Thank God!

Wow.

I have heard about pickpockets for forever now. Whenever I say that I am going to Spain inevitably someone says that I need to watch out for pick pocketers, but there was some part of my brain that was just like, "yeah yeah pick pockets, just hold onto your bag and you will be fine." Tonight, thouogh, I had my first run in with a pick pocket.

He wasnt even sly at all, and he scared the crap out of all of us. I was standing in front of a metro station with about 4 other girls and we were chit chatting in english and waiting for another girl to show. All of a sudden I was jerked backwards and I realize that someone was pulling on my purse. I immediately tried to hold onto it tighter and pull it towards me. He was also pulling on the purse of the girl next to me. The strap on her purse broke so once he had her purse he took off running. We were all stunned and couldnt believe what happened. About ten seconds later Katie took off running after the theif and all of a sudden we found ourselves running through the streets of madrid trying to find Steffi's purse. Of course we never caught up to him, which could be for the better since I dont know what we were going to do once we chased him down. We never thought that far ahead.

Steffi was stunned and so were the rest of us. She lost 45 Euros, her camera and her keys to her house. We went straight to Steffi's house to tell her mom what happened. We called the police to file a report but her house mom told us that it was pretty much a lost cause. We were all pretty frightened. Sadly for Steffi, in addition to losing all of her stuff this all happend tonight and it is her birthday. That poor girl.

It was all so surreal and sudden. I can still feel the sudden jerk on my purse when he tried to grab it. I know that he was going to have either my purse or Steffi's and I was incredibly blessed that he didnt get mine too, but I can't help but feel bad for Steffi. It was all so strange. I am unbelievably thankful though that none of us got hurt and nothing too bad happened.

For the rest of the night we were all on our gaurd. We took Steffi out to a bunch of bars and bought her a lot of drinks. That poor girl, robbed on her birthday! We figured the best way to cheer her up would be to just let her forget and we tried to crack jokes and have a good time for the rest of the night. I know though, that none of us really forgot what happened and it will take a while for us to forget exactly how easy it is to steal someone's purse and how scary it can be.