Saturday:

Today started with excitement over Spain and sadness over leaving Turkey. It quickly turned to panic. Omer suggested I do my web check-in before Idil came to go for breakfast. That is when I discovered my flight was for 6:00am, not 6:00pm and it was 9:30am. (these were the papers that went AWOL in Goa) Enter the feeling of absolute panic that is impossible to express and you find yourself wandering in circles because you have no idea what to do. Thankfully Omer is an experienced traveller and we were soon going over the options. I called the airline in Spain and as expected, you snooze you lose, literally. Then we started looking to see what the cheapest option was including planes and trains. We couldn’t book stuff online for some reason and we had to go to the airport anyway to mail my package so I packed my bag in weak hope that it would get sorted and get me to Spain in time for Monday. At the post office it turned out the machines were down for the weekend and now I was stuck with a box of stuff on top of everything else. Back at the airline desk that was supposed to open at 1:00 but it was 1:45 now. Turns out my flight was transferable, umm, awesome! The flight were sold out until the next evening though, boo. Unless I wanted to upgrade to business class, for a mere 197euro instead of the original 519euro, SCORE! After warm goodbye’s and inexpressible gratitude to my saviour and companions from the last 3 weeks (seriously, Omer even changed my Turkish Lira for Euro’s), it was off to wait until check-in an hour later. I waited in the slow going lineup until I realized I could go through the VIP one with people wondering what was up with the backpacking hippie girl in first class, I flew through with no extra charge on the box of stuff and up to the lounge where I had something to eat and access to wifi. Got a whole row to myself on the flight and a great dinner, the plane was nothing fantastic but I had piles of space and played musical chairs confusing the poor guy in front who unexpectedly tilted back to hear my clattering dishes that thankfully never spilled. Next flight, back to the VIP room in the gorgeous Barajas airport in Madrid with power to charge the iPod and on my second flight, I had all of business class to myself. The flight was shorter than I thought and next thing I knew I was in Seville. I decided that the box was a bit of a pain but also good because now I’d have a larger wardrobe to work with for the month. I took a cab to the Samay hostel which is fantastic, after some twittering and facebooking, I climbed on my bunk and went to sleep.

Sunday:

I missed the sun! Oh heat, how I missed you too! I’m sitting on the rooftop at the Samay drinking tea and blogging at my leisure while my stuff waits in storage for when I go to my apartment later. I’ve been trying to figure out where all the places I need to go tomorrow will be and found that everything is pretty much walking distance. I’ll be taking a walking tour later to get my bearings and getting my plans for tomorrow tighter. I’m loving the ability to understand the majority of what people say and everyone has been so helpful! From the couple on the plane who gave me their daughters info in case I need it, to the futball scout who made sure I got to my next flight, to the cabbie who took me to the hostel, to the people at the front desk. Men actually offer their seats to women, stand up when you come near, ladies first through every doorway… I’m home.