I might not have any stories about my stay in Spain that are worth writing for my web page, but I have two about coming and going there. I guess the two reasons I wanted to post them online are: I didn't have a livejournal when these two things happened, and, strangely, they had some emotional significance and impact to me.

As you know, I spent 7 weeks in Spain from late May to mid-July 2002. That was the first time I'd ever left the country, and only the second (round-trip) plane trip I had taken. (The first was to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the 13-year-old Dizzy Dean World Series!)

Our plane trip took us from Hartsfield to the Paris airport, Charles de Gaulle, and then to Madrid's airport. It was on Air France, so that was the natural course. First of all, I just want to say I love hearing French spoken. I never knew the name of Paris's airport, and when I heard the French-speaking announcer at our gate make announcements in English and then French, it was slightly surprising and definitely pleasing to hear him pronounce "Charl-de-Gaulle." It never occurred to me that it would be pronounced like that. It was just so cool. So I got to hear him say that a few times, and also the captain of the plane said it once or twice. I think they teach them to say that a lot because it's so neat to hear to us.

So the first impactful thing that happened to me on my trip was: as the plane was descending towards Paris, and I looked out the window at the sky, trees, roads, buildings, and everything else, I was taken aback by the fact that these were all French objects and places—European, on another continent, across a huge ocean, but it all looks the same as it would anywhere else. Normal trees, normal sky, normal pavement, office buildings, roads, airport, airplanes—but they're all European, and I've never experienced this before. For some reason, and only for a short time, that struck me as very...neat, special, I don't know a better word. There was nothing outwardly different about anything out the window, but it was all French, waaaayyyy far away from anywhere I had ever been. I wonder how many people have felt the same thing, and if anyone else can understand what I mean.

Skipping 7 weeks of details, I can tell you I was pretty ready to come home by the end, if only for the food. By the end of our stay in the dorm in Valencia, I and the rest of us would all have been perfectly content to stay there for another few weeks, as we had made it our home. I didn't want to leave there. I felt like I still had unfinished business with the Spanish language, the culture, the sights, and, especially, the ice cream. But once we hit that road in our big ol' bus on Monday morning to go to Granada for half a day (to see the Alhambra), leave for Sevilla Tuesday morning, see a fantastic flamenco show our second night there (Wednesday), leave for our original Madrid hotel Thursday afternoon (a long drive), and get up at 6:00 to go to the airport Friday morning, I was ready to be at home, in my bed, in my house, with my family. Also the worst part was that I turned my ankle playing soccer and tore some ligaments (or tendons, same thing), so I was in pain and crippled for the last week of the trip, not to mention I was very sick for at least one afternoon in Sevilla, so that made me even more anxious to get the hell home.

So the point of all this is: In Hartsfield Airport when we were making it to the homestretch of things you have to go through before you finally make it to your welcoming party, one of the Hartsfield employees at one of the turnstiles or security checks or whatever was a black lady (so rare in Hartsfield, I know), and when I heard her speak in that typical black southern accent, it made me feel so at home. I hadn't heard anyone but Spaniards and my fellow-students talk in...forever, and I think none of us did much talking from the aforementioned early morning in Madrid until we met our families, and to hear that black lady speak just really struck me as...I don't know, nice. Home. Atlanta. America. It was the final thing that knocked me back into reality, out of my tired, sleepy, glad-to-be-home-but-still-missing-Spain reverie I was in. It was great, and I never would have expected it.

(And by the way, I know that's not how you spell Charles de Gaulle in French; it was supposed to be phonetic.)
(And by the way, when we got up to the top of the escalator and saw the hundreds-strong welcoming party for all the passengers on the flight, with the runway or whatever in the background behind the big glass wall of the welcoming area, with the darkening night sky, that was just damn cool. Why? Because everything's better at night.)