finale

well, we're home. it was an adventure, but we're home. as soon as we got out of madrid, everything went well, so we knew it had to be the right choice. but right now, i'd rather be back in london. i miss it so much! and i miss being with tucker all the time. i'm kinda not looking forward to having a room to myself tonight. :(
anyway, after leaving pop hostel, we headed to a new hostel for the night in madrid (until we could find a flight). unfortunately we walked about 10 blocks in the wrong direction. it was not one of my better moments. it was my closest point to breaking down. but we turned around and walked 18 blocks to get to where we were supposed to be, found the hostel, and relaxed a bit. it was hotel quality for hostel price. so nice. showered, took care of some email stuff, tucker talked to his mom and she tried everything in her power to get us home. she's so cool!
we went to the airport that night, found out that there was a flight leaving that night that we could afford, so we hurried home, grabbed our stuff, and went back to the airport to get on the plane to london. got to london about 1 am, spent the night there waiting for Delta to open at 6 am, but of course we didn't sleep. who does that, really? we ate some mcdonalds (kinda gross), did some sketching, read some books, and camped out in the airport. once 6 o'clock rolled around, we got in line, talked to the guy, and he did everything he could to help us get our tickets changed to leave as soon as possible. and it cost $100 less than we hoped, so we were happy. waited around a couple more hours for that flight, then took off for connecticut. delta is so great, good food all the time, 3 good movies, slept a bit but not enough, and got off on american soil. it felt good. then we had about a 6 1/2 hour layover. called everyone we could think of to tell them we were in the states, read some more, at good mcdonalds. discovered that it is probably written into the airport employee contracts to be rude and unhelpful to people who haven't slept properly in 48 hours. went into a british style pub to make things better, and it helped. got on a teeny tiny plane that was freezing cold, and took off for sioux falls. got into sioux falls, saw britta (our friend who picked us up), and basically tackled her with hugs and kisses. a familiar face! it was happy. talked the whole way home (as in orange city), where britta dropped us off at the movie theater so that tucker's friend emma could take us to her place to crash for the night. picked up some snacks and watched fantasia. well, sort of. tucker and i were out before the dinosaurs died. oh well.
slept in til gma betty and tressy called to pick me up at caseys, and drove home. it was sad saying goodbye to tucker. we've spent so much time together the past week, plus all the time in london, that it feels strange not to have him here. i should call him.... tomorrow. we need to sleep. it's only 9pm but i'm ready to crash. i was ready for bed about 3 hours ago.
okay, that is basically the end of my adventure. short lived, not as planned, but it was good. learned a lot and had some fun. met great people and tried lots of new things. i miss it, and i want to go back. i'm not ready to be home. but i know that it is better this way. with everything that went wrong, this is better. seeing how happy tucker was to be back made it all worth it. i know it was much harder on him to be away from home. but it is all okay now, i hope.
so yeah. next time (hopefully there will be a next time) we will know what to do differently, how to do this thing better and get the most out of it.