerd I've ever met. Maybe geek is a better word. He's tall, t-shirt & jeans kind of guy but plays computer games 95% of his free time. If we don't hear him screaming from his bedroom at some stranger in another country via his gaming headset...then he's probably not home. I don't even mind that. I can live with the complete nerdiness. I do have a hard time dealing with his "around the house" apparel. He has these matching dull green sweatpants and sweatshirt with a wolf on it that he wears all the time. They smell funny. And the sweatpants are hideous. They're substantially tight and have elastic around the ankles. He doesn't own slippers, so he likes to pair them with some of those ugly strappy male sandals and socks.

He looks like the one in the middle. With these shoes:

I'd take a real live picture if it didn't make me nauseous and give me unnaturally strong urges to cut up the sandals and take a pair of sharp fabric scissors to the elastic ankles of the sweatpants.

Like I said, I deal with it all. What is hard to handle is him being a Spanish male who is out of the house for the first time. In Spain, people usually tend to live at home until they get married, and then finally move out when they are 30ish (they marry later here). That causes certain...well, problems. Spanish guys seem to be a LOT more immature. They aren't quite as self-sufficient. They think they are the hottest shit on the planet (because they live with personal cheerleaders, their mothers, until they get married...to another personal cheerleader.) Take that male out of his mother's household, put him in a new city...eventually (you hope) he might learn how to be more self-dependent and less demanding.

Well, not yet.

Of course all of that is just a generalization for many of the boys I have met. It's not true for all of them. And most of that information I got from my teachers at school, haha. My roommate doesn't understand cohabitation. On paper he gets it but in real life it just doesn't seem to be settling into his brain. For example, we all three have to share the bathroom and the living room. He's a nosey little bitch. So if one of those three areas is occupied, wait 30 seconds and he'll come poking his nose in to see what's going on. Maybe it's a territory issue....like dogs when they have to pee all over everything that's already been peed on. If I'm "peeing" in the living room, he's gotta come see what I'm doing, and "pee" there too. If I'm in the kitchen, he will walk back and forth in the hallway just poking his nose in because all of a sudden, now that I'm using the kitchen, he wants to do use it too. The girl & I cook together in the kitchen all the time with no problems...but he has to have it all to himself. And the bathroom.....good God, the bathroom. I feel like the bathroom is a sacred place. I don't care what you do in there but it's private time. Unless I'm about to piss my pants, I'm not going to knock on the door and ask you to get out. I expect the same courtesy. I lived with 50 girls in a sorority house and we NEVER had any issues. The bathroom is not different than the kitchen or the living room. I was in there for about a minute one night, washing my face and getting ready for bed, and I hear him come storming out of the bedroom and knocks on the door "CHELSEA...how much longer are you going to be in there?? A long time??" ....no, don't worry, I'm just washing my face. When I'm finished you can come proverbially piss all over the place. It's also his tone of voice that he uses. I feel like there is a certain commeradery among roommates...a politeness if you will. If someone's somewhere you need to be, you ask politely "when you're finished could you let me know?" Or if someone accidentally turns on water while you're in the shower, "Would you mind waiting until I'm out of the shower? The water just got cold!" All of these instances have happened between the girl and I and we have no problems. We're friends. The princess, however, who I might start calling Your Royal Highness, doesn't have that tact. Here's how Your Royal Highness deals with these situations. "HURRY UP, I NEED TO SHOWER BEFORE I GO TO BED!!!!" or my favorite...while banging on the door to the kitchen as I was washing dishes (I started washing dishes before he went into the bathroom) "CHELSEA!!! SHUT OFF THE WATER, I'M IN THE SHOWER AND IT'S COLD AS F***"

Assface. He couldn't be a bigger, more inconsiderate asshole if he intentionally tried. And I honestly don't care, it's just annoying. I avoid him and do what I need to do without giving a crap. He gets annoyed/jealous when I talk to the girl and we have bonding moments. One night I came home and they were in his room because he was showing her some video game about zombies and farms. She asked me how my day was, and I started telling them some funny stories...and all of a sudden he gets up, throws on his jacket, and runs out the door. We asked where he was going and he said "SHOPPING" then slammed the door in our faces. We had no idea what the hell had just happened. When he got home he was pouting because he was trying to show her this video game and then she started talking to me and clearly didn't care about it anymore....what a freaking lunatic.

He also has this weird obsession, being such a geek, of showing his body. I swear to God every time I'm trying to have a conversation with him he lifts up his shirt and starts stroking his hairy stomach. It's as horribly awkward as it sounds. Then one day I came home and he was shaving his head...and maybe his body....ugh who knows. I walk in the door and I'm staring at a very well lit, half naked roommate, with the bathroom door wide open and him shaving himself. Hair all over the floor. Hair all in the sink. (For this exact reason, plus he doesn't know how to cover his mouth when he coughs, I moved all of my personal things [i.e. toothbrush] out of the bathroom a month ago) I couldn't hide my horrified expression (he's not bad looking but personal grooming doesn't really get my motor running, it actually turns my stomach) and he looks at me, scratching his stomach again, and says, "What?? What's wrong with you??" ....clearly he couldn't possibly fathom why this moment was not the highlight of my 24 years of existance. Not to mention that there is ALWAYS hair all over the bathroom. And here's the thing....girl hair is not that gross. It's long. It's shiny. You know it came from a girl's head. Boy hair...............disgusting. It's short, dark, curly, and you have no idea what follicle on the body it came from. To me, it all looks like pubic hair. And that makes me want to gag. There's boy hair in the sink. Boy hair all over the bathroom. Boy hair in the shower. Living with one boy is 100 times worse than living with 50 girls. That's all I'm saying. And if he was more pleasant and polite, I'd care less about his bear hair all over the apartment.

Anyways. Like I said, I'm not affected that much by him. I know that rant makes it seem like I hate him but I really don't. It seemed like an entertaining rant and I haven't let it out to anybody yet. I still love the apartment. Monday, though, we had a tiff and he pissed me off so much that I stayed home from school to take a personal day. Every weekend I like to bake, and there's always a pile of dishes that aren't mine. I like to have a clean kitchen, though, so I always wash all the dishes. Numerous times. This past weekend I was so annoyed with it that I left all the dishes in the sink and didn't wash them. Then, randomly, Monday morning I hear my roommates screaming at each other at 7 a.m. I come stumbling out and asked the girl what's wrong. She said that it was just the apartment and how it's so dirty. I started to tell her how I was going to clean the living room later that day (we rotate the common rooms for cleaning each week) and he barges into the kitchen and yells that he wants all of the dishes cleaned by the time he gets home. To me. And I can't really snap back in Spanish at 7 a.m. when I have just been woken up and am getting screamed at for something I didn't do. And I told him I have been washing my dishes all week and leaving the rest and I wasn't going to clean HIS dishes. Plus the fact that he keeps dumping his old food and soup down the drain, on top of all of the dirty dishes....so that dishes that only had a couple of crumbs are now covered in an oily, tomatoe-y mess. He flipped the hell out, started cussing me out for 5 minutes, and then went to his bedroom to continue. I went to my room, started crying because I hate confrontation and was so annoyed with him (maybe some of the dishes were mine, but why the hell wouldn't you just have an adult conversation on Sunday night calmly, instead of blowing a gasket at 7 a.m. on a work day?? How stupid are you??) I knew a couple of the dishes were mine from making pancakes so I figured I was in such a bad mood I shouldn't be dealing with small children, so I texted my teachers, stayed home, and started cleaning the dishes. He came in and was like "are you gonna clean them or do I have to do them after I get home? Just leave them and I'll do them when I get home". No, douchebag. I'm already doing them. I just kept crying and cleaning. It ended up being a good thing because I cleaned the whole house. Dishes, the living room, my bedroom...and took out all the trash. I haven't talked to him since but the way I see it I owe him nothing so he can keep playing with his imaginary friends online and I'll live my life normally (but a little bit more organized as to avoid his crazy bipolar meltdowns).

So those are the roommates. Our neighbors are fun too. One of our neighbors has heard me on the phone with Jeri before and has been trying to catch me because she's Swedish or something and doesn't speak much Spanish. She keeps asking the girl if she's the one who's been speaking English. In the mean time I wonder what else she's heard because the walls are made of paper and I say a lot of stuff I wouldn't with English-speaking roomates because they don't understand me....haha. I met another neighbor one day at the front door and she's hilarious. I'm guessing she's 95 years old, has an amazing fashion sense, and has like fifteen names. I was telling her I'm from the States and this weather seems cold, even for me. She told me her name was Maria Teresa, or Maite, or Maria, or just Teresa....and she lives in 3A if I ever need anything. I love neighbors like that.

The apartment is located ten minutes away from my school (walking) so I get to walk to school every morning. This comes with a lot of pro's and con's. The pro's are being able to walk to school and the fact that it's so centrally located. I can walk to the center of Madrid in 20 minutes. It's also in between two main Metro lines. I also live next door to the Madrid Harley Davidson. European bikers are much different than American bikers. In America they wear lots of leather, long curly hair, bandanas, and look like they could kill you with one look. Europeans also wear lots of leather, but they are very very well groomed. This causes all European bikers to look like they belong in a gay bar or club. It cracks me up. And makes me feel quite at home.

The con's.....there are many. For one, I live next to my school and so do many of my students. I can no longer leave my apartment without makeup and doing my hair because 85% of the time I run into my students. This might sound conceited (and if you were to come to school with me one day you'd understand) but I'm kind of famous at my school. I have more than 420 students and all of them adore me (because I have the fun class of the week usually). Now that I've been speaking Spanish more with them, all of the shy ones feel more comfortable talking to me when they don't know what to say in English and we're all a lot closer. Basically, when we're not in school (or even if it's just lunch break) and they see me on the street, they act like they've just seen Brad Pitt walking half naked down the street. Jumping. Shouting. Waving like a crazy person. Screaming in English. And because they're screaming in English, everyone turns and looks with a look like, "what the hell?? Why is this small child screaming in English?" Most of the time I see them and say hi and ask how they're doing (it's a ritual...."How are you? I'm fine thanks, and you?" If you don't ask how they are, and just say hello, most of my students look confused, wait 15 seconds, then say "............I'm fine, thanks, and you??" without even being prompted). Also, one of my least favorite students lives in the next apartment down. She's annoying and has the worst behavior of any female student I have. Her mother is also annoying because she likes to brag about how amazing her daughter's English is, to ME, her English teacher. At first I didn't know her well (she's a new student) but after getting to know her through punishing her almost every class, I have a lot more that I don't say to her mother now. Every morning her mother tries to wait for me outside the building so I can walk to school with her, practice English, and the mother doesn't have to leave the house. Of COURSE it's my luck to live next to the one student I practically loathe. And of course she has the biggest mouth of anybody at school and tells everyone we're neighbors.

I also have a "bad" habit of listening to my iPhone on the way to school, to avoid gypsies begging for money and men hitting on me or calling me "rubia"...blonde. If even one man under the age of 40 and under 300 lbs. hit on me, I'd reconsider my walking habits. Until then...headphone ignorance. This causes problems because I cannot count how many times my students run up to me at school and tell me "I saw you yesterday!! I said hi, but you didn't hear me because you had your headphones in...." *insert sad puppy face*. I feel so awful but my headphones cancel out all noises. I've begun taking out my headphones when I reach the street of the school, but sometimes that's not good enough. One of my teachers told me yesterday that she was with a group of students, about 8, who were all screaming at me at the top of their lungs trying to get my attention, and thought I was ignoring them. She said her daughter (who isn't my student, she's only 5 and in preschool...but she sees me during lunch & on the way to school sometimes and really likes me) was in the front of the pact screaming and waving like a maniac. Luckily the teacher saw me take out my headphones and was able to explain that's why I was "ignoring" them, I had no idea they were there.

All in all, I'm happier here. Being close to my life is very important for my work life and my social life. I'll try to update soon with the other catch-up news...but it felt really good getting all this off my chest :) Until next time!

All Catastrophes Must Come To An End (Thank God)

...back again, to tell the rest of this heinous airport story. Just for the record, in the week after I updated again with more details about the airport, I kept waking up at like 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. nervous and paranoid that I was stuck in the airport and not going to make it back here to Spain to work on time. When I wake up under these circumstances I'm positive it's before Christmas and before my birthday. It blows my mind when I finally realize it's half way through February and both holidays have passed. It's slightly sad to realize but that's just how traumatizing this was. Here's to wishful thinking that this conclusive post won't effect my sleep patterns.

Okay. So when we last left off I was at the airport, Rashidanaan had dropped me off and waited to make sure I was at the right place. I asked curbside check-in and they said I was. I asked a woman where I was supposed to check in with my boarding pass and she pointed me in the direction of the ticket kiosks. She told me I could put anything in the kiosk with my name on it and it would scan and print the ticket (based on name recognition). I did so and after scanning it said it could not locate me in the system. Panicking a little bit on the inside, I swiped all articles of I.D. I had....still no luck. Trying not to worry, I asked the woman what to do and she said not to worry, I would just have to have one of the attendants print out my ticket for me. It was totally fine. Nothing to worry about. Yet.

Got in line in "Special Customer Services", and by this point I was musing about how truly special I am now to have wasted hours of my life in these "special situation" lines. And they still kept dicking up. But I wasn't panicking yet. This was totally fine. The cheery kiosk lady told me so. She wouldn't lie. This was a normal situation.



Of course it wasn't a normal situation and if you believed that then you're as dumb as I am/was.

I handed the woman my ticket (it was really a receipt that my Latina friend had printed out to show the transaction...not an actual ticket. If it were I wouldn't be that special right now) and told her the machine did not recognize me in the system. She takes my passport, enters all my information, and after ten minutes tells me that there is no ticket with my name on it in the system. My heart literally dropped like a dead body to the floor. I heard a thud. And I'm pretty sure it stopped beating for the next two hours. After typing and diddling on the computer for another 10 minutes, the woman tells me that she can see something really weird happening with my name in the system, that she can see a bunch of transactions that were made and then cancelled, but that none of those ticket numbers worked in the system (they'd all been cancelled) and now there was no ticket number to hold on to, to put me on a flight back to Indianapolis (or anywhere for that matter)...I was stuck in computer hell, essentially. Cosmo trick was working, I kept staring into the bright hallogens above and wasn't crying. It was 6:50 and I still had an hour and forty minutes before my flight left. Totally fine. This was normal. Kiosk woman said so. Although that hope was slowly slipping down the shitter.

New woman (I feel awful I forget her name because I stared at her left breast for atleast two hours by the time this was over and vowed half way through I was going to write Delta a letter telling them how helpful she was, assuming she was able to figure out how to get my carcass, dead or alive, to Indy...and I forgot it) kept typing in codes, looking in books, and doing everything she could think of to figure the situation out. I told her that Latina had put me on a flight to Minneapolis, and then to Washington, before she finally got her manager and asked him to finish the transaction correctly to Indianapolis. She told me she could see all that, but I was never reinstated onto another flight. My ticket was just cancelled and that was the last of it. The bad part was that the ticket number from the Washington flight was not working. Four other Delta members tried their best to crack the code but all of their codes came back saying, "Call American Airlines for assistance." Eventually she ended up using two phones at the same time, one on the phone with Delta headquarters and the other on the phone with American Airlines at the airport. She switched back and forth on the phones (literally a phone on each ear stretched from two different desks) and eventually, after realizing she'd been helping me for, literally, and hour and ten minutes and on hold for half of that....she wasn't going to get anywhere. That's when the Cosmo trick wore off and I started ugly crying with no hope of stopping. Gasping for air. Trembling. Pretty ugly in general. She said she didn't want to send me to American, because American would just send me back to Delta...and I'd be running back and forth. The time was 7:25 a.m. and my flight was going to leave me. Again. Technically it wasn't even my flight. I didn't have a flight. My name was floating in the computer, belonging to nobody. Poetically, that's how I had felt for the past 32 hours.

I didn't know what to do. By this point the woman at the desk was hella livid with American Airlines, I was bawling, and every five minutes somebody would come up to the desk and check in to the exact flight to Indiana I was supposed to be on. Which made me wail even harder. It was a nightmare...or a bad sitcom montage. Finally the woman just told me, "Look. I wish I could get inside of your head for twenty minutes, or just long enough to chew the shit out of those bastards at American. You need to get angry. You need to tell them, point blank, you have screwed me over and I need to get home. Period. And that they are GOING to fix it. No questions asked. All they need to do is issue you a new ticket number...the last one I can see does not work."

She told me once I knew anything to come find her immediately, because she wanted to know what ended up happening. I called American, which ended up being even more annoying in this situation than you can even imagine. First of all, they have a machine-automated system. It asks you for your first and last name. "Did you say 'Selsie Ice-lear?" Why the hell would I say that. "I'm sorry about that...where is your destination?" Indianapolis. "Did you say Indianapolis?" Duh. "When is your flight?"? 8:40. "When?" 8:40. "Did you say 8:30?" No. What the hell. I said 8:40. "I'm sorry I don't recognize that flight time. We have a flight to Indianapolis at 6:30 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., and 4:45 p.m. Are one of those options your flight?" NO I SAID THE FLIGHT WAS AT 8 EFFING 40 A.M. YOU DUMB AUTOMATED STEAMING PILE OF USELESS CRAP.

So now I was annoyed. Not really angry. And still crying. I finally get ahold of someone and tell her the story (just of this morning). She spends 10 minutes looking, while I'm on hold, and comes back telling me the ticket number. I look and of course it's the same ticket number that wasn't working in the Delta system. I told her that Delta can't help me. Period. And that I wasn't going to accept that their worthless company couldn't either. I trusted Delta and the woman who spent over an hour on the phone for me more than American Airlines at this point. She put me on hold again and said she would see what she could do. Ten more minutes on hold and she comes back to tell me that she couldn't reinstate me on that flight because it would cost more. I told her that all of this was a computer glitch. All she had to do was give me a new ticket number. That's ALL. I was not paying more money. I was not at fault here. I DID NOTHING WRONG TO DESERVE THIS (except maybe kill innocent puppies in a past life or something). I tried to maintain my annoyed voice but it was painfully obvious I was trying not to break down crying (because that would do me no good, I wouldn't be able to breathe or say anything...and softly sobbing on the other end would not move people to action...it might move them to euthanize me, but not help me). She decides to call Delta headquarters herself to work it out and finally after another ten minutes comes back and tells me she has a new ticket number. I run to the lady at the desk and throw her my phone telling her to talk to her. My fingers are so wadded up crossed every which way possible that my hands looked like nubbins. I was pleased because the lady at the desk was talking to the American Airlines person like she was the most worthless human being on the planet....I'm glad she could convey the emotions I couldn't. Finally I hear her say "thank God, that one worked. Thank you so much. Yeah, bye." IT WORKED.

But it was 8:00. And my flight LEAVES in 40 minutes (there was no boarding time labelled). I asked the woman if I even had enough time to get all the way there and she told me there was no way in hell I was missing that flight. She shoved me through the entire line herself at security and then with a puff of smoke and some glitter she was gone (in my mind). I was so gittery and excited and nervous about missing the flight that I was ready to run through the airport (which goes against all of my values, I hate running, especially in public). I kick off my boots, throw everything I can into the little plastic bins, and run through the metal detector. No beeps. I grab my boots, my bag, and my computer and prepared to jet miles through the airport to get to my gate; 5-A. I didn't waste time putting on my shoes or putting my computer in my bag...I would carry them whilst running. I did make sure to ask the security guard if 5-A was close though. He told me simply "yeah, all the gates are right there" and pointed. Yeah right, douchebag, like ALL of the gates in this forsaken airport are just around the corner. Dumbass. "Okay but how much time will it take to get to gate 5-A?" "I said, all of the gates are that way." FINE, be rude. I was still gonna run for it.

Annoyed that he was so worthless, but not effected because I had too much running to do, I got a good grip on my boots and on my computer and start scuffling in my socks down the hallway. I wasn't going to work up to a full-fledged run until I knew exactly how far away my gate was....were we talking five minutes? Ten minutes? I needed one of those signs that tells you exactly how many minutes you should expect to wait. Plus I could probably take a breather from all the running in those stupid trams between the terminals. It'd be fine. Get my heart pumping.

I shuffle around the corner, amidst getting stared at like I had just grown a third arm out of my forehead for running around without my shoes on (it's an airport for Christ's sake, if you can't run frantically barefoot through an AIRPORT, where can you??). I look at the signs for a chart of wait times and gates....and all I see is Gate 1, Gate 3, Gate 5, Gate 7 on the left...and Gate 2, Gate 4, Gate 5-A on the right. I'll be damned if the gate was not literally right around the corner, just like security man said.

I should mention that it's been a long time (if ever) since I have flown through a domestic airport. They are all international and I always end up walking on 15 moving sidewalks before I get to my gate. And by then I'm exhausted from dragging my stupid carry on 200 miles and trying to keep up with the power walkers.

Speaking of, even with my boots and my laptop in my arms, it felt like I was missing something. That's when I realized I was. I was so jumpy and spastic at the checkpoint that I had left my rolling carry on bag that weighed 20 lbs and had all of my clothes. Not to mention that's the second time in my Spain travels that I've gotten so panicked that I forget to grab it from security.

So, relieved that the gate was within eyesight, I hustled back to security and noticed that aforementioned security "dumbass douchebag" (accidentally inappropriately named...although I truly believe he could have been more verbal and explained "We only have one terminal and all gates are 3o seconds away") had taken my carry on over to the bomb squad area and was testing it for explosives. Peachy. I sheepishly got closer and flashed as innocent of a smile as possible and said "heh, that's my bag...I was in such a rush I forgot" and offered my boots and bare feet as visual proof of said-hurry (in case he didn't remember me from less than a minute ago). He brushed me off and said, "yeah yeah, I still have to finish with this, it'll be just a second." I tried to act ditzy, thanked douchebag, and then ran all 10 feet to gate 5-A, where they weren't even boarding. Once they called for our flight, though, we did have to take a little bus from the area to the actual plane. Apparently the overhead storage in our plane was not excellent, so they took our larger carry-on items and checked them for free. The plane was SO luxurious. There was massive legroom, the seats were wide & cushioned, and there drinks were amazing. I was so overwhelmed with relief that I thought I was going to throw up, or that this was all too much good to come to me so quickly, so the plane was clearly bound to crash. Seriously. I also had forgotten to use my $12 breakfast voucher (read: didn't have time to use it) so I was practically starving.

I landed in Indianapolis on time and called Jeri immediately. They could see me landing. I rushed through the gate expecting them to be there (like the movies) but I was pretty let down when I realized I was at the gates where normal people weren't allowed. I would have to trek a little bit to find them. I power-walked past all the schmucks in front of me (clearly NOT appreciating Indiana as much as I was) and bound through the walkway into the food court with nothing on me but my jacket and my purse. Luckily, without all the luggage, I was able to scream at full volume and flail my arms like a mental patient while attacking my mother. The thought crossed my mind for a few seconds that maybe she was just a hologram. Luckily she wasn't. We grabbed McDonalds (and Tim strong-armed Starbucks into issuing us free crap for the $12 JFK voucher) and then went downstairs to find my suitcases. It wasn't there (surprise!) The man at the office told me that it would be in at 5:30 that day but that the offices were open until 9 or 10 and he would be there so I could come whenever. Perfect! I told the man that he was the most helpful American Airlines employee, which means a lot coming from me and the shit I put up with in the past two days.

Hours later my brother and I go to the airport. I hustle to the office....pitch black. With a sign that says "Be back in two hours." I completely jinxed myself. That man was worthless. Luckily there was an older couple and their best friend who also needed their bags so they had called security to come and open the door. We only waited ten minutes when the guard showed up and opened the door. I asked her if she wanted to see my ID or my luggage tags when she looked at me like I was the world's dumbest living human being and said "uh, NO." .........................how comforting. In that case all four of those bags are mine too.

In the end I made it home by 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve. I was only home for 2 weeks-ish, and the second week I ate some Arby's on the way home from a funeral and got the most intense bout of food poisoning I think I've ever had. I ended up getting a shot in the ass to stop me from getting sick.....but I was able to rest a lot and catch up on American television and pop culture. I also lost 8 lbs. since September, and am attributing 7 of those to the food poisoning. Thank you, and eff you Arby's.

Welp, I think that's it. Starting next blog I can update about my crazy ass private classes I suffer through, the new cute student teachers at our school, Carnaval, and most importantly my birthday. If you're lucky I will update Sunday. I'm trying to catch up so I write these in real-time and not via my slowly-fading memory. I retain more deets that way. Love you all! Happy Valentine's Day, and Carnaval.

The Catastrophe Continues...

I'm back to continue my story! I was talking about it on the phone with Jeri when I realized that referring to my journey home as a "fiasco" was just not strong enough...in the least bit...so I'm now referring to it as the Christmas Catastrophe of 2011. It has a nice ring to it anyways. I love alliteration. I would just like to begin with a caviat that none of this information has been altered from reality. I truly couldn't make this shit up if I tried, and I honestly believe that this much crap couldn't possibly happen to anybody other than me.

Where were we...ah yes. I had just waited 2 hours (almost) to get my luggage and had approximately 30 minutes to grab my bags, recheck them, and hustle my ass to Terminal 3 from Terminal 8 & board (while I figured my flight was probably already boarding anyways). I said bye to my new-found American friends and scurried to put my bags on the rechecked conveyor belt. I run up to the woman in charge of this task and ask her if I simply put my bags on the belt...? She asked me where I was going and I said Indianapolis (p.s. every time I said Indianapolis my voice went up two octaves, I swear, because of the hope that I was going to finally make it home) and she said yes just put the bags there. I threw the bag on like a sack of sand and ran back over to ask her where I should go next. Working at the JFK airport, she was naturally not a native American and judging from her accent I'm pretty sure she was Swedish...or something similar. I handed her my ticket (EXPRESS ticket!) and she goes (as snarkily as possible), "oh....dees sayz dat you are eh-go-eeng to Detroit fehst. You should have told me daht." And shrugged without a care in the world.

......WHAT?! You're kidding me. I, watching my bag slip into the land of luggage, probably never to be seen again, ask her panicked what to do since I just put my bag on the belt following her non-chalant instructions. Her response? "Oh well, eet wheel get dare eventually."

I think I stood there mouth gaping for a minute, just blinking at her and imagining mauling the shit out of her like a lion with a chicken carcass...but finally realized I now had 25 minutes to get to my flight. I asked her, defeated, where I was supposed to go for the damned connection to Detroit, and she pointed me to the air-train. Luckily the airtrain goes in a circle around the airport, and T8 is the last terminal, so I only had to wait 3 stops. I get off the air-train, run outside (following the signs), run back inside, and realize I'm at the Delta check-in counter, that is swarmed with atleast 50 people in line for security. While my fluorescent orange "Express Connection" envelope was given to me with good intentions, I had to succomb to logic and admit that the stupid-ass "express" ticket was as useful to me in this situation as a Bounty super-absorbant paper towel in a hurricane. Plus by this time it was 6:15 and my flight was set to take off at 6:30. Even more defeatedly, I kicked my carry on luggage to let out some frustration and hauled it caveman style to the check-in counter. I kept my cool, though, because my Dad had checked online and told me there was a flight from JFK to Indy at 8:30, and I could arrive at midnight. And bypass the whole birthplace of Eminem debacle. This shining star allowed me to maintain hope in the black-hole that was T3. I asked one of the attendants who was organizing the lines if I was in the right place to get put on a different connecting flight and he said yes. He also grabbed my information and wrote down some sort of conformation code to use once I got to the desk. I waited in line for atleast twenty minutes and was really hoping for the middle-aged woman who seemed understanding and normal (as opposed to the other two people who looked like they were as interested in their job as watching paint dry...also not American, very Jamaican. And very hard to understand.) Of course I don't get her, I get the barely-legal Rastafarian who asks me lazily how he could help me (with as much conviction as OJ). I try to shorten my story and withhold my frustration in order to receive optimal assistance but he says "uh yah, ya gonna haveta go to dat line ova dere, man, dat is for Special Assistance" (.......he didn't say man. But I wouldn't have been surprised) My shining star of hope was starting to fade and I wanted to punch Old Man Rivers in the face for telling me this was the right line. I just wasted 30 minutes of my life I'm never going to get back.

I go over to Special Assistance. Wait in line. Get infuriated because they keep asking who (from the other lines) has a flight at 7, so they can get them checked in and on their flight on time. Finally I literally yelled, "MY FLIGHT IS AT 6:30 WHICH WAS TEN MINUTES AGO. WHO THE HELL IS GONNA HELP ME??" It was not effective, even in the least bit. Nobody even looked at me awkwardly and judging. I'm worse than psycho-crazy, I was invisible. I wish life was more like the movies, where you go balls-to-the-wall and suddenly the world falls in to place so you can end things on a high note in only 90 minutes. I finally get to the counter, recount my sob-story, including my lost luggage, and ask her if she can please give me some of this Special Assistance. She asked me who the flight was with from Madrid and I begrudgingly utter American Airlines with the deepest scowl on my face possible without risking my eyebrows flying right off my face. She tells me that "even if she wanted to help me she couldn't do anything, and I had to go back to American to change the flight." That part kills me. Even if she wanted to...whatabitch. I hope she got coal in her stocking, and then transferred to work for American Airlines until she retires.

So it's back to Terminal 8. With EFFING American Airlines to deal with. I had held it together thus far. And luckily I had read in Cosmo on the 12 hour flight that if you're about ready to cry, and you don't want to, you can look into a bright light and it will subdue the tears...so I kept staring up into the ceiling and it worked. I got to the elevator to go back up to the air-train and trying to muster up some sort of anger and intimidation to bully my way onto the 8:30 flight. Right before the elevator came a family of about 8 are hurrying with two strollers to try and catch the elevator too. They were all so happy and peaceful to be together...and I was trying to hard to stare bullets through the Halogens lamps...but I couldn't fight it anymore. Before the doors even finish opening I start sobbing. I let the family get on the elevator first while trying to wipe away my tears to make it less obvious, but by that time there was a steady stream of tears with no signs of stopping and I was forgetting to breath so I was also gasping for air. On the elevator. It was so awkward. Imagine a happy family of eight giggling and thinking about sugar plums taking up 95% of the elevator and then Pathetic Patty in the corner sobbing for God knows what reason and is scaring the children. And I'm Patty. God. (side note: while writing this I have actually started crying again, just by remembering this horrifying experience...I swear in 15 years I'll be in therapy still reminiscing this trauma.)

The air-train journey wasn't super pleasant either. I was the only Caucasian female (and non-Jamaican) on the entire shuttle and everybody was staring at me. I was convinced in the five minutes the ride took that I was going to get sold into sex-trafficking or simply murdered for organs. Looking back on the situation with a clearer head, everybody was probably staring at me because I was also the only one on the train who was crying uncontrollably and looking like a complete fool.

I make it to the American Airlines desks and end up waiting in a long line. The time gives me a chance to try to stop crying (which I kind of did...my eyes were practically swollen shut and I had managed to control my tears enough to just hang out with my eyeballs) and scope out the employees. There was an older woman working who was talking to an Indian guy for like twenty minutes about his brother and his cousin's dog or something, so I knew I wanted her. Someone with compassion. I couldn't read the others but I knew the one I didn't want was the third desk, which was a shorter French woman who didn't speak great English but seemed to have something large and obtrusive stuck up her rear. She looked like Edna from The Incredibles.

Terrifying, right?

I kept my fingers crossed for the old lady but she was a talker so by the time my turn came she wasn't available yet. Of course with my luck I get angry Edna. I told the girl behind me she could go...I wasn't going to risk it. The next available woman seemed to be Latina and I couldn't figure out her emotional capacity but I said a quick prayer and asked God to let this be part of the plan. I go up and I start explaining everything slowly. After I finish she says, "so whose fault was this the flight was delayed?" That's when I lost it and started bawling again. Really ugly crying. If I had missed my layover and had had even a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of this FORSAKEN city, I wouldn't be so upset. If I dicked up, that's my fault and I would deal with it. But I felt like a victim. All of this bullshit kept happening and it wasn't stopping. I felt like roadkill. It's bad enough you get hit the first time, you don't need to be flattened into a pancake. So I'm sobbing and gasping and not breathing and she's trying to tell me it'll be okay honey, let me see what I can do. She looks at all the information and tells me that there is a flight at 8:30 p.m., but it's from La Guardia. If it's even possible I'm sobbing even harder. I keep asking her about a flight from JFK that night but everything is booked. I know less than nothing about New York and its airports, so the LAST thing I wanted to do was switch airports and get lost McCauley Culkin style. For one, he had his father's credit card and $2,000 in cash. It would have been less terrifying but I had, literally, $5 in my wallet and about $20 in my bank account. Ironically I had a check for 400 euros in my purse but that was absolutely worthless in this situation. I had $7 when I landed but I gave a girl $2 to use the payphone and make some phone calls because she didn't have a cell phone & I was in a jolly Christmas mood, ecstatic to make it home on time. That bit me in the ass.

The woman looks at other flights and tells me the first available flight out is at 8:40 a.m. tomorrow, from La Guardia. I did not want to change airports but my tune changed when she told me the first flight out from JFK was at 5:30 p.m. That made me bawl again. She told me not to worry, that they would give me a voucher for dinner, a voucher for breakfast, a voucher for a hotel, and a voucher for a car to the airport since it was not to JFK. This makes me look like a 2-year old but I was wailing at this point because all of this was not what I wanted to hear. I didn't want ANY vouchers. I wanted to be home. Right then. Or preferrably 3 hours before that when I was supposed to get home. She had kind of accepted that I wasn't goint to stop crying, and I had kind of accepted that my body was revolting against me, so we both accepted the water works and moved on with our transactions. While I was sobbing into my sleeve I hear "aww...don't cry...it'll be okay..." Next to me, Edna was fighting with a fiesty girl my age about another missed flight...but she was nice & trying to be supportive. Unfortunately I couldn't register that much information so I just stared at her and kept crying. In the meantime my Latina starts the computer work to get my ticket changed and prints it out and says, proudly, "Here you go...this is your receipt for the ticket. 8:40 a.m. to Minneapolis."

.......are you effing serious. I knew she was trying her hardest but was clearly a few cards short of a full deck. I meekly told her it was INDIANAPOLIS...even saying the city made the tears come back...but she deleted it and put the information in again. She prints out the new ticket and hands it to me. I look and it says 8:40 a.m. to Washington Dulles, IAD. I refrained from telling her that if I wanted to go to Washington Dulles I would walk there on foot from JFK and simply pointed out that Indianapolis *cry* was IND, not IAD. She had deleted the ticket so many times (OMEN) that the system shut down or something so she had to call her supervisor over. He actually started repremanding her for giving me so many vouchers, but luckily she was super sassy and didn't let him get any word in edgewise. Latina had my back. We had a mutal understanding and a bond....plus I'm pretty sure she had a handful of my DNA all over her work station in the form of saline tears. So she ripped his ass for not knowing what he was talking about, went into Mom-mode and labelled all of my vouchers, and told me how to get to the hotel. We still hadn't figured out the luggage situation, though, so she grabs her ID tag and climbs over the counter, leaving her desk and the long line of disgruntled fliers, grabs my hand, and walks me downstairs to talk to luggage people directly. She asked if they could pull my luggage but they said I was showing up in the system as "still travelling" so they weren't allowed. They assured me that my luggage would be on the flight the next day at 6:30 a.m....and humorously enough would probably beat me to Indianapolis. My first question was why I wasn't on that flight at 6:30. I offered to cuddle with the luggage but apparently it's cold and illegal.

I head over to an area with some seats and finally make the call to my family to let them know what's happening. Just hearing my Dad's voice spins me off into another sobbing non-breathing tangent...luckily he gave the phone to Jeri who went into military mode telling me to get to the hotel and get to sleep. Period. By the time I hung up I was determined to use my $12 for food for dinner at the airport and use what little street smarts I have to navigate to the hotel. I found myself having pretty severe culture shock, though, because everyone was staring at me while I was yelling/crying on the phone with my parents. In Spain nobody knows what I say. All of a sudden everyone knows my business and was annoyingly happy. It really bugged me until I realized that I had parked myself right infront of one of the arrival gates which is arguably one of the happiest places in the world for people at the arrival gates. Except Pathetic Patty who was bawling on the phone and being a Debbie Downer. Later, while scoping out food I found the girl that was fighting with Edna and asked if she got everything figured out. While grabbing food I (more rationally and finally not crying) vented my whole situation to her and made plans to eat dinner together. She lives in New York but is from (and was on her way to) Bermuda. I texted Tim that I had found a friend and would call when I was on my way to the hotel. Apparently as parents you don't appreciate receiving vague texts about how your stranded daughter has made friends in 30 seconds in a strange city with someone and is eating dinner with them. I found that out when I finally got home :)

Bermuda girl (I forget her name by now :/) "helped" me to the air-train and I was feeling better about life. I follow the signs to the hotel shuttles outside but don't see any shuttles that go to the Double Tree Hotel. I go to the information booth and tell the guard I was supposed to ask for the shuttle to the DTH. He says, dripping with sass, "well, it'd probably be a good idea to call them to send a shuttle!" ......okay, how do I do that? "Well you've gotta go back up [a mile back] where you got off the train and call from the phone that is there." I asked him what the number was and without missing a beat he informed me, smugly, that the code was 69. I said thank you, half heartedly, and turned around, eyes rolling in the back of my head wondering how the hell my life has slipped so far into the crapper. As if missing two flights wasn't bad enough, and being stuck in NYC, I was getting hit on by old black men in charge of hotel shuttles. I walked back the five miles and noticed the phone kiosk. I picked up the phone, looked at the list of hotels.....and I'll be damned if the number for the Double Tree wasn't 69. Maybe, luckily for me, the man was a little bit of a perv and knew the # off the top of his head. I doubt he didn't get a little joy from that though. I probably would have.

I go back downstairs and wait in the cold. All of the shuttles were gutted out mini-buses that were less than reputable looking. They all pretty much looked like this:

....well, without the FREE CANDY sign. But it was equally unnerving.

 The Holiday Inn buses were legit, with professional signage on the side and painting. Other hotels weren't as trustworthy....some had duct-taped an 8 1/2 x 11 paper to the side with a printed logo of their hotel. This whole situation petrified me. How shady is it that these rapist-vans come for free and magically take you to where you're supposed to go? I was convinced my body parts were going to be scattered through a cornfield or lake somewhere nearby (side note: after all of this I've decided I watch too many horror movies, and should stop watching Saw so much...) Luckily there was a middle-aged woman who arrived who was also asking for the Double Tree shuttle. The assistant told her it would be very easy to spot because it had a very big ---- on the side of the van. I couldn't hear what he said but I, naturally, assumed he said "tree". We waited another two minutes or so and the woman asked if another shuttle was for the DTH. The assistant, again, assured her that she would know the shuttle because it really did have a huge ----- on the side of the van. I STILL didn't catch it. But was very sure it was a tree.

Eventually the shuttle pulls up. Do you wanna make bets as to what was on the side of the van? Hint: it wasn't a tree.



It was a chocolate chip cookie. A gigantic chocolate chip cookie. Next to it, in huge purple scrolly font, "SWEET RIDE."

This is a more professional version of the JFK shuttle I found on Google from North Carolina. The shuttle I got into looked like the candy van, but it only had the cookie and the phrase Sweet Ride....nothing else. I should have taken a picture but I was too busy calling Jeri to make sure she was on the phone with me the entire drive in case I was kidnapped and/or drugged for my kidneys.

I got to the hotel and it wasn't bad. While the Double Tree is a Hilton hotel, the hotel itself is a little bit...lacking...in the common areas. The elevators & hallways were less than beautiful. A large football-player sized man was hitting on my in the lobby, trying to obtain my room # and give me his phone number, so I avoided contact with him and talked to my mom on the phone until I figured he had made it to his room. Then I quickly booked it upstairs and locked myself in my room. Luckily, the rooms were Hilton. It was so beautiful. I had my own Wolfgang Puck coffee maker with two to-go cups, two capsules for coffee, and two bags of tea. I clicked on some Christmas TV on the big screen and started myself a bath. It was wonderful and for once I forgot about the Christmas Catastrophe of 2011. I went to sleep around 1 a.m. and woke up every fifteen minutes from anxiety until my alarm went off at 5:15 a.m. My personal car was coming at 6 a.m., so I got up and tried to get ready. Unfortunately I didn't pack any legit clothes so I would have more space in my suitcase (especially because I have clothes at home)...but I had no clean underwear and it was bothering me so I figured I had enough time to hand-wash them in the sink. As I'm drying them with the hairdryer I get a call on my cell phone at 5:40 from the driver. He tells me his name is Rashidhasaan or...something...and if I'm going to be ready soon. I told him I had asked for the car at 6 a.m. and he told me that was true but he was already downstairs. I told him (as I'm literally ass-naked) I would do the best I could and aim for 5:50...and he told me he'd see me then, he was driving the white mini-van. No good sentences end with "...look for the white mini-van." Through some miracle I finally got my undies dried, made myself some coffee to-go, and prepared for the white mini-van. It wasn't so bad...it was a very modern white mini and quite new. I approved. And I liked the driver. I told him my sob story without crying and we had a good laugh. He dropped me off at the Delta gates and told me he'd wait until I knew I was at the right spot. Curbside check-in told me I was and I just needed to print my ticket off at the kiosk inside. I waved goodbye to Rashidhasaan and excitedly go inside.

Not surprisingly, this is not the end of my journey. But this post is getting long enough so I think I'll cut it off here and finish it in another post, along with news of being home and perhaps my birthday. :) Until next time!