Stories of Spain 1 at 00:59

Hello,

This is my first update from Spain, although I've been here for four days now. I actually set a lot of time each day to stop and journal my trip (feeling at times that I'm doing it rather obsessively), but I hadn't posted while I had internet at my hotel in Sevilla, and now that I'm in Cordoba it's much more difficult to find internet access.
I'm doing well! It took me over 24 hours to get to my hotel on the first day, and at one point in the airport in Barcelona (BAR), I was delirious and sleep-deprived but I couldn't sleep because the airport doesn't announce where flights are boarding and at which gate, so I had to stay awake and constantly check the board to see if my delayed flight had arrived yet.

On the last leg of my four flights, I sat next to a really interesting guy named Elliot, who was from Chicago but had spent the last year teaching English on some island on the south of Spain, and was continuing onto Cadiz from Sevilla, to teach English for this next year. He was very funny and the kind of guy who has no shame, and doesn't stop talking, and his Spanish was excellent. Unfortunately I only started talking to him since we started the descent, since as soon as I boarded I immediately knocked out.

I had to wait at the baggage claim longer than everybody, because I still didn't have my bag and the carousel stopped moving. I had a somewhat valid fear that my bag did not make it with me, since my transfer at O'Hare was tricky enough for a conscious person, and there was another complication at Barcelona. But I prayed for the minutes that the bag didn't show, and the carousel next to mine the one I was waiting at started moving - and spat out my luggage. Victory!

I wandered outside for the bus, and saw Elliot dancing as three Africans played on their shell drums. "Do you get yourself into these situations often?" I asked him, laughing. He shook his head with a straight face, but cracked into a grin and admitted that he did. Then he told the Africans that I was a percussionist, and in their French-accented English, one of them told me to play his drum so he could sing. So he demonstrated a few strokes and beating spots on his shell, and I started drumming a funk beat. The other two, who were women, fit into my rhythm, and the guy who gave me his drum started rapping. No kidding. I actually have no recollection of what he said, but we played and danced and sang for five minutes or so, entertaining the rest of the travellers waiting for the bus.

Soli Gloria Dei,
Yi David Yang