The past twenty-four hours marked the start of my three-month trip to Spain. Travis drove me to the hotel in Des Moines on Tuesday night so that we wouldn’t have to get up early in the morning to drive for my flight. It was a good thing too, because when we stopped in Sioux City the car stalled on us. For a bit there, we thought we’d have to call someone to come pick me up and continue the adventure. But we arrived in Des Moines just fine last night.
The flights themselves were pretty good so far. My first flight I got a window sleep and took an hour or two nap on the way to Detroit. While in Detroit I met some pretty fun people. I don’t remember any names, but people in airports are either really angry or really excited. The ones I met were on their ways to vacation, so they were bubbling with energy just like me.
One girl, who was going on the Amsterdam flight with me, was on her way to Barcelona for a five-day trip with a friend. She graduated college three years ago, and is still travelling the world. My lesson to learn from this person was that you can totally continue to travel, even so shortly after college (and you don’t have to do it on a holiday! Just go and do it, and enjoy yourself).
The second ‘person’ was actually two women at the airport. One was going to Germany for two weeks, then to Italy. The other was going to Italy for two weeks then coming back. However, as I spoke with these two it was pretty fun thinking about the communication barriers and the US thoughts on such. I’ve never been one to get angry at people for not learning English when they come to the US, but I do admit it frustrates me when we’re unable to communicate. However, these women spoke neither Italian nor German, which got me to thinking about how I don’t speak Italian or French at all! And I plan on going to both of those countries! I can’t wait to see what it’s like to be on the other side of the “not-learning-a-language” situation. I wonder if those countries are more accepting than Americans are…
Finally, I met a man (Stephen Kamali) from Kenya on my flight to Amsterdam as well. He just graduated from Med School in Michigan (which he said was “quite cold” and I bet compared to Kenya that’s an understatement!). He does work with the Air Force or one of our armed forced branches, but his trip was to go and do missionary work in Kenya. He’s done it for one month every year for the past three years, so already knew what he was getting into. It was interesting though to hear about how the situation is. He said that he will be in a large van/mobile clinic, and that he will be the only doctor there, along with two RN’s. That’s a lot to put on someone who just got out of medical school, but I think It’s awesome he’s doing it. He said that he will see between 50 and 60 people a day! But unlike the medicine they teach here in the US, he’ll have to use generic versions of drugs, some he’s never heard of so was reading about on the flight, and have to diagnose without a CAT scans, MRI’s, and X-Rays… Like I said, sounded like a lot of pressure. Lesson from him: pay back to your community. It helped you become who you are today, so don’t forget about it no matter how far you go. On a related note: he spoke 14 different languages/dialects!!
On another note, in preparation for Spain I started listening to some of the top Spain music. “Waka Waka” by Shakira is apparently the top song in Spain right now (go figure, as it was the anthem of FIFA and Spain won!). This song, being just as catchy as the rest of Shakira’s songs, was stuck in my head the entire flight! EVERY time I got close to sleep (except for the first hour or two on this flight) I started thinking “Llego el momento…” haha! And all the parts I understand would play in my mind!
The song, as it is “This time for Africa” in its English version, and similar in the Spanish one, has some Swahili in it. I asked Stephen what the words mean and for those who are interested in Swahili: “tsamina mina” is something like “talk to me” and “waka waka” is like “fire fire” or “shoot shoot.”
Por fin, I have between two and four hours of sleep under my belt so far and about 8 hours of silent/light-music relaxation and contortions in an airplane seat. Hopefully on my next flight I can get a few more. Tomorrow is a very full day! Arrival in Spain, drive to Cáceres, orientation, and meeting the host families!
No comments:
Post a Comment