So, my intention was to write after each day of the trip about my experiences and impressions, but yeah right. That never happens. So here I am on the final leg of my trip, my flight from Philadelphia to San Diego, with 19% battery power remaining, about to write abuot what was a weekend of lots of talking, beers and excitement and VERY little sleep.
Thanks to my week of insomnia that resulted from the move and stress of the prospect of the trip, I took Restoril the night before my flight and was therefore still 90% groggy for my flight to Philadelphia. Once at the PHL airport, I fully woke up only to discover that this is the only airport in my experience in the US with neither a Starbucks nor wifi! ( I discovered on my trip home that there is wifi, just not in the international terminal. But no Starbucks? Really?) After a greasy pizza and a severely overpriced latte with whole milk, I settled down to watch more Sopranos. I was "stuck" in an exit row on my flight. I say "stuck" because its not actaully better than other seats. Yes, you get a little more leg room, but that matters little for my 5'1 frame. What you don't get is a normal table or space in front of you to store your bag cuz everything has to be in the overhead compartment. Needless to say it was a VERY long flight. What was even longer, however, was the hour I spent sitting on the train in the Barcelona airport waiting to ride into the city. The train was full. It was ready to go. And it just sat there. Every 10-15 minutes, the doors would close, the exhausted passengers would start applauding, the train would beep....and then the doors would open again, and disappointed sighs would be heard up and down the cars. Since my body was thinking it was 1am at this point, and my last week had been anything but restful, I'm pretty sure the pain on my face made the other passengers around me think I was going into labor. I'm really bad at hiding my discomfort.
When we finally got into the Sants station, I took a Metro to Hospital Clinic. Despite the annoyed and disapproving looks I got at the stations, I dragged my ridiculously oversized duffel bag up and down many flights of stairs. Fuck off. I don't care if it makes an annoying banging sound. I'm not picking it up. I ended up taking a cab from the Metro stop because no way was my 3am jet lagged ass about to navigate a map at this point. I checked into the hotel without incident and was asleep by 2pm local time. Kathy never made it back to the room to get ready for the evening's activities, so I took a cab to IESE on my own.
It started raining on the drive over, and I was struck by the humor of the fact that in a city that has 300 sunny days a year, each time I happen to visit campus, it rains. I checked in upstairs and then awkwardly made conversation with some students standing around. I wouldn't say any of my small-talk making attempts went particularly well this weekend. I did end up meeting quite a few people, but I can only take credit for about 20% of the connections I made, and those are weak at best. There was a presentation put on by a member of the faculty, about how we would grow and what we would get out of the program and how hard we would work and the amazing friendships we would forge...Then it was accross the street for what they referred to as a "stand up dinner". No guys. Its called drinks and pass-around appetizers. Not dinner.
Further evidence for the lack of "dinner" was the fact that on the walk down from school, everyone made plans where to meet up for dinner. Stephanie, Kathy and I went back to our hotels to "freshen up", and then met with Cory from London, who could easily be mistaken for Eric from Gossip Girl. We went to a very traditional tapas place and picked up two stragglers along the way, a french guy named Julien and a local Barcelonian named Miguel. True to American tourist status, we were loud, boisterous, and obnoxious and the owners repeatedly asked us to keep it down.
After dinner, we went to the BOW (Bar of the Week) party organized by the current students at a bar called Universal. Lots of networking, lots of meeting people, a little bit of drinking, a little bit of dancing, and had to call it an early night and go home at 3am due to sheer, utter exhaustion.
