It still hasn’t hit me that I’m leaving.
By Friday morning, Aliza and I just had such an eventful week, that all we wanted to do was sleep. But as our last day, how could we!?
We woke up early to go shopping in El Corte Ingles, but as always, I found nothing. We went for Starbucks (my new best friend) and then went on our way to the Chabad House to FINALLY help cook for Shabbos!
We have been so excited to help that we basically RAN there. The problem was that it is brutally hot outside that even though I was wearing one layer (yes mom, ONE layer!), I was soaked through by the time we got there!
Cooking with them was just as fun as we had hoped. When we got to them, they started taking pictures of us to send to their kids (they have so many kids and they are all over the world, that they send weekly updates and pictures…. WE MADE IT IN!!!). Then the cooking began. We helped them make A LOT of different salads, cholent, and chicken soup.
When it normally takes them 4 hours to do, it took an hour and half!
They were so grateful and so excited that for the first Friday in what they said was years, they could actually relax on a Friday and not have to cook so hard.
When we got back to the dorms, it started to drizzle… something weird for Spain.
Our afternoon plan of going to the pool was canceled and instead we ate lunch with Brenna (obviously) and then Jenna and I had a mani party, in which I polish her nails and my own nails.
At 4 o’clock, when we were bored and Shabbos was not for another few hours, we decided to go to Lavapies (a few metro stops away) for coffee.
We are unsure why, by many people told Bryce to go visit Lavapies. When Aliza and I looked it up on the Internet, we were told that it was the ghetto- area of Madrid. Trusting Bryce’s opinion, we decided to go along… but once we got off the metro and saw where we were, we RAN – literally, RAN back onto the train.
With mine and Aliza’s get up outfits, and the bright blue eyes and clothing we were wearing, we KNEW that in a matter of minutes we would get mugged, raped, or who knows what!
Instead, we went to Puerta del Sol – aka our HOME, and went to Dunkin Donuts.
Shabbos came around at 8:00 PM as always.
Because it was so hot, Aliza and I decided to take the metro to get to shul. We were so excited to spot the tourists in shul and immediately found all 20 people that would be going to Chabad with us for dinner.
When dinner started, thunder and lightening began… followed by RAIN. Not drizzle like in the early afternoon, but real RAIN.
Dinner was definitely an adventure:
6 Argentinian’s
2 Israelis
2 Storch’s (Rabbi Storch from DRS’s parents)
1 boy from Toronto
2 girls who live in the Heights
1 girl who made aliyah and was traveling alone.
Once you know that someone is traveling alone, you know it’s BAD NEWS. Not only was she a health freak and critiqued everything that the Rebbitzen (and us) made, but she was just annoying and with the lack of sleep Aliza and I have had, all we wanted to do was KILL HER!
The two girls who lived in the heights were no different! They were the epitome of the “Blue Fringe” song about girls who meet in Me’ah Shearim on Fridays (yes, you know what I’m talking about!). With their squeaky voices and dumb questions, you wanted to zip their mouths shut… but we had to be nice because of course one of them knew Aliza’s sister in law!
The Argentian’s were great! 3 kids and 3 adults, they only spoke Spanish. The kids were adorable and while cleaning up their table, I actually practiced some of my Spanish J.
The Storch’s were super. They were just really fun.
Normally, when Aliza and I would be in public and would want to talk about someone, we would speak in Hebrew, but this time, in order to avoid people hearing what we had to say, we spoke in Spanish! It was really too funny, because as we would speak, we would constantly be correcting each other… (just goes to show how much we learned!)
Saturday morning was really sad for us.
The time really came to say good-byes… Starting at 6:30 AM, we got knocks on our door for goodbye hugs.
Everyone was on the same flight together, so Aliza and I got up to say goodbye to everyone at the same time.
We stood by the door, helped everyone into taxis and waved goodbye, yet - it still wasn’t hitting us that we were leaving.
Yes, we had packed and yes, our rooms were empty – but the summer has gone by so quickly, it still feels like it’s just beginning!
We had our usual Shabbos morning of shul and lunch, but then sad our good-byes to the Chabad family, which was sad.
We had become close with them in the last 6 weeks that spending Shabbos without them next week may be really sad!
We spent the rest of our afternoon sleeping because we hadn’t slept all night… when Shabbos was over, we spent our last night walking through Puerta del Sol (again) and then went to sleep because our flight to LONDON is at 7 AM!
It still hasn’t hit me that this trip is over… the time really could not have passed faster…
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