add on...

Ok so today I am finally in Sevilla...I took the AVE, which was way cool, very fast and very modern. And when I arrived at the Sevilla stop I ran into another girl who was from CIEE and we grabbed a cab together...lol the guy was like "oye trajiste toda la casa?" I guess he thought all the equipaje was mine at first.

And the other highlight of the day was that Andres and I went to buy un móvil! So now I have 3 contacts and have made my first International call from my Spanish cell phone. :) Sometimes its little things like this that help smooth the bumps of travel.

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Also yesterday I abbreviated as to the actual story of my visit with José Miguel ...The house was quite unique and very eccentric but in a good way. But the story of what happened during our visit was far more strange...

Loly had called around lunchtime to make sure he was ready for our visita, but he stopped midsentence and despite her repeating José...José he did not answer. But she heard the TV in the back so she assumed he forgot to hang up the phone.

We packed up the colored pencils form Tia Nini and Tio Mario along with the leftovers form our Cuban almuerzo and headed for the metro. After we changed several times and walked a few blocks we arrived at the parte antiguo de la ciudad, donde vive el. We knocked on the door and rang his bell but no one could hear us, eventually neighbors buzzed us in and up we went to the very top floor to the attic where he lives.

We had to ask around for a key because we were beginning to get worried, so once we got inside Loly went to the back to see if he was alright, and I entered behind her taking in my surroundings. (Refer to yesterday's blog) So we find out that this very clearheaded man is unable to sit up and has not left his bed for days...we call the medico who takes forever to arrive and he then tells us that in fact Sr. Miguel has a high fever and possibly an infection of some kind.

But he can do nothing more than try to lower the fever by giving him pastillas to which he said, "pero no me gusta" Well i'm sure they were not as tasty as caramelos pero a veces tiene que endurecer...

Then 45 min later the ambulancia arrives and in come two rather hefty hombres who after seeing the stairs say a few curse words before mounting the first one. But when they arrive they realize the journey and the complications have just begun. They squeeze through the tiny hallways of José Miguel's house and then roughly try to lift him and put him in the medical gurney/chair.

This was a horrible sight to watch and it made me thankful for our medical care here in the states, because el es un viejo y era muy debil at that moment, but they were harsh with him. They couldn’t really get their grip on him and he ended up on the floor at one point. I felt helpless and insulted that they would treat someone this way.

And to top things off they insisted that he remove his ring which he was not ok with, but Loly reminded him that is he took it off here there was less chance of loosing it, so he consented but barely.

So then we had to rummage through all the loose papers to find medical records of some kind...and then it came to the medics attention that José Miguel was part of a private hospital así que they could not help him. So after all that they put him in a chair and left him with us to wait on the 3rd medics of the day. It was incredible the way they could just leave a sick man when it just wasn't part of their jurisdiction.

An hour later the private doctors show up and eventually with the help of a neighbor we literally carried him down out of the attic and all the way down 3 floors worth of stairs to the ambulancia outside. We told him he looked like a king being hoisted above the crowd but I’m not sure he believed us.

Needless to say it was a visit quite different than the one I was prepared for, but in the end it was an adventure...

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Loly me llamó and told me he's doing better...more mañana