This past Saturday was... Interesting... It started off reallllllly fun, and then maybe the universe saw how much fun we were having and decided to throw us off our game.
Me and my friend Izzy (the other American in my school) decided to go shopping Saturday in Zaragoza (It has a really awesome mall)(don't worry mom I didn't buy much, it was more so that Izzy could get new clothes). Anyways, we took the bus there at 9AM, as it takes about two hours by bus to get there and we wanted to have the whole day to explore and shop (the plan was to take the last bus back to Sabi at 7:30). We had an amazing day, we went shopping for a few hours, and then went out to lunch at Taco Bell (which is really special because it almost doesn't exist here). We also got the hang of the tram system, and I was our navigator with my awesome little map of the city. I've been there a few times, and I know a lot about the city (because my host dad knows a lot about the city and much like my real dad will talk foreverrrr). It's a really beautiful place, there's a really beautiful cathedral called Pilar, and a whole plaza dedicated to it. So we spent our time exploring the center from about 3PM to 6:45PM when we started looking for a bus to get back to the station. We got to the stop, and then realized that it did not have service with the bus we needed, and after consulting my map, I realized that the stop we needed was way past the plaza on the other side, probably about a mile away. At this point it was 7, and we had thirty minutes until our bus left the station. We realized we needed to get to the stop, and fast, so we started running. We're both runners, so we wouldn't have had much of a problem with it, if it weren't for the fact that we were fully dressed (with thick coats for the cold) and we had shopping bags (I had the majority of my things in my backpack). It was uncomfortable. While we were running through the plaza, my backpack opened up at the top and all of my stuff started falling out, but of course I didn't notice until we were about 100 meters from where it started falling out. All of my things were scattered on the ground, including my wallet, and all of my new things. We gathered them up and right when we thought we had everything, a woman came running up to us holding a dress I had just bought and my credit card which I guess had fallen out of wallet. I am so so thankful for that woman, I wouldn't have checked through my wallet until we were at least on the bus.
So Izzy and I kept running towards the bus stop, but now I had my backpack clutched to my chest. Which definitely did not help with the discomfort of our activities. We were about a block away from the stop when I realized that the bus was almost there, so we sprinted the last 30 yards (sorry I keep switching between meters and the American measurements). AND WE MADE IT ONTO THE BUS! And we were so so happy, because our bus didn't leave until 7:30 and it was only 7:15, and we were only about 10 minutes from the station! We were so so happy, and although we were 99% positive we wouldn't miss our bus, we did think of other options we had in case we did. When we got to the station, we ran straight to the platform and checked the screens to find out that our bus didn't leave until 7:35 even though online it had said 7:30! We were so excited, so we decided to go buy our tickets at the counter (the previous plan had been to buy them on the bus). When we got to the ticket place and asked for two tickets to Sabi, the woman asked us "tomorrow?". When we said "no, right now" she informed us that the last bus had left at 7:15, and that the screens were indicating that the bus would arrive from Sabi at 7:35. We waited at the platform just hoping that the lady was wrong, but she was right, and we were left in a city two hours from home with no bus to get back on.
I have friends who are on exchange in the city, so I called up my friend Pooja to see if she could have us in her host house for the night, and her host mom was happy to take us. We called our host parents, and her host parents said it was fine as did my host dad (my host mom was just returning from a few days in Madrid). We decided not to make extra trouble for Pooja's host family by eating dinner in the center before taking the bus to her house (that way her host mom wouldn't need to cook for us too). We ate sandwiches at a Spanish chain called Pans & Company which is essentially the Spanish version of McDonalds. They were pretttty gross. We were getting ready to figure out the bus to Pooja's house when my host mom called, and she was very very angry. I was really confused, because I thought we had done everything right. We had stayed calm and figured out a good, safe option, and we had gotten permission from everyone we needed to. Of course I was thinking it was the right thing to do in my USA mind. Because back in California we would've done that and it would've been the good thing to do. However as my host mom explained to me later (her first phone call was just a lot of angry and not a lot of an explination), it is not okay to invite yourself to someone else's house, NOT IN España. Not that it's a polite thing to do in the USA either, but when it's an emergency (such as being stuck in a city overnight) it is a fine thing to do. Here people are reallllly into their houses. It seems that they're always cleaning, and trying to improve their houses so they like to have more of a warning when they're going to have guests. Honestly, Pooja's host mom seemed excited to have us. Her son Guillen is in my Rotary District back in California, and he and I talk a lot because we're both in eachother's area of their country (if that makes sense haha).But my host mom realllly did not want us to intrude and was really quite furious about it, so cultural differences got me again gosh dang it.
Anyways my host mom told us that what we needed to do was take a bus to Huesca (a city about an hour south of Sabi, and a bus we did not know existed)and that she would come pick us up there. We were still in the center of the city when she told us this, and the bus left at 10:30, and it was 10:00 already (I feel like you probably already know where this is going). So Izzy and I set off to find a bus to the station. We were just getting to a stop where they did have service with our bus, when our bus (number 34) pulled away :( Buses run every 10 minutes there, and we knew we could make it if we got on the next bus so we waited. Another one came very soon after, and we got on, however we were very confused (and stressed from having missed yet another bus) that we got on the bus going the wrong way. We ended up being the last people on the bus, which really confused us because normally lots of people need to get to the bus station. Well it turned out we had made it to the end of the route (the opposite side of the city as the bus station), and we ended up having to pay a second time and go through the entire route :( making us late for a bus we were already running late for. At 10:28 we were still a good 8 minutes from the station so I called my host mom and told her there was no way we were making it on that bus. At that point I figured she would say it's easier if we stay at Pooja's, but instead she informed us that she and my host dad would come get us at the bus station, a 1.5 hour drive for them.
I was really frustrated, because I felt that I had done the right thing, I hadn't stressed myself out, instead I had found a good way to not cause any more issues. My host mom had been angry that I had not asked my host dad to come get us when I first told him that we had missed our first bus, but I was trying to be polite, and that seemed like a lot to ask at almost eight at night. I guess it really wasn't. Izzy could tell that I was not exactly happy with the way things had ended up, and when we got to the bus station and we were waiting alone, we put on the song "Shake it Off" by Taylor Swift (who is a goddess by the way), and had a little dance party (which one of the security guards TOTALLY saw, but ya know, you just gotta shake it off ;) that was a bad joke. Sorry. Anyways that definitely lightened the mood a lot. Honestly I am just so happy Izzy was there with me. If I had been alone it would've been really hard for me to handle what went down. Or I guess it was hard for me, so just a lot harder.
My host parents came to get us, and we drove home, Izzy and I falling asleep in the backseat.
Overall I think it was a good experience. It was exhausting, a little bit scary, but I think I handled it to the best of my ability, and that's all that can really be expected from me. (And of course I apologized and thanked my host parents a million times for coming to get us).
Dear Mom and Dad, please don't let this story stress you out. Obviously if I have people who are willing to drive almost two hours to come get me in the middle of the night I'm being taken care of well. Hopefully I won't have to write about anything similar to this again.
P.S- In case you were wondering, we took 12 buses/ trams that day. And we only missed three.... So three missed out of 15? That's only like 20%... AKA 80% not missed. I'm okay with those stats I think. Thanks for reading this!
Also if you're looking for photos from Carnaval (my last blog post) they're on my Facebook page!
Hasta luego! -Zeph (:
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