September 14th

Here in Spain, I feel lighter. 

My spirits are so light they could be a cloud and all of my problems are at the bottom of the ocean. 

I have had nothing but literally freshly squeezed orange juice and I can't even stop craving it. The chips here are made with less chemicals and taste so much lighter and the coca cola comes in the real bottles you see on adds and it is made with better sugar and also zero chemicals. The salmon on my sandwhich yesterday afternoon was so fresh it was practically slithering off the bread and the cheese tastes like some kind of sweet, carefully grown and harvested plant. I don't like cheese, but I'm kind of diggin' it here. 

Enough about food, I'm hungry. 

I've been on this tren for a few horas and in a few more horas I will meet my host familia! I am having some rather mixed emotions about this whole ordeal. 

I had a whole new puffing and swelling black rain cloud in my throat when I had to say goodbye to all of the girls I met on this trip, and our hip leader Alvaro as well. 

Maddie was the first girl to say hi to me when I first walked into the Chicago airport and she is extremely excitable and bubbly and has a way of triggering those traits out of me too. She is one of the most genuine people I have ever met and we connected on every subject we talked about I swear. She has her nose pierced, which I have been considering but I keep being told that I don't have the right nose for it. However, Maddie informed me multiple times that I have the perfect nose for a stud and my face is shaped so that I'm practically poster child for a nose piercing. So naturally, I have come to the conclusion that it will be my next piercing. 

Mariah is the second girl I met and we ended up figuring out the plane to Germany togeter and even rooming together. Olivia and I have deemed her a "wind sister". Back in America I think we would refer to her as "chill" but I have to go a little deeper than that if I'm going to attempt to capture her personality. She is the kind of girl who only finds a reason to worry about the things in life that truly need to be worried about. However, she really hates that her name is Maria in Spanish because people here simply have diffculty saying Mariah, but that is understandable because we all tend to absolutly freak if someone says our name incorrectly. She is so down-to-earth, probably the most grounded person I've ever met. Also, she has a hippie side and gave me this oil that cured my throat immediamente. Between her and Olivia, I have a healed throat and my cuts from various incidents have been erased by a little vitamin E. 

You will hear plenty about Olivia as I complete this journey. She is staying in the same village as I am and leaving around the same time as me too. She lives in Pennsylvania and attends a really cool boarding school in New Jersey. She is so confident and calm and can make a joke of anything. I can never fully comprehend her feelings (most people I know are an open book; I know when they are irked and I know when they are deflated and I know when they are euphoric), but it's not a downfall at all. Our friendship is light and happy and I love hearing about her awesome boarding school and her trips around the world. I know we won't be able to be attached at the hip in Porrino because it will Americanize our Spanish trip but I also know we will have a ridiculous amount of fun together nevertheless. Olivia's host uncle apparently owns the best bar in town and we are already planning things to do during the aftermath of our Spanish adventure. Okay so, Olivia has completed the entirety of the high school Spanish course; in other words she has left Spanish 4 far behind. We spent the first hour or so on this train ride studying grammar techniques and her explanations are definitely putting me at ease. I vaguely remember this stuff but with grammar, it's all about the details. 

Maddie, Mariah, and Olivia are the girls who I learned the most about and I feel like I didnt get the chance to bond as much with the other girls, but I still have to say something about everyone else because I never want to forget them either. 

There was another girl named Maddie, and she is the youngest of all of us. I admire her guts for coming here as a sophomore. She lives in Utah and had lots of really funny Mormon stories to share with us. 

I only recently got to begin a friendship with Christina. Mariah was picked up by her host family a day early so Christina moved into our room. She is so bubbly and has a smile and a laugh that makes me smile and laugh even before I know what's going on. 

Sierra was the quietest out of us all and I couldn't quite figure her out. She is headed to southern Spain where it is beautiful and warm and, well, paradise. I was only able to have a couple conversations with her and it seems that she's really interesting if you dig a little deeper. 

Well, this is the end of that short life. We all said goodbye today. We hopped on the metro (first time on a subway!) and hauled our bags to the tren estacion. After sitting in a group with Alvaro for awhile, our numbers began to slowly dwindle as our trains arrived at the station. Olivia and I are now only a couple hours away (it is 19:05 and we are expected to arrive at 21:22) and I am so relieved to have someone to help me navigate to my family when we get off the train. I hear the stations here are slightly complicado. 

So today has not been all sugarplums. We set an alarm but ended up falling asleep again and waking up late so we didn't have time to take showers and we had to throw all of our stuff together and race downstairs. Also, I ran into some wallet troubles. Alvaro is so helpful and lovable and I swear I almost exploded when he threw his arm around me and told me it would be okay. When people are nice to me in stressful situations, my emotions don't quite know what they want to do. 

Ight well, I meet my host family in a couple hours and these are my last hours to really bond with Olivia. I hope all is well in Michigan, send me a Facebook message with interesting things about your current life, okay? 

Now I am off to go study Olivia's Spanish textbook. 

Hasta pronto.