Study Abroad Problems (Hashtag) --3 days Pre-race

It’s not my fault that I feel like crying every time I’m in the airport. 

Well, maybe a little.  I’m talking tears of embarrassment, after wandering around the airport* clueless to the terminal I’m in related to the one I’m supposed to be in.  *Note the lack of specificity here: this has happened to me in every airport I’ve been in for the past two months.  Counting on fingers, that’s… 5 airports.  I’ve been overly terminal-conscious since “that one time” I sprinted through JFK to catch my flight to Spain on that first day back in August.  Once seated on that flight finally regaining control of both my breath and my nerves, I could brush it off as traveler’s inexperience.

…Traveler’s inexperience continued.  The Lisbon International Airport in Portugal, where I now sit to catch my connecting flight to Munich, consists of two terminals.  Only two.  And for what it matters I’m not sure the second one exists.  After perusing the departing flights on multiple screens and not finding my flight, I am convinced I need to be in the other terminal.  So I turn corners, walk through airport bars and cafés, even ask a security guard; take an escalator, go through security again, which includes chugging once again the water from the bottle I’ve just refilled, and wind up all the way back in front of the first screen I checked.  Rephrase: I’ve succeeded in making a complete loop around the airport.  Duration of loop: roughly 25 minutes.

I look again, knowing my frustration is in spill-over danger.  Not on the list.  About five seconds away from stamping my feet and causing a real scene, the voice in my head finally surfaces.  “Stop checking the screen and check the email confirmation you went through so much trouble to print.  You’re looking at your boarding time, not departure time,” it mutters, exasperated and rolling its eyes at me.  What do you know, my flight to Munich, Germany is indeed further down on the screen, 30 minutes later than the boarding time I had been searching.

Luckily, the realization brings instant comic relief.  I will laugh about it now.  The funny thing is, the better I get at travelling the worse I get at Spanish.  After my weekend in Portugal, my host mom told me she could tell I had been speaking English all weekend because my Spanish was worse.  If three days in Portugal exacerbated my Spanish, I have no idea what three weeks back in the States after Christmas will do.

Then I remember that I’m in Europe, currently on the chattiest flight I’ve ever been on, probably one of the few English-speakers among so many Germans, with a copy of Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal (in Spanish, if you didn’t catch that), writing letters in English, and reflecting on the Spanish woman I helped in the cafeteria line at the Zurich airport in Sweden.

I think that’s me calling trump.