Please Refrain from Seflies While Walking Down the Aisle

Hello again!

For anyone who was curious, we made it to Spain safely! Was it an easy or smooth trip? Absolutely not.

I have been avoiding writing this post since Sunday, but I figured it was about time as I've cleaned my entire kitchen, rearranged the furniture, done some laundry and watched a fair amount of YouTube videos on my first day being home alone. I think I've been avoiding writing this because of how much I have to write.

Going back to the trip, so much happened in such a short period of time.

First, Monday morning rolled around (this was last week) and we didn't have our visas. Our flight was scheduled for Tuesday evening and we had no idea when our visas were going to come in. Well couldn't you just go on your passport and get your visas later? That would have been ideal, but as they had our passports because the visas are stickers they put in the back, we were unable to do that.

So, Matthew called the LA consulate several times. All in vain because they just don't like talking to people. I was getting stressed and had him call just one more time. He got distracted and didn't choose an option. Surprisingly this was the trick. Instead of sending us straight to voicemail, we were able to get someone on the phone to check the status of our visas.

She called us back several ours later and informed us that she had sent them out and they were on their way. This was fantastic news! We had purchased overnight shipping so that would mean that they would come Tuesday morning, we could fly to Vegas and catch our international flight. So I booked a flight and bought our train tickets from Barcelona to Valencia.

That night we went to bed, stressed, but relieved that we had some idea of what was happening.

I had gone to the post office Monday afternoon and asked them to keep an eye out for our visas. They had agreed to call us when they arrived. She had informed me that they shouldn't arrive any later than 9:30 or 10:00 am. Monday night we were up late packing. Making sure everything weighed the right amount and thus we were up way later than we wanted to. I justified this with the knowledge that we would have lots of long travel time to sleep through.

I was anticipating the morning because if we didn't get our visas, we would be in a world of hurt.

Matthew woke me up that morning at about 9:30 and that's when the panicking started. The lady at the post office had said 9:30 10:00 at the latest. Why hadn't I heard from them? I instantly knew something had gone wrong. For some reason I needed to stay home, but Matthew went to check in at the post office and see what was going one.

They looked up our tracking numbers and it showed that our visas were still in LA. There was no way this was happening. I had purchased these international tickets months ago and everything was supposed to be done and figured out by now, yet here we were with no visas and no way to change our flights without major expenses. Matthew asked the people at the post office why our overnight shipping wasn't being honored. The manager explained that it looked like the consulate had placed our visas in a dropbox instead of taking them to an actual USPS window, and therefore missed the flight for that evening. So instead of the overnight being from Monday to Tuesday, it was now being treated like a Tuesday to Wednesday overnight shipping. This was absolutely shocking to me. It was a matter of hours, and now we had to figure out how to change our flight.

I had looked at flight change prices a couple weeks ago and they were pretty low, but now everything was sold out leaving the Vegas airport and the price jump to leave from the LA airport was about $1200. That was the original amount of the first tickets I bought.

The situation we found ourselves in was so frustrating. We had worked so hard to get to this point. Building a visa packet is not an easy task, and if you don't get it wright the first time you get rejected and have to come back - which is what happened to us. We had gone to the LA consulate in May and they informed us that we were missing documents. When we went to reschedule an appointment, the only appointment left was in August.

So not only was the waaaaay late appointment frustrating but because of that appointment, all of my preparation and planning to spend the least amount of money on our move went to waste as we had to change our flight and absorb the costs. I guess you could say I was upset. I was a water feature that whole afternoon.

I had to take a step back and realize what was important in that moment. Yes, money is not something to be thrown around and taken for granted, but it is something very temporal. Money is so easily replenished with some hard work, diligence, and budgeting. Education and experience, on the other hand, can be hard to come by - especially an education and experience we were being offered. So we moved forward and did what was needed to get to Spain.

Who knows why we weren't able to make our flight or why things didn't work out. At first I was really angry. I felt like this whole trip was what Heavenly Father wanted, but at the same time, He was making things very difficult for us to get over there. But, I have no idea what the bigger picture is. All that matters is that in the end we got here.

So, after the fiasco of getting our visas, we set off Wednesday morning to the SLC airport after a personal delivery from the manger of the USPS post office.

The flight for SLC to LA was rather quick and easy. A mood lightener was one of the intercom broadcast. Of all the times I actually listened to what was being said in the airport, the best thing I heard was "Please refrain from selfies while walking down the aisle. Thank you." #firstworldproblems. Our flight from LA to Stockholm was good as well. That flight was incredibly long, but everything had been going very smoothly. We sat next to a Spaniard on our last flight. He was amazing! He helped us with all the random questions we had and lighted our stress load a little. He was such a blessing.

When I had planned our flights, I made sure we had several hours in between them incase of error - except for the time between arrival in Barcelona and our train ride to Valencia.

I only had given us an 1 1/2 hour window. If it had been anywhere else, I think it would have been fine, but it was not fine. We arrived in Valencia and my jet-lag had caught up to me in Sweden and I was exhausted by the time we got to Valencia.

It is very humid here, and you could feel it the second you got off the plane. We walked over to an exchange counter and traded all our american money for Euros. This took forever. I figured it would have been a quick "Here ya go!" swap and be done, but no. She tried to upsell stuff to us and explained random things. She was quickly burning up our precious time and I had no idea how to get to the train station.

We suddenly only had an hour left and this airport is looong and of course, the money exchange was on the complete opposite side. I don't know if it is just the lazy American in me, but in that moment all I wanted were those walking escalators that make you feel invincible, but alas.. there were no such pleasures here. We had to haul our little butts, and luggage, across the airport. We were drenched in sweat.

Well we go downstairs into baggage and we have no idea where to go and our tickets don't help. I scrambled to find our luggage, which again, was on the complete opposite side of everything. So I run over there and grab our 4 extra pieces of luggage and add them to our two carry on pieces.

The Spaniard on the plane told us that we could take a train from the airport to the train station we needed to be at. This would be a lot cheaper than a cap. He was probably right, but we had no idea where this train was and we only had 30 minutes left before we needed to be on our other train.

We ran outside and grabbed a cab, and we were able to breath for about 15 minutes.. but we definitely paid for it.

I swear, in this moment, Satan was doing everything in his power to make all the things inconvenient. As you could probably guess, when we finally got to the train station, our platform was the furthest away and still no walking escalators could be found. We go down stairs and, good guess, our car was almost the very last car. We had made it with about 5 minutes to spare. Not wanting to miss our train because we were trying to get to the right cabin, we hopped on to the closest one and left our luggage in that car while we found our real seats.

The next 3 hours were relaxing, though we never actually cooled down.

When we finally reached Valencia we took a cab to our apartment. The cab driver got lost and dropped us off at a hotel, which luckily was very close to our apartment. We used someones cell phone and called our Landlord. He came and got us and showed us the apartment.

We had arrived. Valencia Spain. It was real.  I still can't really believe that I live in Spain. I've never even been to Europe, and now here I am.

The trip here was crazy and stressful, but I had my man with me and that's all I could ask for.