An Unknown Journey with Strangers
The strange feeling in my gut didn’t hit me until my mom hugged me right before I entered the security line. A knot that could not be undone with stretching. An ache that could not be soothed by soda. An uneasiness that no pill could help. My luggage, camera bag, and backpack weighed me down but now the mental weight started to take its toll. I am to board a plane for 12 hours to Spain, a place I have never been, and with people I don’t know.
I sat down in front of the gate and could feel myself get a lot lighter as each bag fell off me, but the mental burden still remained. LAX was suppose to be a hassle for travel, but I seemed to be one of the lucky ones who breezed through all of the checkpoints. This gave me a chance to scout my surroundings and I noticed a Cal State Fullerton hat. It belonged to one of the students that who was going to study abroad with me. However, I did not get up to greet her. I did not wave hello. I did not make an attempt to make eye contact or smile. I just sat there. Consumed by the possibility that I may not be able to fit in with the group that I am going with or not be able to adjust to the Spanish culture. My Spanish was not where I wanted it to be even though I had been practicing with my family. Also, I could feel that I forgot something important in my room next to where my luggage was.
All of that doubt disappeared when two of my classmates, Sarah and Caitlin, saw me and sat down next to me. They waved down the CSUF-hat-wearing student, Alycia, that I had shunned. So I pretended like I hadn’t seen her earlier. We all had a couple of hours to kill, so we made small talk. We were Southern California students experiencing the same stress. Laughs, stories, and our cameras brought us a little closer because that has been a tool that we have all used as journalists. We shared a small sense of camaraderie as we boarded that plane to Valencia, Spain.
The plane’s seats were made for people that were about half of my size. My legs were crunched together, the lady next to me kept bumping into me as she tried to get comfortable, and I couldn’t seem to align my head rest the right way. Uncomfortable napping and watching a Netflix-binge amount of movies was the only thing that I had to keep me from being bored out of my mind. Then I came to an awkward moment on the plane. I had about an hour of flight time to go, but all of the movies that they had to offer were over an hour long, so I did not want to start a movie without being able to finish it. I did the next sensible thing and started watching movies that the other guests on the plane were watching. I noticed that one of the guys a couple rows in front of me was watching “2lander” with Ben Stiller and I decided to watch the silent film with dialogue that I had made up for the characters. The *ding* of the plane let me know that I had dozed off and that we had began to make our descent into Spain.
When we got off the plane, I realized that the guy watching Ben Stiller’s terrible remake was a student with our study abroad program. His name was Matthew and he was going to be the one that I was going to be rooming with for a month. I could see that he was slightly taller than me and I expected him to be a year or two older than me because of how thick his facial hair was. Turned out that I was three older than him and he was even more goofy than me when he started to loosen up. So he went from “the 2lander guy” to my best bud in a matter of a couple minutes.
Then came the taxi ride into the city. We were driven around by a man that only spoke in a Spanish accent that was hard for me to pick up on. So I just looked out the window taking in the view with him cursing the traffic in the background. The roads seemed to get smaller as we inched closer to the heart of the city and each car moved at a completely different pace than back in the states. There was a sense of controlled chaos because there were cars that were passing each other, honking, random stops in the middle of the road and street lights that were facing in every direction. All of the building were stacked next to each other and were at least five stories tall each. Pastel colors seem to be the themes of the building and I felt like I was back in Mexico about to see my family again.
Matthew and I weren’t family, but we had awkward family reunion small talk as we settled into our rooms. I would ask him about his school, he would ask me about my hobbies and then there were be moments of silence that follow. This would happen until the cycle decided to start again. It wasn’t until dinner with our house mother, Amparo, that we were bonded. He understands Spanish, but does not speak it. I can speak Spanish, but not very well. The looks of confusing that we gave each other at the dinner table reassured us that we had something in common. We were both in a place we have never been, with people that we barely know.
