On my Flight Back and Other Notes

I am currently watching the Big Bang Theory on the plane. I am so excited to get back, but I still have to get on the connecting flight in Chicago. Ugh. But at least the long flight will be over.

I've met a lot of cool people on my trip. It all started off in Marquette, where I met Diane. She was great and gave me a book to read (which unfortunately I never finished). She is a biologist and travels between Marquette and California. She has to travel because he husband can`t find work anywhere else. She has family in Benzie county, and one of her sisters actually works in one of the banks in the area. My mom probably knows her. Another one of her sisters is a teacher at Benzie High. 

I met lots of other travelers in hostels. I can't believe how popular it is for people to go traveling for a year throughout Europe. I met a lot of Canadians in Spain. I have no idea how people can afford to go traveling for so long. Also, traveling is so mentally and physically jarring, I don't know how people can always be on the move like that, and actually enjoy the places they are seeing. My weekend trips from Salamanca were super tiring for me. 

I met a lot of people in my classes at the University. Actually, I am now friends with Saki and Monica from my elective class. Really nice people.

I met Sandra in the Madrid hostel. She is from Austria, and finished school for Tourism. She is working a little bit outside of Madrid for a company for 3 months. She is only going back home once. She had to find a place to live next to the train station in Madrid for work. She ended up finding one, but the landowner lives in the flat, and talks a lot. She also has a lot of weird rules about the house that made Sandra slightly confused. I added her on Facebook too :) I hope she does well. She seemed really nice.

On the walking tour I met an Argentinian, named Adiel. When I first met him, I spoke to him in English, and then he asked me to speak slower because his English isn't that good. But his accent didn't sound like a spanish accent. And when I asked him where he was from, I couldn't understand him. But I soon found out he spoke Spanish, and we continued to speak in Spanish for hte rest of the trip. He works as an editor of a tv channel in Buenos Aires. But right now he is on vacation for a month, so he is seeing Spain, France, Germany, and England. He said he's a little worried about navagating in France, because he doesn't speak French, and apparently the French do not like to help with directions and do not speak English or Spanish a lot. 

Anyways, on the walking tour I felt kind of cool because we were the only ones speaking Spanish. Everyone else was from Canada or the states. So we spoke in Spanish with the guide. One thing that we learned that was strange is that in Argentina, they mandate that everyone in grade school must read Don Quijote, but in Spain they don't. 

I'm so ready to be home!!!! I wish I was there already.