Soooo…. I know I said I would post a week after I got back, but the moment I got back to the house, extreme lazy came upon me, and now, about 3 weeks after I got back, and 2 days before I move back to Richmond, I am finally getting around to writing this thing. So as a final post to summarize my thoughts and say where I am going into this next semester, lets get started.

Coming Back to the US and Christmas

The day we left was one of the hardest days in Spain, worse than any test could have been. I tried my hardest not to cry, and I could tell Zaida was doing the same, but I was excited at the same time to get the chance to relax and see my friends again. Panth and I use the cercanias to get to the airport and then make our way to our terminal. I order my usual breakfast for the last time: a chocolate croissant, a coffee and an orange juice. It seems so weird that we are actually leaving now. 4 months after we arrived here, and now we leave to go back home. It just feels weird. We get on our 1.5 hour flight to Heathrow, and as we get closer, I start to get more anxious. We are a little late on our arrival, which is a problem since we have very little time to transfer flights. So we land like 10 minutes late, and 5 minutes later, Panth and I are running through the airport to get to our next gate. We get to the security check, and our tickets are not letting us through. We go to the attendant there, and apparently everyone’s passes are having a problem. So she prints us off a new pass, and we continue to security. They have us unpack everything AGAIN, and we now only have 30 minutes to get to our gate, and turns out it is a tram ride away. I strip as fast as possible and separate all of my bags, taking up 5 bins like a freaking lunatic, AND MY FREAKING BAG GETS FLAGGED!!! My bad, cause I forgot to empty my water bottle, so I literally drink my entire water bottle, which is a liter. Thanks VCU.

So I finally repack everything, and we have 20 minutes to get to our gate. Panth and I are sprinting to this tram, and we get there just as the doors are about to close. Both he and I are horribly out of shape, so we are panting as we have a little break to catch our breath. We get to our stop on the tram, and we have 10 minutes left. Thankfully, the gate is at the end of the terminal (sarcasm), and my legs are actually dead. My carry-on can’t roll right, so I was dragging it on the side that doesn’t have the wheels. We get there with 5 minutes to spare, and there is still a long line of people boarding. As I scan my ticket to get on the plane, it says to see an attendant. I was confused, so I go to the counter, and apparently I was randomly selected for a search, so I HAVE TO UNPACK MY THINGS YET AGAIN!!! ugh, i hate flying. But I am in the gate and I knew they wouldn’t leave without me, so I was fine. I get on the plane and prepare for my 8 hour flight.

The flight was actually not that bad. The flight attendant was really nice, and when she found out I was turning 21 the next day, she gave me 2 little wine bottles for dinner! Other than that, I watched 4 movies in the flight since I couldn’t fall asleep. For some reason, I just can’t fall asleep on planes now. Don’t know why, but hey, as is life.

We land at Dulles, and when I turn off airplane mode, I get a very awesome email!! Apparently, Panth and I’s bags did not make the plane to DC, so our bags were still in London. I was fine with that cause its just clothes and gifts and I have more clothes at home, but its like that’s just one more thing on a long day of crap. We get to customs, and we wait so long I feel like I am at an amusement park. We wait for like an hour, he asks me like 2 questions, and then I’m through. Since it wasn’t our fault our bags were lost, the airline said they would mail our bags to us, which I was not against. We finally walk out of the terminal, and there is my family!! Oh it feels so good to be back.

The only downside is that we still have a 3 hour drive ahead of us. But I can sleep in a car. So I did.

The next few days consist of a lot of sleep, eating, and playing video games on fast WiFi again. My birthday was the day after I got back, which was a trip to Olive Garden, then Christmas 3 days later. My bag got back to the house the night of Christmas Eve, so I wrapped all my presents Christmas Eve, and was so excited to give all my presents to my family. It feels so good to be back with my family, doing normal, boring stuff. I’m glad to be home.

Semester in Review

I am so glad I studied abroad. I remember the first time I heard that this program existed and the first time Panth and I started looking into it. Going from planning and buying to actually going and enjoying, it was a crazy ride. And I never thought my experience there would be so fruitful. The week before leaving, I was so worried about classes working out and what my host family would be like, but that shouldn’t have been my worry. I should have been worrying about where I was going to travel to, how do I say this in Spanish, and what recipes should I steal from my host mother, because those things are what made my time there so much fun and so enjoyable. Coming back, having all those trips in my memory and Spanish on the tip of my tongue, there is nothing I regret on this experience (except for not seeing the Sagrada Familia, cause that was a stupid mistake on me and it could have been avoided) and I would go again in a heartbeat, once my wallet gets bigger a little bit.

One thing that I also didn’t expect is how much I learned how to be with myself and how to enjoy traveling alone. Were there times where I would have loved to have friends with me, of course, but I didn’t let that fear stop me from exploring the city. The one thing I never want to lose from this trip is how to just enjoy being alone, that you do not have to be with people 24/7. By the end of the trip, even with friends with me, I preferred to explore alone, and I believe I was able to experience the city much more that way. Once this blog is finished, I will cherish it for so long and look back on it with extreme fondness.

The Future…

At the time of me writing this, I move back to Richmond in 2 days and start classes in 4. Everything is packed, and my schedule is in place. I have had to recover, and am ready to get back to my regularly scheduled programming of going to class, cooking for myself, and going to the gym. I have lost all physical progress and have started growing a gut, so I have to put a stop to that now. Today, I made a 2-week alternating meal plan full of protein that will hopefully help me get back into shape. But I plan to do this semester differently. I want to leave more time for me to be social and relax in the form of cooking, being social, and exercising. I don;t want to feel like I am not doing enough and then signing up for things just to make myself busy. I want to leave enough time to enjoy these last 3 semesters of college, as well as enough time to learn a couple extra things, like maybe finish coding my MineSweeper game!!

I am excited to see how this semester goes. Thanks for keeping up with my blog if you have read it this far. This is the last post, so this part if finished!! Go back to the home page here to go see my photos and videos, and I hope you enjoyed reading!!

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