I am going to open up with the fact that I finally made it home. After traveling for about 30 hours straight and trying to sleep on a train one night, and a marble airport floor the next my bed felt great. But the point of this post is to explain my 14 day trip of insanity through France and Italy. So I will start from the beginning.

15/05/09
I had woken up that morning and checked my book to see that I could catch a train at 10:00 PM to get into Barcelona in the morning. We had a closing session for school at 5 that night. So I went to lunch with my house mom and walked her to work. We said our goodbyes, and some tears followed. She was my mother for 5 months and saw me everyday during those 5 months, it was hard not to cry. We had a connection to each other. So I got on the metro at like 3:30 to go book my train before I went to the ceremony. I had all my luggage and got the station and asked them about the train to Barcelona which they seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. So I moved to my next option. Is there any way that I can get to Barcelona by tomorrow morning. The lady did some typing on her computer and found a train into a town called Burgos where I could then transfer to a train to Barcelona.....the problem was the train was leaving in 10 minutes. I said book it, called my friends and told them goodbye, I will not be at the ceremony. With this change came some unexpected costs. I had to book a ticket in first class on a train that was leaving at 2 AM from Burgos. So I was out of Bilbao for the rest of my life, but my heart will always remain there. I can not thank my parents enough for allowing me to do the experience of study abroad. Not only did I learn so much about the culture, the language, the people, and the continent of Europe; I also learned so much about myself. So I get on this train to Burgos and get a call from my buddy who is angry at me cause I seemed to have pulled off the best grades out of all of our friends (4 As and a B, but I am not bragging). I get into Burgos around 7 PM and notice there is an earlier train and go talk to someone about this problem. I solve my problem of the expensive first class ticket on a 2 AM train by purchasing a second class ticket on a train that is 2 hours earlier. I am quite the problem solver. So I get on this train which is a night train. On night trains they have 6 seats facing eachother in this small room. The seats can pull out all the way to make a bed. I am in the room with some random girl and another guy, so we all sprawl out and fall asleep........I don't because I am too excited and full of emotion. This lasts an hour as the train makes a stop in another town and more people enter. So we get woken up by a family who is in our car.

16/05/09 (Since it is now after Midnight)

I change seats and sit next to the girl so that the family can sit together. We get to talking and I make a new friend named Yaiza from Galicia. She doesn't speak ANY english besides Hello and a few random words like Butter. We have an interesting conversation and we watch the sun rise as we pull into Barcelona; this watching the sun rise while I pull into cities becomes a normality on this trip. So I get off the train and I have no credit on my phone to get into contact with my travelling partner, Alex, but luckily Yaiza was nice enough to let me use her phone. We call Alex, I meet her up and we say our goodbyes. Me and Alex drop off the bags we are not travelling with and head out to check out Barcelona for a few hours before our train to Marseille. We had a coffee, since we both haven't slept and went to the open air market to grab some food and then went to the Segrada Familia. We then catch a train, I found out you can travel for free if you do short distances. So we go from Barcelona to Cerbere, France which is right on the border of Spain and France. We then caught a train to Narbonne and finally Marseille. These train rides were so beautiful since we literally followed the Meditteranean sea the whole time. There were times where it was the train, ocean, and then swamp on the other side. I felt like I was travelling through Louisiana. At this point on the train we have no idea where we are going to stay or even if we will make it to Marseille, but we do make it to Marseille and start walking around looking for Hostels. I walk into everyone looking for the cheapest price. I find one for 15 euro and say book it. This hostel was extremely dirty with a non functioning elevator. Its about 10 minutes away from the train station and in an area that is extremely Arabic, but we are fine. So we walked around a little bit, grabbed a glass of wine, and had a bite to eat. We head to beat early and thats the start of our Europe trip!

Time is winding down here, and I completely loved my experience abroad. Not only have I learned so much about the culture, the language, and the people, but I also learned soooo much about myself. I am writing this post because I am going to post a picture of my senora and I. Also here is my schedule for next weeks Eurrail trip:
5/16 to 5/29
Marseille, Nice, Cannes, Cinque Terra, Monaco, Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan!!!!