February 21, 2011
After a couple hours of sleep my phone alarm went off at 3:00 because our taxi was supposed to pick us up at 3:30 from the hostel. We were initially planning on taking the metro to the bus station where the bus would take us from Barcelona to Girona, but the metro closes from midnight to like 5 a.m. or something like that, plus taking a taxi at that time at night would be the safest option. We checked out at the hostel and soon after the taxi arrived and took us to the bus station. We timed it perfectly and caught a bus where there were only about 8 seats left…once again, super lucky! The bus got us to the airport a little before 5 a.m. and our flight was leaving at 7:30 which meant we had time to eat a little breakfast and relax. We decided to go through security to just get it out of the way and get something to eat by the gates. We ended up finding a McDonalds, and I was definitely not ashamed to get an egg and sausage mcmuffin with a coffee even though I had that apple tart on the bus. My sleep was so messed up that my stomach didn’t understand what was going on and was hungry nonstop. Marissa and I got some food which was the SLOWEST fast food I have ever experienced in my entire life! It definitely sucked up a ton of time and shortly after we finished our gate was announced and we ran to the gate.
When we got there a huge line was already formed…how did all of these people get here so fast? Then we realized that they had posted two different flights for the same gate, so confusing! We let all of the people from the earlier flight to pass by and we ended up in the front of the line for our Pisa flight. Eventually our flight was able to board the plane and we got good seats again right behind the priority seats. It seemed like we had to wait a while before our plane took off which we blamed on this mother and daughter who got pulled out of the line by the gate because their suitcases were too big and even though they tried shoving them in the bin that was the sample size of the baggage you were allowed to bring on the flight, their bags were not fitting. We eventually took flight and I think I had the best sleep of my entire life on that plane! When I woke up we were approaching Pisa and as we started descending my sinuses felt this outrageous pressure and even though I was feeling 100% better in Spain, I felt all of the crap coming back into my system…ahhh!
Surprisingly our flight landed early which gave us even more time to catch our train which was supposed to be a close call – another “sprinting” train. We didn’t even have to go through customs or anything and before we knew it we were on our train back to Florence with time to spare! I studied a little more on the train and when our train was about to stop we looked at the time and realized it was only like 10:00…we would have just enough time to walk home, drop off our stuff, grab our school stuff and make it in plenty time to Italian class! What a relief that I would definitely be taking my Comparative Media midterm on time! Italian class was a drag because we were all extremely tired and felt grody because we hadn’t showered in over a day, so we were “back row Joes” and hid out in the back of class.
I had a little time to eat lunch before my midterm, and even though I cut up a couple carrots and packed a granola bar before we left the house I was still super hungry and walked down the street from school to the little panini shop and ordered a Fresh Sausage and Eggplant sandwich. I got back to the school to eat it while I looked over my notes one more time to discover that “Fresh Sausage” is RAW, pink, gooey sausage! Gross! I was definitely not going to eat raw meat, especially raw pork, so I scraped off the meat and just ate the sandwich with the eggplant and was satisfied, although still a little sick to my stomach.
I walked downstairs ready to kick this midterm’s butt! Fabio handed out the exams and there were 4 questions…he told us we had to answer the first question, but could choose to answer only 2 of the 3 remaining questions. I wrote down a small outline of answers for all of the questions and chose the 3 that I felt the most confident about. It was hard to process thoughts because the lack of sleep was really kicking in, but I just took my time and ended up being the last person in the room for at least 20 or so minutes. When I handed in my exam Fabio told me he was happy to see I made it to class and asked me all about my trip. It was comforting to hear him be concerned for me and want to know all about my adventures. We talked for a little while and I eventually went up to the library to just wait til European Issues. I had trouble staying awake in class, but she went through the material over Belgium and the Netherlands so fast! I couldn’t wait to go home and finally be able to “rest,” even though I still had to study for our Italian test tomorrow, eat dinner, shower, try to unpack, and attempt to get some rest.
P.S. I must point out one little funny fact that I forgot to mention. When we were on our way to Spain we all were talking about how great it would be to use all of the Spanish that we learned in high school, but in Barcelona they actually speak a really strange language called Catalan there which is more of a regional tongue. Catalan was like a mix of Spanish, Italian, and French, but it was still understandable for the most part. When we got back to it Italy I thought it would be no problem to switch back over to full-out Italian, but I did end up saying “Hola” to the person at the sandwich counter…whoops!
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