due to conflicting schedules, this blog, our last blog, will be

written by only casey and keelin.

you all may be wondering where we have been the past few days. we are

now here to quell your worries and explain exactly what has been

happening.

the last few times we wrote, we didn’t include where we were or what

we had been spending our time doing. there is, in fact, reason behind

this. we were coming home. being the sweethearts that we are, we

wanted to surprise our family and friends, so after day two in nice,

we trekked our way west to ol’ madrid. there we wrote blogs about not

doing anything and mullets. the truth is, we didn’t do anything, and

we saw way too many mullets.

you now may be wondering as to why we decided to skip a majority of

spain and france and completely cut italy out of our itinerary. you

may also be curious about us coming home four and a half weeks early.

the reason behind our choices came from the fact that maggie was

homesick. unfortunately, casey and keelin were still having a grand

ol’ time. but, when one member is unhappy, the morale of the group

seems to plummet and nobody is able to have a good time.

sooo… after nice, we took a thirteen hour train ride over to

barcelona. word to the wise… never eat chinese food in barcelona.

also, never look for a post office. both of these actions will leave

you in a state of bitter dissatisfaction. if that’s a word. after

spending our nine hour layover in barcelona, we took a five hour train

ride to madrid and then found our way to the metro going to the

airport. we got to the airport around midnight. the decision to go to

the madrid airport was made in nice. when planning this trip, we

bought tickets that flew out of madrid, to frankfurt, to portland, and

then finally back home to eugene. the tickets that we purchased were

unrefundable and we had to stick to the same route if we didn’t want

to buy new ones. being that it is peak season to fly in and out of

europe, we were kind of screwed when trying to get tickets home. after

hours and hours of waiting lists, standby, and hopeless attempts to

follow our original route back to america, we broke down and called

karen, the travel agent back home. being the gem that she is, karen

was able to find us some tickets. but since it is us, and it is

europe, we couldn’t buy them from her. because lady luck is always on

our side. we were told to find a travel agency in the madrid airport

and tell them exactly what we wanted and at the price. at this point,

we came to the realization that we don’t rule the world and yes, we

would have to pay more than the estimate handed to us by karen. good

thing was, we were making it home under a thousand dollars. bad thing

was we were coming home a month early and paying for it…

after we secured our tickets, we looked for a hotel. our flight

wouldn’t be leaving until the 28th and it was currently the 26th.

well… you know how we feel about the gay community. love them. but

sometimes it just sucks to be screwed over by every single breathing,

and some inanimate, objects. gay and lesbian pride festival was in

town and every single hotel was booked. BOOKED! the airport was our

new home. we figured it wouldn’t be THAT horrible since we did just

spend about ninety seven days on trains getting over to madrid. in

fact, the airport would be better. we’d be saving money and we would

have some room to stretch out and what not. so that night, we put our

belongings in lockers and went out to experience a little bit of the

nightlife in madrid. we had a midnight dinner and discussed churros,

but decided we’d put them on the back burner, because if we didn’t,

we’d have to walk home to the airport since the last metro ran at

1:30. tired and well-fed, we found a space to sleep in a secluded area

of the airport. we got all of our stuff and surrounded ourselves by

carts. in all attempts to stay awake, casey and keelin went so far as

to drink some coffee. little did she know, warm things put kiki to

sleep and the girls were unable to stay awake much longer. oh… the

bitter hatred of the world. who would harm such fragile objects as

ourselves? nobody, we thought. we soon found out just how naive we

were to trust the spanish gypsys… the next morning we awoke to

missing cameras, ipod, eighty usd, and kaitie. the blackberry. this is

why there has been a shortage of bloggage. frantically calling home to

shut down service on the blackberry, we frightened poor jim and toni.

they called the blackberry and a couple of gypsys picked up and said

they were the police and blah blah blah. “don’t shut off service, we

mail to you, yes?” i don’t know if you know the lyerlas, but jim and

toni are not so easily fooled. they shut down the phone. back to

spain… casey, maggie, and keelin got to deal with the spanish

police. that is when we found out that they are the twelve people in

all of madrid that don’t speak a word of english. even the gypsys 

that robbed us could speak better english. useless. they even laughed

in our faces about the possibility of getting our belongings returned

to us. upset and a few belongings short, we found our way back to the

beautiful city of madrid where we celebrated our loss of everything

that was important to us with some churritos and chocolate sauce.

intoxicating. you really don’t realize how filling those suckers are

until twenty minutes after you shoveled forty into your mouth and you

are paralized from the waist down. we somehow wheelbarrowed our bodies

out of the chocolatier and made our way to the grocery store, where

being 18 (with the exception of rebelious casey) we bought alcohol for

the 21 and older back home that we care so much for. back to home, aka

the airport, where we tried to convince the spanish police to let us

see the tapes of the camera that was POINTING AT US when we got

gypped. but they wouldn’t let us. because they’re the spanish police.

so we sat for hours. and hours. eventually it was 2 am and none of us

were asleep due to the raging paranoia that maybe next our bodies

would be stolen and sold to the world of human trafficing. in said

state of paranoia, we saw a man talking on a phone. of course, this

phone had to be a blackberry and there was no doubt in our minds that

it was ours. so we waited for the theif to walk away from who he was

talking to and we approached them. we asked the strangers to describe

the phone, but we were just hallucinating because it was a flip phone.

unfortunately, our jumping to conclusions made us some new friends.

weird ones at that. but, they were nice and sat with us for three

hours and talked about things that didn’t matter in life. once they

boarded a plane to chicago or something, we gave a sigh of relief and

waited for our plane to show up, which eventually, surprisingly, it

did. we got to dusseldorf at 11 pm and started our twelve hour

layover. i don’t know if you’ve ever been, but the dusseldorf airport

is amazing. following this blog, we will put up some videos of our

safari adventure filmed that night in dusseldorf. that is if we can

figure out how. so blah blah blah twelve hours pass, we get on a

plane, fly nine hours, end up in vancouver bc. trina “t ball” wright

was awaiting our arrival with a giant maternal grin and snacks for the

ride home. lucky for us, she knew what was up and took us to get some

taco bell RIGHT AWAY. we made it back home around 1130, after a ten or

so hour car ride where the three of us slept 99 per cent of the time.

and now, here we are. keelin is currently living with the lyerlas due

to a run in with a bitter sister of hers claiming that their house was

hers for the rest of july. casey is enjoying the time spent with dear

keelin and turning 18 in a few days. maggie has since been missing. if

you see her, report to keelin and casey stat.

well, as promised, the travelers are home and…

we are safe.