5. When I am talking to my host family!
The couple Drew and I live with speak NO English. When we asked her if she speaks English she replied with "No, sólo 'Oh my God'" And she wasn't lying. She literally asked us one day "qué quiere decir 'good'" She has had over 50 americans live with her, I don't know how she still doesn't know what good means!! Also, one day I translated between her and the parents of a girl who had stayed with her in the past that came to say hello!
4. When I was hanging out with the Niños :)
This semester I was able to hang out with some pretty cool niños and "teach them english." They were 4 and 5 years old, sooo there wasn't a whole lot of English being learned, but they can sure count to ten and name all of the colors! They are the cutest! This little girl Laura is my favorite. Here she is telling me about the tooth fairy! Just ignore me talking at the end and look at how cute she is!
3. When I almost lost 260 euros!!
When we did the horseback riding on the beach, multiple people called me from their office (they were NOT very organized people) and our plans changed multiple times. Finally I was so frustrated with them that I cancelled our reservations and we showed up and paid in cash. Bueno. Well, not quite bueno because when I got back home I saw that I had been charged 260 euros to my bank account, and I was so angry I called them up, and after a bit of explaining, arguing, explaining some more and a tid bit of yelling, she told me I would get my money back, and I did. Phew!
2. When my parents almost got stranded in Sevilla
Huelga. If I had come to Spain in a different semester, I may have never learned this Spanish word, but you better believe I know what it means now. Huelga is the Spanish word for "Strike". On March 29th there was a "Huelga General" which basically meant that most things were closed, some classes were cancelled, and everything was in a bit of chaos. They provided "servicios mínimos" which meant the metro ran once every so often, etc, but there were tons of flights and trains cancelled. This would not have normally been a huge deal, except that my parents were scheduled to fly out on March 29th to go to Barcelona for their cruise. Well, we looked online and their flight was cancelled, so we went down to the train station and I got a worker to assure me "cien por cien" that their train would be leaving the next day. It was a bit stressful, but their train left as promised, and they made it to Barcelona just a bit behind schedule (:
1. When we had to beg our way onto a flight
On our way back from Vienna, Austria, we had two flights with about 45 minutes in between. Not a huge deal. But our first flight left 30 minutes late! Soo we had 20 minutes from the time one plane landed to get onto the next one. Should be able to make it right? Well the catch is that we were flying Ryan Air. This airline requires that non EU citizens get their boarding passes stamped before going through security. Well, we didn't have time for that, so we sprinted to our gate and decided to give it our best shot and talk our way onto the flight. Changing the flight would have been 110 euros plus whatever a hostel for the night would have been. It was not an option. So when we got to the gate, we begged ("por favor, no es nuestra culpa"), reasoned ("tenemos los pasaportes aquí, tenemos los billetes, por qué no podemos entrar"), and begged some more ("estamos en una isla, no tenemos opciones"). There was lots of yelling and then finally crying (good work by my friend Deirdre) before about 15 minutes later they broke down and let us on the flight.
Best part? We got stuck in the emergency exit seats because that's all that was left, and they happen to be the most comfortable on the whole plane (:
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