Finally have time and wifi!

I got sick right before the trip, so it was a long tiring trip! First we flew to Chicago. I sat next to a really cool guy and made friends with him. His name was Salex, he was on his way to visit his mom in Germany. We talked the whole time so the flight literally flew by. He goes to TCU for international business and he is originally from Dubai. When we got to Chicago, we were going through security again and the TSA lady was so rude! We accidentally got in the business class line and she yells "alright we all know you aint business class, get in the other line!" We had to wait for four hours so we wondered around the airport for a while so it went by pretty fast. Then we boarded to go to Zurich!
Swiss air is so nice. They are all so helpful and happy and you get so much free stuff. The food is really tasty too. At the end of the flight they even give everyone a piece of chocolate and a hot towel?? I guess to wipe your face off or something I don't really know. It was interesting to see how the flight attendants knew who to speak to in english and who to speak to in german. They accidentally spoke to me in german once. Towards the end of the flight i was so antsy and my back hurt from the seat. I couldn't sleep at all on the flight. Then we arrived in Zurich, and Europe is so different! People can just walk around the airport drinking beer.
Everyone on the Valencia flight kept talking to me in spanish and i freaked out and probably looked really rude. Then I slept the whole way there since I didn't feel good at all. I made sure to wake up in time for the chocolate though and then left it in my lap on accident. So I got up and there was chocolate ALL over my lap. It looked disgusting. What a way to enter a country. Then a baby started throwing up everywhere behind me and I was about to throw up too because of it. Anyways we didn't even have to go through customs and we didn't get a stamp in our passport! I wanted one!

The AIDICO representatives Ana Marie and Pablo picked us up from the airport. They were so nice and Ana was super excited to see us. It was so funny fitting all our luggage in their tiny european cars but it actually fit! Then we went to see our flats and Ana asked us if we wanted to go to her summer home in the countryside to go swim or if we were too tired. Of course we were too excited to be tired even though we barely slept! So we went grocery shopping first. The food is so different here and really good. They make you wear gloves when you pick up the produce to put in the bags to be more sanitary too.

We get to Ana's home and meet her dad and her two kids and her cousin that lives down the street. The house is on the side of a mountain and is beautiful! They have a little garden and a pool and patio. Ana started cooking dinner around 8 pm (which is early here! but we hadn't eaten all day). She just started handing me potatoes and a knife and told me to start peeling. We made "Patatas de Pobres" which means potatoes for the poor and it was really good! She wrote the recipe in spanish and we wrote it in english under it. She really wants to learn english and is practicing with us a lot!
We finally slept at like 11 pm and didn't wake up until 11 am. They don't really use AC here but usually the weather is nice so they don't need it. The first two nights were hot though! (even for me!)


The next day we met her friend Marie Luz and she was really nice. She's a psychologist and takes care of elderly people at their homes. We swam more and had a nice lunch (at 3 pm lol) with the whole family. Ana's little boys started acting up since they were jealous of us taking their mom away from them. The nine year old, Jorge was so funny and sassy. The five year old Ugo was so cute! They play soccer constantly or watch it or watch racing. Later we went to eat Tapas at a restaurant with the Interns from Italy. They were really nice and helped us find the best phone and internet deals. I like speaking spanish with them since they don't speak english fluently. Its less intimidating. My mentor, Sara, told me to be careful of them though! lol But i'm pretty sure that's the case with all Italian guys. For us to get reimbursed for the food, we have to keep all the receipts, which is kinda inconvenient especially since they basically don't exist here. And they don't split checks. So at this restaurant was the first time to get yelled at by the spanish people.


So monday was the first day of work and it was such a disaster getting there. We have to ride a tram then switch to get on a bus and theres only two buses so we can't miss it. Well a tram derailed so we had to get off the one we were on. We asked around to see how far of a walk it was to our stop. A friendly german artist said he'd walk us and warned us it was far. He said about a kilometer walk. It was like 3 kilometers. So there's a famous Valencian holiday called Fallas and they make statues and then they burn them?? Idk but its a huge deal. He's one of the artists for that festival. He showed us photos of his work on the walk and it was amazing! The statues are like 60' tall! It was such a long walk we kinda started to worry he was leading us the wrong way but we finally got to the bus stop and he saw the yellow bus and told us to run so we'd catch it so we barely had time to thank him.

The next day we tried to ask the bus driver where to get a card so we didn't have to pay each time and he started yelling at us.
We went to the beach and it was nice but the Sicilian guys said it was nothing compared to theirs. Then on the walk home Ariel and I stopped at a cervezeria for the wifi and to get a drink and dinner an watch the world cup game. The paella and beer was really good. It was cool watching the game outside on the street like that because you could hear everyone down the street yelling when German scored.

Today I saw one of the experiments which was pretty cool. We had to make sure this anchor line would hold the weight of three people for three minutes. It's to simulate workers falling. So in the last second it broke and it was kinda scary there was a huge snap and the weight fell. We finally have wifi at "el piso" which is how they say flat or apartment so its so much nicer now! lol