D-Day

Considering this is my first blog post evar, I think it’s pretty fitting that I start out doing just the usual – talking about what I did, what I’m doing, just the whole musing of recent events thing without even daring to look at my syntax or grammar. I’m DGAF’ing up in this blog. Also, I’m so tired it probably won’t be too cohesive. So just get used to it for now. (EDIT: also this post is long as I’ve written it over the course of two days)

Anyways, getting up wasn’t the hard part. It was only 8:30am, so I got like 6 ½ hours. Saying goodbye to my parents wasn’t overly difficult either. Saying goodbye to my cat, who I’ll probably never see again as my parents are looking for any kind soul to take him off their hands (shameless plug) was slightly taxing. Even packing my life away in two suitcases the night before wasn’t really that hard.

The all day ordeal of traveling and having my flights delayed, combined with this ridiculous love-hate relationship TAP Portugal airlines established with me – THAT was difficult. In a really short synopsis, this was my day:

8:30am – get up, shower, eat, and make sure I have everything I could possibly need or want

9:28am – unfortunately, be an asshole to my mother one last time, as she was struggling to figure out what “on the back of the suitcase” meant with regards to the nametag I put there. I was too cranky to actually point it out, so I just repeated myself in an unnecessarily mean tone many times. In retrospect, very terrible and I still feel bad about it

9:30am – on the road to DTW

10:00am – Arrive at DTW, deal with culturally insensitive and downright cruel check-in agents as they horribly mispronounced any name and city that wasn’t blatantly American

10:15am – get through security, triumphantly stand in the AIT machine knowing full well the 40-something woman was going to get a great look at my junk

10:45am – get 65 euros from Dad, say goodbye, board the plane.

11:00am – realize that there are literally 20 people on this plane going from Detroit to Newark. How fitting

1:15pm – get to Newark, go to TAP Portugal check-in for next boarding pass. Realize the counter doesn’t open until 2:15. Wait an hour in line while silently being judged by every foreign person in line. A surprising number of Italians. Hot Italian girls. Also, realize I forgot my swim suit. “Have fun in a speedo” says text from mother.

8:00pm – SEE THE TIME DIFFERENCE?! Er, board plane to Lisbon, Portugal following a two hour delay. Silently pray that my 37J seat would not be by the one obese American I saw board the plane (I’m talking like 300+ pounds of man). Sure enough, he was. Thankfully his wife decided to be a martyr and let me take her seat which was NOT next to her. Of course, this seat ended up being behind the Portuguese guy who decided to recline his seat ALL THE WAY

10:30pm – Finish Social Network on my dinky little tv screen in front of me. This might not be such a bad trip afterall

2am – Finish The Town on my drinky little tv screen in front of me. This is awesome. Italian mother stands up and bends over to help her baby daughter with something. I and everyone around me realize she’s wearing a thong. Total MILF

2:30am – realize the only other available movie is Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Eat dinner with no movie. Listen to music until the end of the flight

7:30am (EST + 5 hours) – arrive in Lisbon knowing full well that my connecting flight departed at 7:25. TAP Portugal saves the day and provides the 30+ people with a whole new flight that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

8:30am – takeoff from Lisbon. Spend flight talking to a Spanish couple. It turns out the husband works at the Universidad de Sevilla. They give me tons of tips. Rock on.

10:45am – Arrive in Sevilla. The suitcase I checked in Detroit is miraculously waiting for me. I am excite

11:45am – Rather than spend 30 euros on a taxi, decide to use public transportation. Challenge accepted

1:00pm – roughly an hour and 3.80 euros later, arrive at hostel. Make first updated facebook status, pass out on bed.

And here I am now. It’s almost 8pm and restaurants don’t serve dinner, or Tapas, until 8:30pm. I’m exhausted, I’m starving, and I hope to god the sink water here is safe to drink because I’ve had about a gallon of it.

After the first day of speaking almost entirely Spanish, my repertoire of words available to me I realize is horrendous. It’s terrible to say to a stranger “I was already down there” when referring to the fact that I couldn’t find my hostel and I had already gone down the street he directed me to and I couldn’t remember how to say “down there.” Just like random little things that would make it so much easier to talk to people and I either don’t know the words or I freak out and don’t remember them. Practice makes perfect I suppose. I need a beer. My hostel offers a “Nightlife Tour” that will take me to 3 bars and a club. 10 Euros will buy me 3 beers and 4 shots and entry to each place. It seems too good to be true. Something like that makes me paranoid that in my drunken, severely taken-advantage-of state I’ll get kidnapped and wake up in a warehouse where corporate dudes will inevitably torture me. Yes, that’s the plot of the movie Hostel. Fuck it. Challenge maybe accepted.

On another note, I don’t even have a phone right now. It feels weird, but not because I can’t call/text. Mostly it’s because I have absolutely no concept of time right now and it would be GREAT to know that when I’m walking around the city by myself.

Besides the stereotypical goals of “omg liek make Spanish frenz!” and “be fluentz in Spanish!” I have better goals:
1) For Christmas my brother gave me the discography of apparently one of the most famous Spanish metal bands, Angelus Apatrida. I’m going to meet someone here who has not only heard of them but also loves them

2) I’m going to find somebody here who likes Skrillex

3) I’m going to get somebody here to get into Son of Aurelius.

Well, this is all I have. I’m starving and it’s almost 8:30pm. Dinner time. 

-Addendum: After dinner I promptly go to sleep, but not before setting an alarm for 9:30am on the phone that doesn’t work yet, as it doesn’t have a SIM card. That’s a task for tomorrow. The plan was set: get up at 9:30am, find a Vodafone store, buy SIM card, have working phone. My checkout time from the hostel would be at 10:30am, so I’d have plenty of time.

Execution of plan: I wake up to the sound of knocking and a woman telling me that I need to check out. I check my phone for the time, 22:45. “wait a second, I didn’t sleep for 24 hours,” I think to myself. Then it suddenly makes sense. When setting the time on my phone last night, I put it at 10:00, but with European phones, I obviously had to put 22:00. So I woke up at 10:45am – just perfect. I quickly throw on clothes, pack up everything, check out, and ask for the closest Vodafone store. Walking with my two suitcases, getting to the store was quite frustrating. I buy a SIM card and, since I have nowhere to go until 7:30pm when I’m supposed to be at a hotel, I go back to my hostel for internet. I put in my SIM card, but I can’t seem to make calls and I can’t figure out why. I am disappoint. I decide to write more on this post, and as I’m doing this, the lady at the front desk clearly realizes that I still have internet even though I’m no longer staying at the hostel so my username/password no longer works.

I just want it to be 7:30, or rather 19:30.

Song of the day: Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites – Skrillex. If you’ve never heard of Skrillex, just do it now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeNSzJ2-Jw