A Voyage to my Independence

It all started on the winter of 2010, at that time I was in coursing the tenth grade in Santa Rosa Superior. Two years before, my oldest sister Isabel, had fallen in love with Alfons, an exchange law student from Spain, and had gone to live with him in Menorca, one of the Balearic islands in the Western coast of Spain.  My mother, being as family centered as she is, had decided that we were going to go celebrate New Years eve in this island which in the summer is very similar to Puerto Rico, but in the winter it was cold as a seals armpit because they only have one mountain and the cold air form the Mediterranean pierces thought the whole Island.  So me, Laura, my other sister, and my mother got on a journey that would take an unexpected turn and change us all.

            When we arrived there, there were plans already laid out that we where going to stay in a vacation house owned by the parents of my sisters boyfriend In a part of the island very close to the beach called Canutells. It was a very beautiful house on top of a little hill, with a pool, a beautiful fireplace and four rooms. Everything seemed perfect, the only problem was that this was a vacation house meant to be used in the summer so, except for the fireplace, there wasn’t any heating system. Most of the day’s we spent out in town or adventuring coves and caves, but at night we had to deal with the intense cold that entered the house and which my sister, mother and me being from the tropics were not built to live in. Here was that I learned that if hell existed it wasn’t a fiery pit as most of us imagine but a windy house on top of a hill at wintertime.

            Anyways one night while I was playing X-box with Alfons, Laura came out of her room claiming that she could not breath, but we did not pay much attention. This may seem a harsh reaction, but everyone that has had the pleasure of being with Laura for some time knows that she takes after my father and they’re both a little, I mean considerably over dramatic. It turns out that we should have listened because the day after she did go to the hospital and was diagnosed with a pneumonia that caused her pleurisy, which is basically a build up of fluid in the space between the lungs and the ribcage. This happened the day before we where supposed to head back home and didn’t allow her to take any flight because the change in pressures could kill her.

            Consequently we had to cancel our flight back home, which had no insurance so the money was lost. Laura had to be hospitalized and have a tube inserted to her pleural space until the doctors determined what caused the infection. This was a process that went on for weeks with very few results. My mom and my big sister were loosing their heads, Laura was the most difficult patient ever and I had to be stuck in that house for eternity. Since the beginning of school was very close my mom finally agreed to my request to travel to Puerto Rico alone. I had to take flights from Menorca to Barcelona, Barcelona to Madrid, Madrid to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to Puerto Rico. At this time I was 16 years old and this idea seemed frightening, but like it could be the adventure of a lifetime and believe me it was.

            Nevertheless I packed and was taken to the airport in Menorca where I found out that at 16 years old you’re an adult in an airport so there was no companion service provided. I was happy about this until I arrived to Madrid where apparently the plain to Philadelphia was suffering some mechanical difficulties so after waiting 15 hours I was sent to Europe’s biggest hotel to spend the night. There in Madrid I met some very cool people from the flight, which took me all over town, something my mother still doesn’t know, or she would die from a heart attack. It was the experience of a lifetime being in a foreign country, so young and being able to meet so much cool people. Here I discovered that I could travel the world alone, I obtained my independence in this event and ever since had felt the need to explore the whole world even if I have to travel it alone.