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Published: December 8th 2010
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Madrid really goes all out for Christmas. Many of the streets in the center of town and in different neighborhoods are very nicely decorated and lit up with lights. My neighborhood in particular is looking very festive. I have included a few pictures of the streets. But, with all of this Christmas spirit, I was starting to feel the pull of going home for the holidays. To be honest, I can’t believe I am at the point of having to go home already. This semester has been a whirlwind of fun and incredible experiences and it is bitter sweet to see it come to an end.
Once we had finished with finals (which, though stressful, were relatively easy compared to finals back at SCU or even my midterms this semester for that matter), we had to pack and get everything in order to go home. For me that meant figuring out how to get all the ‘stuff’ I had accumulated over the semester home. I decided the cheapest and easiest option was to ship a box home with some of the heavier items that would over wise weigh my luggage down. I found a box at one of the recycling
bins on the street and borrowed some tape from the school. I then packed the thing with over 55 pounds of ‘stuff’ and had to carry this beast of a box to the post office 8 blocks away. I am not a strong person and this about killed me… I was sore for 2 days afterwards.
The university did a nice farewell celebration with some awards for the semester (I won the Extracurricular Activities award because I attended a number of the events that the school organized), pictures and slideshows, and a reception afterwards with the professors and staff. It was a nice way to end a semester in which we realized we had all grown really close from spending literally almost everyday together. A number of us went out for lunch to our favorite bar afterwards (El Tigre) and then everyone met up later for beers in Plaza Santa Ana where numerous toasts were made, lots of goodbyes were exchanged and we had lots of fun… so much that they ended up cutting our group off. It was a great last day and night in Madrid… so we thought!
Leaving Madrid proved to be more difficult than
Serrano Street
This the 5th ave of Madrid (I would walk down this street twice a day back and forth on my to school) we would have ever imagined. The day before we were to leave (we were leaving on a Saturday), the air controllers of Spain went on strike unexpectedly. They literally walked off the job with planes still in the air and on the ground. The entire air space over Spain and all the airports were closed Friday and all day Saturday, the day we were supposed to leave. Well, you can only imagine the mess that this caused. I had never seen anything like it and the next few days were a surreal experience trying to get home. The Madrid airport reopened late Saturday afternoon after the military forced the air controllers back to work (who by the way make the equivalent of almost a half million dollars a year), but the there were thousands of passengers who had been affected and needed to be rebooked on flights. Iberia airlines, who we were flying, was in a particularly bad situation because it operates almost 60% of all flights out of Madrid and had thousands of very anger passengers (the Spanish have no problem expressing their displeasure or anger about a situation) and were very understaffed at first to handle the situation.
El Corte Ingles - Serrano Street
The Store front of the huge department store chain in Spain. As a result, most people in my group were put on standby for flights to New York on Sunday, but considering there were over 150 people on this list and all the flights were already overbooked, it wasn’t a surprise we didn’t get out Sunday. Instead I waited 3 hours in line (some waited 7.5 hours) to get rebooked on a flight to anywhere in the U.S. I told them to get me to the west coast somewhere if they could, but they couldn’t (of course their computers were not working correctly during this time) and the best they could do is send me to London on Monday and then to New York, or else I would have to wait till Wednesday evening to fly direct from Madrid to New York. So, we boarded a flight to London Monday afternoon, only to be delayed because of fog and we missed our flight to New York that evening. We then were rebooked for another flight to New York the next morning, which finally went off without a hitch. And delta was kind enough to rebook me on a flight from New York to Seattle on Tuesday free of charge after missing
Jorge Street
This was the street the Fashion Night Out was on back in October. I also daily walk this street my original Saturday flight. This series of events is filled in with many crazy stories of angry mobs and the Spanish civil guard, fighting to get reimbursed for hotels, taxi drivers trying to rip us off, the worst security people ever at London (we missed our flight by 5 minutes because of them), lost luggage and a whole bunch of other ironies. Obviously some people handled it better than others, and the amount of tears shed by some people would be enough to filled the Atlantic Ocean. But, it all worked out, and I am now currently writing this on my flight back to Seattle (where I have free and fast Wi-Fi!) and I am looking forward to seeing my family and being home.
Thank you for following along with my adventures. I have enjoyed writing this more for my sake than anything, but am glad to have been able to share in this journey. The experience has been an incredibly formative one that has forever changed me and my outlook on things, and I will continue to reflect on it for a long time to come. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be able to have
Velasquez Street
This is one street over from my street done this (statistically only 4-5% of all college graduates study abroad) and I know that the fun, friends and memories I have taken away from Madrid and Europe is hard to relate to for others unless they too have gone through a similar experience. Because of this, the friends I made and people I came to know while in Madrid will forever be very important to me and I hope to continue those friendships. Until next time!
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