Letter to My Mom
hi ma,
i am finally in marina's apartment in central madrid; its a run down dirty apartment with several students from peru, austria, france, and other countries; they are all very nice and i think its going to be a great time!
you would not believe the mess i went through getting here though. at houston, continental airlines had a weird problem with their server. i was supposed to leave at 220 pm for new jersey but the flight before mine had a huge problem: the wrong kind of plane arrived; it was a small plane and could not fit all the people that had tickets, so most people had to get rerouted; this led to a TON of problems with delays, so that by the time my flight was supposed to take off, there were two planes scheduled to leave at the same time from the same gate, one to sweden and the other to new jersey. my flight was going to be seriously delayed and i was going to miss my flight to madrid so they put me on an earlier flight to new jersey. in the process, they rerouted my bags and my bags ended up on a different flight. so when i got to madrid, they were not there! i was not happy about that at all as i was stinky and tired and grumpy and hungry.
then i arrived at new jersey and as soon as i stepped off the gate they announced my flight to madrid was about to close. i ran so fast through the airport with my bag, i even took off my shoes and left behind a bracelet that fell off. i barely made it, BARELY and it was the last flight to madrid for the day. so i would have been stuck in new jersey right now if my flight from houston had landed just one minute later. !!!!!!!!!!!!!
here in madrid; after taking forever to declare my bags lost along with tons of other continental customers who also had their bags sent to the wrong place, i took the metro and went to the center of the city. there, i tried to take a taxi to marina's but all i had was 100 euro bill and my debit and credit cards. no taxi would take me so i walked to the police station and they helped me get smaller bills. then i walked along looking for a taxi in the rain. i thought spain would be sunny and hot but it is cold and rainy. finally i found one and the driver was real sweet and told me all about the best things to do here. its been a mess of a day, i swear. i have been trying to call you but there is no answer. i called justin and asked him to let you know im here ok. i went for a walk in marinas neighbordhood, its really beautiful, i love the buildings and the parks have huge trees and fountains. now im going to sleep until marina gets home in three hours, im starving but ill wait for her to get here; ill write more tomorrow.
i love you.
Sammie Wammie
ps: i met two portuguese people while waiting at the houston airport and i practiced my portuguese on both of them. they both (at different times) said i have a brazilian accent. that's sexy. i'm thrilled.