Well things cant get much...oh wait they just did

Well its been a while since I last wrote and now its time for me to vent and calm the fuck down. Things for the most part were going relatively smooth. Im in spanish classes right now. They are in the morning which is perfect. They get me up early and into the city of Madrid.

This weekend Im going to Granada in the South of Spain. When I bought my tickets I thought I was going alone but it turns out that about for others are coming, so this should be fun. One relatively small upset is that its supposed to rain all this weekend. Not that big of deal and luckily I brought my rain coat.

Tonight will be a fun night, Sheila and Brittany leave Sunday to return to the states and since a good amount of people wont be here this weekend we are having a grand going away party night out in Madrid. Things should work out well, hang out all night and have fun and then catch my bus to Granada at 8:30 and get some shut eye. Ya for the most part things are looking up however I want to take this time to touch on a subject Ive mentioned before.

Luck, some people just dont have the bust luck with things. I dont know if its because they put themselves out there a lot so you have a greater chance of having your number picked out of the hat. Well a reoccurring theme in Europe is when I travel things must go wrong. No matter how hard I try, plan in advance, it always leaves my cursing loudly and self loathing.

Last Sunday I was buying my bus tickets from ALSA a bus company over here. Ive used them a couple times before and things have been fairly good. Well when I was buying the tickets, when I would push the finalize payment button the next screen would appear as an error. This happened multiple times, quite frustrated but still with a bit of self control I would make myself wait about twenty minutes between transactions.

I would be checking my bank account and my email accounts to see if the payment went through. I never received any confirmation emails, nothing. So after a couple hours I had to go teach english and finally after lessons and dinner I tried one last time. Finally success, the ticket appeared on the screen and I had received confirmation emails.

Feeling great relief I treated myself to extra hour of sleep that night. When I awoke I checked my emails to see if any of the language assistance had emailed me for plans for the day. I have new messages only from PayPal, an online service I use to purchase a lot of things.

All these messages say I have sent payments to ALSA. Goddammit, I checked my bank account and sure enough those transactions went through, however I still to this day havnt received any confirmation email.

Normally you could just cancel your ticket online, it would cost you nothing. Well since I used PayPal, the only way to view my tickets and change/cancel them is by using the locator number giving on the ticket. Great, I never received any of those tickets, nor emails so I dont have shit.

I have sent three emails to the company about this problem and still awaiting a single reply. Now Im gonna ask Irene my host mom to talk with the company and figure this shit out. I need it figured out because my tickets are for tomorrow, if I dont get it done today, I will lose all that other money. So now Im waiting for her to get home and hopefully come to some sort of conclusion with the conundrum.

If things couldnt get just a little bit more stressful, I was taking money out of the ATM on my way home. Same machine Ive always used and now I hate it. I went to withdraw money and entered my amount, pushed okay. It just went back to the welcome screen like always, gave me my card, but of course no receipt and no money.

Its not that I dont have money in my account because I do, I went inside and explained my problem, I gave her all of my information and she will look to see if thing are correct or wrong at the end of the day. She also suggested trying it again. So I did and this time it said it cant accept my card. This usually happens when you dont have sufficient funds in your account, which leads me to believe that the first transaction went through.

Now I wait til my bank opens, get in contact with them and try to figure all these problems out before class today and before I have to pack to leave for Granada. Ugh, hopefully some day soon Ill get a break from all this...