I had to take the bus and then 2 metros to get to the hostel. Everything was going great until I was on my last metro. I looked down at my suitcase and noticed it was almost completely open on the bottom and half of the side! The zipper broke from the bottom and slowly continued to open it as I was traveling. I started trying to fix it and realized I had my Mac was sitting right on top.... and it was no longer there. I remember that morning questioning if I should put it in my back pack or my luggage. I chose my luggage because it’s really heavy in my back pack and I’d have my luggage with me the whole time, SO WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? My luggage breaking thats what went wrong. So anyways when I noticed I started shaking and saying some swear words to my self while face palming myself, and everyone on the train was staring at me as I was panicky looking at my broken luggage. I got off at the next stop and grabbed a taxi back to where I got off the bus to take the metro. I retraced my steps looking for it. I tried explaining to people at the metro that I think worked with the buses my situation. This was all in Spanish though and they just told me to try and look for it. When I retraced all my steps I just went to my final destination, went up to the streets of Madrid, sat on a bench, and called my mom and balled my eyes out. When I finally got out why I was crying so hard she laughed and said calm down, she was scared I got stabbed or hurt or something worse. She told me it was just a laptop and it can be replaced. I felt a little better she wasn’t mad, but still was extremely upset. I talked to my mom about talking with apple and possibly tracking it. I had a little hope I’d get it back, but I knew that my laptop was gone and I was probably not getting it back. Then I needed to find the hostel, and couldn’t find street signs. As I was searching for it and crying I saw a Starbucks, so I went in to get a drink, calm down a little, and get wifi so I could find where my hostel was.
I calmed down a little and found my way to the hostel but I just couldn’t wait to see my best friend Nirmala and give her a huge hug and just cry about everything going on. I have needed that, since I don’t have my real mom here or my best friends Nirm was able to substitute for them. I arrived at the hostel before anyone but went some of the students arrived I got to hug Nirm and cry to her. I think everyone was thinking “what the heck is going on with this girl?” Anyways I explained what happened and the people from Interhispania said after lunch they would take me to the police station to make a report. While at lunch I got a call from my host dad saying he had my laptop! I didn’t even tell my host parents because I wasn’t sure they could actually do anything, and I also felt a little stupid and embarrassed. My mom got a hold of them though and told them what happened. They made some calls to the police stations and train stations and got my computer! THEY ARE AWESOME! I feel like I can’t thank them enough for what they did.
Anyways now the actual weekend. A majority of the students I already knew from orientation in Barcelona, but there were a few people I didn’t know. I made a friend named Christoffer (looks like Christopher, but no its pronounced Chris-t-off-er) He is from Sweden and spoke fluent English. I also made a friend from Germany named Thomas but his English was not as good. We refer to them as “Sweden” and “Germany” mostly though hahah. It’s pretty cool making friends from around the world and learning how their lives are different and similar.... and when you have friends from other countries you have an excuse to visit those countries;) We got to see a lot of things in Madrid like Museo de Prado, Plaza Meyor, Palacio Real, and other things that I don’t remember there names. I don’t want to bore anyone with a history lesson of what these things are so just google it if you care, or I’ll put up some pictures. I surprisingly didn’t take many pictures though. Almost the whole weekend we all stayed up super late and had to get up early, so when it came to tours and what not it was a struggle to understand since I was exhausted, also the tour guide spoke in spanish most of the time. We had a lot of free time which was cool so we could just explore the city on our own, or hang out at the hostel and talk, or watch funny videos about sweden and how to speak swedish hahahah. One day Chris (the swedish guy) brought speakers, and at first we kinda made fun of him because WHY WOULD YOU BRING SPEAKERS AROUND? He finally ended up playing music and we walked around the city listening to music. Chris had some pretty awesome music too! At night we had a lot of fun going out and what not. I’d say that a good way to describe our nights overall is... interesting hahahha. One night some of us were skyping there friends from home to introduce to our friends here, so I skyped my best friend Logan:) I was really happy she got to see all my friends that I have told her about. One of the nights it was so awesome because we walked into the hotel and my friend Taylor was there! I’m not sure if I’ve written about Taylor but he’s an exchange student at my school from China/United States. He was friends with one of the guys that works at the Hostel, so was coincidentally staying at the same hostel for the night with his friend! Taylor and his friend ended up hanging out with us for a lot of the night. The last day everyone went home around noonish, but I stayed in the city for awhile with Andrea, who changed and now lives in the city. We went to a mall close to her where we got lunch. Her mall had TACO BELL!!!! Taco Bell is definitely not in any way a super good place to eat, but I ALWAYS go in the middle of the night with my brother or with my friends, so it was nice to get some taco bell! Great way to end the weekend:)
Over the weekend some of us exchange students became a lot closer. We actually started a group message on Whatsapp (haven’t mentioned this but people in Spain ONLY use WhatsApp to text, its like kik) the group chat literally has me cracking up all day. IT IS TAKING OVER ALL MY FREE TIME!!!!! No not really, but we’ve discovered if you don’t have your phone for about an hour you will come back to at least 100 messages, it’s kinda funny.
Nirmala, Me, and Kevin (Austrailia)
In front of Palacio Real
Andrea caught my moment of happiness taking my first bite into taco bell for 2 months
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