The main subject of my post today, however, has nothing to do with school and more to do with the adventure that Chloé and I stumbled into this afternoon. We went to the university in the morning, but for our religion class every Monday we have to go to the church. We took the bus there yesterday no problem, but Blanca told us that we ought to walk there at least once and that it really wasn't that far. She gave us some pretty strait forward directions (which we thought we understood well enough between the two of us) and then Chloé looked up the address to the church on mapquest and we took pictures of it to take with us just to be safe. We left at about 4:30, giving us plenty of time to walk there and arrive on time for class at 5:00.
Well, needless to say, we were quite mistaken. The mapquest directions were not only off, but they took us completely off course. By the time we realized that we definitely were not anywhere near the church, we also realized that I had forgotten our issued emergency pay to go phone. So there we were, in the completely wrong location without a way of contacting our professor or any of the other girls in our group with nothing but our bags, a map, and our determination. So we made the most practical decision we could; we looked at our map, found our location and destination, and started walking.
Before our slight panic had time to fizzle down to calm determination, however, we had to walk to a sketchier part of town, all the while seeing old gangly men in our peripheral vision and trying our best to ignore the phrases "guapas" y "bonitas" as we forced our legs to move a bit faster than our already brisk pace.
After a while we began to feel more confident as we walked through the streets of Alcalá, all the while resisting the urge to check the time since we already knew we would be very late for class.
We came to a roundabout and turned onto the main road that we were sure would lead us to the church. Across the street as we were walking we saw the missionaries from our ward walking the other way and they totally gave us the stink eye. Probably because they knew we weren't in class like we were supposed to be. We continued checking our map, but there weren't many crossroads to reference so we simply assumed we were going the right way.
Wrong again! We asked a friendly restaurant employee how to get to the point marked on our tourist map and we soon discovered that we had gone the opposite way we needed to go...yet again! Laughing at ourselves and hardly able to believe how silly we must have looked to the missionaries and to the general public of Alcalá, we turned around and began retracing our steps. Then a wonderful thing happened that made this entire two hour trek worth it: we spoke to the most beautiful Spanish man I have yet encountered.
He was a policeman who saw us checking our map again once we reached the large roundabout and he said to us "¿Necesitáis ayuda, chicas? Porque parecéis muy perdidas." Translation: Do you guys need help? Because you seem really lost. I don't know what was this man's best feature, he had almost everything going for him. Dark clean cut hair, some sexy scruff on his defined jawline, a nicely fitting uniform, and deep blue eyes that I definitely wanted to be lost in for the rest of the evening rather than being lost in Alcalá. Luckily Chloé asked him for some more detailed directions and he gladly helped us figure out where to go from there to finally get to the church building. Apparently my tongue tied symptoms around striking men is much more severe when a language barrier is involved as well.
Ten or fifteen minutes later we finally made it to the church, exhausted and tired and embarrassed that we had completely missed out religion class, but we at least made but on time for FHE! Our professor was very understanding and our other group members felt nothing but sympathy toward our predicament.
So that was our first big adventure in España! I hope there will be many more to come, especially if they involve more hombres guapos ;)
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