09-01-07 To Cadiz!

I went to bed around 12 and obsessively woke up to check what time it was. I forgot to bring any sort of alarm device and my clock was the computer. I probably spent about half of the hours in bed trying to fall back asleep, waking up a good 20 times or so. At 5 I finally gave up, and got ready to catch the metro at 6 to the airport.

Walking around town at 6 AM was an experience in itself due to the large number of people still out and about. The first train of the morning was much fuller than I thought it would be, but I with one glance around I figured out why. Many heads were drooping onto shoulders, people were yawning, and all were catching the train home after a long night of festivity.

At the airport I met up with Josh, Michaela, and Jessica who were taking the same early flight to Jerez de la Frontera. After a short flight we arrived fresh and ready for some adventure, well at least Josh and I did. Michaela and Jessica were not very into exploring. Josh and I convinced them to come with us into town with us since we had a good few hours to kill. The tourism lady gave us some instructions and off we went, hauling all of our crap into town. At the bus station in town, where we were told we could leave our things a guard with the most ridiculously hard to understand accent told us that a new ordinance made it so that we can’t leave bags there, effectively killing our adventuresome escapade since trekking around town with rollers the size of small cows wasn’t going to be easy. We found two more programees at the bus station who returned with us to the airport where we found even more programees!

That evening we arrived in Cadiz and we were whisked away by our different families. Since my ‘mom’ was feeling poorly my ‘dad’ picked me up. Celso, a retired captain in the navy who was once the top assistant to the governor of all of the Cadiz province, is a fantastic man who loves to laugh and joke. Having served in the navy he has traveled to many places and was even stationed in the United States for a while. Carmen is also great. She works as a flamenco teacher in and around town. Her cooking is fantastic and she feeds me way too much frequently. Her most endearing quality is how much she enjoys talking. Oh man do I get an earful about everything. It is occasionally excessive but never annoying. They are both intelligent, have intelligent kids, and entertain my developing Spanish as well as wandering mind.

After some lunch a nap, some dinner, and a walk I slept soundly for the first time in a few days quite comfortably and certainly content with my situation here in Cadiz.