I'm HOME!!!!

Okay, I realize this is a bit overdue since I have now been home for over a week... but late is better than never, right?

Well, my flight on the 9th went pretty well except for the initial checking in. Because of that $75 fee that I went to the airport to pay a bazillion times (and they never knew how much to charge me), there were problems in checking in. I ended up having to pay a $200 "penalty fee" for not paying the changing fee before the day of my flight! Needless to say, I have already filed a complaint with Air France and am waiting for a response so that I get my money back. After yelling at the Air France lady for about 30 minutes at 5 in the morning I finally just paid the money and checked in. My flight to Paris from Barcelona was not very pleasant because there was a loud child sitting behind me who thought it was really fun to kick my seat. However, once I got to Paris, I walked quickly through the airport and found my gate for the long flight. After getting through the passport check and security, I really only had about 20 minutes until they started boarding my long flight. While waiting to board, I realized that there weren't a whole lot of people sitting in our area, meaning our flight may not be full. Once I got on, I asked a flight attendant and he told me that the flight was only about half full, maybe even less. YAY!!!! So, I was in a window seat with the seat next to me open, meaning I got to stretch and have a very relaxing 9 hour flight! I watched two movies, tried to sleep a bit, and just sort of stared off into space for a while during the flight, the whole time trying to convince myself that I would not cry when I saw my family in the airport. Once we landed in Detroit, I quickly got off the plane, got through immigration, luggage claim, and customs. It really only took about 45 minutes to get through all of that, which surprised me. As soon as I walked out, I saw my mom and Meghan (my older sister) and immediately started crying! Yeah, it was just a dream to think that after so long I wouldn't cry!! We left the airport pretty quickly and got on the road for the 4 or 5 hour drive back home from Detroit. By the time I got home, I was pretty tired since I was going on 20ish hours without sleep. I said hi to Emily (my little sister) and my dad, ate some pizza, took Meghan to her boyfriend's house, and then came home and attempted to watch a movie with everyone. It was a great first night back!

Since then, I have been searching for a job, catching up with people (I feel like my phone has not stopped ringing), and trying to adjust back from the time difference as fast as possible. I've been driving my sisters around to school and work, which has been fun, and spending lunch breaks with my mom. This weekend I went up to Manchester to see some of my friends and to be there for graduation. It is still sort of unreal to be back, and hard to believe that I've really been gone for so long. So many people have said to me, "You haven't changed a bit...," and I think that may be true. Yes, I have had a lot of new experiences and lived for 9 months in another country, but I am still the same 5-year-old Melissa who loves Disney and junk food. As time goes on I'm sure I'll see more changes in myself from my time abroad, but as of right now it seems that I'm no different than I was when I left at the end of August. The hard part about this going to be seeing how others have changed while I've been away and how that might factor into my return to Manchester. It will all be fine, I know it will, but I just can't help but think about everything... especially after watching graduation yesterday and realizing that it will be me next year up there!

Anyhow, so now I am back to Noblesville, looking for a job for the summer. The good thing is that I have two very real possibilities! Last week I started calling around to counseling centers in Hamilton County to ask if they might need any sort of summer help in the office. One of them said it was a very real possibility and had me fax my resume in. He said they have team meetings on Tuesday mornings and they would discuss the possibility of hiring me at the next one. So, I am waiting to hear back from them tomorrow after their meeting. The other wonderful thing is that I received an email this morning from a family that I nannied for two summers in a row during high school. She asked if I had found a summer job yet, and if not might I be willing to nanny for their family again this summer. Yay again!! I don't particularly love nannying, but it pays well and every once in a while you see the angelic sides of the children. So, we'll see what all comes of this and maybe I'll be able to do both jobs (if I get offered both) and make enough money for my Hawaii trip next January! Alright, this has become super long, so I'll spare you all anymore details from the last week and a half of my life. I'll try and write again soon because I really would like to keep this going at least through the summer... Okay, bye for now!

2 days

I´m sitting here in the lab, 20 minutes before my lit exam and can´t seem to make myself study for it. Granted, it is an open notes exam, so it shouldn´t be difficult, but still... I should at least re-read my notes, right? I will...

Anywho, I leave in two short days, which is really only one short day because I have the rest of today, tomorrow, and then my host parents and I are leaving the house at 4:30 in the morning on Friday to get to the airport by 5 for my 7 AM flight. After the whole fiasco with the Ireland flight, they don´t want to take any chances with me missing this one! It´s gotten to a point in the last few days that I´ve realized how much I really will miss my host parents. I wish that I would have gotten the email address of one of their children or children-in-laws so that I could stay in touch that way. I may still ask for one, but it is just hard at the moment with David still being in the hospital and all that. By the way, David is doing really well. The surgeries a week and a half ago went well and he is recovering quickly. He got bored in the hospital room the other day and called our apartment just to tell us that he was sitting in a chair... that is really amazing progress considering his pelvic bone was broken in 3 places and dislocated a short week and a half ago!! Ana, David´s youngest daughter, just turned 1 on the 1st of this month, so that is exciting. She is at our apartment right now because my host parents took her to the doctor this morning for her 1 year checkup. He said she is a healthy little girl! I´m really happy that I got to see her again before I leave.

Oh, for those of you that know me and my procrastination skills when it comes to packing, you will be happy to know that I actually started packing last week when I was procrastinating from studying for finals! So, each of my suitcases is half full, and I am waiting until tomorrow to put the rest of the shoes, books, and other random heavy things in. Here´s to hoping that none of the suitcases are overweight...

Hmm... lets see, what else.. I have too many thoughts flowing through my head right now to even focus on putting any of them in words. So, I guess for now this is all I´ll write. I´m going to try and keep blogging (probably less frequently) once I get back home, at least for the summer. After that, we´ll see what happens. Anywho, I´m out for now. Wish me luck on this exam!!!

One Week

Well, my time here is officially coming to an end. I fly home next Friday, a week from today... and I am super super excited. I am also really sad...

My host mom and I were sitting on the couch together lastnight watching our favorite game show when she asked what time I had to be at the airport. I said, "5 in the morning" and made a scrunchy face because it is so early. She said "te llevaremos..." meaning "we´ll take you." How sweet is that?!? The thing is, I am afraid for my host parents to take me because I know I will be even more of an emotional mess if I have to say goodbye to them at the airport rather than in the house the night before I leave. My host dad even looked at me the other day and asked me not to leave yet!! We´ve really become family to eachother this year, and to say goodbye is going to be so hard. A very wise professor told me just after I got here that I would cry when I left to come here, and cry again when it was time to go back... he was right! Back then when he said it, I missed home and everyone there so much that I didn´t think I would really let Barcelona become a new home to me. But I guess you can´t stop that from happening when you live somewhere for over 8 months! In any case, it is going to be hard to leave, especially since I don´t know the next time I´ll be able to come back and visit.

However, I am going home!!!!! I get to see my mom three days after her birthday and I´ll be there for Mother´s Day! I get to take my little sister out to breakfast and drop her off at school! I get to meet my older sister for her lunch break! I get to go to choir practice with my dad and talk him into stopping for ice cream on the way home! I get to watch my Manchester friends who are seniors graduate on the 18th! I get to spend hours eating junk food (which I´ve not had enough of here) and watching movies and talking and laughing and crying with my best friends who I´ve been away from for so long. Sure, I know things will be different and I am a little worried about reverse culture shock... but overall I´ve learned that I can adjust and I can handle change, no matter how much I hate it. So, for now I am just absorbing the bittersweet emotions running through me and taking advantage of the sunshine and beach and time with my host parents and friends here in Barcelona. I´ll worry some other time.

In between times.

I think I am getting anxious about being here. Pretty much all this week I have had a stomach ache and I don´t know what it is from. My host mom bought bananas for the first time since I´ve been living there and I´ve eaten quite a few of them... she thinks that might be the cause of my aching stomach. I, however, think it might be from all of the stress and anxiety about finishing out the semester and leaving. Right now, I sort of feel like I am just waiting things out until the 9th of May when I leave. I haven´t seen a whole lot of my host parents this week because they have been spending so much time at the hospital with David. I pretty much see them in the morning before I leave for class, and then at night when we eat dinner. I´ve been trying to motivate myself to finish the papers (or actually start them) that are due by the time I leave, but somehow I haven´t found that motivation yet. As a quick update on David.. he dislocated his pelvic bone and broke it in 3 spots. He has two surgeries scheduled for Monday to try and set it back in place and to assess any other damage done. All-in-all he is pretty lucky, though he does have many months of recovery with limited or no movement at all. He seems to be keeping his spirits up, according to my host parents, though he gets frustrated at times of being so still all the time because it is just uncomfortable. One really nice thing is that he told my host mom the other day to tell me he was sorry that he wouldn´t be able to see me and say goodbye before I left. That made me sad, but also happy to know that I am a part of this family.

In other news, Wednesday was a Catalan holiday and I didn´t have my class, so I went to the beach. I sort of forgot to put sunscreen on because the sun didn´t feel all that strong... that night we had our last BCA dinner together at a restaurant called "El Cangrejo Loco" and my face fit the theme of that very well. I looked very much like a crazy lobster. Oh well, it has faded into a sort of tan now, and I hope I find some more time to take advantage of the beach and beautiful weather before I leave. I can´t believe that I will be on a plane halfway between Indiana and Barcelona at this time in two weeks. Here is to praying that I get to finish all I need to before leaving...

This weekend...

It has been a long time since I´ve posted, and a lot of things have happened.

After the initial shock and disappointment of not getting to go to Ireland, I recovered and was actually happy to be able to spend the weekend in Barcelona with my host parents. On Sunday, my host dad´s brother and sister-in-law came over for lunch, stayed most of the afternoon, and then were joined by my host dad´s other brother and sister-in-law. Then, David (my host parents´ son) came over with his two daughters to drop Ana off with us for the week. My apartment was full of fun festivities and lots of delicious food (including a homemade flan) in honor of all of the guests.

Last week went pretty well, and I just realized that I have very little time to finish all that I need to finish in relation to my classes. Ana was with us all week, and I got to play with her quite a bit, so that was exciting. She turns 1 on May 1st, so I´m pretty excited... I´ve been here for over half of her life, weird, huh?!?

Here is the scary/sad/bad news. On Friday evening my host parents drove to David and Marta´s apartment to drop Ana off. Only Marta was home because David was still at work. On their way back to our apartment for dinner, they got a phone call on their cell phone from Marta telling them that David had fallen at work and was on his way to the hospital. The whole time, I was watching Pasapalabra (my favorite Spanish game show) at our apartment... when all of a sudden my host parents came running in the house and yelled my name. I went to go see what was wrong and they handed me a baguette and then quickly explained that they were going to the hospital. This was around 8:30, and they didn´t get back until after 1 in the morning. The next morning I was getting ready to leave because I had a friend from Austrailia who is studying in the UK this semester who I met in Brussels (confusing, I know) visiting. I went to ask how David was, and my host mom started crying, saying that he wasn´t well. I´m not sure exactly how far he fell, but quite a ways, enough to break his pelvic bone and do some internal damage to some organs. At that point he was still in critical condition and my host parents hadn´t been allowed to see him yet. They went back on Saturday and spent over 9 hours at the hospital. When they called to update me around 9 pm, my host mom seemed a lot calmer, which was good. As of right now things seem to be okay. David ate for the first time yesterday and the doctors say that his intestines and stomach seem to be functioning alright. They are going to see the status of the broken pelvis today to see whether or not they can go in for surgery on some of the other damaged organs. He got moved to a different part of the hospital since he is stable now, but he will have a long recovery period in front of him. In any case, it has been a stressful, sad weekend, but my host parents seem to be doing just fine, and I was happy to be able to just sit and watch a movie with my host mom lastnight. She seemed so happy just to have someone to sit with her... So, please, just pray for David and Marta and for the rest of the family as they deal with this whole recovery period and the surgeries that may take place in the near future. Alright, that turned out a lot longer than I thought it would... I have to go to class. I´ll write more later.

"That girl"

Well, I am officially "that girl," you know, the one that always leaves the party early and drinks about 1/100 the amount of what everyone else drinks? There, of course, is a story that goes along with this...

I should be in Dublin, Ireland right now. Instead, I am in my apartment, using my friend's computer, which she left here earlier, while she and another one of my friends are still out going to some bar or disco somewhere in the city of Barcelona. Here is why I'm not in Dublin... See, we were supposed to fly out lastnight, but a lot of things happened to keep us from getting on the plane... We got to the airport a little late, but in plenty of time to check in. However, there was no counter for aer lingus.. so we went to information and asked which it was. They told us two different numbers, and we went to both those check in counters and talked to the woman working the counter and she said it wasn't the right one. So we went back to information and they told us two different numbers. when we got to those counters, there was absolutely noone there. so, we went back to the information counter to ask where the aer lingus office was so we could talk to them and check in. We already had all of our printed documents and just needed our boarding passes. They told us that the airline didnt have an office in the barcelona airport, and after about 10 minutes of arguing with them to call the gate or something they gave us 3 numbers to call the airline, one of which ended up being a fax number. We tried about 5 or 6 times to call each of the other 2 numbers but nobody answered. At this point we were getting really frustrated, but realized the flight was delayed by 30 minutes, so we thought it would all still work out. Finally, after not being able to reach anyone at the numbers, we went to another information desk since the 2 girls at the first desk were being very unhelpful. The woman at the other information desk was very helpful and called the gate to see why there was noone at the checkin counter. They told us that the door was already closed and that it was too late for us to get on the flight. The woman got off the phone and told us that it didn't make sense because the boards and her records on the computer said that they hadn't even begun boarding yet, but she was only the information woman and couldnt do anything else. so she looked up some more flights for us, but the next one didn't leave until today sometime. We tried calling all the numbers again to reach aer lingus, but still nobody answered at any of the lines. Needless to say we were/are all really pissed off because we payed for the flights and there was noone there to check us in... plus, i was just excited to go to ireland.. i mean, this was supposed to be my one big trip this semester after all my travel in january. So we stayed at the airport to document all the times from the board about boarding/last call/and others so that we could write a complaint.

Then, this morning, first thing, we went to a wifi cafe to skype the numbers and try to reach someone... still there is nobody answering any number that we found for any of the offices throughout the world. We wrote an official complaint email asking them to do something about it because it is just ridiculous, the whole thing, especially since we were at the airport a whole 2 hours before the last call for the flight. Now we are just waiting to see what might happen.

Which brings me to now... Since we obviously aren't in Ireland, we decided to go out tonight with one of Melania's friend and some of his friends. We hung out at his apartment for a while, had a few drinks (by had a few I mean I had a total of one and the other finished almost 2 entire bottles of vodka), and then decided to head out to a bar or a club. I have no problem going to clubs and bars, but after the stress of lastnight, my 30 minute conversation at 3:45 in the morning with my host mom about what had happened, and my altogether lack of sleep in the last week, I just didn't feel like going to the club with them. So, I am "that girl." You know, the one that leaves early... I don't like having to be that person, but when I am ready to go, I want to go, and the more you try to tell me that I'm not leaving, the more determined I am to go. So here I am, writing this before I go to sleep so that I can get it all out and actually get some rest before the awkward lunch with my host dad's 80 year old brother and sister-in-law tomorrow.

Yes, I am really upset and disappointed that I didn't get my trip to Ireland. And yes, I am sad that I disappointed my friends by leaving early tonight. But, maybe there was a reason that I wasn't supposed to go to Ireland this weekend and God just kept me from going. And sometimes you've got to do what you know is best for yourself, even if that requires skipping out early and going home to bed. Which is exactly where I'm going right now. Goodnight.

Almost down to 4 weeks!!

Well, things are going pretty well here in Barcelona at the moment. The weather is turning out to be lovely and I am very much enjoying that. I also had a visitor this week, Colleen, who is studying in France this year. She got here Sunday and left yesterday, which left the two of us with some very great visiting time. It was really nice to talk to someone who has also been gone as long as I have from Manchester and to hear about one another's experiences. I really enjoyed the visit, and was sad to see her go. Besides Colleen's visit, though, this week has just been busy with classes and stuff. Today is one of my friend's birthdays, so we are going out to celebrate this evening, but I am also leaving for Ireland tomorrow night and spending the weekend in Dublin. This means that I have very little sleep ahead of me for the next 3 or 4 days, which I'm not too excited about. I am still very excited about the trip, though!! Other than the nice weather and my trip, I don't have much going on. I have two papers to write by the end of the semester, and I started reading one of the books for one of the papers. I finally purchased the other book for the other paper and feel better about that one. It will be strange next year to go back to actually having a lot of work throughout the semester since we don't even have textbooks here for any of my classes! I sent in my list of classes for next year that I want to register for, and Lila sent me an email saying that all of them looked fine. That is soooo exciting, if you knew all that I'd been through with classes this year, to actually have an email saying everything looks good was wonderful! Another random/fun thing is that my little sister sent me an email the other day with a countdown in it until I come home. I thought it was really cute that she actually wants me to come home that badly!!! I still have no idea about the job situation this summer, but if any of you hear anything, let me know. I'm looking, and I'm not worried about not finding a job, so that is good. Anyway, that is about all for now... I'll post again after my trip to Ireland!!!