Katya Learns to Walk Again But Her Luggage Can't

I got maybe 30 minutes of sleep since my mom and sister drove me to the airport yesterday morning (Pacific Time). I have a pretty nice apartment, and of the 7 girls living here, am the only one with my own room!! What a blessing! Just had an amazing sandwich at a local place. After I nap, I am planning on going by the frutaria and a cafe to stock-up for breakfast the next few days. All checked-in with my study center and have orientation tomorrow morning. The rest of the day is ours to spend as we wish.

I was a hot mess at the airport and on the metro. While I have yet to be convinced that I over-packed, I will most definitely be sore in the shoulders tomorrow from lugging my huge carry-on* and giant roller suitcase** from the gate to the metro to the center to my apartment.  Thankfully, I traveled with new friends from the program that helped me laugh about my awkward tripping, dropping, swinging, and bumping incidents. Plural intended.

Also on the plus-side, a young Spanish gentleman was kind enough to offer to help me take my huge suitcase down the stairs into the metro at one point. I would have enjoyed the moment more if I had not immediately proceeded to trip on the stairs behind him, almost breaking my ankle/neck/you-name-it on the stairs. Kudos to one of my new friends, the only person who saw me, who burst into semi-silent and terrified*** laughter with me as I auto-corrected and managed to make it to the last step on my feet in time to take my luggage back from this kind Spaniard-Samaritan. I am deciding whether or not to keep a tally of male-Spanish gentility, but at this point am undecided. If I were, the score would currently be Chivalry-1:Whatever-the-Opposite-Is-0.

I have since attributed my extreme lack of coordination to a case of me-no-sleepy and paraplegic luggage, but will cherish this in my memory as one of my first moments bonding with Spain. Below is all I could manage to record when I first wrote this event down:

[Soooo tired right now, but wanting to capture the precious memory of when that Spanish dude offered to help me carry my stuff down the stairs when the escalator disappeared—oh, I certainly let him!—followed by me biffing it on the stairs behind him. I stumbled, but by the grace of God didn’t go down or hit my head. Just ended-up waving my arms in a frenzy and lost my footing...

Going to go crash now. Exhausted. May post after my nap….. ]
(finished post at 2:29pm Madrid time)

I debated titling this post "Katya Survives and Spanish Chivalry" but decided to eschew the gross misappropriation of alliteration for a more bombastic heading. Anyway, now it is a few days later than my aforementioned nap, and I'm sitting here transposing and editing my notes from the piece I wrote that first day--believe me, it needed a lot of editing--and don't want to mess with the integrity of this post anymore. Asi, hasta luego!


Footnotes for the easily-bored:
*my carry-on is tearing at the seams. I think this may be it's literal and proverbial last trip. At least it got to go to Europe first, right?
**my roller suitcase is missing the part on the bottom that is meant to help it stay at rest and upright when I'm not pulling it. This results in frequent, frustrating, and comical falling-over incidents which have left me asking existential questions about life.
***our laughter may have been classifiable as manic, since we were both running on crazy little sleep and looking around us, disoriented and exuberant, like babies fresh from the womb.