Off To The Airport... Again

How is it that December completely took hold of me, leaving me frozen in my tracks, unable to move forward? I never even finished writing about Portugal, and I'm heading out of town again on another adventure later today. Four years ago, I took my first West African Dance class with Idy Ciss. He told me about a two-week dance-themed tour that he leads every year in December in his native Senegal, and I was intrigued. I took a brochure, mulled it over, checked flight prices, and decided I would wait until the following year. After all, I'd only just started taking classes with him, I didn't know whether I'd like it enough to fly all the way to Africa and spend two weeks with him and a group of my fellow dance students.

The next year I wasn't able to go due to my work schedule, nor the following year, or the year after that. After not taking classes for a couple years due to work obligations, I began taking classes with Idy again in September of this year. He recognized me immediately, and welcomed me back into the class. Out of curiosity, I asked if he still did his annual tour of Senegal. "Wait right here," he said, "I have the brochures in the car."

This year I'm unemployed; the only thing stopping me is the common sense logic of not spending money on an expensive airline ticket when I'm only earning what the Illinois Department of Employment Security pays me every two weeks. On the other hand, with adventures of this kind, its always a question of having the time and the money, and I rarely have both. I had just committed to doing the Habitat for Humanity project in Portugal, but I didn't want to let this one slip away for yet another year. At some point, I reasoned, I won't want to fly to Senegal to dance. Someday I might not be in the physical shape necessary for such an undertaking, or, more likely, someday I'll have a job that will keep me from traveling internationally for two weeks at a time.

I started looking at flights, which are expensive - its not cheap to fly to Senegal, flights typically run about $1,800. One day I was scanning flights and came across one at the unbelievably low (for flying to Senegal) price of $1100. I asked Idy about it; "oh, you won't find anything cheaper than that," he said, "book that today." When I got home I discussed it with M. "Is it crazy?" I asked, somewhat rhetorically. M convinced me to buy the ticket, reasoning that I've wanted to go for years and this might be my one big chance. I bought the ticket. The next day the price went up to $1,800.

All of this was months ago, and in the interim I've had all kinds of adventures, both close to home and far away. I've gone to the travel clinic for immunizations (yellow fever, typhoid, and would you believe polio?) and prescriptions for malaria and something called travelers diarrhea to take with me on my trip. I've watched the calendar with a mixture of trepidation and excitement, and once again, the date has snuck up on me. I spent most of this weekend preparing for this journey, and will be heading to the airport later today. As those of you in the Midwest and on the East Coast know, there's been weather trouble at a number of airports, and as all of you doubtless know, there's been an increase in security. With luck, I'll be in Senegal by tomorrow. If I get delayed maybe there will be time for one more post before the end of the year.

When I return I'll have a backlog of posts to write, but I guess that's not such a bad problem to have. Thanks to all of you for following my adventures, have a wonderful new year's, and I'll talk to you all in 2010.

The Nutcracker

I've shied away from re-posting every single thing that I write for Gapers Block, but I really had fun with this one, I got to see a performance of The Nutcracker with my upstairs neighbors' daughters, who are 3 and 6 years old.

Portugal, Part I

My roommate's alarm went off at 7. She hit the snooze, then got up when it sounded a second time. "Hi J," she said.
"Hi," I said from underneath my bedsheets, "you must be Frances, it's nice to meet you." Frances was the team leader from Habitat, I'd sent her a photo and bio of myself so she could compile it into a document along with the rest of the team's information and email it to us before the trip. I wrote about myself using the third person, and felt like a tool when I saw that everyone else had written about themselves using the first. Secretly I was hoping that I would be paired up with Frances as a roommate, I'd considered a few different Habitat trips before committing to this one, and her easy going manner and Midwestern hominess had sold me. She's originally from Michigan, and I have a soft spot for America's high-five. Some of the best people I've ever met are from Michigan, and every summer M and I spend time at my in-laws' summer cottage in a town called Dowagiac; maybe choosing a trip based on the regional familiarity of the team leader isn't the best way to make a decision, but its not the worst either.

Frances hadn't heard me enter the room the night before, so I explained my unintended late-night check-in, and told her I'd be joining the group later with another team member who hadn't yet arrived. After Frances left the room I could hear the other team members gathering in the hallway, snippets of conversation as they made their way out of their rooms and down the stairs, and wondered which bios matched the voices I was hearing. At 8a.m. church bells rang out, first from one church, then another and another. I lost track of how many, and wondered if this would be an hourly occurrence. Just when I thought I'd never get back to sleep I drifted off.

I woke at 10, ravenous. I descended a flight of stairs to the breakfast room, where evidence that other guests had recently dined surrounded me; empty coffee cups and crumb-filled dishes populated the tabletops in pairs. I approached the buffet table and picked up what I thought was a coffee mug and realized was a cereal bowl only after I'd poured instant coffee into it. The food selection was spare: cereal in plastic dispensers; a few lonely yogurts in a bowl of melted ice; bread rolls; and a couple slices of ham and cheese. I ate a roll with butter and jam, and two pieces of something that looked like zwieback crackers. Then I went back to my room and, Portuguese glossary in hand, walked out of the hotel onto the cobblestone street.

It was raining a little, not enough to really be called rain. Misty drops of condensation landed on my face and darkened the cobblestones, creating a high-contrast tone reminiscent of an old black and white photo. A hundred feet to my left was a cathedral, twenty feet to my right was something that looked like a diner called Refrigerador da Sé . I walked to the cathedral in time to see a group of Asian tourists approach the edifice in silent observation, guidebooks in their hands and cameras around their necks. I followed them into the cathedral and looked inside, then walked back up the street past my hotel, and crossed the street into new territory. I walked past a school where the voices of young students singing in unison could be heard, and further along the narrow street the proprietor of a bar stood outside his establishment and silently watched me walk past him until I rounded the corner to a wide avenue that led to residential buildings and a dead end. I was hungry; I retraced my steps to Refrigerador da Sé, and opened my glossary to the food page.

"Sandsh?" I asked the young, dark-haired woman behind the counter while pointing to the word sandes, which according to my glossary meant sandwich. She called over an older woman, who pointed to all the words in my glossary that were available at the Refrigerador, and said them out loud to me. Then she opened a menu and pointed to the various items available; when her finger hovered over the word omelete, I made a happy sound and nodded my head. "Café?" I asked, the woman nodded and said: "sim" (sounds like si). "Can I sit here?" I asked, pointing to a small round table by the window. She held her hand out towards the table, indicating that the table was available. A few minutes later a delectably strong cappuccino and a ham and cheese omelet served with rice and fries was delivered to me. It was a small victory, but I was extraordinarily pleased with myself. I ate everything on my plate. "Obrigado," I said to the woman as I left, "Obrigado, bom dia," she replied.

Later I was driven to the job site by Irène, a Habitat Portugal staffer, along with the team member whose flight had landed earlier that day. We drove through the town and up into green hills, and parked near the small building we'd be working in for the next week. I walked in and immediately saw Frances.
"There's J!" She said. I was directed to the basement where I put on the construction gloves M had insisted on buying me at Menards, picked out a hard hat, and was assigned to a room in the back of the building to apply cement to the walls. The foreman demonstrated, slopping a pile of cement from a bucket using a trowel, and heaping it onto a flat rectangular plate with a handle on the underside. With the plate in his left hand, he scooped up several ounces of cement onto the back of the trowel with his right, and spread it onto the wall as easily as if he were icing a cake. It was much harder and went much slower when I did it. When the foreman stopped by my station to see how I was doing, he held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart and said "Mais." It sounded like maish, and I knew from context that he was telling me to apply more cement.

By the time we called it a day and walked to the bus stop a few blocks from the job site my wrist was sore from the repeated motion and effort of spreading cement. I had finally met my fellow team members, and if I were to cast celebrities in the movie version of this trip it would break down like this: there was a mother of two from Minneapolis who could be portrayed by Bebe Neuwirth; a woman from California who worked in the film industry who might be played by Lili Taylor; a young ad exec from New York City who could possibly be portrayed by Cher circa 1968; a viola player from New Jersey with a resemblance to Shirley MacLaine; an outdoors-man from Vermont who had a passing resemblance to John Malkovich; an attorney from Utah who could easily be played by Catherine O'Hara; the Habitat team leader, who reminded me of Frances McDormand circa Fargo; and a young man who lived with his parents in southern France, who could be played variously by Nicholas Cage circa Valley Girl or Leaving Las Vegas, depending on the situation. Over the next week or so I would come to know these people, but for now all I knew of them was what I'd read in their bios, and the few hours we'd spent working together.

And Now For Something Completely Different

I feel like I just looked up and suddenly a week has passed since my last post. More travel stories will be coming soon, in the meantime I've been reading my blog stats on google analytics, and have discovered some interesting key word searches that are bringing people to my blog. Below is a list of some of the funnier ones, it kind of reads like a prose poem:

ban nudity in living rooms
coitus groom to his bride in front of the guests
cranberry juice, red pee
drummer with dialysis
happy halloween fat woman's butt as a pumpkin
i pee in my moth
lane bryant embarrassed to be measured
miriam celedonia
led zeppelin immigrant song single blogspot
nude people in noodles
peehole stabbing finger
pentwater adult store
ramen noodles with marijuana
strange sensation afer i pee
red hook immigrant story
why is there no word for seventy in french
uncontrollable exhaling

From Spain to Portugal, Part III - Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I. Planes

I approached an aisle seat occupied by a man with dark, thinning hair, and apologized for making him stand up so that I could get to the window seat. The plane was half empty, and the seat between us remained vacant. When it seemed that boarding had completed, an announcement that I didn't understand went over the PA system, and my neighbor explained that airline personnel would be walking through the cabin to check everyone's boarding passes because there was a discrepancy on the manifest, and it appeared as though there were one more person on the plane than ought to be. I let this information wash over me without lodging in any dark, shadowy places in my brain, and presented my ticket stub when asked.

A follow-up announcement was made and my new friend turned to me and said "they found him." I smiled and nodded. He reminded me a bit of Seinfeld's Uncle Leo, with a dash of Leon Voskovec, the herring merchant from Woody Allen's Love and Death. "One time," he said, "I was going to airport with my daughter, to go to America, and I look at passport the day before my trip," he raised his eyebrows slightly, indicating that the next thing out of his mouth was going to be a shocker, "and I see - expired!"
"Oh!" I said, and raised my eyebrows to mirror his expression.
"I get to America, but coming back home, it's problem." I nodded, tilted my head slightly and raised my shoulders in the universal sign of "whattayougonnado?"

"I fly back through Mexico," he continued. At this point I was committed to the story and wanted to know how on earth the man got back to Portugal on an expired passport. "They make me connect five times," he said, holding his hand up so that I could see the correlation between the digits of his appendage and the number of times he had to connect to different flights. "Finally I make it home. My daughter, she so worried!"
"Yes!" I said emphatically, and imagined myself in her place, flying home alone from the US to Portugal on a flight that I was supposed to be on with my dad, using the in-flight time to figure out a way to break the news to the rest of the family. "Where's dad?" they might ask as they met me at baggage claim. "Well," I'd begin, "there's a story..."

When the in-flight meal arrived my new friend held out a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer and offered it to me, saying "you want alcohol?" I accepted, and a glob of germ-fighting liquid plopped into my open hand, warm from resting in the inside pocket of his jacket. I was hungry, I hadn't eaten since breakfast and it was after 7pm. I ate everything on my plate, even the dry, overly frosted brown dessert.

II. Trains

It was raining in Lisbon when we landed; we de-planed on one of those movable staircases that I've seen in documentaries about the lives of US presidents, and piled onto a bus. With only my Rick Steves backpack to worry about (thanks Rick Steves!), I blew past baggage claim once we reached the terminal and found an information desk, where I was directed to the shuttle bus that would take me to Oriente station. There were two ticket booths at the train station, and I wasn't sure which one I needed. I picked one and waited my turn.

"I need a ticket to Braga," I said to the bespectacled man on the other side of the booth. He typed something into the computer in front of him and without looking up said, "today?"
"Yes," I said, perhaps a bit too forcefully. He continued typing.
"I only have first class," he said.
"How much?" I asked, leaning an elbow on the counter and peering into his tiny workspace, imagining briefly what it would be like to spend my days inside such an enclosure. He typed some more.
"€21.50."
"Fine," I said, and handed some money to him through an opening in the Plexiglas that separated us. He took my cash and handed me a ticket and some change. "When does it leave?" I asked. The ticket booth dweller made eye contact with me for the first time.
"Now," he said, pointing to a spot above both of us, "track 1, upstairs." I trotted up a staircase and showed my ticket to a conductor to confirm that I was getting on the right train. I clambered on and found my assigned seat, two minutes later the train pulled out of the station.

I hadn't called João from Habitat from the station to let him know what train I was on, there hadn't been any time to find a pay phone. I had no idea how long I would be on the train or how many stops there were between Lisbon and Braga, and I couldn't understand the announcements being made over the PA system. I listened to the conversations in progress around me for anything that sounded like French, English or even Spanish, but heard none. In France and Spain I had the luxury of either understanding the language, being surrounded by signage and spoken announcements that were made in at least two languages, or easily finding English speakers; this was no longer the case. If I'd been on this train in Chicago I would have assumed I was hearing Polish; despite the similarities between Portuguese, French and Spanish I couldn't understand a word of what people were saying.

I sat by the window in a berth of four seats, two facing forward and two facing backward. The seat across from me was empty, and the aisle seats were occupied by two women in their early 20's. They appeared to be traveling with four others seated in the berth across the aisle, the six of them engaged in lively conversation. The woman next to me had dark hair and groomed eyebrows, I made eye contact with her and said: "Français?" She nodded her head sideways, no. "English?" I asked, and got another sideways nod. I pointed to my watch, "Braga? What time does the train pull into Braga?" I asked. Through a combination of gesture, facial expression and ESP, the dark-haired woman explained that this train wasn't going all the way to Braga, that I would have to change trains at a station called Campanhã.

Like Holly Hunter in The Piano I opened a small notebook and wrote Campagna and showed it to her, to indicate that I knew where to switch trains. She nodded and began to mime descending the train and making a connection to another one, speaking to me throughout this exercise in the hopes that I understood some of what she was saying. I picked up on a phrase that sounded like ligne 1 and indicated that I understood by making my fingers "walk" off the train and "board" another one, and writing line 1 in my notebook. My new travel companion smiled and said "si". Then I pointed to my watch and asked "what time does the train get to Campagna?" She pointed to the top of the dial, then to the 10, and held her hand 0ut for a moment, waving it from side to side to indicate approximately. I wrote 11:50 in my notebook, she shook her head sideways. I wrote 10:50 and she nodded. I circled 10:50 to indicate that I understood this was when I should expect to make my connection at Campanhã.

As satisfied as I was with my sensory communication skills, I still had to make a phone call. The young women traveling with me all had cell phones, which they consulted frequently to read and compose text messages. I've never asked a stranger if I could borrow their phone, much less figured out how to communicate this need with gestures, but now was not the time to be shy about it. I let a few minutes pass to work up my courage, and thought of my brother in-law Mike, who has the uncanny ability to speak to anyone. Mike would figure out how to explain to this woman that he needs to use her phone, I thought, and imagined what he may have done in the same situation. I reached into my purse, fished out a €1 coin, and took a deep breath. I made eye contact with my dark-haired travel companion, held the coin in the air with my right hand, and made the call me sign with my left. I pointed to her phone, then pointed to the phone number I'd written in my notebook and said "its a local call, I need to call someone in Portugal," and hoped that she'd understand that I wasn't trying to call out of her cell phone range.

She looked at me, then looked at the coin, furrowed her well-groomed eyebrows slightly and held her hand up to say keep your money, and handed me the phone that had been resting in her lap. I dialed João, he picked up on the first ring. As I spoke, the conversations in the train car dropped, all ears were trained on me as I explained my situation to the man on the other side of the phone connection. Now that he knew what train I was on, João could look up the timetable and figure out when to expect my arrival. I ended the call and handed the phone back to my travel companion. "Thank you," I said, "merci, gracias," and then, finally remembering what I'd heard at the end of every train announcement, "obrigado."
"De nada," my travel companion said, and set the phone back in her lap.

Things went swimmingly until the train stopped for no apparent reason at a darkened station for half an hour. An announcement was made, resulting in a collective groan from the passengers on the train. My travel companion addressed me and pointed to her phone, and I understood that the train had been delayed, and that I might want to call João back to let him know. She handed me the phone, and I dialed. When the train began moving again a collective exhale emanated from the inhabitants of the train. We continued on, stopping at darkened stations with names I couldn't read from my seat.

My travel companion's phone rang, she looked at the incoming number and handed it to me. It was João calling to say that due to the delay I would miss the last connection to Braga, the only way to get there at this time of night was by taxi, and he was going to text the hotel information to this cell phone. "Can you just tell it to me?" I asked.
"It will be hard for you to understand, its better if I send it in a text," he said. I hung up and mimed to the dark-haired woman that I was expecting a text, holding my fingers in keyboard position and pretending to type, and then pointing to the phone. She said something to me that I couldn't figure out, and began collecting her things, including the phone. I stood up to get my backpack from the overhead rack, and she held her hands up and pushed them downward, and I understood that this was not my train stop, but it was hers. She kept talking, pointing to her phone and then to one of her friends in the berth across the aisle. I smiled and nodded, but didn't understand what she was trying to communicate to me.

She got off the train at the next stop, along with a blonde woman who had been sitting across from her. Oh well, I thought, I guess I'll find a payphone at the Campagna train station. The train continued on, and I waited for my stop; I figured it would be at the end of the line and that everyone would be getting off. A figure approached me, one of the women who'd been sitting in the berth across the aisle; she handed me her phone and finally I understood what my travel companion had been trying to say to me - she received João's text and sent it on to one of her friends who was traveling to Campagna. I opened my notebook and jotted down the address, then tried saying it out loud. The woman who'd brought me the message went over the address with me, helping me to pronounce it correctly. "Obrigado," I said, and she returned to her seat.

III. Automobiles

A line of taxis waited outside the Campanhã train station. I found an unoccupied cab, its gray-haired driver standing on the pavement, and handed him a piece of paper that I'd transcribed the hotel address onto. He read it, and I said "Braga?" He looked at me, exclaimed "Braga!" and launched into something that I didn't understand but knew meant are you crazy lady? This is really far away! He walked away from me with the piece of paper in his hand, and consulted a fellow driver, or perhaps his supervisor. He came back a moment later, still chatting.
"OK?" I asked.
"OK, OK" he said, and opened the trunk of his car for my backpack.

I settled into the car and we took off. The driver talked incessantly, I assumed he was talking on a cell phone earbud until I heard a whistle, looked up and saw that he was making eye contact with me in the rear-view mirror. He said something that sounded like capeesh, and I shook my head: no, I don't understand. He kept talking, ending his sentences with the word português? "No," I said to him, shaking my head, "I don't speak Portuguese." This seemed to agitate him, and he began talking faster. I opened my notebook and pointed to João's phone number. "If you want I can call someone who can speak to you," I said, holding the notebook up so he could see what I was talking about. Si, si, he said. I pointed to the cellphone that sat next to him on the passenger side seat, "can I use your phone?" I asked. Si, he replied, and handed the phone to me.

João is going to hate me, I thought as I dialed his number for the fourth time since 3 o'clock that afternoon; we hadn't even met and already I was causing him grief. "I'm in a taxi and the driver doesn't understand," I said once we'd connected.
"Let me speak to him," João said. The driver was in the middle of an agitated soliloquy, and it took some effort to get his attention.
"Excuse me," I said, thrusting the phone into his personal space, "excuse me, could you please take the phone, there's someone who can talk to you." The driver continued on his rant, unabated. "Excuse me, excuse me," I kept saying, and lightly touched his shoulder, to no avail. "Excuse me," I said again, my touch on his shoulder growing more firm. Finally he looked at me in the rear-view mirror, "there's someone on the phone who can talk to you." He took the phone from my extended hand and began speaking into it. "OK?" I asked when he disconnected.
"OK, OK," he said, and drove us past a highway sign that read: Braga 44km.

We continued on this way for some time, the driver talking a blue streak, intermittently looking at me in the rear-view mirror to see if I understood anything. At one point he pointed to his temple with an index finger and said "cray zee, craaaaay zeeeeee!" Then he rubbed his index and middle fingers against his thumb, making the international sign for expensive and said "reesh, reeeeesh!"
"I know, I know," I said, "I don't usually take expensive cab rides from Portuguese train stations in the middle of the night, but there was a last minute change in my itinerary." I listened to the music coming from the car radio and realized that I was hearing a cover of Johnny Nash's I Can See Clearly Now, sung by a female vocalist; it wasn't a version I'd heard before.

We got off the highway and began circling streets, the driver became more agitated; although he had a GPS monitor on the dashboard it seemed he was lost. I'm not from here, he seemed to be saying to me, I don't usually take passengers this far out of my way. We drove up a dead-end street, then turned back around. We circled the area, the driver speaking to me in a tone that sounded more desperate and anxious than before.

I had been watching the number on the fare box grow steadily higher, and didn't have enough cash on hand to pay the driver. He slowed the car near an ATM, and I tried to sound out the words printed on the side of it: Caixa Automatica. "Kai-ksah out-oh-mah-ticah," I said, and pointed to the sign.
"Si, si," he said. I left the car door open in case there was any doubt as to my intention of returning, and hoped that the hold on my debit card that the international operator had told me about in Barcelona had been lifted. I slid my card through the magnetic reader on the glass door of the shelter, and a tiny light changed from red to green. I put my card into the appropriate slot of a cash dispenser, and withdrew €200 without incident. I breathed a sigh of relief, tucked the money and the card into my purse, and walked back outside where the car was still running, the door I'd opened was ajar, but the driver was nowhere to be seen.

Nothing good ever happens in empty taxi cabs that are left idling with a door wide open; I scanned the area - I was the only person on the block. I stood for a moment and considered my options - was I safer in the cab or outside of it? Should I open the trunk, take my backpack and run for my life? Should I abandon the backpack and run for my life? If I'd taken that grim facebook quiz that tells you the hour and means of your own demise would the result have been: bludgeoned to death by a Portuguese cab driver, 1am, November 9th, 2009, 38 years old?

I got back in the cab, closed the door, and engaged in a 360° visual scan. Shortly I saw the figures of two men approaching from behind the car; the driver and a man dressed in a doorman's uniform. The doorman was making wide gestures with his arms, perhaps explaining how to get to my hotel. My breathing relaxed a bit as I watched the men communicate. The driver returned to the car and got in. "OK?" I asked.
"OK, OK," he said, and put the car back in gear. His cell phone rang - I hoped that it was João calling to see why I still hadn't shown up.

The call ended and the driver pulled away from the curb, he took us around a bend and down a street that had a signs for a hospital on it. He talked to me, but the only word I understood was hospital. He pulled over to a curb and repeated himself, ending his sentence with capeesh? I shook my head no. He spoke to me again, maintaining eye contact in the rear-view mirror: capeesh, capeesh? I kept shaking my head no.
"It doesn't matter how many times you say it to me in Portuguese," I said, "I still won't understand." Finally something clicked. "Oh," I said, "the guy from Habitat is going to meet me here?" I asked, and pointed to the curb.
"Si, si," the driver said.
"So I should get out here?" I said, walking my fingers through the air to the door of the cab.
"Si, si!" the driver said, his mood seemed to lift with my comprehension of the situation.

A moment later João appeared on the sidewalk; I knew instantly that it was him, and I can honestly say that I have never been so happy to meet someone in my life. If I had to set the moment to music, I would use Parliament's 1978 classic: Flash Light. The driver sat at the wheel for what seemed like a long time filling out a very detailed receipt; the fare came to €70, almost as much as the economy class airline ticket from Barcelona and the first class train ticket from Lisbon combined. I didn't understand why a receipt was necessary, João explained that I could submit it for reimbursement due to the extenuating circumstances of my travels. The driver got out of the car and opened the trunk, revealing my backpack and two plastic bottles of water. João took my backpack and the driver took out the water bottles, holding them up and speaking to me.
"He wants to know if you want some water," João explained.
"Oh, that's okay, I have a water bottle," I said.

We parted ways with the cab driver and walked along dark, quiet streets; João carried my backpack, and I felt positively light with the success of having survived my journey, and excited that the person I was speaking to understood what I was saying. I talked a mile a minute, it was as if I'd been infected with the cab driver's proclivity for incessant speech, and recounted every detail of my trip like a schoolgirl telling someone about her day. When I explained to João that a kind-hearted stranger on the train had lent me her cell phone, he asked: "what was her name?" I'm sure someone said her name out loud over the course of that train ride, but my comprehension of the language was so low that I couldn't decipher names from any other parts of speech.
"I have no idea," I said.
"I have her number, I'll send her a text thanking her," João said.

The hotel was just a few blocks away, João walked me to the door of my room and said there was another member of the team who'd had travel difficulties and hadn't arrived yet. The others would leave for the work site at 8:40 in the morning, but I could sleep in and wait for my fellow errant traveler, and we'd arrive at the job site late together.

It was 1:20am, over 16 hours had passed since I left Mara's apartment in Barcelona. I turned the key to the hotel room door and crept in; in the dark I could make out the figure of a sleeping person occupying one of two twin beds. I took off my shoes and glasses, and climbed into the empty bed fully clothed.

From Spain to Portugal, Part II - Seven Hours in the Barcelona Airport

I needed to get in touch with the Habitat trip leader. There were pay Internet kiosks on the other side of security, but I couldn't go through without a boarding pass. The earliest I could check in and get my boarding pass was two and a half hours prior to takeoff. I dropped €1 into a payphone, which bought me two minutes to get in touch with M and walk him through my email to find a phone number for someone at Habitat. It was six in the morning in Chicago, I left a message with a hurried explanation, and said I'd call again.

I idled away a couple hours in the seating area of a fast food restaurant, drinking coffee and trying not to stress out. The two TAP Portugal check-in windows were due to open at 3:05 to start checking passengers in for the 6:35 flight to Lisbon, and by 3:00 people had started lining up - I was first in line. I waited for 3:05 to arrive with a mania. At the appointed hour, two languid women dressed in skirt suits and neckerchiefs took their stations and began plugging things into sockets and pressing various buttons, all the while engaging in a collegial conversation. Neither of them looked up at the line of people that had formed in front of them. When I was sure things were going to get started, the woman at the window in front of me stood up and walked away with no explanation, reappearing a couple minutes later and moving across the floor with all the urgency of a lazy Sunday afternoon stroll on the beach. I bore holes into her head with my stare, my whole body leaning forward over the red line on the floor marking the spot where people should wait until called on. By the time she acknowledged my presence I was fighting back tears of frustration.

I presented my itinerary to the woman, got my boarding pass, and asked her to reconfirm my return flight to Chicago; the prospect of going through all of this again nine days from now was too much to bear. This set off a flurry of questions - you bought this ticket today?, and a phone call to the TAP Portugal ticket window on the other side of the floor. I was so close to tears that I concentrated on tiny details to distract myself - the woman's nail polish, the pen in her hand that she took notes with. She told me to reconfirm my return flight the day before I was scheduled to fly home, and to check in at the Lufthansa counter when I arrived at the airport.

I went through a short but maddeningly slow line at security, and found an information booth on the other side where I was directed to the pay Internet kiosks. I found two kiosks, but neither of them accepted coins or my debit card. I walked to a payphone, my face getting hotter by the second, tears of frustration beginning to slip past my resolve to remain calm and making their way over the edges of my eyelids in a single file. Nothing was working, I had been at the airport for over four hours, and I was at my breaking point. I found a payphone and dropped €1 in it, and when I finally heard M's voice come through the line I was full on sobbing.

"What's wrong?" M asked, not having listened to the two voicemail messages I'd left him in his sleep.
"Everything!" I said, "this has been the shittiest day!" I had enough time to walk him through my email account, and then the phone started beeping and counting down the seconds until we were disconnected. I didn't have any more change, so I called back using my debit card, but before the operator connected me I had to read the digits on my debit card out loud for the benefit of anyone who might have been listening, twice, along with the security code on the back, the phone number I was trying to reach, my full name, and my zip code. M came through the line again and I became a ridiculous spectacle, a grown woman crying on a payphone in the Barcelona airport, cursing and sputtering, tears shooting out of my eyes and running down the inside of my glasses and down my cheeks. I don't remember everything I said, but I think there was a "they don't care, they don't just put you on the next flight, they make you pay," and "I'm so tired of nobody giving a shit!" When I'd exorcised the worst of it I jotted down two phone numbers that M had found in a recent email from Habitat, and hung up the phone.

I dialed the international operator again to use my debit card, repeated the exercise of reading the digits on the card out loud, and the number I was trying to reach. The first phone number I gave the operator didn't go through, so I gave the operator the second one. There was a pause, and the man who was connecting my call said:
"There's a block on this card."
"I just used it to make a call," I said, and in an attempt to impress upon him the gravity of the situation, "I'm having an emergency."
"I'll try again," he said, and came back a few seconds later with "It won't go through, do you have another card?"

I did have another card; it was secreted away in a security sleeve, sewn into the bottom of my backpack, underneath all my clothes, toiletries and electronics.
"Can you hold on for just a minute?" I asked, and let the phone go slack and hang from its metal cord, swaying back and forth with the force of gravity like a pendulum. I hoped the operator could hear me as I unzipped my carefully packed bag and dumped its contents onto the floor, dug into the bottom for the security sleeve - exposing my secret stash of money and backup credit card for anyone who happened to be watching, unzipped the sleeve and pulled out the credit card. Just in case anyone had missed hearing my debit card number, the operator made me read the digits of my credit card and the three digit security code aloud, twice. Finally, through some kind of divine intervention, I heard the voice of Habitat Portugal on the line.

With urgency in my voice and snot in my nasal cavity I explained my situation to the person on the other end of the line, a man named João (rhymes with "wow"). I probably sounded insane, but I got my message across. João told me to get on a shuttle bus headed for Oriente station when I landed in Lisbon, and to call him back with my train information. I said something noncommittal like "okay," and ended the call. I placed the phone receiver back in its cradle and surveyed the scene around me: it looked like a small weather event had hit a very localized area of the airport - my possessions were strewn around the floor by the phone booth, bras and panties mingling with travel sized toothpaste and guides to Barcelona and Portugal. A few feet from me, partially obscured by the phone booth, I saw a pair of crossed legs wearing black leather boots. Until that moment I hadn't realized that I had an audience. I peeked around the corner of the phone booth and made brief eye contact with a boot-wearing woman, then got down on my hands and knees and set about re-packing my bag.

I found a restroom and checked out my reflection in the mirror, my eyes were red and puffy and I looked like I'd smoked too much pot. I ran cold water over my face and headed for my boarding gate. As I boarded the plane Johnny Nash's I Can See Clearly Now piped in over the PA system. I really, really hoped that was the case.

From Spain to Portugal, Part I

Four luggage-toting, English-speaking girls were on the same Metro car that I was riding in. We all got off at Plaça Espanya, and I approached one of them to ask if they were heading to the airport. Not only were they going to the airport, but they were flying to Portugal. The girl I spoke to asked what I was going to do there, and when I told her about the Habitat for Humanity build she said that she'd done a couple Habitat builds herself, and so had her traveling companions. She introduced herself as Katie, she had long dark hair and walked with a limp, the result of recently twisting her ankle in the stairwell of a youth hostel. Accompanying her was Nikki, who had a short red bob of hair; Meghan, who wore glasses and had her hair in a ponytail that hadn't been pulled through all the way, leaving a loop that looked like a teacup handle; and Adrienne, who had blonde hair and spoke fluent Spanish. They were college friends who'd met in Spain a handful of years ago during their junior year abroad, and had planned this vacation together as a kind of reunion. Adrienne had taken the bus into the city from the airport on arrival, so she knew where to find it.

We installed ourselves at the bus stop, and chatted. They had a number of suitcases between them, which they leaned up against the wall of the bus shelter. I wore my backpack, it was helping to block the wind that was coming off the street. After a few minutes a car pulled up to the bus stop and the driver rolled down the passenger side window to ask something. Adrienne approached the car, but even with her fluency she didn't understand what the man wanted. After a moment she shrugged her shoulders and the car drove off. A few minutes later a man crossed the street in a brisk trot and approached us, pointing to his eyes and speaking quickly. He'd been sitting in a bar across the street and had witnessed as someone had walked past us and stolen a bag while we were distracted by the driver.

A cold sensation ran down the length of my spine. I checked my belongings: my backpack was still on me, and none of the zippers had been opened; my pacsafe purse was still around my neck, unopened; and my secret wallet that held my passport and ticket was secure under my clothes. The girls looked around and quickly realized that Katie's purse was missing. She'd lost her passport but her cash, credit cards, drivers license, airline ticket, camera and cell phone were all in a separate bag. The group strategized on the best course of action as Katie stared at a fixed point in the distance trying to remember what else had been in her purse: a pair of glasses, a set of headphones, her social security card and a package of birth control pills.

The bus arrived, and we piled in. I sat across from Katie and told her the story of how I'd once been pick-pocketed in Paris, losing everything of value except my passport. Adrienne told me that on an earlier leg of this trip someone had stolen her suitcase from a train going from Brussels to Amsterdam, the thief ended up with all her clothing but no valuables.

We parted ways at the airport, we were on the same flight but my ticket was bought through Spanair and theirs was on TAP Portugal so we had different check-in locations. The line moved slowly, there was only one Spanair window open and at least 20 people in line. When my turn came I presented my information to the handsome, dark-haired man at the window, who informed me that my flight had been canceled. I asked him to clarify, hoping that I'd missed some vital piece of information. I got the same explanation and was told to check with the TAP Portugal ticketing window at the end of the terminal. My pulse quickened, the trip leader from Habitat was due to meet me and everyone else who'd signed up for the project at the Porto airport in a couple hours, and I didn't have her contact information. I found the TAP Portugal ticketing window, where Katie sat barefoot on the floor nursing her bruised ankle, Nikki and Meghan guarded a pile of luggage, and Adrienne was speaking to a ticketing agent.

Adrienne explained that what I'd understood as canceled really meant that I'd gotten to the check-in window less than an hour before the flight was due to take off, and anyone who tried to check in under that time was automatically denied access to the plane. I'd gotten there with 55 minutes to go.

There are moments in every international travel experience when I am taken out of my comfort zone and reminded of my inescapable American-ness, they range from the banal - going to McDonald's and finding no ice or napkins, to the unintentionally hilarious - reporting my lost wallet in a Paris police station and asking to use the bathroom, to find that the facilities consist of a drain at the bottom of a depression in the floor, three feet from a wooden bench festooned with a pair of locked handcuffs. My American moment in Barcelona had arrived: if this had been Chicago the time limit for checking in would have been 30 minutes before takeoff, and if by some chance I'd missed that deadline I would have been put on a standby list for the next flight. As it turns out, flying standby is an American construct - the only option available was to purchase new tickets on the next flight Porto. The ticket pricing structure also felt distinctly foreign, the price first offered to Adrienne had been €694, but seemingly it depended on how many of us were trying to get on the flight - if just one of us wanted to fly to Porto it would cost €57 but the next ticket might be more expensive.

The process of looking up new flights involved a lengthy inspection passports and travel documents, and performing what seemed to be a deep search on a computer, so Meghan left the group and momentarily reappeared with a bottle of red wine and four plastic cups she'd bought from an airport concession stand. There was one ticketing agent serving the five of us, and every once in a while someone else would get in line and the agent would ask if we minded if that person were served ahead of us, as their request was likely to be simpler. The next flight on TAP Portugal wasn't for another six hours and the ticketing agent had our passports, so we acquiesced every time.

Aside from a reservation at a youth hostel in Porto, my new-found friends didn't have a deadline for getting there, so they opted to rent a car at €89 per day and drive the roughly 560 miles between Barcelona and Porto using only a Hertz map and their collective wits. I was invited to join them. My flight options were a €57 flight to Lisbon in the early evening and a €20-€30 train ride up the coast, or a €191 flight to Porto the following morning. Part of me really wanted to join those girls on their journey across Spain, but I had no idea when I'd actually arrive at my destination; with the flight to Lisbon at least I had a shot at arriving the same day. We parted ways for the last time, and for reasons that I cannot explain I shook their hands. It felt awkward even before I raised my forearm and extended my hand out to the first of them, but although our brief time together had been traumatic I wasn't sure if it called for hugging. I watched them longingly as they made their way out of the terminal to the Hertz rental office, certain that theirs would be a more enjoyable journey than mine.