The Trip

Hey everyone! Sorry for my absence. I am now in Tenerife, Spain, its an island in the Canary Islands. It is really nice here, but man it was a long trip.
I flew from Dallas to New York where I had a layover of like 9 hours! Ahhh it was crazy. I found a wifi spot so I entertained myself there lol. Then I met another family there that was joining Mercy Ships too. From New York we went to Madrid, Spain. Here the layer over was only 2 and a half hours. It was the longest 2 and a half hours of my life! First our baggage was suppose to come out and go through customs, well only one of my bags came out! and customs didn't even look at it! So I had to walk like 3 miles to get to the right gates to check the bag back in. Then when I got to the gate they didn't speak English so they sent me downstairs to security who then sent me back upstairs to the gate. Ugh long story short I finally found a gate person who spoke some English and I was able to check the bag and go through security! Then off to find the correct gate which changed three times on my journey because people kept telling me the wrong thing. lol

Finally we all got onto the plane heading toward Tenerife. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep before the plane even took off and woke up during the landing thinking "oh crap we're crashing" lol.

The first day here was pretty slow. I just checked into Mercy Ships and went to my room and unpacked. Then we had a HR meeting and security meeting, which I also ended up sleeping through most of, obviously most people do since we all just arrived! The time change is still bothering. I was going to call home this morning and realized its the middle of the night lol.

Yesterday me and some of my roommates went to town. Town is downtown Santa Cruz, Tenerife. It takes forever to get here because you have to walk all the way out of port which is like a mile in itself. Wow. But walking around town was so awesome. The people here are really friendly even though they dont understand anything we are saying! The landscape looks like Mexico but the infrastructure is way more modern and industrialized. Anyways, so we went on a hunt for a guitar because one of my roomies, Caitlin, plays and couldn't bring hers. After like walking from one end to the other we finally made it to the music store! It was seriously like a scavenger hunt except the clues were in Spanish! haha. But we had a good lunch at a local pizzeria everything we ordered had eggs on it tho. That was weird. Then we just headed back to the ship, by this time we were exhausted and still had a ship tour to do! Afterwards we all hung out and went to sleep.

Right now I am sitting in downtown at McDonalds (they have free wifi here) by myself because everyone else had to work. I won't have much work to do until we get to Togo. I feel kind of bad because everyone is getting up at like 6 am and working all day but I slept till 11 had lunch and took off!

I have to tell you how great the guy at the music store was tho. Because the guitar Caitlin wanted to buy was more than she budgeted for so I asked for a missionary rate lol. And he knocked some of the price off ( like 60 euros) and gave her the picks and extra strings for free! I thought that was awesome!

Funny story, the roads here are really narrow and on either side of the road there are these huge balls of concrete, like literally balls lol. They are probably 2 feet high and 3 feet in diameter, well this SUV comes zooming down the road and ran up on one! haha he is still there for like the last hour! The car is literally sitting on top of one, and all the liquid in his car came out everywhere, it wasn't gas but something else brown. Now the policia are here and everyone is just standing there looking because he can't get it off the top of the ball! It is funny lol.

I am having a hard time navigating right now because when I am hooked up to this internet everything is in Spanish. :( and facebook isn't working right now. It wouldn't really work last night either. Everyone says it has to do with the internet here because it usually works. IDK tho.

Well really that's all that has happened since I've been here. The last 3 days have gone by so fast! It feels like just hours. Me and Caitlin (my roomie that arrived the same day as me) kept saying yesterday "wow can you believe we are really here!" Its pretty crazy to think we are actually here! Everyone is enjoying Tenerife because it is like a vacation but everyone is also anxious about getting to Africa. Especially me. I have waited for Africa for a long time and 2 weeks seems so far away! Plus it is kinda cold here so I am ready to be warmer! :)

Thats it for now!

Buenos Dias