The Trip

I am safe and sound in Strasbourg. Ipa took me to Chicago on Sunday night and I hung out with the Chicago Chungs for the evening. I love those crazy kids; they remind me so much of myself and my siblings at that age! I got to the airport at noon for my 4:45 plane. The ticket counter didn’t open until 1 so I waited for an hour and then another three hours my plane took off without any mishap or delays. I sat next to a 16yr old girl from Madrid who had been visiting the family that had hosted her study abroad last year. We talked for a while and then I basically sat awake the next 7 hours of my eight hour plane ride. I got to Madrid and went through customs with no problem at all. By that time I was exhausted so I just pushed two benches together and slept for 6 hours of my 7 hour layover, probably not the best thing to do, I am very happy that no one just walked off with my stuff. But really if you were going to steal something in an airport would it be the raggedy backpack from a sleeping 20yr old or the Louis Vuitton bag from the 30 something woman who set it down to talk on the phone? Also all the signs in the Madrid airport were in English first then Spanish.

Anyhow it was another two hours from Madrid to Strasbourg. The flight attendants on Iberia were by far the most beautiful I have ever seen. Truly all of them were very tall gorgeous long hair perfectly manicured nails the right touch of makeup well you get the idea anyhow they spoke English to me after I had employed my entire Spanish vocabulary which consisted of Hola, los banos, audios, bueno dias, and the word for silverware which I have no idea how to spell.
S. the father of the family I am staying with met me at the airport. I was very nervous about meeting the family and just seeing S there was intimidating. The Strasbourg airport is not very big it’s comparable to the Cedar Rapids airport so I really didn’t have any clue what I was doing. Some sweet girl about my age pointed me in the right direction after I stood around looking like an idiot at the baggage carousel while everyone else picked up their luggage and mine was nowhere to be found. Apparently people coming from outside of the EU had a different area to go through which makes sense because then I had to go through customs. Customs consisted of a French lady speaking every language she knew which seemed to me like everything except English. We laughed together and made our way through. She asked me things in French like are you declaring anything and translated it into English as “did you brings machine guns” I responded by saying “non je ne parle Francais, no guns” haha exactly like that it was amusing to say the least thank heavens she thought the whole thing was as funny as I did.