A Life Hiatus: Summer Abroad in SPAIN

Fast forward to the summer of 2006. I had just completed my junior year of college and had been given the opportunity to spend the summer living with a family in Madrid and touring other parts of Spain, through the study abroad program at my university. I didn't know anyone else going on the trip and was a little nervous, to say the least. I cried when my parents dropped me off at the airport and wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into. It was going to be my first time traveling overseas and I was going all by myself. That's what it felt like anyway.
My roommate was going to be a girl I knew of, but I had never actually met her. How did I know of her? Well... I had been set up on a blind date with her brother just a few months before. How did the date go? Not good.

So. I'm going overseas for the first time, I don't know anyone else going, my roommate is the sister of a guy I ditched after a blind date, oh and did I mention I'm going to Spain and I DON'T SPEAK SPANISH!?
Should be fun, right??

My first memory after stepping off the plane in Madrid:
I got in a cab with the girl I was positive hated me, and my new Madre (mother) who I could not even begin to communicate with. We got to our apartment, unloaded our suitcases, put them on the elevator then raced up the stairs so we would be there to get them when they got to our floor. Yes, the elevators in Spain are much smaller than ours. We walked into our apartment, Madre showed us to our room, actually it was more like she shoved us into our room, mumbled something under her breath and shut our door. My roommate and I looked at each other, eyes wide in shock/confusion, and she said, " I think she said, 'Take a nap.' but I'm not sure". We were exhausted so of course we went straight to sleep, whether that's what she told us to do or not. When we woke up from our nap, there was the most awful smell filling the apartment. We knew exactly what it was. Okay, maybe not exactly, but we knew it was lunch. That was the moment we realized, this had potential to be the longest summer ever, but we were off to a great start!! Or at least I kept telling myself that, anyway.

Most frustrating memory:
The ATM machine ate my debit card. It was going to take a day for my new card to arrive, so my sweet parents wired me some money to get me through. I didn't speak much Spanish, but how hard could it be to ask, "Where is the closest Western Union?"... Really really hard apparently. Even after dragging a classmate along, who spoke fluent Spanish, we could NOT find anyone who knew what Western Union was, much less where there was one. My mom was on the phone with me the whole time (she had never been overseas either) saying, "Just look in the windows at all of the grocery stores, it should be posted in the window". Well... it wasn't, and when she met up with me at the end of the summer, I made sure to walk around with her and point out that I wasn't crazy. Anyway, my debit card arrived the next day - the same day I just happened to walk by a Western Union OFFICE. I could have pitched a temper tantrum in the middle of the side walk. But I didn't... I almost did, but I fought the urge on account of no one would understand me so I would seem even more weird.

My "I'm obviously not from around here" moment:
In class every day, we started by going around the room and telling everyone, in Spanish, what we had done the day before. I got out my dictionary this particular morning and started searching for the words I would need to complete my sentence. Yes. Sentence. I believe in keeping things short and sweet. Okay obviously you know that's a lie from my blog, but if my blog was in Spanish trust me it would be short and sweet. My sentence about the day before was going to be, "I went to Retiro Park after class and did cheerleading stunts with a friend". It was my turn, I had my sentence ready and was going to read it straight off of my paper. Easy enough. I was so proud when I finished because I didn't make a single mistake. As I looked up and my eyes met my teacher's, I suddenly realized something had gone WAY wrong. She walked over to me, took my dictionary off my desk, walked to the garbage can and tossed it in. She turned back around to me and said (in English, which never happened because once we walked in the door it was Spanish only) "Don't ever use that dictionary again. I'm going to pretend that you did not just tell me you smoked a joint in the park yesterday afternoon, because I'm positive that's not what you meant. Right?" The whole time she was saying this she was cracking up, and I was turning a million shades of red. The word for stunt listed in my dictionary did indeed mean stunt, just not the kind cheerleaders do. Needless to say, it became the class joke and every day someone would ask if they could stunt with me after class. Good thing I take pride in being able to laugh at myself when I do something stupid. That was the most stupid I felt the whole summer. Maybe ever.

Surprisingly, it ended up being the best summer of my life! I developed life-long friendships, especially with my roommate! The blind date that I was so worried would come back to haunt me was the topic of our entertainment one of the last nights of the trip. We laughed so hard we cried, as I told her about how bad that night was and how worried I had been that she was going to hate me because of it!
I learned so much on this trip, mostly about myself and coping/surviving in a world where I literally felt lost and alone. I honestly don't remember everything I did, everywhere I went, everything I saw, blah blah blah, and I don't want to bore you with more writing since I'm not really sure what else to say. So I will leave you with pictures. Those say more than words anyway, so here you go....

Retiro Park - I spent many afternoons here and loved it!

Christopher Columbus monument in the Plaza de Colòn.

The Royal Palace in Madrid.

The cross at El Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen).

Plaza de Toros.

We got to see a bull fight!

We had a free weekend to travel anywhere we wanted in Spain.
We flew to Mallorca, an island off of Spain, then took this train down the coast to the beach where we stayed.