Palma de Mallorca and Feria de Abril

Hey guys!
Sorry I've been a little late on this blog but this last week has been really crazy. I officially have about two weeks left in beautiful Seville before I get on my flight back to the states. As of right now I am in a really good place in terms of my feelings of leaving. I win both ways. One way, I have two weeks left to enjoy the city; the other, I have two weeks before I come home and see all the friends and family that I miss so much. This last week was my "spring break", I guess you could say. Have I mentioned enough times in this blog that school here is an absolute joke? I really am learning a lot in my classes but at the same time, we have had two separate weeks off from school in April: one for Semana Santa and the other for Feria de Abril (I'll explain what that is a little later).

For the first weekend of our break Steph, Kels and I flew to Palma de Mallorca, which is a island off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean. . It's kind of the Florida of Spain. It's very low key with a lot of older people. All the tourists are either German or British and nothing else. It's known for it's beautiful, clear, quiet , white sand beaches. Jack, our British friend who also met us in Paris, also came to meet us in Palma. A lot of our other trips have been to big cities and have been pretty tourist-y so we decided to come to Palma to do only one thing: relax. We were able to find really cheap plane tickets and a really cheap hotel on the coast that overlooked the ocean so our plan was to just lay out all day. The city itself was pretty quiet because it wasn't their busy season. A couple of the days it was rainy and cloudy, so we were forced to stay in our hotel room and rent movies on I-tunes, but when the weather was nice, it was absolutely beautiful. One morning when Jack had already left, Kels, Steph and I went down to the breakfast buffet that our resort had. We were waiting in line to get omelets when the Spanish woman making them asked "Did you guys win yesterday?" We were really confused. Then she said "Your basketball team is good, isn't it?" After talking to her for a little while and being pretty confused on what she was talking about, we realized that she thought that WE were on a basketball team and we had come to Palma to play. I'm 6 feet tall, Steph is like 5 foot 9 and Kels is like 5 foot 6 so I guess you could say we're collectively tall. Instead of correcting her, we just went along with it. She continued to ask us about it the rest of breakfast and the other times that we saw her that week. We just smiled, nodded and said "sí, sí".

We got back to Seville on Tuesday with the rest of the week free to enjoy the Feria de Abril (April Fair). Now, Feria is really hard to explain to someone that doesn't know anything about it and, truthfully, I didn't really know what to expect until I got there. So hang in there while I try to explain it. First of all, it is a HUGE fair. It was started about 100 years ago in order to protest the foreign influence that was coming from the west. As you can imagine, it is about as traditionally Spanish as you can get. During this week, the ENTIRE city shuts down. Stores are closed, the streets in the center of town are almost completely vacant because the fair is located on the outside of town. It is conveniently located 2 blocks from my house. The fair grounds are huge. Half of the fairground is taken over by carnival rides. The other half is taken over by literally hundreds of "casetas" all in rows. This area actually has streets with names with the casetas lining them. Each caseta is a tent much like one that you would have a wedding reception in but smaller. Each one has a dance floor, tables, a bar and restaurant in the back. Almost all of these casetas are private. They are owned by a family and the whole family will invite their whole extended family and all of their friends. They are very hard to get and if you have one, it has probably belonged to your family for many, many years. If you are a native Sevilliano, you usually go to the Feria grounds with many different casetas you can go to because you know a lot of people. These casetas are by invite only and each caseta has a security card that is required in order to enter it. There are even guards at each door. If you are a foreigner who's just coming to the fair, you're probably out of luck. Out of many 500 casetas, there is only 1 large public one that is open to everyone. Inside the tents, there is music, dancing, eating and spending time with your whole family and all of your friends. Imagine 500 small wedding receptions going on side by side in a giant fairground and that's basically how the Feria is.

Also, in true Sevilliano style, there are more traditional aspects as well. Women wear flamenco dresses and men wear suits and ties. Some of the men go all out and wear the short horse riding jackets. EVERY sevilliana woman wears a Flamenco dress. My señora, Pillar, has 3 and Piluca, her daughter, has 4. Women of all ages wear them, from the babies to the grandmas. Take a look at the pictures I took, but the dress also includes wearing a shawl and a flower in your hair. These dresses cost anywhere from 150 to 5000 euros (That's like 200 to 7,000 dollars). I talked to Steph's Spanish dad and he told me that he bought a dress for each of his daughters and the two dresses cost him "only" 2,000 euros. How they afford these things, I have no idea, but it does tell you just how serious the Sevillianos are about the fair. Needless to say, I did not buy a dress. Steph found one for 150 euros which, she was told by many Spaniards, is really cheap. I decided to do what Spaniards do when they've worn their dress 3 days in a row. I put on a regular dress, bought a shawl and put a flower in my hair. Thankfully, I didn't feel too out of place. Also, instead of popular music, only Flamenco music is played and only Sevillianas is danced. Sevillianas is a type of Flamenco that is particular to the Feria. Each sevillianas has for different sets of partner dances within it. Thankfully, Steph, Kels and I took a class in Sevilla that taught us all four dances so we were ready when we got there. Ever sevilliano knows this dance by heart. I personally think it's pretty complicated but the natives make it look so easy. They never get bored of dancing it for hours and hours.

So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday AND Saturday night, Kels, Steph and I were at the fairgrounds. The earliest we went home was 4 in the morning, the latest was 7 in the morning. Lucky for us, we did have a few casetas to go to. Steph's family owns a caseta. Maria (the 19 year old girl who Steph lives with) let us go to a few casetas that her friends owned and we also have some other Spanish friends who let us come into theirs. So basically, I spent 4 nights in a row, eating Spanish food, dancing to Spanish music, wearing Spanish clothes and having fun until the sun rose. I went on rides and I made new friends. I will go as far to say that the Feria was the most fun that I've had this whole semester. One particular night, we couldn't get a hold of any of our Spanish friends to go into a caseta so we just walked around. Within 5 minutes, we had 3 Spanish guys again our age following us begging us to come into their caseta. We thought they were really creepy but they would not leave us alone. We told them that we were going to get some dessert so we couldn't come. They followed and then BOUGHT our dessert for us, while continuing to tell us we had to come back to their caseta. We figured we would stop by, grab a free drink and leave. Turns out that going to that caseta was one of the best decisions we made all weekend. We walked into their caseta and there was a HUGE group of Spanish people our age who welcomed us with open arms. The guys were all super nice and super funny. The girls even danced with us and were patient when we forgot a dance step. We spent probably 4 hours in that caseta before we called it a night. I don't think I will ever forget how much fun it was. I don't think I'll ever forget how amazing that whole week was. It was a dream. I've never had so much fun in my whole life. I also got the amazing chance to really experience a true, traditional Spanish custom. It also cemented the fact that I am fluent in Spanish. I was able to have conversations with my Spanish friends and with strangers with almost no problems. I had been hearing about and looking forward to the Feria this entire semester and I will have to say that I cannot think of a better way to end my time here in Sevilla.

Now it's Monday and it's time to go back to the real world (By real world, I mean back to Seville, which is a dream in itself). I was walking to school today and things are still closed with signs that was "cerrado: descanso de la Feria" which means "Closed: resting from Feria". As you can see, people are still recuperating from the week long party. I officially have 10 days left in Sevilla before we go to Madrid for the LAST weekend and then fly back to the states. That means that I have 10 days left to pack up my stuff, write 2 papers, study for my exams and try to soak up as much of the city as I can. This will be my last blog before I get home so that I can make sure that my time is devoted to all the things I have to do. Please keep watch out for a last and final entry once I get back to the states on the 19th of May.

Also, check out my pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2391197&id=10235591&l=6371c0d933

It's springtime in Sevilla...¡Qué chica tan grande!

So I officially have 4 weeks left overseas and I cannot believe it. Before coming to Spain, our study abroad office at CU gave us a workshop of the "Cultural Appreciation Curve" (or something like that) and they talked about how you will have ups and downs when you are living outside your home country for 4 months. They said that there will be times like when you arrive and you are constantly excited and happy and then there will be other times when you will be sick of foreign food, the different culture and a different language and you will just want to go home. I was also told that about a month before you leave, you will develop a deep, heart-left appreciation for the place where you are living. I think that I have come to that point. Right after Italy, I went through a few days where I was incredibly homesick and just wanted to see my family. But that phase disappeared (not to say that I don't want to see my parents or any of my friends at home because I still miss people) and I feel like I am walking on a cloud. The weather has been between 70-80 degrees without a cloud in the sky for the last 4 days straight. I have fallen in love with this city. I could not ask for a better place to call my home (except Colorado, of course). Leaving here in 4 weeks is the EPITOME of bittersweet.

The last week or so has been a little uneventful in terms of the adventures that I have been having for the last 2 months of non stop traveling, so I'm just going to give you guys some random updates on what I have been up to.

So first of all, the day I after I got back from Italy, the festivities of Holy Week began in Seville. I mentioned this briefly in my last entry, but Semana Santa is a HUGE deal in Seville. It is one of the most important traditional events of the city. It is celebrated in the week leading up to Easter, one to two weeks before the city's other great celebration, the Feria, and is amongst the largest religious events within Spain, internationally renowned for its drama. The week features the procession of pasos, floats of lifelike wooden sculptures of individual scenes of the events of the Passion, or images of the Virgin Mary showing grief for the torture and killing of her son. Some of the sculptures are of great antiquity and are considered artistic masterpieces. I'm in a interest group concentrated on Spanish Art and we went on a field trip to a taller (workshop) where we met a man whose entire career was devoted to making floats for Semana Santa. He works all year long to built ONE float to go through the city only once. During Holy Week, the city is crowded with residents and visitors, drawn by the spectacle and atmosphere.The processions are organised by hermandades and cofradías, religious brotherhoods. During the processions, members precede the pasos (of which there are up to three in each procession) dressed in penitential robes, and, with few exceptions, hoods. They may also be accompanied by brass bands. The processions work along the shortest route from the home churches and chapels to the Cathedral, usually via a central viewing area and back. The processions from the suburban barrios may take 14 hours to return to their home churches. A total of 59 processions are scheduled for the week, from Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday morning. The climax of the week is the night of Maundy Thursday, when the most popular processions set out to arrive at the Cathedral on the dawn of Good Friday, known as the madrugá. Stephanie's host family has a balcony that overlooks one of the busiest and most important streets in Seville so we got a chance to see some pasos from a balcony looking down, most importantly, we got to see the Virgen del Madrugá. The pasos are carried on the backs of up to 50 men and they travel at all hours, even though the middle of the night. When I was walking at home at 3am in the morning from Steph's host family, it might as well have been the 3pm. There were families everywhere, babies, toddlers, grandparents included. It was like the Thanksgiving Day parade. Because there are so many pasos, up to 5 can be going around the city at the same time, so I saw two more just walking home. It was definitely an amazing experience.

This past weekend, I went with my interest group to Madrid. My program has interest groups, each of them focused on a different subject. I choose Arte Español Moderno y Contemporáneo (Spanish Modern and Contemporary Art). Through out the semester, we have been taking feild trips all over the city to art museums to see and discuss the pieces. The semester ends with a trip that is paid for by the program. Our trip was to Madrid which I didn't know until now is a city with one of the greatest collections of art museums in the world. While we were there, I visited the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Museo Thyssen Bornemisza. I got to see some of the most famous paintings in the world by some of the most famous artists in the world. I got to see works by El Greco, Goya, Velazquéz, Murillo, Raphael, Picasso, Dalí, Miró and many others. I got to the Picasso's famous Guernica mural. It was absolutely huge and completely breathtaking. Besides the incredible art I got to see, I also got a cool opportunity to the the AVE train from Sevilla to Madrid. This train goes up to 300 mph is one of the fastest trains in the world. It is usually about a 6 or 7 hour bus ride or hour plane ride from Sevilla to Madrid, but we got there in 2 hours by train. Madrid is truely a magnificant city. While people joke about the fact that the only thing to do there is drink and go to museums, it really is a city that you have to experience simply by walking through its streets. I loved the feel and the atmosphere of a busy Spanish city. I really fell in love with Spain as a whole even more by my trip to Madrid. I walked through the downtown streets and the plazas, hearing the spanish music and the Spanish language and all I could think was "I want to stay here forever, please don't make me go home".

I have one more story before I head off which I think is kind of funny. One thing that I love about Sevilla is that people walk absolutely everywhere. The city is set up in the way that a typical European country is set up, in a way where you don't have to use a car or even a bus at times. I walk probably up to 2 hours a day here. So the sidewalks are always full and I pass the most interesting people. Whereas people in the states like to hum or whistle while they walk, some people in Spain like to SING and loudly. Again, this is completely normal. The other thing that's important to know is that people in Spain are much shorter than people in the states. I am feet tall so when I walk into a bar or down the street, I get a lot of stares, stares I have learned to ignore. Not only do I get stares, I also get a lot of commentary over my height. Everywhere from the grocery store to the coffee shop to homestay with people visit, I am constantly getting "¿Eres muy alta, sí? (You're really tall, right?)" I get it all the time! Part of me wants to scream, "YES! I AM VERY TALL! IS THAT A PROPER WAY TO START A CONVERSATION WITH A STRANGER?" (in Spanish, of course). Anyway, a while back I was walking down the street and a man walked by and he was singing at the top of his lungs. I guess he was making up his song because when we came close to me on the sidewalk, he stopped right in front of me, looked me up and down, held out his hands and sang loudly "Qué chica tan grande!". This means "what a big girl" in Spanish. You would think that this would offend me, but it was probably one of the funniest things I've ever experienced. I was chuckling about it for the rest of the day

So that's all for this week, folks. I'm off to Palma de Mallorca! We have this next week off of school because it's Feria, which is a city carnival that shuts the entire city down once again (this Spaniards know how to have a good time, man). I'll be on the beach for the first part of the week and then testing out my Flamenco at Feria (I've been taking classes here) the second half of the week. Thanks for reading!

pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2387943&id=10235591&l=cf5459fa41

Gondolas, Pigeons and sunlight...Venice and Rome again

Hey guys!

So I'm back in Seville. I've been here a few days but it's Semana Santa (Holy Week) so it's been really hard for me to find an internet cafe that's open for me to use the internet. Also, I am COMPLETELY exhausted from traveling. I literally spent the first two days back in Seville doing absolutely nothing and I spent A LOT of time in bed just trying to get my body back on track after too much food, too little rest and too many sights. I have to be honest, it's been really hard to get back in the swing of things here in Seville, I'm still so tired! But I'm sure school will wake me up because I start up again tomorrow.

Anyway, when I left you last, I had just updated you guys on Florence. From Florence, we took a 2 hour train to Venice, which is at the northeast side of the country. The ride between Florence and Venice wasn't nearly as beautiful as the one between Rome and Florence, which has beautiful Italian countrysides, so we all caught up on our sleep. When we got off the train, it was night outside and we literally walked out of the train station and THERE was the Grand Canal. For those of you that don't know, the ONLY transportation in Venice is by boat. There are no cars, trucks or anything. Thankfully, our hostel was very close to the train station. It was only a short walk and we didn't need to take a water taxi. We had gotten to Venice around 10 o clock so we settled into our hostel, got some dinner and walked around. One note about Italy and Venice in particular: Up to this point, I have been to many different places in Europe, and Italy by far has the rudest people. Our waiter this night was incredibly rude and it set the tone for every other restaurant that we visited in Venice.

The next morning, we woke up, got a 36 hour pass to use the water bus (and that's exactly what is was; it was just like a bus but it was on water) and headed over to St. Mark's Square. On the way, the scenery was amazing. We passed under the Rialto Bridge and by the farmer's market on the Grand Canal. When we got to St. Mark's Square, all of us were really excited about the HUGE amount of pigeons there were. Kelsey had been scaring pigeons in every country and city we've been to so far so we knew that she would have a field day. Part of me thought it was funny that were were so many and part of me just thought it was disgusting. Regardless, we did have some fun chasing them. But these ones were tough, it took a little bit more to actually compel them to move. You nearly had to cause them harm, not such scare them. As much as I was tempted, I did not kick any pigeons. That afternoon we visited The Doge Palace (The Duke's Palace) and St. Mark's Basilica. I really enjoyed St. Mark's Basilica just because it was very different that a lot of the churches we had seen so far. Instead of stained glass and large stones, St. Mark's had gold and jewels everywhere with amazing mosaics of events from the bible. The most interesting part, by far, was the fact that St. Mark's, the gospel writer, tomb was there. After I saw it, it really hit me just how historically important this place is! Italy (Rome especially) is where Christianity took off! This is where the early apostles and followers fought for what they believed and I felt really blessed to feel so close to someone like St. Mark.

The next day, we bought tickets for an afternoon train back to Rome and then just hung out with Venice until we had to leave. We had a few hours left so we shopped around the Rialto Bridge, bought fresh fruit at an outdoor market, ate some pizza and, of course, took the cliché gondola ride. Get ready for probably the funniest story of my whole semester this far. So Kelsey, Steph and I kept joking about how we wanted a very attractive, young gondolier man to take us around Venice in his gondola. So while we were walking by the Rialto Bridge, it was like God heard our request and bought us just what we wanted. Standing on the bridge were two gondoliers: one HOT, young man and another one that looked like he was maybe 45 and not that attractive. I went up to the two of them and asked for a gondola ride. Right as I did, the younger one was being asked by another family (who literally came up at the EXACT same time as we did) so the older one offered to take us. When we got to the dock, the attractive guy was there with the family. Somehow, I think the two gondoliers decided to switch costumers because we ended up with this INCREDIBLY handsome, young gondolier who took us down the Gran Canal. We found out after taking off from the dock that his name was Marco.

So anyway, Marco is taking us through the smaller canals of Venice and is explaining the history and architecture of the buildings around us and we are just dumb in the presence his beauty. We must of had the stupidest grins on our faces as we just stared at him while he rowed. So we were passing under a bridge and Marco says "This is the famous kissing bridge. Do you want a kiss?" We thought he was kidding and we started giggling like idiots. Then under her breath (but not really under her breath; is was really easy to hear), Steph says "Ab-so-lutely". Next thing we know, Marco has got his face 5 inches from hers. We thought he was just going to give her a little kiss on the cheek. That is not what happened. He kissed her and I mean KISSED her. It was not just a peck on the lips. I think the 3 of us were going to die. I wanted to jump out of the boat I was laughing so hard. We couldn't believe it! Afterwards, he continued rowing and I asked "Do you do that to all your customers? Even the old ladies?" Marco said "No." with a grin. A few minutes later, we went under another bridge and Marco said "This is the other kissing bridge." Then he pointed at me and said "Do YOU want a kiss?" And I said "No, I'm good". As cool as that sounded, he had JUST kissed my best friend and I was not having any of that. Next thing I know, he's kissing Steph AGAIN! Much longer than the first time. By the way, there IS a real bridge called the "Kissing Bridge" but there certainly aren't two. Finally, we were back at the dock. We gave him a huge tip and left as fast as we could so we could BURST into laughter when we were out of Marco's sight. Needless to say, it was the most interesting boat ride I have EVER been on.

That afternoon, we took a 5 hour train ride back to Rome to spend one more full day before we flew back to Seville. It was really nice to have a free day in Rome without any huge pressure to do anything because we got a lot of things done the first time we went to Rome. We woke up on our last day and decided to go back to the Coliseum. We had seen the outside at the beginning of the week, but we wanted to go back to get a full tour of the inside, which we had not seen yet. We found a tour that would take us through the Coliseum and would also take on a tour of the Roman Forum which is located right next to the Coliseum. It was amazing to see just how little of the original buildings are left. They really are just skeletons of what they used to be because over thousands of years, people in Rome would use material from the ruins to build new things. This is why the Trevi fountain is made out of marble taken from the Coliseum. I was also extremely surprised and excited to learn that right next to the Forum is a church (it wasn't originally a church, but it became a church later) that contains the prison where St. Paul and St. Peter were held before they were both martyered. This was by far my favorite sight to visit in Rome and was also the one that I took most seriously. I walked down a flight of stairs and was actually standing in the stone cell were Paul and Peter had been. There was also a column there that they used to tie them to and flog them. Being there was extremely powerful. I had the amazing opportunity to see what they saw and to try (with no success) to imagine myself in their position. I also found out that they baptized other prisoners waiting for execution while there were held down there. I will never forget that small cell for the rest of my life.

The next day we got up at the crack of dawn to come back to Seville! How blessed am I? This trip was such a gift and it was everything I could have asked for and more. Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera so I was depending on Steph, Kels and Sarah to take all the pictures. I stole some pictures from them to place on this blog. If you want to see more, you should check out Kelsey's photo bucket account: website: http://www.photobucket.com/, username: kelseymcwhirter, password: sevilla. Thanks again for reading my novels! See you next week!

P.S. The guy with us in the picture above is Marco, the gondolier

I've never had so much gelato and cappuccino in my LIFE. Florence

Hey guys! I'm on a train once again but this time I'm on a train from Venice back to Rome. I didn't get a chance to write about Florence on the train ride from Florence to Venice so I'm going to write about it now and write about Venice and my last day in Rome when I get a chance. On a side note, I heard that yesterday there was a huge earthquake 60 miles outside of Rome. As you probably already know because you are reading these words, I am completely fine. I was in Venice when it happened which is a good 5 hours by train from Rome. One of the only reasons I knew that there was an earthquake in Italy was because I received some nervous emails asking me if everything is all right. Thanks be to God, but Kels, Steph, Sarah and I didn't feel a thing and were completely unaffected by it.

On Friday night, we arrived in Rome and took a taxi to our hostel. It has been a huge blessing that the majority of people that we have encountered here have spoke English, but this was not the case with the gentleman who was running the taxi. We just pointed to the address and he took us to our hostel. When we got there, I opened the door to get out and he said something to me in Italian. I think he told me to either close or open the door to the car. I obviously didn't understand so he started SCREAMING the same thing over and over again to me. So I just got out of the car. I thought "sure, buddy, just scream louder and then I'll magically understand what you're saying". That night, we met up with Stephanie's dad and sister. They had actually been in Seville a few days earlier to visit Steph and then went to Italy afterwards and we were in Florence on the same day. We also met up with Steph's friend, Alex from her sorority, who is studying in Florence for the semester. It was really nice to talk to someone who knew their way around and had no problem showing us all the right places to go to see, eat and hang out. That night all 7 of us went to dinner and then went to a bar to have a drink.

That next morning, we met up with Steph's dad and sister to have a quick lunch, cappuccino and dessert before the two of them left for Rome. Before coming to Italy, I knew that there were a few things that I needed to eat because they were Italian and cappuccinos were high on my list. Obviously, pizza, pasta and gelato are also on my list and I cannot even explain to you how much I have been eating of all of them. Anyway, this afternoon we went to a cappuccino bar that probably had the best cappuccino I've ever had in my life. For the much of the rest of the day, we just wandered around Florence. It seems like Florence is the Italian version of Seville. While there were differences between the two of them, Florence REALLY reminded me of Seville. For example, it's based next to a river, it's main attraction is a huge cathedral, MANY Americans study there and you can walk absolutely everywhere in the whole city within 40 minutes. The weather wasn't amazing on Saturday, it was a little dreary and rainy, but it fit the city perfectly. It gave the entire city a green, grey and brown shade. We went to a huge outdoor market (very common in Europe)and visited the Duomo (the huge cathedral). My favorite part of the day was hiking up to La Piazza de Michelangelo. From the Piazza, we could see a view of the entire city. The other cool thing about Florence is that it is surrounded by mountains, so it seems like a mixture between Salzburg and Seville. We hiked up a little more to a church that gave us an even better view. For some reason, at the church there were a lot of groups of Italian teenagers who were calling us really bad names (none of them that I will mention here) simply because we were there . We never really knew why, we literally just walked by them and had multiple people cuss at us (maybe it was the flip flops, they're not well-liked in Europe). I didn't let that take away from the breathtaking view on the steps of the church. Not only could you see all of Florence, but you could also see the deep green hillsides that surrounded it. That night, we met up with Alex again, went to a few bars and ended our night at a dance club called Space. It was a little funny because Sarah didn't know that the club was called "Space" so we were at one bar and I said "I really want to go to Space" and then Sarah starts this whole conversation about how she thought that being an astronaut would be terrifying. It was only when we got to the club that she realized I was talking about the club and not outer space.

The next day we woke up and we knew that we had to move kind of fast because we had to catch a train to Venice that afternoon. Florence is the historical and current center of Italian art and it is famous for all of its art museums, mainly the Academy Gallery which has Michelangelo's David. We started our day bright and early and walked over to the Ufizzi Museum which is famous for its works by Raphael, Michelangelo and Botelli. We had heard that the line was about a half and hour long. Turns out that it was about 4 and a half hours. Thankfully, after standing in line for 45 minutes with it barely moving, we bought a pass that lets you come back at a specified time. So we were able to walk around the city for a few hours and then come back. I got to the "The Birth of Venice" and I've decided that Botticelli is my favorite artist (even though I don't think that I had one before). I've never been a huge fan of art, but Botticelli blew me away. I was convinced I could have stayed there for hours staring at one piece where the Angel Gabriel visits the Virgin Mary. Sadly, I had to tear myself away because we needed to get to the David before our train left. While part of it seemed a little silly to stand in an hour line to see a statue, but Michelangelo does not disappoint. I know that this is pretty general, but this statue was a recreation of probably the most perfect, beautiful human I have ever seen in my life. We sat there for a good half hour just staring at the body wondering HOW Michelangelo made his skin and his muscles SO realistic. It's obviously stone, but it really looks like his surface is flesh and bone. It's seriously magic. Plus, it's a LOT bigger than I thought it would be. It was overwhelming. I'm officially a HUGE fan. That afternoon, we got on our train to Venice. I should also mention that in between just about everything we did in Florence, we stopped for gelato (Walk around, stop of gelato, hike to piazza, gelato, museum, gelato, David, gelato, etc.) Europe has gelato everywhere, but Florence tops them all. I'm sure my arteries are clogged, but hey, you're only in Italy once ;).

I am full of pasta and pizza...Rome

This was written on April 3rd...

Hey guys!
So I am on the train between Rome and Florence right now as I am writing this. I am looking at the window at green hillsides, country houses and sheep and pastures out the window. I'm thinking that because I will be in Italy for 8 days and every single day will be packed with stuff, I'll write a blog while I'm on the train between cities in order to best document my trip. The reason why we are able to spend a whole week in Italy is because it's holy week and we don't have school. Here's our itinerary for this week. We flew out of Seville on Wednesday night (we skipped school on Thursday and don't have school on Friday) and just spend two days in Rome. Now we’re on a train to Florence where we'll spend two more days. After that we'll take a train to Venice, spend two days there and THEN take a train back to Rome to spend two more days before flying back to Seville in time for Good Friday and Easter. How many times can I say I can't believe how blessed I am?

So we flew into Rome two days ago and have been having the time of our lives. After getting into the Rome airport and checking into our hostel (Kelsey booked us an AMAZING hostel, it was just as good as a hotel), we decided to venture out into the neighborhood to get something to eat. Let me tell you something right now, every single meal that I have had since I have been here has been one of the most amazing meals I have eaten in my entire life. Just about 80 percent of the restaurants I've seen here have had pasta and pizza. I don't know if that's a tourist thing or if it really IS the only thing that Italians eat. We woke up the next morning, got dressed, ate some more amazing food and then went to a hotel to meet our tour guide for a tour of Italy. Nancy, Steph's mom, had heard of this amazing tour from multiple travel guides. During this tour, an English-speaking driver picks you up, takes you to all the important landmarks in Rome and tells you all about the historical significance. She was so excited about it that she offered to pay for it for us as a gift (WHAT a gift, right?). So we are standing outside the hotel and we see this Mercedes Benz parked across in front. When we ask the guy at the front desk, he tells us that this is the right car. We go up to the window and there's this big Italian guy reading a book. We knock and the window and say "Is this the tour of Italy?". He nods. We get in the car and everyone is dead silent; the driver doesn't introduce himself or say hi or anything. Steph asks "So how does this work?". The driver says in a THICK Italian accent "I don't understand". Silence and shifty eyes begin. Then he says "Where do you want to go?" We, knowing nothing about Rome, say "Wherever you want". So basically, as you can see, this is not what we expected. He did try to explain to us information about Rome, but his English was HORRIBLE so we didn't really learn anything. If we asked questions he would say "I don't understand." BUT overall, it was still AMAZING. Even though we didn't get any information, he did take us to the Trevi Fountain, The Coliseum, the Spanish Steps, the Forum, The Pantheon and some other important spots all in 3 hours. Even though Nancy was furious that the tour wasn't what she was told, to say that we were spoiled that day would be an understatement.

While we were on this tour, we turned a corner to drive down this really narrow, one way road in between two buildings. As we did, literally hundreds of tourists in the street had to squish up against the walls in order to get out of our way. People were GLARING at us through the windows. We were also in a Mercedes so people would peek in our windows as we drove by. Just to be funny, I started waving out the windows. Kels and Steph joined. Soon we had even MORE people peering in our windows and I had tourists as far as the eye could see waving BACK. I think from my confident waving, they might have thought we were famous or they should know who we are. It was hilarious.

Later that night, our friend Sarah who goes to CU and is also studying in Sevilla met up with us. We went on a Spanish Steps pub crawl and were taken around Rome to some really good bars where we met some really cool English speaking people (from Britain, New Zealand and Canada) and had a really good time talking about all of our travel adventures. It's pretty normal to find English speaking people in big tourist cities because it's a heck of a lot harder to hang with someone who isn't good at your language. Also I'm not going to lie, I LOVE listening to all the different accents.

The next morning, we woke up and went to the Vatican. I think that out of everything in Rome, the Vatican was the sight that I was the most excited about seeing. While I am not Catholic, one of my best friends from high school is Catholic and I find it SO interesting. Also, I love the history of the Christian church in Rome. We got there and figured that we would spoil ourselves with a guided tour through the city because we were a little sick of going to these awesome sights and having no idea why they were so important. It really was worth the extra money. We learned SO much about Roman and Christian history. I saw the Sistine Chapel and was blown away. My favorite section of the ceiling is "the touch" (even though they're not touching) between Adam and God. It was so cool to see the God was reaching so far to try to reach Adam and Adam is barely lifting a finger in response. It really was breathtaking but I have to say it hurt my neck haha. Then we continued on to St. Peter's Basilica and the Square. After the Sacra Coeur in Paris, this church was one of my favorite churches I've seen in Europe (trust me, I have seen A LOT). It was also HUGE. Sadly, the line to the top of the Culpa was extremely long and we had to catch a train, so I didn't get to go to the top of the dome. But it was interesting because the Pope was in the Vatican City, even though I didn't see him. It was just cool to know that he was there. So After the Vatican City, we got on our train to Florence.

So that's about it for this post, I'll write about Florence on my next train ride to Venice in two days. Hopefully, I can find a place that has wifi so I can post these while I'm here and not just put up 3 blogs at once when I get back. Thanks again for reading!

P.S. The weather in Rome was STUNNING. I had read before we left Spain that it was going to be cloudy and rainy all day the two days we were going to be there, but to our surprise, it was sunny and the sky was so BLUE. Only down side was I left the hostel with my rain boats, sweater, jacket and umbrella. Needless to say, I had a lot of extra things to carry that day.

What a nice little weekend! Barcelona

So I am sitting in the university and I literally have about 10 minutes before I have to leave to go home, eat and get on a plane to Italy, so I figured I would give you guys a check update about Barcelona this last weekend. Barcelona was really awesome. It was nice to go someplace IN Spain and be able to speak the language because I was lost in terms of Germany, Portugal and Paris. This weekend was especially nice because it was really different from our other weekend trips. First of all, when we went to Munich and Paris, we literally had to fit an ENTIRE city in in one day. That meant that we woke up early, ate really fast, ran around non stop all day and then went to bed really late. We of course had great experiences in these places but they were PACKED and very, very busy. We were in Barcelona for just about 3 complete days, had a hostel in the middle of the city and came without a lot of information about what we could even do. I knew that Barcelona is one of the biggest cities in Spain, it hosted the Olympics in the 90s and it's on the coast, but that's about all I knew about it. In terms of sights, I was sure there were things to see, I just didn't know what they were. Thankfully, I have a friend who is studying in Barcelona and she made a complete list of what we should do while we were there. Also, because we had 3 days instead of one, we actually had time to sleep in and not rush through every meal. We were actually able to sit, have a cup of coffee and not feel like we had to rush through it.

I literally have about 5 minutes to finish this blog, so I'll just list the things that we did and maybe you can google them if you don't know what they are?

1. Mont Juic

2. Parc Guell

3. Clubs and bars at Port Olimpic

4. Las Ramblas

5. La Boqueria (HUGE outdoor market)

6. Fountain show at Mont Juic

7. Cristobal Colon Monument

8. Ate AMAZING spanish food

9. SAGRADA FAMILIA (absolutely beautiful, please wikipedia this one, it was probably my favorite thing we did)

Now here's a couple stories. First of all, our "private" hostel was HUGE. We asked for a private room with 4 beds but they gave us something that was closer to an apartment. This place had two huge bedrooms with 6 beds in each one. It also had a dining area, living room with couches, and a washroom. These weren't even public areas for everyone in the hostel, this whole place was part of our "private" room that you could only get to with our key. There were other common areas OUTSIDE our private common areas. It was insane. We could literally choose with out of 12 beds we wanted. Sorry if I'm not doing a good job of explaining what it was like.

Also, Kels and I missed our bus from the center of Barcelona to the airport which was like an hour outside of the city. Because we did, the only way we could get there on time was to take a taxi for an HOUR. It cost 150 euros (about 200 dollars). I cried. But what can you do?

Overall, it was a lovely trip. Perfect relaxation before ITALY!

thanks for keeping up!

Miss you lots!

P.S. I haven't been able to return any emails so please forgive me, we are busy busy busy. I'll write you guys back after Italy!

The city of lovers is glowing tonight...Paris!

Hey everyone!
Yes, the title of this post quotes a song from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame. So I just kicked off my month and a half of straight travel (with some school and some Sevillian festivals in there) and I am really pumped. I really can't even think about how quickly my time here will go. This last weekend, I went to PARIS. I should let you know, going to Paris has been a dream of mine for a very long time. I've been to France twice before, but the other two times, I went to the Southern coast. When Kels, Steph and I got together at the beginning of the semester and we were talking about where we wanted to travel to, I said "We can go wherever you want, but if I leave Europe without seeing the Eiffel Tower, I'm going to jump off a cliff." So as you can imagine, we planned a trip. We knew it would be really hard to see all of the city in one day because there are SO many things to do, but at the same time, we feel like veteran travelers by now and we know how to do even a huge city in a few days.

So we left Seville right after school on Thursday and took a non stop flight to Paris. When we got off the plane, we took the metro to our hotel and checked in. Our hotel was located on Grand Boulevard and had a balcony with an amazing view of the busy street below. Because we knew that we had a PACKED day the next day, we went to dinner when we got there, planned out the next day and went to bed. We woke up bright and early and left the hotel with our map, cameras and jackets and set out for our day. By that point, we had made an itinerary for the day according to where it was on the Paris map. One really awesome thing about Paris (among many) is the fact that their Metro system is amazing. It really can take you absolutely everywhere. Also, there was a metro stop literally outside of our hotel. Our first stop was the Sacre Couer. This was the only place that we visited this weekend that I had never heard of and I have no idea how I hadn't. It's a giant white basilica built high up on a hill that overlooks the entire city. You had to walk up about 6 STEEP flights of concrete steps to get up to it, but once you did, you realized it was completely worth it. You could see all of the city from the front steps. The inside was even more breathtaking. Being in Europe, I have seen many MANY churches but this was by far the most beautiful church I've ever seen in my whole life. Whereas many other cathedrals in Europe are very dark on the inside, the Sacre Couer was built with white stone and was full of light. It was so warm, inviting and marvelous. At the front of the altar, this is a GIGANTIC moral of Jesus and other important people from the gospels painted on the domed ceiling. Also, there was a sign at the entrance that said "This is a house of continuous prayer, please don't talk", so it was completely silent as well. The environment inside this church was unexplainable. After we had walked around the whole thing and took a few moments of silence, we left the Basilica and got some nutella and banana crepes before setting off for the next place.

Our next stop was the Lourve Art Museum. As you've probably heard, it is the biggest art museum in the world and it is completely useless to try to see it all in one week, let alone a couple hours. While we knew it would be daunting, we decided to go anyway and see the two most famous pieces: the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. Thankfully, in this HUGE building, those two works were relatively easy to find. I had heard this before I saw it, but the Mona Lisa is one of the biggest overstatements in history to the untrained mind/eye (aka me). It's smaller than you think it is and they put it on this MASSIVE wall. Yeah, I looked at it, but I was more interested in the GIGANTIC painting of the last supper on the opposite wall (not the one you've heard of, but a similar painting). I really do want to find out what makes this small portrait of a woman so darn important and famous, so I'll have to wikipedia it or something. After the Lourve, we took the Metro to the Notre Dame, which was another sight that was a little different from what I expected. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the disney movie, is one of my favorite movies. In the movie, they make the Notre Dame look like it is 50 stories tall. This is not true in life. It was beautiful, but it was again smaller than I thought. The inside was very dark but it made the stained glass windows looks even more spectacular. Unlike the Sacre Coeur, there was no policy against talking, so it was a little harder to realize the holiness of the building, but it was still really nice to visit. The part that I enjoyed the most about the Notre Dame wasn't even inside the building, it was the beautiful statues and sculptures on the outside. I especially loved the sculpture of the 28 kings of Judah and Israel that were above the 3 huge entrances on the front.

The next thing that we did was by far my favorite part of the day. After the Notre Dame, we found a grocery store where we bought ourselves the perfect French picnic: 2 French baguettes, two wedges of brie, a bag of grapes, a bottle of wine, olives and 3 toblerone bars. With grocery bags in hand, we hopped on the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. When we got there, we found a tree in the park in front of the Eiffel Tower, ate our picnic and took in the beautiful sight. I honestly cannot explain how happy Kels, Steph and I were. We were all smiles for the entire hour and a half we were sitting. After our picnic, we walked over to a plaza where it's really easy to take pictures with the tower in the back ground. It was a little scary because you have to take a couple flights of stairs to get to the platform where you can take the best pictures. When you get up on the ledge, it's literally a two story drop straight down to concrete. I tried not to think about it when I was taking pictures, but I'm really thankful none of us fell. After taking pictures, we walked to the Eiffel Tower so we could actually go up it. Sadly, the very top of the Eiffel Tower was closed. It was about 4:30pm, the elevators stopped at 6:30pm and I cannot even explain to you how long it was to get on the elevator. We probably would have been waiting at LEAST 3 hours. So we decided that it was cheaper and easier to take the stairs. It's hard to say how many flights it is to get to the first and second levels because it's so curvy, but we definitely walked the whole way. But in the end, it was worth it, because I was on the second level right as the sun was setting. We finished off our day with a walk down the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe.

So if Friday was our French, brie-eating, Eiffel Tower visiting day, Saturday was definitely our corporate, "I'm an American tourist" day. We had been in Europe for so long that we had no shame in doing all American-things that day. We woke up, got our starbucks and hopped on the Metro to Eurodisney. Many people asked us why Kels, Steph and I would think about going when we have the same park at home, but they have no idea how obsessed with Disney the 3 of us are. As I could have guessed, Eurodisney is almost exactly the same as Magic Kingdom in DisneyWorld Orlando, with a few differences. First of all, the characters on all the rides speak French, which made our "Star Tours" (the star wars ride) pretty interesting. Also, the Space Mountain goes upside down and is A LOT more extreme than the one at home. We went on all the important rides: Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones. It was also really nice because we had a good friend from England, Jack, meet us. We met him in Lagos on my birthday and he decided to meet us in Paris. He worked on Friday, so he met us at Disney on Saturday. That night, the four of us continued our American journey (along with our British friend?) and ate dinner at Hard Rock Café Paris. It was really awesome to sit with Jack and compare common sayings from our countries. I called Jack an alien because he kept saying such weird things. He responded by calling me a cow, which I thought was hilarious. While in America "cow" usually means you're fat, "cow" in England means "catty". I told him that he should be careful to never call a bigger girl a "cow" because she won't take it as easily as I did. After Hard Rock Café, we ended our night and our trip with a return to the Eiffel Tower. At night, the Eiffel Tower sparkles every hour on the hour. Please forgive me, but for lack of a better word, it was absolutely magical. I was in Paris watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle with my two best friends and an awesome British guy; I couldn't have been happier.

Please forgive me if I haven't said this enough in my other blogs because it's always on my mind, but I cannot even explain how blessed I feel to be able to do all the amazing things that I've been doing. I didn't think that feeling could be made stronger until I saw the Eiffel Tower. In my prayers, I am constantly thanking God for these amazing experiences and this amazing opportunity to do these things. Not only has God blessed me with these sights, but he blessed me a long time ago when he gave me 2 parents who would support me in all my dreams, including this one.

Anyway, that's my update of my Paris weekend. I am back in Seville going to school this week until I leave for Barcelona on Thursday. I'm trying so hard to soak up Spanish culture on the weekdays now that I'm leaving every weekend. Yesterday, in between classes, I sat in the Jardines de Murillo, which are the gardens outside the Alcazar, (the old king's palace) to read. The weather has been flawless every single day for the last 2 or 3 weeks. It’s been about 70 degrees without a cloud in the sky. Once again, I truly am blessed. Thanks for reading, you guys! I know that these blogs are long but I keep telling myself that people who really care (like my parents) will read the whole thing so congrats on making it this far, cause I don't know if would read someone else's blog if it were this long! Love you all!

Here's a link to more pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2375057&id=10235591&l=855d8cdb2a

It's the half way point!

Hey guys!

So tomorrow, I will have officially been in Seville for 8 weeks out of my 16 week semester. I don't really have a lot of write about in this post the time since I wrote last has been pretty uneventful. We didn't travel anywhere this weekend and we didn't even really go out to bars or clubs either because we were still recuperating from our sleepless, crazy Lagos weekend. When we got off the bus from Lagos last Monday, I went directly to class so I never really had a day to get back on track. So as you can see after Lagos, a weekend of sleep and sightseeing sounded amazing to me. On Friday, I woke up and met Kelsey to do our weekly bible study. After the bible study, Kelsey took me for a walk around Triana, her "barrio". Seville is broken up much like New York City is broken up into boroughs. Triana is the "Brooklyn" of Seville. It's on the opposite side of the river from downtown and it really is charming. We walked down all the small, old streets. We walked by cathedrals, took pictures on the bridge and even went to a market which was really similar to farmers' markets in the states. Also, that day (along with almost every single day for the last week) was about 75 degrees and sunny. That afternoon, I spent a lot of time in my bedroom and around town just relaxing. I just started "Twilight" (yes, I gave into the fad), took a nap and worked out, 3 things I never get to do in the States. That night, Steph, Kels and I met up to go to a bar that has a terrace that overlooks the river and the city. We had a drink, talked and walked back home to our host families. Even though the 3 of us just went to sit and have a drink, because it's Sevilla and it's not normal to go to a bar before 11am, I still wasn't in bed until 2am. 2am is an "early night" here; isn't that crazy?

The next day (Saturday) we decide to go to the beach. The nearest beach from Seville is about an hour away by bus. The only departing times for the bus were 8am or 11am. Because we wanted to get the most out of the day, we took the 8am bus, meaning we had to be at the bus station at 7:30am. The bus was absolutely packed with people wanting to get to the beach and the drive through Spain's Southern countryside was beautiful. We got to the beach, which was named Matalascañas, went to a café for some breakfast and headed to the beach. This beach was the biggest beach I had ever been to. Every single beach I've been to in my whole life has had some sort of curved land or marina that cut off some of view of the ocean, but this beach was like a straight line and there were no marinas in sight so when you stood at the shore line, the ONLY thing you could see was blue water. Obviously, we did all the cliche beach things; we played in the waves, took in the sun, etc. We also had a really nice lunch at a restaurant on the beach. We took the bus home at about 6 pm and got back to Sevilla with enough time to catch a movie. We saw Gran Torino with Spanish subtitles (good flick, love the symbolism). We were all exhausted from the sun and the night before, so we all went home around 10pm. I got to bed and slept for 13 hours. Finally, today is the first day I've felt well rested since Lagos.

This week, I have midterms so if you send me emails, please forgive me if I don't return any of them this week, because I will be studying. I know this post was pretty uneventful, but get ready for some big news and stories coming up in the next ones. Here's my schedule for the rest of my semester here:

March 19th-22nd (Next Weekend): PARIS!

March 26th-29th: Barcelona

April 1st-9th: Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice)

April 9th-12th: Semana Santa Events in Sevilla (these are a HUGE deal here)

April 17th-19th: Madrid

April 23rd-28th: Palma de Mallorca

April 29th-May 3rd: Sevilla's "Feria" (This is Sevilla's annual fair, people flock from all over the world to visit)

As you can see, I am incredibly blessed/spoiled and I will have a LOT to write about over the next month and a half. This also means that I will be busy busy busy, so again, please forgive me if I don't respond to emails as quickly or as frequently as I have been. Next weekend, I am going to see the Eiffel Tower, which is one of my life goals (1. Be happy, 2. Have kids. 3. See the Eiffel Tower...). I can't wait to tell you all about it!

more photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2372487&id=10235591&l=14f87d3022

How do you say "It's my birthday" in Portuguese

Olá! Bom dia! Fala inglês?
That means "Hello! Good day! Do you speak English?" in Portuguese, a language that I don't speak a word. I had to look up what I wrote in my Let's Go: Spain and Portugal guidebook. This weekend (the 6th, to be exact) I turned 21 years old. I don't usually make a big deal out of my birthday. I like to spend it with people I love, but I usually don't need a lot of things to make me happy. Even though I am so blessed to be in Europe, I was a little down because I knew that I wasn't going to see many of my BEST friends on my birthday. I also knew that I will never have the cliché Boulder birthday where you go to Pearl Street with all of your friends, you don't pay for a single drink and you kiss the buffalo (it's a Boulder thing). Obviously, if I had to pick between spending my 21st birthday in SPAIN vs. Boulder, I would pick Spain. Before I left for Spain, the study abroad office taught us something called the "Cultural Awareness Curve". It basically showed us that it is normal to have highs and lows while you are abroad. I am rounding the half way point and I think that I was in one of the lows last week. I was walking around the city and I just didn't appreciate it in the same way that I did the few couple weeks I was here. I'm getting to the part where I miss certain things about home more than I used to and find certain things that annoy me about Spanish culture that didn't bother me before, even though Seville is still breathtaking. For all of these reasons, I wanted to have a good birthday. I decided that it would be nice to take a bus down to the beaches of Southern Portugal and spend my birthday on the beach.

That's right, Steph, Kels and I went to a beach town called Lagos, Portugal, which is located on the Southwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. It's known for its beautiful beaches, breathtaking cliffs and lively nightlife. It's about a 4 hour bus ride from Seville so on Friday morning, we woke up and caught the 7:30 bus to Lagos. Most of the bus ride was along the coast so it was so beautiful to see the ocean. When we arrived, we took a taxi to the hostel I found online. We stayed at the International Youth Hostel and it was amazing. It was 12 EUROS a night including breakfast. It was really close to the center of town and only a short walk to the beach. The people that ran it spoke English and it was clean and neat. Also, because it was the off season for the town, the 3 of us got a 4 person dorm all to ourselves. Overall, it was an awesome pick. Unfortunately, the weather on Friday was not that good and too cold to really go to the beach. We were going in a weird time of year, so it was a toss up of whether the weather would be nice or not. Just because it's on the beach, doesn't mean that it's warm and sunny all year.

We got there, settled into our hostel. I went to go check the internet and I came back and Steph and Kels had set up a little surprise birthday for me, complete with a cake and a birthday card (somehow they snuck a cake onto the bus without me noticing). After singing and eating a little bit of cake, we went to the center of town where we had a drink and a snack. It was here that Steph and Kels bought me my first beer as a 21 year old. After that, we walked around town a little bit and walked down to the beach, just to see it. That night, we got all dressed up and went to dinner. We went to a place that the guy at the hostel recommended and it was amazing. We got 3 HUGE plates of food for cheap cheap food and a cheap cheap bottle of wine. We had pasta, prawns and filet mignon and potatoes (it was unbelievable). After that we went to the bars. A few funny things about that night: First of all, we didn't know that there was a time change between Spain and Portugal, for the first 30 hours or so of our trip, we thought it was an hour later than it really was. Second of all, Lagos was in its off season. So we out that night and not that many people were out. We also knew that all the bars closed at 2. So we left at "2" to go back to our hostel (it was really just 1pm). Plus we didn't find out until the next day that the bar were at closed at 4, not 2, so the bartender must have thought we were crazy when we said we were leaving cause it was too late. We went to a few bars and had a few drinks that night, which was nice but we definitely could have stayed out a lot longer.

The next day I consider my real birthday because it was absolutely perfect. We woke up to an impeccable blue sky and 72 degree weather. We ate a quick breakfast and headed down to the beach. We got there and there was the cutest little bar/restaurant on the beach. Before actually going down to the beach, we stopped and had a margarita (my first). Then we stayed on the beach for the rest of the day, listening to music, reading, sunbathing, relaxing and talking. At about 3 o clock we had an AMAZING meal at that same restaurant. We still the whole sha-bang: appretizer, meal, desert and coffee; All of it with an amazing view of the Atlantic ocean. That night, we went out for real (we had changed our clocks and everything). We got dressed up and went to the bars. This night was a lot more lively than the first. The first bar we went to, we met some Americans and a British guy who we spent the rest of the night hanging out with. We went to probably 4 bars that night all around the center of town. We also did everything you would do on your cliché 21st birthday. We sang, danced, drank, played pool, laughed, etc. I also had my first Long Island Iced Tea. After this night, I felt like I really had celebrated my 21st right.

We had planned to leave the next day but realized that we just couldn't. The only bus we could take would be in the middle of the day on Sunday. We didn't have class until later on Monday and the hostel was only 12 euros, so we decided to stay and take the bus home early on Monday. Sunday's weather was even better than Saturday and we decided to go to a different beach this time. The walk to our beach was amazing. We had to hike upward and as we did, we could see the whole ocean sprawled out before us. They call the town "Lagos" which means "Lakes" in Portuguese because there are almost no waves. It isn't even located in a gulf or a cove; It's situated on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the water is as calm as a lake. The beach that we went to on Saturday was Meia Praia, which was big and flat. On Sunday, we headed to the beaches that were west of town. These beaches were divided by large cliffs and huge grottoes. We went to Praia de Pinhâo, a beach that we had to take a huge stone staircase built into the cliff in order to get to. The beach on Meia Praia was beautiful but this beach was BREATHTAKING. Because it was situated between cliffs, the wind couldn't get to us so it was nice and warm. We stayed there for the day just relaxing. We finished the day with another meal on the beach, but this time, the restaurant was on a cliff, not just on the sand of a flat beach. That night, we went out again to many of the same places with the same guys that we met the night before. We stayed out until 3 o clock in the morning and got back to the hostel with just enough time to sleep for about 2 and a half hours, pack, clean up our room and head to the bus station for our 6:30am bus ride home. Needless to say, when we got back to Seville and I had to go to class, I was DYING, but I think that's expected after the weekend of your 21st birthday.

By the time this semester ends, we will have traveled many places in Europe. Some trips will be more culturally based where we see how many museums and landmarks we can fit in one day. This weekend was not like that at all. My wish was to have a RELAXING beach weekend with no rushing or worries. That is exactly what we did. We ate, drank and completely relaxed. Not a single museum or landmark was seen. We just took in the breathtaking atmosphere that Lagos has to offer and I cannot think of a better way to spend your birthday. Hopefully for my 22nd birthday I can take a plane back with all my friends from the states. That won't too expensive, right ;)? This upcoming weekend, I am staying in Seville which is good because I have midterms next week and I will be studying. Also, I just checked the weather in Seville for the next 10 days and, no joke, it is supposed to be between 70-75 degrees and sunny EVERYDAY. I am so thankful that spring has finally come to Seville, because the rain and the clouds were really beginning to bother me. Thank you so much for all the birthday wishes I received! Thanks for reading and I'll see you guys next week!

Here are links to better pictures:

http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss239/kelseymcwhirter/DSCF3581.jpg

http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss239/kelseymcwhirter/DSCF3554.jpg

http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss239/kelseymcwhirter/DSCF3592.jpg

40 días y 40 noches

Well, not exactly. So Lent just started and Steph, Kels and I made a decision to give up English. Steph, Kels and I spend a LOT of time together. We are always on the phone, doing cultural things about the city, sitting at a café or going out for the night together. We all spend time with Spaniards too, but for the majority of the time, it's only us. You can imagine how much English we are each speaking when we hang out so much. Plus, our program made it sound like you couldn't even speak English in school, so I assumed that when you weren't in class but you were still in the building everyone would be speaking Spanish. Unfortunately, no one enforces this rule and most of students don't care, so they all speak English anyway. Even though we are in Spain, it's really easy to completely avoid the language if you want to. You can hang out with your American friends, never meet Spaniards, speak English all the time and only hear Spanish when you go to your classes (all the classes are in Spanish). The program makes it sounds like you will be completely immersed in the language, but you really do have to work at it and put yourself out there. Kels and I are both Spanish majors and Steph might as well be because she has taken all of the same classes. We all came here with the goal to perfect our Spanish, so we all started feeling a bit anxious when we noticed that we were spending a lot of time together and we were only speaking English. So a few days ago, everyone in our program got an email from one of the heads our of program telling us that many people who are studying abroad give up English for Lent. This was just the kick we needed to take our begin taking our Spanish more seriously.

Obviously, I am writing in English right now so you can see that we have a few regulations about this time. First of all, when we are communicating with people at home, we can use English. Obviously, my dad doesn't speak Spanish and I can't assume that everyone that reads this blog speaks Spanish, so my blog is in English. Also, if we leave the country to travel, we can speak English. Obviously there is no point of 3 American girls going to Paris and speaking Spanish; that's just confusing. But other than that, every time we hang out, every time we text each other or talk on the phone and every time we talk to another Americans in our program, we're only going to be speaking Spanish. We have been doing it for 3 days now. The first day was very very frustrating, but it has gotten easier and easier. It's to the point where I don't even notice it anymore. Yesterday, I didn't speak a word of English because I didn't go online to email or call anyone. It's also helping us to learn even more vocabulary. Each of us have our Spanish/English dictionaries on us at all times so that we can explain things better. For example, in the last 3 days I learned "anxious", "annoying", "to be in a bad mood", "sketchy", "awkward turtle" and other very common words. I cannot even explain how happy I am about using my Spanish. I have absolutely no anxiety when I talk to a stranger in Spanish. It's also amazing to know that I can say basically everything I want to say. I want to say that I'm fluent, but it's hard to say because there are still times when I meet someone with a thick accent or someone who talks very fast and I can't understand a word they're saying. My señora for example, is really hard for me to understand.

Sense my last blog, things have been pretty uneventful. We stayed in Seville last weekend and we stayed in Seville this weekend. I did win that free day trip to the beach, but I didn't end up going cause the weather was bad. On Friday night, I met a Spanish guy who knew the CU fight song. It was the most random thing. He said that he had friends in Boulder. I took a video of them on my camera singing it. Kels, Steph and I went to the Parque Maria Luisa yesterday. This place is a lot like Central Park but not AS big, but still pretty big. It's probably about a half mile by quarter mile in area. It has two museums, a HUGE plaza, trees, fountains and beautiful ceramics. I took pictures, but I'm going to come back and take more soon because it was pretty cloudy and I can tell that the park will be STUNNING when the weather gets better. My classes are still going very well. I really like the way my school is run. Because they know that we all want to travel and get to know the city, we spend more in the in the class room and less time doing homework and assignments outside the class room. I go to school for about 4 hours a day and the rest of the time, I have no worries! We also don't have school on Fridays. It really is a dream for me, especially after a busy, busy semester with all my activities at CU. It is such a relief to have time to sleep, read, work out and RELAX. I know that I'll come back so refreshed and ready to take on school in the states when I come back. I'm still spending time with both Daniel and Alejandro. I also spend a lot of time with the girl that Steph lives with, Maria Angeles, who is 19. Daniel and Maria both have been taking us out with their friends, which is a lot of fun.

Also, one more thing I wanted to tell you guys. The schedule here is unbelievable. They wake up at 10, eat lunch at 2 or 3, and eat dinner around 9-11. It is not unusual at all to see an elderly woman or a mother with her 3 year old out at 10 or 11pm. Also, they really do have a siesta. I had heard about this before I came here, but I thought it was just something that they did 100 years ago. Every single store and business closes from 2-5pm so that people can go home and eat lunch or take a nap. Thank God I have school during this time or it would be pretty difficult to run errands. It's the same with the night life. People don't even go to bars until 12, bars don't get busy until around 2 and people don't go home until 6 AM. Kels, Steph and I went to a dance club last night at 1 in the morning and NO ONE was there. We left at around 4 and it was packed. As we were leaving, some Spanish guys that we had met there were asking us why we were going home so early. A couple nights ago, Kels, Steph and I were out and decided we wanted it to be an early night so we were going to go home. We looked at our clocks, it was 2 AM. In Spain, all the stores and businesses are closed on Sundays, so many of the young people (and some of the old people) stay out until 6 am on Saturday nights (or is it Sunday mornings?) and then sleep all day Sunday. Surprisingly, this is getting more and more normal to me every single day.

Well that's all I have for now. My birthday is on Friday so we're taking a bus to Lagos, a beach town in southern Portugal. I'm praying that the weather will be nice because I've heard that it's beautiful.

¡Hasta Luego!

It's sunny in Seville! Catedral and Cadiz Carnaval

Hey guys!

Here I am again for my weekly update. I still cannot believe that I am so blessed to be here. I know that I didn't do anything to deserve this but I walk around this city and constantly think "HOW am I think blessed? How am I THIS lucky?" I've been here a little more than a month and I can tell you that I have not been homesick at all, which is really good because I really thought I would be before I left. It's not that I don't miss Colorado or people at home (because I do), but I am delighting in everything here. I am doing my best to soak up this place and this culture and I am loving every single minute of it. I know that I haven't talked about this in a while, but things with my host family are really looking up. In one of my first posts, I said that I was disappointed because they don't make an effort to get to know me, no matter how much I try to get to know them. I never ever see my hermanos or my senora and when they are home, they stay in their rooms. Things haven't changed, but I'm beginning to really like my living situation. First of all, I LOVE the alone time that I have here. After living in the dorms, living in a sorority house and living with friends, it is so nice to come home to my own room and do whatever I want. I have so much time to read, which is something I NEVER had in the states. Also, because I don't get to practice my Spanish at home, I'm encouraged to find places to practice elsewhere. Not only do I find people to practice with every single time I go out at night, I have two people that I have been meeting with a couple times a week to just sit and practice with. One of them is my friend Daniel (pronounced like the American "Danielle"). About two weeks ago, he walked right up to my on the street and asked if I was American. I said yes and he told me that he wanted to meet up practice his English. I told him that would be fine, as long as we could practice Spanish also. Since then, we meet up every couple days and walk all over the city just talking to each other, eating tapas and learning things about each other's cultures. He's 24, just graduated from the university and is studying for an exam that will get him a job with the Andalusian government. I've also been meeting with a guy named Alejandro. Alejandro was actually assigned to me by my program. He's 26, just graduated and is working on learning English. His English is not nearly as good as Daniel's, but he helps me out just as much with my Spanish. While my Spanish has a lot of room to grow, I really think that my Spanish is getting better every single day. Also, because my classes are all in Spanish, my listening it getting better too. I'm a lot more comfortable to speak to people I don't know and yesterday I was in a cafe watching the news and I could understand absolutely everything they were saying!

On Saturday afternoon, I met up with Steph and went to La Catedral. I honestly have no idea how I've been in Seville for almost a month and haven't gone inside this place. It is probably the #1 thing to visit while you are Seville. I said in another blog that I walk by it every single day on the way to class. It's the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and it the 4th biggest catedral in the world (I think when I wrote about it before, I was incorrect about the information). It was built in 1402. Attached to the Cathedral, is a huge bell tower that towers stories over the city. You can see absolutely all of Seville from this tower because nothing else in the city is remotely as tall. Here's a link for more pictures that I took from the top. These pictures start on the 2nd page of the album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2357567&id=10235591&l=332f4

Saturday night, I went to one of the most famous events in all of Spain. I went to the Cadiz Carnaval: the Mardi Gras of Europe. Cadiz is on the southern coast of Spain and it holds probably the biggest party in the whole country every year before Lent. On this night, hoards of people from all over to Spain take planes, trains and buses to this city to meet up, dress up, parade, drink, dance and sing. It's a lot like Halloween in the fact that you have to dress up. I decided to dress up like a Mexican because the costume store had the costume set and I thought it would be funny. It was pretty hilarious because I kept trying to explain that I wanted the Mexican costume and the lady kept telling me there wasn't a female mexican costume. I told her I wanted the MALE Mexican costume and she did not understand at all. I finally got it thought. Not only did I have a poncho and a sombrero, I also bought a huge, hairy, ugly bigote (mustache). I didn't really think my costume was THAT funny, but people seemed to think that it was a HIT. For example, on my bus ride down to Cadiz (it's about 2 hours away) they had a costume contest and I won. I won a free trip to a pretty popular beach town in Spain. Also, when I was walking arounf, people kept wanting to take pictures with me because of my costume. My bigote fell off after a while, so I had to draw another one on with an eyeliner pencil. Anyway, Cadiz was just as you could imagine. SO many people, all of them drunk. It was crowded and there were people as far as the eye could see. It was difficult to move around or see what was going on simply because there were SO many people, all of them drunk or on drugs when I was completely sober. Overall, I'm glad that I made the trip down there to see it, but it was a little bit too much for me. By the end of the night, me and Steph sat down in a grassy area and ate churros and just watched all the crazy people walk by. I did get some awesome pictures. The costumes that people had were insane and clever. There were too many drag queens to count, Waldos from "Where's Waldo", soccer players, ninjas and hundreds of others. My bus left to return at 6 am in the morning and I didn't "go to bed" until 9 am in the morning. As you can probably guess, I spent all of yesterday sleeping.

So next weekend, I'll be going on that free trip to the beach, which I'm really excited about because the weather is getting better everyday. My birthday is in a little less than two weeks and I'm working on planning a trip to Portugal on that weekend. Steph, Kels and I also bought plane tickets to Paris, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca. In the mean time, thanks for continuing to read this!

Until next time!

Pictures of Cadiz: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2365562&id=10235591&l=8cb62