Friend Time!

Well it looks like another overwhelming gap between blog entries has arisen. For that I am sorry. But after this entry there will be another one very soon, maybe even on the same day(!!!) so hopefully that will make up for any hard feelings. Anyways I'm going to go back in time here and start this blog update the 18th of March....

My friend Ryan was coming to visit!! He was to arrive on Friday the 18th of March. Being that the tickets directly into Sevilla were so expensive however, we decided that it would be better if he flew into Madrid and I met him there. Which, as I have learned time and time again this year, that was much easier said than done. At first I looked for plane tickets (to get me from sevilla to madrid) and I thought that I had found one at a reasonable price, which would have been a miracle - but, alas, no miracle was to be involved (although the airport said 'sevilla' it was actually an airport in a tiny town about 2 hours outside of the city). With the option that would have made my life almost completely stress free out of the discussion, I was forced to go to plan B - the bus. My host brother, Moises, decided that he wanted to come with me (and this actually was a miracle - I don't know if I have mentioned before that he is always on his computer, but he is... his computer broke however so he decided to come with me and meet up with his cousins whom live in Madrid) so I had to look for bus tickets for the both of us. I thought everything was under control, (the tickets purchased and all) but at 10 o'clock the night we were supposed to leave I realized that I had only reserved the 1am bus tickets, not actually bought them. Realizing this minor detail I went to buy them only to find that they I had to have done it 24 hours before the bus departed and that there were none remaining. To put it simply that little mistake sent the whole house into a panic (thats the problem when once you start traveling with other people). To make a long story a little bit less cumbersome (and to not wear-out my writing desire in the description of a single event) Moises and I were rushed to the bus station by his Dad where we got the last 2 seats on the 11 o'clock bus. We then arrived in Madrid at 4 in the morning, waited until the train station opened, took a total of three metros to a different bus station where we caught a bus to his cousins house - hour of arrival: 8 am. I guess it gave Moises a little better idea of what my life had been like more or less during that month of travel.

From there Moises and I went with his cousin and his cousins mom to pick up my friend at the airport. (Looking back on this we were incredibly lucky that the plane arrived on time and that I made it to the airport because we didn't have any hostel for the night or, for that matter, any form of a plan B whatsoever.) Upon arrival the only thing that Ryan really wanted to do was sleep, (as always is with overseas flights) but unfortunately for him he would get very little of that in the following days. That day we went to a tour of the Real Madrid soccer stadium (absolutely massive) and showed Ryan a bit of the city center. The first night in Madrid we stayed in a hostel and went out for some tappas with a friend of mine that I had previously met in Sevilla (I somehow found same tappas street that I had gone to over 6 months before hand) and then watched some Spongebob Square Pants spanish version on the hostel TV.

The following day we had our very own choufer. Moises, not the previously mentioned Moises but the cousin of Moises whose name conveniently happens to be Moises, drove us around the city and stopped at all of the premier locations. Ryan and I also decided that we wanted to go to the Real Madrid game that night so we got to the stadium right when they started selling the tickets and stood in a line that took about 30 minutes to get to the front of. Not to bad... only it was the wrong line. The other line, the correct line, went about 2 blocks and would have taken a minimum of 2 or 3 hours (without any guaranteed tickets waiting for us). Ryan hadn't come all the way to Spain to just give in like that, however, so we resorted to the scalpers. The tickets ended up being 80 euros a piece and we sat at the top top top tippity top, but sometimes you just need to live a little I suppose. That night we stayed at the cousins house (which meant not going to sleep until 8am) and the next day we went to the bus station planning to go to Cadiz but eventually ending up in Sevilla (a story that is a little bit too complicated to describe).

We spent the rest of the week in the wonderful Spanish beach city of Cadiz (a short hour and a half drive from Sevilla) and Sevilla. Cadiz had something similar to a tornado passing through it for both the days we were there (to avoid any confusion I'm just going to go ahead and say that that was an exaggeration, though it was definitely windy) but when you go somewhere just for a beach nothing is going to stop you from doing those beachy activities such as swimming, sand castles and laying out. Upon our return to Sevilla I had to go to school/work but Ryan has two other friends from school studying here so I don't think that he felt too lonely. He left the following friday morning to go to Alicante, Spain for the weekend and I started getting ready for the next visitors - mis padres!! This is getting its own blog, however, so i'm going to end this one by thanking ryan for coming!!! although i don't think he is ever going to read this.... if you actually do read this ryan im sorry for saying that you never would, but if you don't read it I would like for everybody else to know that i thank ryan for coming and that you guys should come too! 6 weeks left....