Sea to desert

I've been back in the states now since Saturday night. I've been doing my best to fight jetlag, but yesterday I crashed at 5 pm and slept until 7:30 am...but I think I'm past it now. The dry desert heat welcomed me to Las Vegas, and even though every time I come home I am reminded of how much I miss it, I miss Barcelona too.

My last week was fairly hectic, writing papers, studying for finals, packing, hitting up las rebajas. The last two nights, we went out, Thursday night to a shot bar called Chupitos and Friday night to a super delicious dinner by the beach and back to the bar. Our last dinner was a feast---our first course was plates and plates and plates of shrimp, along with pan con tomate. The next course was fried calamari, fried shrimp, and fried octopus. And finally our last course was the paella. It was a good, yummy meal to finish off our time in Barcelona. I miss all that yummy seafood, and of course the paella.

Classes wrapped up nicely. I had to write two papers, which kind of sucked, but I got them done and turned them in. I also managed to take my finals, even though I missed a bunch of classes due to the ankle and minimal studying. I'm know I passed my classes (all that really matters to get credit), but I should be getting my grades back fairly soon.

Packing up my room was kind of sad--even though I had only been there for 7 weeks I feel like that apartment turned into a mini home. I had plenty of room in my suitcases, I hadn't packed all that much and I really didn't buy all that much, so I was in good shape. I took a taxi to the airport with 3 of my roommates--I was on the same flight as two of them, and the other one left around the same time we did. Now, it was a Saturday morning and we expected the airport to be busy, but the airport in Barcelona is the most disorganized inefficient airport that I have ever been in. The line to check in at Continental was super long, and it didn't seem to be moving at all. I had my crutches with me and one of the counter people noticed, so I got to cut the line which was kind of nice, but even checking in it went super slow. They do things the Spanish way, slowly checking you in, chatting. They ticketed our bags wrong, so they had to go back through and do it all again. It took a half hour just at the counter checking our bags. By that time we only had 15 minutes until we boarded. We got through security, had to walk a long way, and then had to stand in a mass of people (I'm not calling it a line, because it wasn't), to get our passports checked. I'm not quite sure why since we were LEAVING the country. That took an hour. Once through that mess, you have to go to the gate and take a bus from the gate to the plane. Because of the long lines and masses of people, half of the plane wasn't there for the 10:45 departure. We were told we would leave at 11:30. I was pretty ticked off because I knew I would end up missing my connection in Newark. By 11:30, we still weren't ready to take off, so we missed that departure time as well. The whole time we're just sitting on the plane. We had to wait for a new departure time, and because we were sitting on the runway for so long, we had to go back to the gate to refuel to finally take off. The plane didn't leave until after 1--more than a 2 hour delay, the whole time sitting on the plane. The flight from Barcelona to Newark was 9 hours, so I sat on that plane for 11 hours total. Upon arriving in Newark, I made it through customs and got on another flight to Vegas that left fairly soon. I wasn't too excited to get on another plane, since the flight from Newark to Vegas is 5 hours. But the plane wasn't full, so I got my own row, which was pretty nice. I finally made it home after sitting on a plane for 16 hours, and 24 hours traveling and in airports. I was exhausted. We stopped at In n Out on the way home, I unpacked some, and then crashed.

I was trying to narrow down to what my favorite parts of Barcelona were, but that's impossible--I loved every single moment of my trip. And even though I messed up my ankle, I was out enjoying myself and experiencing the world when I did it.

And now what to do for the rest of the summer?? Lounge around, soak up some sun, have fun, and get ready for the year ahead.

But Spain will always have a little piece of me...