¡Hola España!

This morning was an early one and I was not a happy camper. I had fallen asleep waiting for my blog pictures to upload from yesterday and I was still sitting up with the lights on and my computer on my lap. I woke up once and put my computer on the floor in a daze. A bit later I woke up and managed to lay down my pillows and turn off the lights. I cozied up, much happier and joyfully drifting back into dreams. At least, for 30 seconds before those lights flashed back on and I instantly moaned. "Rise and Shine" my mom said, but it felt like she screamed it into my ear because I was so tired. Lucky me I also only had 20 minutes to get ready and pack up the rest of my stuff. We just barely made it to our boat shuttle to the airport.

Once we got to the airport we had to check the bags because the plane was full and I didn't mind not hauling it through the airport, but it really stressed my mom out. After a couple hour fight to Barcelona we had a four hour layover. After grabbing some food and waiting a lot we got on to our one hour flight to San Sebastian. I had finally woken up and gotten perky by then. Who couldn't be excited to see their sister after being separated for three weeks? Unfortunately, arriving at the airport didn't go super smoothly, which made me think we would be late to meet Hannah, but we were okay. Our first lucky bit was only getting two of the three suitcases we checked. We got to have lots of fun filing a claim en Español. Luckily is was my dad's bag that got lost, so I was in the clear. Our next string of luck was getting to our brand new and undamaged car and finding damage. After redoing some paperwork we were finally on our way. The airport scenario wasn't too hard, but it certainly didn't go perfectly. We were non sarcastically lucky by having an easy drive to our apartment and easily picking up our keys.

Not long after we got our apartment someone finally showed up to our trip three weeks late. Who? HANNAH! I was so happy to see her and she even brought I new friend for me to meet, Ruby. She is also from BoCo, but they didn't meet until going to Spain. I also got to see Makaela again, which made me very happy. After everyone said hello to everyone Hannah, Ruby, Makaela, and I all headed out to meet up with a few more of her friends for dinner. Neither Ruby nor I had a clue where we were so we just followed Hannah and Makaela, thinking that after three weeks they would be great at navigating the city. We were quite wrong as it turned out. We ended up getting on the right bus going the wrong direction. This meant we were driven all of the way out of the city to the end of the line. Here the bus stopped on the side of the road for a long time, as the driver had gotten out of the bus and started talking on his phone. We were really confused and already running late for dinner. The driver didn't look like he would be done anytime soon. We considered walking back to the city, but knew it would take ages. Miraculously, a bus that would take us to the restaurant the right way drove by and we created quite the scene by sprinting out of the bus and across the street, begging the driver of the other bus to let us on even though we weren't at a stop. He didn't look thrilled, but he was kind enough to let us on. However, we happened to have no swipes left on any of the bus cards. Hannah dug some cash out of her bag and we got on officially. We eventually got to the Indian restaurant that was our destination and met up with the rest of the group. Adin, Conner, and Celeste. They all seemed super nice as we sat down for our huge Indian dinner.

When we finally finished eating there was no way any of us could fit a crepe in their stomach, which was our original plan. Instead we started looking for fires on one of the city's main beaches. We couldn't find any on La Concha, which made all of us worried that the fires that were supposed to be lit for the San Juan holiday weren't real. The idea behind the fires is to burn all of the old things you want to forget and to jump over the fire to signify new beginnings. After taking a few really funny pictures we headed up to the town's surfer beach. Here we found the entire beach covered with fires of all sizes. Some were enormous and other were barely surviving. We all walked down to the water, which was really far out because of the tide and put our feet in the refreshingly cold water. We walked back to the beach after not to long and sat in the sand among the fires. This was when someone had the genius idea that we try to make a fire ourselves. Adin had some worksheets in his backpack and we figured we could light our fire using one of the other fires around us. A few people saved our spot on the beach while the other, including me and Hannah went on an adventure to find some cardboard for our fire. It wasn't too hard to find once we found some dumpsters. Loaded up, we walked back to the beach and were greeted with tons of fireworks. After digging a small sandpit we crunched the worksheets up a bit and brought over some delicate embers from a long abandoned fire. With some blowing and babying we eventually coerced a flame to emerge. We were so proud of our selves that we almost let it die while celebrating, but we saved it and fed it some more paper and cardboard. Eventually we had a real fire and a huge sense of pride. We fed it pretty constantly and I decided to give jumping over the fire a go. The fire was pretty small so clearing it wasn't hard, but it was fun. Our fire was running out of fuel so Adin and I ran in search of some more dumpster cardboard, which felt wet, but we decided not to think about it and to hope it was alcohol to help out our dwindling fire. Whatever was on the cardboard did save it and we ended up with a relatively huge fire for us, but there were some twenty times bigger than ours at least. Fireworks continues to bellow and boom and fires cackled and crackled. Time ticked by faster than comprehension allows. Around 12:15 we covered our fire in sand to put it out and walked back down to the water. Some lights projected off of a building and reflected off of the sky's clouds of smoke. It was sad to say goodbye to my brand new friends after sharing an experience as amazing as the fire night of San Juan. We walked back to our apartment with Adin, who's host family lived close to us and we crawled into bed at the early hour of one. Every minute of the nigh was absolutely worth every minute of lost sleep. This was by far one of my life's most amazing nights.