Let's all hold hands on the airplane.

As entirely excruciating as air travel can be, it can have its hidden bonuses.  Yes, the last leg of my trip from Madrid to Seville was canceled; yes, Madrid Barajas may go down in recent history as one of Europe’s most inept, though admittedly architecturally interesting, airports; and yes, after over twenty-four waking hours, filling out paperwork for a delayed (and as of yet not retrieved) piece of luggage seemed about as enticing as a lukewarm tray of airline delicacies. Yet because I had the great fortune of traversing such obstacles in the company of those who would become my peers in the Seville program (evidently Americans aren’t too difficult to pick out of a crowd), the entire experience somehow took on a brighter hue.  Somehow, by collectively encountering what at the time seemed to be crippling setbacks, by seeing each other at our respective worst, and by generally commiserating over the entire ordeal, we were able cobble together a kind of solidarity.

  

This was by no means the first time in history that people had suffered at the hands of derailed travel plans, nor was it even remotely as bad as it could have been (a friend in the program later recounted his ill-fated 48 hour trip to India), but it was miserable enough to bring us close together.  In a way, the seemingly wrathful travel god had actually bestowed upon us an invaluable gift that jump-started what inevitably will develop into great friendships during the next five months.  As I sat in Madrid Barajas, horribly sleep-deprived and nursing a life-restoring bocadillo with jamón ibérico, I looked at the faces around me, some old and most of them new, and felt, in the midst of a thick climatic and emotional fog, a glimmer of hope for my future in this foreign land.