I'm on my way

In a few hours, I will have to leave the commodity of my home in order to begin my adventures abroad. I cannot wait. After forcing myself to bed last night and forcing myself to wake up at a decent hour, I am getting to excited to want to sit still. Even now, however, I still have a number of things to do. One, for example, being that of buying a gift for my host mother. I'm debating on buying something from Starbuks, as I used to work there and they have a nice little mug with the Memphis skyline on it. I am unsure yet...

Other than that, I still have to say my "See you later's" to some friends, and as time is counting down, I have to make them quick!"
(the above was written almost 3 hours before I had to be at the airport)

At the airport, on my way to Spain:

The first airport I had to go through was my own Memphis International. Although a fairly nice airport, it is always awful traveling to and from here. Unless you are going to Amsterdam, you are going to have a connecting flight. And so I did, only this connection was in the Dallas/FtWorth Texas airport. Well, when I first began my trip, being in the Memphis airport I have to admit that there was hardly anybody there. But, since I had plenty of time to spare, I was walking around in between terminals. This was great because I got to see some of Memphis City Schools' artwork hanging around Terminal A. I participated in that same competition 2 years ago, but I do have to admit that some of these looked absolutely amazing. Here is an example of what walking down that terminal looked like:

 

Next stop- Dallas! As we were arriving, I could feel myself becoming more and more anxious to board that final plane. My departing gate was on opposite ends from my arriving gate, and being the only one from that flight to make my connection there for Madrid, the walk there was lonely, but surprisingly satisfying. I had to let it all sink in finally, and so that walk made me realize that it will be like that for a while. Getting closer to my gate, I realized that instead of an airport, I was actually in a minimall disguised as an airport. There were so many stores- Fossil, The Chocolate Factory, and some others which I cannot quite remember. Here is an example of the minimall:

 

I was pleased to find out that one of my classmates was going to be on the plane with me, even if she was going to be sitting about 24 seats behind me! Once aboard the plane, realizing that I was one of the first to get on, I awaited to see whom I was going to sit next to on that nine hour flight. After what seemed like forever, I finally saw her approach the seat. To my surprise, she was Italian! It was the first glimpse that I was going to get about European fashion. While we were on the plane, it was quite funny because she could hardly speak English. So when I asked her something and she was having trouble understanding me, I asked her in Spanish. Curiously enough, she understood me then. Aside from that, most of the trip was about looking at a little map every second or so to see our progress (which took forever because due to bad weather, our flight was delayed for about half an hour). I listened to music, read one of my books, wrote the rest of my paper, and just wondered what it was going to be like to be in this beautiful foreign country.