Hi! Thanks for starting to read my blog! If you had been a follower of my entries from Rio, I apologize that they began to come very slowly and eventually stop. I know excuses are excuses, but I was just so busy! Therefore, to be more realistic, I have thought of another approach. Instead of writing pages and pages about one great experience, I'm going to try to check in every couple of days and share (what I deem to be) an interesting, insightful, or funny story of a paragraph or so. It'll be a test of my brevity but my hope is that amid a chaotic week, one paragraph will seem less daunting than a huge entry.
As my flight (notably simpler, shorter, and less complicated than that to Rio) loomed in the future, I was unable to shake the feeling of uneasiness that was more than likely derived from my lovely experience leaving Rio and arriving 24 hours after I had expected--albeit thoroughly versed in trilingual arguing. But everyone assured me that a simple flight from BWI to Madrid connecting in Philly would be nothing to worry about, and as the agent on the phone I called twice that day assured me, "Today has been pretty good for US Air." All seemed great until despite the clear runway and waiting passengers, my plane to Philly just didn't arrive. I was informed that I would miss my connecting flight to Madrid, but that--lucky me--they could drive me to Dulles (umm isn't that practically the same distance to Philly?) where I would have a flight to Frankfurt, Germany, and connect to Madrid in the morning, a good seven hours after AU would give up looking for me at the airport.
Fast forward a bit, and I'm speeding 90 miles an hour on I-495 towards Dulles in a limo being driven by a self-proclaimed Iranian radical liberal, who considered all Republicans KKK members, and who thought perhaps Clinton's affairs with Lewinski must have only "increased his productivity." I'll spare you the vulgar details. After arriving to Dulles (or as my driver renamed it, "Obama International") three hours after I had gone through security at BWI, I was ready to do the whole thing over again. But this time it was much more fun.
Perhaps my expression at this point in time was the cause of every one's suspicion, but either way, the airport did not want to let me get through security easily. For my personal first time--how exciting--I had my hands swabbed for God only knows what. Lady: "Please hold out your hands sir, I will just swab them lightly." [Swabbing commences] Me (making conversation? curious? pissed off?) "What is this trying to detect?" Lady: "I am just swabbing your hands sir." Informative. But, thankfully, I was clear. But then of course there was my pesky left leg. My "image" was again deemed suspicious when I was inside the new YMCA machines at the third security check point. So a man named Javier and I ended up getting pretty close as they finally conceded to let me into the sacred gate.
And the rest is history, I'm now in Madrid and remain absolutely stunned by seeing such a beautiful city, and more importantly, a city that is loved and taken advantage of by its people more than maybe any place I've ever been. More on this later!
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