Im home

Last night I came home had lunch with Ralph, my mom and brother then went home to sleep. I slept from 5pm till 7:30am this morning. I woke up to the feeling of wanting to walk. So I told myself since I'm use to walking so much, better stay in the habit. I walked around my community for about 1 hour. As I was walking I felt weird. It felt weird not walking or running to get to another destination. It felt weird not being on a time schedule. It felt weird to be able to choose my breakfast this morning. It felt weird that I had the choice of taking a car to any place I wanted. It felt weird to have a cell phone. It was something that I had been without for a month.
 I'm glad to be home with my hubby and I glad to have had an experience of a lifetime. I have learned a lot from the different cultures around the world and I have learned to appreciate what I have here at home. I came home to find my name on a card. Ralph wrote me a letter saying how much he missed me and also how crazy he was to let me be gone for so long. Inside the card was also a gift certificate for a spa treatment. He already made my appointment for Friday afternoon. Wow! I'm so lucky to have such an understanding husband that cares so much about me. Thank you friends and family for following me along my crazy adventures I will never forget. I like that I am able to take a look back and remember everything through this blog. Sometimes I was so tired to write but I had to keep you up to date with the things that were going on on my side of the world. You all were my motivation to keep writing.

I'm Coming Home

So we left Tania's apartment at 12am. To get to the metro and arrive at the airport usually took us 30 minutes. But tonight we had 3 pieces of luggage each. I think I was pulling around 100 lbs throughout the streets of Madrid. I never realized how many flight of stairs there was in the metro. We kept having to take breaks because we were all out of breath and so tired. I had to keep telling myself "Im coming home". That was all the motivation I needed. also Anna kept telling us "come on girls we can do it". We stubbled over stairs and ran out of energy at some points but we made it to the metro that would be taking us to the airport. The metro was empty except for one man that sat next to me. We arrived to the next stop of our metro, paced ourselves really well and boarded the train. Finally we made it to the airport. Everything was closed and only a few people lingered for their next flight. It took us 1 1/2 hour to get the the airport. Crazy how long it took us and how much strength was involved but we saved ourselves 40 euros. Our friends Monica and Rosa arrived a short time later in their taxi. We got some seats and waited for 3 hours till the airport clerks arrived. We took turns sleeping then all headed to our line. I got everyones passport and printed off their boarding pass while they waited in line. We all got cleared to head to our terminal. At the terminal we kept saying how proud we were to be Americans and how excited we were to go back home. Our first flight was to London. When we landed in London we had to run to our next gate because it was boarding. They stopped us and said we needed to get our bags checked. The clerks then realized our gate was closing so they cleared us and we made our way to our gate. We were the last ones to board our flight to Dallas.  I took my nausea medicine and knocked out for most of the flight. I told the girls that the flight didn't seem so long. They did not have the same feeling. They said the flight took forever. I guess the medicine knocked me out pretty good. When we landed I was so anxious to see my family. We went through customs with out any problems. As I walked out my friend Anna said "look there goes Ralph". He had roses in his hands ready to welcome me home. My mom was next to him with a bundle of balloons. I held back my tears of happiness. I was happy to finally be back home!

I made it to the airport

Last Day in Madrid

Today we woke up around 10am but then kept dozing off and on. We knew we had a big flight ahead of us and wanted to just take it easy. I skyped with Ralph then began to pack for my flight HOME. In between packing the girls and I went to have lunch at TGI Fridays. We were talking about how much we enjoyed the trip and also how close we got throughout this experience. We kept saying how glad we were to be rooming together at the same house. We were the only group with 4 room mates. The other groups with us had to be split in to twos. After lunch we went to the Plaza de Espana for one last look and also to shop at their market for last minute souvenirs. We walked back to our apartment and packed some more. Claudia wanted to play a game so bad before we left Spain. So we played charades, my team lost. But Claudia and Anna had a great time beating my team. I took a small nap then woke up for our last minutes in Spain together. We were going to leave at midnight to catch the last metro taking people to the airport. Our flight home was so early in the mooring that we decided this would be the best plan. Also taxi drivers rip people off so bad. So we had our bags packed and ready to head home.

 

Arrivederci

Today we woke up ate breakfast then headed out to get a last glimpse of Italy. We left our bags at the front desk because our train was not coming for until 5pm. We went to the markets square and bought a ton of things. I spent so much I had to go back to the ATM to get more euros. We walked some more then sat down to eat some gellato. My friend Monica had a train ride at 4pm so the rest of us walked her down to the train station. We decided to just stay put since we are always running to get to our destinations. While at the train station we all wrote our last Diary entries for our class. We have so much homework to turn in that  we just told ourselves we should be on top of things. Our train arrived on time and we boarded without running into any problems. We arrived in Bolonga 1 1/2 hour before our flight so we paced our selves and made it to the gate on time. Monica was already in line to board the plane. We were all so happy that this would be our last flight with Ryanair. The flight crew was being awfully rude to people and having a good time looking at people struggling to make their luggage fit in there required bin. We boarded our flight and headed back to Madrid. We landed really late at 10pm. Anna and I got on the metro and headed to our apartment. We dropped of our luggage then went back out for dinner. We wanted something fast and cheap so we went to McDonalds. BAD idea. We got so sick from eating there that we went to sleep with a tummy ache.  

Bus tour of Italy

We woke up pretty late Sunday morning. We got ready ate breakfast then made our way down to the city bus tour. We began our tour at 10:30am. The weather in Italy is prefect. Not to hot nice cool breeze and my hair finally is calm enough to look nice for once. As we made our way around the city we stopped at a peak overlooking the entire town. At this pit stop there was also a replica of Leonardo Di Vinci "David". The view once again was magnificent. I couldn't take enough photos to truly capture this moment. So after a while I stopped taking pictures and just took it all in and enjoyed the view. Then we finished up the rest of the tour and went to the Academia museum where the actually "David" is on display. We waited in a hour long long to get in but once we made it in we looked for our "David". No pictures were allowed but I still saw people sneaking some in the museum. I couldn't believe how huge the statue was. My friend Anna and I found some seats ad just looked at the front view for about 15 minutes. They we made are way to the back of the statue and sat for another 15 minutes. We wanted a full 360 view of "David". We figured we stood in line for 1 hour, we couldn't just take a glimpse and move on. Throughout the museum were many other statues that looked very very real. One in particular was of a lady that Anna and I thought for sure was going to come to life when we turned away. After the museum we ate at a restaurant and we met some folks from the USA. There is a lot of tourist from the USA in Florence. Every time we say we are from Texas they smile and say "Aww we like Texas". After lunch we looked around some more and then headed back to our hotel. We took a 4 hour "nap". I guess were are all worn out and sleep deprived in Madrid that we had to catch up with our rest.  This really sucks because I wanted to see more of Italy but just didn't have the energy. We woke up from our nap and got ready for dinner and drinks for Monica's Birthday. We went to this plaza square that has many restaurants in each corner. A waiter persuaded us to go in to his restaurant. We said "yes" if there was not any cover charge and our drinks were not expensive. He agreed and walked us to our table. I've leaned you can do a lot of barging in Europe expect at the airport of course. The restaurant was so nice with a great view of the plaza. Afterwards we walked a block over and had a drink at the Hard Rock Cafe. We had a lot of fun and I hope Monica enjoyed her special night as well.