Monday, August 25, 2008

European Destination - Part I

Hola! It’s official… We now live in Spain and I still can’t believe it. What a journey it was! We flew out of Dulles (in the DC area) to Madrid on Saturday, 16 August, and arrived the following day. It was actually a great flight. The boys were awesome, keeping themselves entertained with their Game Boys and/or portable DVD player. We took off close to 9pm and managed to get a little sleep on the plane, which is unusual for me because I don’t normally sleep well on planes.

We arrived in Madrid the following day at about 9:30am local time, 3:30am EST time in the U.S. Needless to say, we were exhausted! We had a 2-hour layover in Madrid, but we’d been told it could be confusing to make the connecting flight, and that was certainly the case. We found our way around okay, but for whatever reason (We never did figure it out) we were “not in the system” for the connecting flight, therefore we missed it altogether. What was really frustrating was the rushing around we did, trying to find someone to help us. The language barrier wasn’t the problem as everyone working a counter spoke English. The problem was that we were being sent from one counter to another, and not really getting any assistance.

I finally had a mini-meltdown right there in the airport. I’d say I was embarrassed, but at that moment in time, I was tired, frustrated, confused, hungry, thirsty and suffered from PMS. Looking back, I feel sorry for my poor husband. He was doing all he could do to help make things go smoothly, but missing the connecting flight was totally out of his control. I cried a few tears of fatigue and frustration and tried to hide those tears from our boys, but my little man noticed right away that I was struggling. He asked me what was wrong and I told him I was tired, frustrated, hungry and thirsty (I left out the part about being confused and suffering from PMS since those things need not be shared with little people). Without missing a beat, he opened up his backpack and handed me his water bottle. Talk about feeling humbled! My child was holding it together better than I was.

We finally got ourselves booked for the next scheduled connecting flight and they didn’t make us pay extra since we had proof that we’d paid for it, and luckily the flight was only three hours later. I found the chairs in the airport very uncomfortable, therefore I sprawled out on the floor to try to catch a few winks. I told my husband that I realized I probably looked like a homeless person, but I didn’t care. It’s amazing at how you can simply lose all dignity when you’re physically, mentally and emotionally drained.

We boarded the connecting flight and things were looking up. We were almost there! I sat between my husband and some man who had what appeared to be blood under a few of his fingernails. I suppose I would have found that to be somewhat alarming under normal circumstances, however, I was too tired to give it much thought during the flight. What I did give a lot of thought to was the fact that my knees were literally jammed into the seat in front of me. I rather like being tall most of the time, but not when sitting in a seat on an airplane. My legs were aching and I never did find a comfortable position during the 50-minute flight. I just kept telling myself, “It’s only 50 minutes. It’s only 50 minutes,” like I could will myself to be comfortable. It didn’t work, but 50 minutes did pass by and we landed in Jerez de la Frontera, our journey almost over. We still had luggage to locate and a 20 to 30-minute drive to the base… Stay tuned for the continuation of “European Destination.”

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