Day One - Wednesday

PACKING

So I clearly inherited my dad's way of preparing for a trip... I waited until the very last minute to pack for a six-week trip. Now that was pretty exciting! (can you hear the sarcasm?) Sam was sweet enough to help me get my stuff where it needed to be.

Despite everyone's best efforts, here is what I forgot:

• Hair dryer
• Flat iron/curling iron
• More than one pair of flat sandals
• My brain (apparently)
  
  Luckily, I remembered Bruce! Sam might have killed me if I had forgotten him.

Getting everything in the car wasn't terribly difficult, and the trip to Dulles was nice and speedy. No complaints on that front; I'm so glad that they cleared out those two lights on 28!

LEAVING ON A JET PLANE

Mom, Dad & Sam came with me to the airport – it was so crowded! Is that how Dulles is all of the time? We got there and I checked in for my flight... I got to the counter with my 49-lb suitcase (insert sigh of relief here at it being under the maximum 50-lb weight limit), and the attendant said, “Ma'am, due to the recent merger between United and Continental, the maximum weight limit is now only 35 pounds. You're over the weight limit.”

Oh. Crap. But it gets better, right? Right?

“Ma'am, your passport is not valid. Did you see that part of the form about traveling with a valid passport?”

What? “Um, yes. I got it a month ago, it should be fine.”

“Well, it's not valid until it's signed... right here.” Insert amused grin here.

Aaaaaand now I breathe. As do Sam and Dad, who were both replicas of Casper for a minute.

After that hilarious nightmare, I dropped off my appropriate-weighted bag (because he'd lied about that too) at the checkpoint and headed over to where Mom was, and we immediately went to exchange some of my American money for euros. The exchange rate got me 100 euros for $174. Geez, seriously?! Way to fail, US dollars. Thank God I had enough cash on me to handle the transaction!

Once the money had been figured out, I walked over with my entourage to where I had to get in line for security, and said my adioses. Pictures were taken and hugs were exchanged, and Sam told me to hang on to my wallet “even if someone throws a baby at [me]”. That might just be the best advice I have ever received. Eh-ver.

Security was even more crowded – it was as if they took everyone from the upper level, introduced them and forced them to breed a few times, sped the aging process up by a lot, and shoved them all in there. Crazy! Going through the scanners got pretty funny because a woman about my age, perhaps a few years older, almost got into a fist fight to get the guard to allow her to keep her Aussie shampoo in her carry-on suitcase. Because, you know, nothing says “let me do what I want” like a shove into the items-to-be-checked queue.

It turned out really well for me at the gate – I was one of six people on my trip to be on the flight! I didn't realize how much I had needed to have some company until I reached the terminal, so having some familiar faces was pretty much fantastic. We chatted about our expectations for the culture, our families, what classes would be like (oh yeah, we have to learn things too...), et cetera. My group seems pretty chill – at the very least, we're all going to be nice to each other, and I might make some friends!

TO TAKE ADHD MEDS, OR NOT TO TAKE ADHD MEDS...

First of all, the plane was HUGE. The little monitor at the gate said that it could seat 272 passengers (which is about the same number of students that were in my freshman GPSYC 101 class, ha ha) and that we were at capacity. Easily the biggest airplane I've ever been on, which makes sense since it was an international flight. I had three group mates back in my section (all the way in the back) and was seated next to this very nice Madrid-native gentleman that was returning home with his family (who for some reason kept giving me glares... still haven't figured out that one). I was on an aisle and not once did I get my elbows knocked into by the food and drink carts! Hooray for not re-enacting that scene in “The Wedding Singer”!

When we took off, there was this surreal feeling of “and that's the last time I touch US soil for six weeks...”, which felt sad for a moment, but immediately changed to excitement when we received our embarkation cards for Spain. For those of you that have no clue what those are, Embarkation Cards are little pieces of paper for Customs to check that have your name, where you're staying in the country that you're visiting, passport number, those kinds of things. It's to help keep track of who's in the country, I think... not entirely sure. You can Google it.

The cool thing about the plane is that it has these screens on the bulkheads (sections where the bathrooms are that separate out the sections of the plane) that displayed how long until we reached our destination, how fast we were going, what our altitude was, and a map of our current real-time location. It was pretty sweet and perfect for my ADHD side that needed something to look at every once in a while! Dad, you would totally have loved it.

The flight itself was actually pretty good, for an 8-hour flight. There was only one screaming baby, and he was quiet after about the first twenty minutes (there must have been something in the milk...). They served drinks and snacks, which were quite delicious, and later we were served dinner. I don't think I've ever had dinner on an airplane before, and for whatever people say about airplane food, this was incredible! We had a choice between penne pasta in red sauce, or chicken with carrots and peas (oh, the choices), which both came with salads. After a quick movie (if you haven't seen The King's Speech, DO IT NOW!), another quick movie (ditto Fireflies in the Garden, if you enjoy slightly cerebral movies) and flipping through my guide books for the eleventh time, I decided to open up the provided blanket, tuck my head into the pillow, and fall asleep with Bruce...

And then I remembered that I can't sleep on planes. So the trip quickly turned into a nightmare as I struggled to sleep sitting up. Not happening, at all, let me tell you.

And thus, sleepless in my seat, I sat for eight hours...