still in Madrid...but not for long!!

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¡Hola amigos!

Well, it´s already the "fin de semana" (weekend) for me! Madrid has una fiesta tomorrow so there is no class. So, because this is our only free 3 day weekend, a group of us are going to Tarifa, a city on the southern tip of Spain!

It was so crazy trying to book this trip to Tarifa on such short notice. If I learned anything from this experience, it was that the sooner you can plan trips, the better! At first we were trying to figure out where to go....the island of Mallorca, Tarifa, London....eventually, we decided on Tarifa because plane tickets were crazy expensive trying to get them 4 days before! Then we had to go to the "estacion de los autobuses" to get our tickets. But before we were going to buy them, we wanted to make sure that there was space in hostels in Tarifa. Turned out to be much harder than we had thought. We probably called about 10 hostels in Tarifa asking "¿Hay habitaciones este fin de semana?" (are there rooms for us?). All of them, no. Obviously, this was going to be more complicated than we had originally planned. So we start researching towns that are close to Tarifa. We found one town 20 km from Tarifa with one hostel in it (Hostel Lola). So we call Lola 😊 and she says, yeah there is space there! Yah! Except, there is one problem. We don´t have a car and this little town (pop. 125 people TOTAL!) is 3 miles from a main road. No taxis go there, no buses, nada. She says she´ll give us the "honeymoon suite" because those are the only types of people who come here. Very, very, VERY secluded. Probably not what we are looking for...haha. All this was happening Tuesday. We left the bus station with no set plans.

We come back Wednesday with some more numbers to try to call for hostels in Tarifa. Lola is our last resort! We call about 5 more, all full. Then, I call a hostel and they say they have space but that we have to book it online. So another girl from Furman, Shaley, and I get back on the metro and go on a hunt to find the closest internet cafe. Well, the closest one is closed. We continue wandering and, after about 20 minutes, find another one, thank God! We get online and put in that we need rooms for 10 people. Well, they only have space for....9. Great. One person can´t go or will be sleeping on the beach. So we call the rest of the group waiting in the bus station, they talk, and one guy, Oli from Manchester, UK, volunteers to just go and hope for the best when it comes to sleeping. So I reserve the hostel, and the rest of the group starts buying their bus tickets. I tell one of the girls to buy my bus ticket because I want to make sure I get one because they were going fast. So she did, and I am so lucky that she did too because she bought THE LAST TICKET available to go down to Tarifa. There was a man standing right behind her that wanted to buy the same ticket and he was turned away. God was definitely on my side yesterday!

So tonight (Thursday) we leave for Tarifa at 11 p.m. The bus ride is 8 hours, so we´ll get there Friday morning at 7. Then, I´m just planning on hanging out at the beach all day Friday! Saturday, we´re going to Morocco taking a ferry across the Strait of Gilbraltar!! I´m going to be in AFRICA!! AHHHH!! So excited! I love to do EVERYTHING, so when this was presented to me, there was no way that I was turning down a trip to Morocco! even with all the complications in getting there. Maybe there will be access to the internet down in Tarifa and I can make a posting from there 😊 We are leaving Tarifa at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday and getting back to Madrid at 1:00 a.m. Monday morning.

Please keep me in your prayers because Morocco isn´t the safest place (especially for American girls with blond hair....) but we´ll be going together in a group and we won¨t be there at night so I´m sure it will be okay.

Love and miss you all!

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