I can't believe it's ending!

Esteban and Kali left today to take their tour of Northern Spain before they head home so now I am the only one left from our program in this house. It's kinda weird to have him gone because we have spent the vast part of the last five months sharing a room smaller than a dorm room. It was sad to part ways but he is gunna be in Chapel Hill this summer so hopefully we will get to hang out some. Honestly, the craziest part seems to be that our almost six months is already over. The time has flown by! I feel like I just got here and now it is time to leave. I never thought that I could be as excited as I was before I came over here but I think I am just about as excited to go home!! You don't realize that everyone else's life keeps going even though you are so far away and in a foreign country. It's interesting to try and keep up with everyone, but for the most part you feel so distant because you aren't an integral part of their life. I can't say that I have felt homesick on this trip other than when my uncle passed but I am definitely ready to come and see everyone. I thought that having about a week and a half to just hang out in Sevilla would be pretty cool but honestly it has seemed to drag on because until this week, most people have still had exams and thus couldn't really hang out. I'm excited to see how much Corey has grown and to have the little guy to pick on this summer!! I have missed hangin out with him a lot!! Anyways, I'm just hangin out and waitin for Saturday to start our 23 hour journey home, but it will be worth it for sure!! Miss You All!!

Some Picture Edits

Changing Dynamics

So life round our sweet little abode has had a few changes in the past couple weeks. First of all we got two new roommates the other week which has definitely made for some funny moments. Their names are Graham and Steven (Our señora pronounces them Gray-Ham and Eh-Steven, which is pretty funny and slightly confusing between esteban and esteven) and they are from the University of Richmond. Steven is from Massachusetts and Graham is from New York, about 40 minutes outside the city. They arrived not this past friday, but the friday before. They are pretty cool but their spanish is worse than mine was when we first arrived so their conversations with our señora can be rather comical. Juanky is now sleeping at his grandmother´s house because we are officially out of beds and room here. It definitely changes the dynamics around the house when he isn´t around because he is always up to something or yelling "mamá" from some room in the house. The two newbies seem to be adjusting well but they haven´t quite figured out the eating system around here haha. Graham made the major mistake of telling our señora that he was really hungry the other day and he was surprised when he found that his bowl of soup contained about 1 and 1/2 times as much soup as the rest of us. He promptly remedied this by switching bowls with Steven but he had no idea what he had done. I should mention that Steven probably eats the least out of all of us. When our señora came to the table and realized what had happened, Graham got an earfull haha. She was mostly just joking with him but to some extent she wasn´t. He has been getting paid back for his little "cheat" as she calls it since. She made him finish the salad the other day and it was hilarious. Graham also hasn´t really figured out the political climate of this house, Juanky and our señora are huge about the PSOE which is the socialist party and the more liberal of the two major parties in Spain. Graham opened a political discussion at the table with "I like George W Bush" to which I responded "Still??" This was only the beginning of a rather long winded politically charged conversation which was to follow. The problem is that you really cant discuss anything with our señora or Juanky because they are rather closed minded about most things. Honestly they are a bit racist which definitely plays a role in their closed-mindedness. They aren´t like angry racists they just think certain things about certain groups of people that really have no legitimate basis. When one of these conversations occurs its best just to nod your head and eat your food because the more you try and argue the more stubborn they get. Its rather comical. Honestly they rival some of the Freemans I know on the stubborness scale, and let me tell you, we can be stubborn. Anyways, I try and help the newbies out when I can because they just don´t have the vocab and Esteban always helped me out when I needed it. They are comin along slowly but it is definitely helping to improve my spanish because I remember things better when I am constantly asked about them. Overall life here is pretty good, I just finished my 10 page term paper and so now I am officially done with school until August!! I am pumped, although I still need to go back and edit the paper, but that really doesn´t count. I am honestly about ready to come home and get my summer started for real, and to see all the friends that I havent seen in about six months!! Incredibly this six months has flown by, honestly I dunno where the time went!! But the only sad thing is that I will be leaving some of the new friends I have made here! I said my first two goodbyes the past couple of days. My friends Olivia and Elizabeth left for Africa yesterday. They will be doing AIDS research in Malawi and another one of my friends, Ricky, will be leaving on Tuesday for Malawi, but with a different program. It will be sad to say goodbye to everyone as we all leave, but it will definitely be the hardest to say goodbye to Juanky and María José because honestly I feel like part of their family! It will be really weird to be in the states without them!! Anyways, I just figured I would give an update since my life has calmed down a little bit after exams and expect some more posts about different trips that have already occurred that I simply havent had time to blog about yet!! Hasta Luego!!

Luck of the Irish

We left Sevilla early on Saturday morning. We had to be at the airport around 8AM and then it was off to Ireland on another crazy Ryan Air adventure. It brings new meaning to "flying on a wing and a prayer" because honestly most of the time I feel unsure of that fact that we will make it to our destination in one piece, but this blog is proof that we beat the odds at least a few times. After our 2 hour flight into Dublin we were in the land of green. It was so weird, EVERYONE was speaking ENGLISH!! I honestly had no idea what to think about that because it seems so weird that the general population would speak english!! After pickin up Esteban's bag from baggage claim we went to the information desk to find out the best way to get into the city center. We bought tickets for the regular city bus and then we were off. I believe most people underestimate the odd feeling of drivin on what I would consider the wrong side of the road. You also board on the opposite side of the bus too, which is just weird. It took us about 45 minutes on the bus to get to the city center, at which point we had to figure out where our apartment was. (Esteban found a company that rents apartments in Dublin and it was about as cheap as a hotel so we decided we would do that because we could cook for ourselves and save some €€€€) After a few wrong turns and some different sets of directions, we finally found the office for the company and got settled into the apartment. It was a two bedroom apartment with a nice living room, kitchen and one bath. I slept in the living room on the pull out couch. It was actually rather comfortable!! After getting settled in, we went out to explore a little of Dublin and to get some groceries for dinner. We went to the Botanical Gardens in Dublin which were incredibly beautiful, they are definitely a hidden gem in Dublin and if you are ever there you should go and check them out!! We didn't have a lot of time in the gardens because we got there kind of late in the afternoon so we didn't get to explore as much as we had wanted to but there were some gorgeous flowers and the Greenhouses were incredibly beautiful!! After the gardens, we decided that since we were in Ireland, we should definitely make some Mexican food haha. We found an open air market and bought some fresh veggies and such and then we headed to the supermarket for the rest of the food. We had guacamole, fajitas and some salad. It was pretty amazing, we also threw some cut fruit in a pot for a fruit salad and threw it in the freezer to get it nice and cold for dessert, the only problem was that we forgot it was in there til a good while after dinner, so we had more or less frozen fruit salad, but it was a lot of fun, cuz we all just picked it out of the pot at the same time. We hung out in the apartment and just enjoyed being able to hang out together inside and play some cards. We don't really get the chance to do that in Spain because we all have homestays and you really can't bring friends over. I think that is one thing I have really missed, being able to just have somewhere to hang out. After dinner we decided that we would go out for a little while and take in a little bit of the night life. It was cold and a little drizzly but we walked across the river Liffe and into the Temple Bar area. We walked around a little bit but honestly we were all exhausted, so our little outing only lasted for about 30 minutes before we all came back to the apartment and crashed. The next morning we rose bright and early because we were a taking a tour of the Wicklow Mountains which left at 9AM, which is early for those of us who are living the Spanish lifestyle. We got to the tour and met our tour guide/bus driver who was named Ita, which is not pronounced Ida, she was quite adamant about that fact. We started our Irish history lesson, as we drove through Dublin to pick people up from different locations. It was really interesting to learn about the Irish people and their roots. Their history is pretty interesting and it was definitely a highlight of my trip!! As we rode through the Irish countryside we learned all about the Irish, it was great. We stopped at the Irish Sea to take some pictures which was pretty cool. After that we rode around for a long while just taking in the scenery, or if your name is Christine, sleeping because history just does not interest you haha. We finally broke for lunch at the beggining of the Wicklow Mountains. After that we began moving through the Wicklow Mountains. We saw some pretty cool sites. We stopped at a few glacial lakes which were about 200ft down below us on the cliffs. We saw the tree under which Mel Gibson was married, which was just an interesting little bonus. The glacial lakes were pretty amazing and you could see how they had been carved out of the sides of the mountains and hills. After the glacial lakes we moved farther in and saw a really cool bog, I can honestly say I had never seen a bog before that. It was really cool and it was such a large expanse in the middle of the mountains. Honestly most of the trip was pretty surreal. We finally reached our destination, Glendalough. It was and Irish monastic settlement from about 800 years ago. It's where a lot of different manuscripts were copied by Irish monks with a lot of flourish and color. It was pretty cool to see the old remains of the chapel and the huge, 30 meter, tower which was built with a foundation, which was pretty impressive to me. We roamed throughout the settlement and made it all the way to the back, to the shore of a huge glacier lake. It was a beautiful scene. After taking a few pictures at the glacial lake, we found a cool tree with a huge droopy limb and of course we decided it would be a great place for another group picture!! What we didn't know was how funny watching Kali, Elisa and Christine climb onto the limb would be!! Honestly it looked like something out of the Three Stooges!! It was slapstick humor at its best!! We finally got everyone on the limb and some other tourists took the picture of us, which was nice of them!! After we dismounted they decided they liked the idea of this group picture so they thought they would make their own. This consisted of hoisting a rather pregnant woman and her sister up into the limb. After those to Esteban suggested that the mother of the pregnant woman get up on the limb also, now this woman was probably in her late 60s, aka this was probably a horrible idea!! So the two guys tried to toss her up on the limb like they had done with the other two woman, but she wasn't quite as limber and she couldn't stop laughing!! We also couldn't stop laughing because this plan made ours look well planned or something haha! After two failed attempts, Esteban, Christine and I all decided to help hoist her into the tree, which to all of our surprise actually happened!! The whole process had been one of the funniest moments of my life! The two guys climbed into the tree with them and then we took their group picture for them, I'm sure they are still laughing about that!! After that we hussled back to the bus to head back into Dublin. We were all pretty exhausted from the walking and such so we were glad to sit back down on the bus and to head back. When we got back we got off the bus but had a question for the guide. We wanted to know if she could recommend a pub with authentic Irish music and to our surprise, instead of giving us directions, she told us to get back on the tour bus. She drove us to this really neat bar, where a group of musicians were playing music. We sat and listened for a while and then we headed back for the apartment. Esteban and I went by the grocery story while the girls went back to the apartment to start on dinner. We brought the groceries back and started making pasta with a meat sauce, garlic bread, salad, and yet again some fruit salad. Dinner was pretty amazing and it was great to all work together and make dinner! We had a lot of fun just making dinner. After dinner we decided to play cards again, before we ate our frozen fruit salad concoction again. We had all intentions of going out after dinner, we were all worn out and so we just went to bed because we were getting up early the next morning. I feel like trips never really involve much rest, we always seem to be getting up early for something. We got up the next morning early to go to Trinity College and see the Book of Kells, which is the four Gospels, and was copied by the Irish monks and has all sorts of ornate lettering and caligraphy. They were pretty amazing!! After Trinity college we headed to take our free walking tour of Dublin. (This is a really neat new thing they are doing in a lot of major European cities. Normally a university student or young person leads the tour which is completely free of cost, but at the end they ask for tips. I would highly recommend it because you get a great tour and you just tip whatever you feel like it was worth to you). Our tour guide was a senior at Trinity College and he was really knowledgable about the Irish history and so yet again I was in heaven, but the girls didn't enjoy it quite as much. We went all over Dublin getting little history lessons on every major part of dublin!! After the tour we headed over to the Guiness factory to take the tour of the warehouse. It was really cool to see how the brewing process had changed over the years and to see how large the warehouse had been!! The view from the top was worth every penny!! You could see all of Dublin from up there!! After the tour we headed back to the apartment to hang out and take a siesta! After the siesta we headed out to get dinner because we thought we should eat out atleast once. Dinner was pretty good I got a cajun chicken wrap and the rest of the group either got soup or a burger. After dinner we walked around Dublin for a little while since it was our last nite there, then it was back to the apartment to get some sleep before we flew out before the sun came up the next day!! It was a great trip and I definitely want to go back some time and explore more of Ireland!! I would love to see more of the countryside and of course to see the Blarney Stone in Cork!!

So It's Been A While....Morocco, Camels, Sahara, Madrid, and a National Championship!!

I am still living! I realized that I hadn't posted on here in about a month, but it has been quite a busy month!! The biggest event that occurred was definitely my trip to Morocco which was a ton of fun and really interesting!! Cross another continent off the list, Only Asia, Australia and Antarctica left!! haha Anyways we started out for Morocco by busing to the south of Spain!! Then we took the 35 minute ferry across the 14km strait of Gibraltar to Tangier, Morocco! We had arrived in Africa! The ferry was really bumpy because it was a "high speed" ferry, which only means that it was high speed for the size boat. We got into Tangier which was, as thought, pretty sketchy! As we left the port there were three guys that followed our group of five, which consisted of me, Esteban, Kali, Anna and Lauren. Apparently five Americans, three of which were women, attracted some attention from some of the local teens. They followed at a decent distance which wasn't too bad and luckily when we stopped to eat lunch at the beach they lingered for a minute and then moved on. We enjoyed lunch beside the beach, consisting of a tortilla (like an omelet with potatoes in it) sandwich, orange juice, and some chips. After that we hailed a taxi and made for the train station. Lucky for us, most of the people in Tangier speak at least a little Spanish. All five of us crammed into a "gran" ("Large") taxi, which was a midsized benz from like the 80s, and the taxi didn't seem so large... We arrived at the train station and, after some confusion and the printing out of the wrong tickets about three times, we bought our tickets on the overnight train to Marrakesh, which left later that night. After securing our travel to Marrakesh, we decided that it was time to explore the city a bit, as we had about nine hours before our train was scheduled to leave. We hailed another "gran" taxi and headed to the center of the city to just wander around a bit. It didn't really matter where we headed because we were just going to take a taxi back to the train station, so we were free to wander through the city without worrying where we were. We took some pictures overlooking the harbor and walked around that area before taking a little break, as we had all our luggage with us at this point because we weren't spending the night in Tangier. We took a break in a little place in front of a mosque. The mosque had a clock which was set to time in Mecca which was pretty interesting and we were also sitting beside the mosque when the call to prayer was sounded. It was really neat to be sitting there right beside the mosque as people all over dropped what they were doing and flocked into the mosque. People came from everywhere! Each person taking off their shoes before entering the mosque. It was a really cool experience. After that we walked through a little garden in the middle of the city and just looked around, it really wasn't much of a park but from the top of the little hill you could see for a long ways around the city. It was really different to look around and see all the poverty and such, but on top of every house there was a satellite dish. It's funny that that was the luxury they had and treasured. We saw a little market and walked through it to see what they were selling. Most of what they were selling looked stolen or fake and the rest was fruits or vegetables. We explored this market section of the city only to find ourselves in the middle of a meat market. I should mention that Anna is vegan when she is in the United States and the middle of a Middle Eastern style meat market is just not the place for her haha so maybe ya'll can see the irony of this situation. Needless to say we skirted out of a side street pretty quickly only to find ourselves in the middle of a different market. The markets seemed pretty endless so we just continued to wander until we felt that we had seen all there was to see and decided to head back the way we came which was a bit difficult as we hadn't paid a ton of attention as to where we were headed on the way there. Slowly but surely, after a few missed turns, detours, and backtracks, we made it back to where we started. We stopped in a tea cafe and had some mint tea which was incredible!! We hung out there until around dusk and then we headed to see a last little bit before dark and as darkness fell we began looking for another "gran" taxi to take us back to the train station. This turned out to be a little more difficult than we had previously thought. As we stood on a street corner looking rather confused a Moroccan man walked up to us and said he wanted to help us find what we were looking for. This translates to "I want you to pay me when we get there" in morocco haha So we were a little skeptical when he said that he didn't want any money but as it turns out he really did just want to help us which was really nice. We turned about three corners and we stood staring at about 100 taxis sitting in a parking lot waiting. Then we picked one and he took us back to the train station. We grabbed dinner in the little restaurant in the train station which was surprisingly good. Then around 930PM we departed for morocco on the night train. We boarded the train to find that each little sleeping room had two beds which meant that I was the odd man out and got to split a sleeping car with some Moroccan man that was in his mid to late twenties, built like a football center, and he spoke only french. Needless to say there was very little smalltalk and I didnt spend much time in the room until I was ready to go to bed. I hung out with Anna and Lauren in there room for a little while until I went to bed around midnight. I should mention that these rooms were about 10x7ft and the huge Moroccan guy didn't fit in his bunk haha from his knees down hung off the side of the bed as he laid crossways on the bed which was smaller than a twin. After a restless night of sleep and the Moroccan man answering his mother who called his phone in the wee hours of the morning, Anna woke me up by beating on the door because she thought we were there, we were about an hour out... I was not too happy, but I was up. We hung out in the hallway outside the rooms and waited to arrive in Marrakesh. We disembarked and hailed a taxi to the Riad (A Moroccan House that had been converted to a hotel) which had about six rooms, two of which our group occupied. It was owned by Thierry Dugast, which if u couldn't guess was a french man! He was really nice and got us all settled in and made our dinner reservations for us. After getting settled in the Riad we headed out to explore Marrakesh. If you haven't figured it out yet this trip involved a lot of exploring Moroccan cities. We just kind of wandered through the city, but I kept up with where we were a lot closer than in Tangier. After explorin some of the city we headed back to meet with Muhammed, the "travel agent" that planned our desert excursion for us. So we met with him and gave him half of the money for the trip and then headed out to see some more of the city. We wandered through a lot more of Marrakesh haggling with the different vendors for things. We walked through the main market square and saw the different snake charmers, women drawing henna, and men with monkeys. Abbey would have died! All those snakes around. As we were walking through the square one of the monkeys jumped on my shoulder and tried to get in my bag but I sloughed it off as fast as I could because it looked pretty gross! After that we looked at the huge minaret that was part of a mosque. We set off to find where our dinner reservations had been made, which proved more difficult than you would think because all the street signs are in Arabic, which none of us read. After some intense searching and asking policemen, we finally located the restaurant. We decided to head back to the main square and look around a little more and then got some tea at a small cafe. We killed some time drinkin tea and watchin the sun go down over the square. After tea it was time for dinner! It was an authentic Moroccan restaurant with a bellydancer show during the meal! The waiters were hilarious. They would mess with you during the entire meal. They would start to hand you something (menu, etc) and as soon as you were about to grab it, they would act like someone behind them had said something and pull whatever they were holding just out of reach. Also while he was serving soup he held the bowl up above eye level so you couldnt see that he wasn't really filling the bowl and then as he handed the "full" bowl to Kali he dropped it in her lap. Her face was priceless!! Dinner was amazing, we had salad, lamb, vegetables, cous cous, and desert! It was a three course meal! After dinner we took a taxi back to the riad and passed out! The next day it was up early to head out into the desert! We awoke early the next morning and had breakfast which was incredible. We had moroccan bread which is kinda sweet and is kinda like pita bread. We had fresh jam and butter, it was amazing. Then we began the 8 hour trek out to the desert in the SUV or as they call it Cat-Cat. We picked up our guide and we were off! The drive was interesting as we drove through the Atlas mountains! It was also a bit scary as I am convinced our driver thought he was driving in the Indy 500! It wasn't too bad except for the times he passed on the solid line! There were a couple times when we passed on a switchback, the likes of which, I have never seen. I'm pretty sure these roads would be illegal in America, but o well, we survived!! After a bunch of different stops, one of which included fording a river on foot, in order to go see a Kasbah(Moroccan castle), we finally arrived at the side of the road haha. We met our camel guides and of course our camels!! Stebs was the first one up on the camel and the next was Kali. Kali was hilarious because camels don't really stand up like most other animals its more like a normal animal with hydrolics. The front end stands up first and then the back end and its all a bit jerky!! The facial expressions were hilarious!! Anyways, a camel ride is a ton of fun but let me tell you, about an hour and a half of riding a camel, did I mention I made the horrible mistake of wearing shorts, I was ready to get on solid ground. After dismounting our camels we walked to our desert home, which consisted of a berber tent with some mats, a rug, and some blankets. It was already dark by the time we got to the tent so we threw our stuff down and then lit the lantern and waited on dinner. Dinner was pretty good especially considering that we were in the desert! We had ment tea and typical moroccan food which was a tagine of vegetables and chicken with bread and some oranges for dessert. Right before dinner started our driver (Who weighs about 275) freaked out and jumped up and started dancin around the tent. Turns out that there was a huge spider that had come into the tent and he didnt like spiders. So for the next five minutes all four guys attempted to kill this massive spider while the girls freaked out. Eventually we killed it and sat back down for dinner but I'm not sure if the girls fully recovered for a while. After dinner we played some cards and hung out for a little while until we went out to the campfire to listen to some authentic berber music sung by all the guides. It was pretty cool to hear the songs even though I had no idea wat was being said. Some of our group got up and joined in the dance too which was pretty funny to watch. After the music and campfire we walked out a little farther into the desert and looked up at the stars. I don't think I have ever seen so many stars!! It was amazing!! After our little field trip into the desert we decided it was time to get some shut eye. Our guide chose to sleep away from the tent outside in the desert. I decided I wanted to sleep outside the tent also so I dragged my mat and blanket out beside the tent and just looked up at the stars and the moon. It was surprisingly bright outside, but I was so tired that it didnt matter. The rest of the group chose to sleep in the tent. I woke up around 330 AM because the moon was so bright and I decided that I would head into the tent because it was too bright outside for me to sleep. I laid down in the tent and was attempting to fall asleep, when I heard some whimpering from the other side of the tent. I realized that Anna was wimpering about something so I asked her wat was up (she gets a little scared in a tent in the middle of the desert with bugs and such haha) she said she was cold but didnt want to go and get a blanket which was just across the tent. So I got up and gave her a blanket. After that I went back to sleep only to b awoke before sunrise by anna who told us we were gunna miss seeing the sunrise in the desert. She was only off by about an hour, I coulda killed her. After getting up and watching the sunrise I walked out into the desert to take some pictures away from camp. I took pictures and just walked around for about an hour it was nice. Then we came back to breakfast and had bread with some homemade butter and jam with coffee. After breakfast it was back on the camels, and let me tell you, I was sore from the day before!! The ride back was significantly less comfortable than the ride there!! After our 1 and 1/2 hour ride back it was time to pile back into the SUV and head back. We all were not too excited about climbing into an SUV for the 8 hour ride back. Needless to say we were significantly less energetic on the ride home and not very interested in seeing the scenery, most of which we had already seen. We all napped on and off on the ride home. Finally we arrived back in Marrakech and all showered, which was definitely necessary!! After showers and such we decided to go and get dinner in the city in the market. So we set out toward the market but Anna was still tired because I dont think she really slept in the desert...so she didnt come with us to the market. We arrived at the market with no problems and found a little restaraunt stall from which we could get some food. The food was surprisingly good for a little stall in the middle of an arabic market square. After dinner we walked around the square for a little while and then we headed back to the hotel. This is where we encountered some problems. None of read Arabic and normally we just take a taxi back to the hotel but we didnt have enough money to do that so we decided to walk. We started the walk back and needless to say we got a little lost. Not really lost but we were sure of our exact position. After asking for directions a few times we were getting close and we asked one final time and the guy said he would take us. We told him that we didnt have any money and he said that was no problem and acted like he was just doing it to be nice. Anyways we talked to him on the walk back and about three blocks from our riad he turned and said pay me. We were like we told you we dont have any money and at that point I knew where I was, so I just started walkin toward the riad but Esteban was still talkin to him so I couldnt get too far ahead. Eventually he showed us his scarred up arms and was like pay me trying to intimidate us but all we had was like 10 dhm between us which is like 1 euro and that only made him more angry but eventually we made enough noise that everyone was lookin at him so he just left. We hurried back into the riad, and luckily he had just completely given up on folllowing us. After that we headed to bed because we had to be up early the next morning. The next morning we had breakfast and then headed out after paying for the riad and finding out that carolina had won the final four game. We finally found two taxis and got to the airport. I really enjoyed Morocco but I was definitely read to be back in Spain where I could communicate with people!! All in all Morocco was a ton of fun and some very memorable experiences!!

Madrid

We arrived in Madrid around noon on the eve of the national championship. We checked into our hotel and Lauren and Anna found a room in the same building. After getting settled in we set out to find somewhere to watch the game and also to buy our tickets for Toledo and to go back the Sevilla because Lauren and Anna were goin back to Sevilla the next day. We found an internet cafe and checked our email and facebooks. We let our parent know that we had made it out of Morocco safe and that we were back in Spain. After that we set out to find a place to watch the game. We found an Irish pub that was close to the hotel and they said they would remain open to watch the game. We were pumped and so after that we headed back to the hotel to rest up a little before a long night because we were alreay really tired from the Morocco part of the trip. We all napped and laid around until dinner time. Anna and Lauren had been in Madrid before so Anna recommended this tapas place called El Tigre which is in Chueca (The gay district of Madrid). That made it a little interesting to get to but the bar itself was amazing!! The food was amazing and you would never have known that it was in the gay district. After dinner we headed to the bar to get some seats and to make sure they didnt close the bar before the game started or anything. So we watched a little bit of MLB action before the coverage even started for the National Championship. It finally started around 230AM and then the game didnt start until around 330AM. We were pretty pumped up when the game came on, it was great to actually watch the boys play on a TV instead of my computer screen. The game turned out to be rather boring as far as a national championship goes, we took the lead and never looked back but I cant really complain that we killed them. Esteban left with about 6 mins left in the second half and Anna fell asleep for the majority of the second half which was pretty funny, because she is kinda germaphob and she was asleep with her face on the nasty bar. After we won we sang the alma mater and then headed home to the hotel around quarter to 7AM. We got home and passed out. The next day, or the same day, however you wanna look at that, Esteban Kali and I headed out to Toledo. It was pretty neat to walk around because it has a very medieval city feel to it. We just walked around and enjoyed the city. I decided to head back to Madrid about an hour earlier than Kali and Stebs because I was tired of walkin around. I hung out back at the hotel until they got into Madrid and then we met at the Prado museum. It was cool to see all the art but there wasnt a ton that I was interested in there!! After the museum we went back to the hotel and pasesd out because we were all dead between morocco and stayin up for the game. The next day we decided to see all the sites around madrid. We saw the Reina Sofia museum which is a lot more modern art which I surprisingly liked a good bit of. We saw most of the big tourist sites around Madrid and then we headed back to the bus station to catch our bus which left around 6PM. The bus ride back, about 6 hours, was not near as bad as I would have thought. Other than being a little hot it wasnt bad at all. We got back into Sevilla around 12:15AM and had to walk all the way across the city back to the apartments. We literally walked in and passed out. All in all it was a great trip, but we were completely and totally exhausted!!

Photography

Here is a link to my artwork (click here) which contains a lot of the pictures I have taken while here in Spain. Figured I would let all of you, who follow my blog and don't have facebook, see my artwork. Hope you enjoy.

One of those weeks....

It's just been one of those weeks... The week started off heading downhill and pretty much followed that trend to the end. I ran about 6 miles this past sunday to get some exercise and do something I enjoy. Before I started my run I realized that my iPod was dead, which is pretty much the saddest feeling ever before I start a run, but I decided to run anyways. Normally I have my music goin in the background, playing some of my favorites, which is a pretty ecclectic mix of music. But this run was so much better than my normal runs and I really don't know why. Music is normally one of the best parts of my run! Anyways, I was feelin great right out of the gate, I took a little slower pace than normal because I was planning on going a little farther than I had gone in a while. I was feeling great, running right by the river and through a little park down there, its a great place to run. I continued to follow the river, running through some more concrete and finally arriving at another great stretch where I was able to run on the dirt for the majority of about 3 miles. It is so much better on your legs and knees in the dirt and it was great to find some dirt relief in Sevilla because so much of it is paved or stone. Anyways, I even got to take my shirt off for about a mile and a half which was great because around here apparently no one does that until like the middle of the summer, but o well I didn't really care, the only other people around were runners and I figured they would understand. I had a pretty good wind at my back which was nice until I turned around at the bridge. Then it was in my face and still pretty strong, but it didn't have the usual effect of making me feel incredibly slow, incredibly it didn't really seem to affect me all that much. I ran the same route back to the house to complete my six mile run, I felt great during the run and had one of the best runner's highs I have had in a long time. Which of course meant that after my shower and stretch I was rather cranky and quiet as my family can attest to after my long runs. My senora asked me why I was so quiet at lunch and I pulled the i'm tired from my run card, but its just the runner's low that follows a long run haha, but thats life haha. So sunday wasn't too bad, but Monday was a different story. Apparently my foot didn't agree with that 6 mile run and decided to talk to me about it. All day monday my foot had a nagging pain in it and I jus attributed it to being sore or something from the run and assumed it would get better on tuesday. It didn't, Tuesday was actually worse than monday. Wednesday was worse than Tuesday, I could barely walk to class and where I park my bike is a grand total of like 100 yards from my class. It was rediculous so I decided that it was time to go to the doctor because I was beginning to wonder if it was a stress fracture. So after classes I contacted the course director here and arranged for one of the assistant directors to accompany me to the doctor because although I can speak spanish pretty well I just don't really have the vocab to go to the doctor by myself, but after going I am pretty sure that I could manage and if I have to go back I think that I will find a way to manage because I hate to make Brit take time out of his day to come with me. Anyways we went to the doctor at 5 and it didnt take to long to be seen. I told the doctor about my run and that it started hurting the next day and he more or less poked it about 3 times and said lets take an X-ray lol I was like nice haha. So anyways the assistant took an X-ray and then he read it and said he pretty much thought it was acute tendinitis. He wrote me a prescription for some intense doses of ibuprofen after every meal and it seems to be helping to keep the inflamation down along with the pain. After the doctor I went to EUSA cuz I have class at 630. I got there a little after 6 and that is when I found out about Ralph. So I was quiet for the rest of the evening, just trying to keep everything together and make it through class. I felt bad, cuz I kinda ignored everyone but I just didn't really wanna talk about it and I wasn't ready to talk about it. So as much as Hannah was trying to pry what was wrong out of me I didn't really wanna spill the beans and as many of you know, that meant that I didn't say anything. I tend to wait til I am ready to tell people about something, which is a good and a bad thing. Anyways, class started and needless to say I was a bit distracted and definitely was not in class mentally. I really didn't say anything all class unless I was directly called upon. I think Coro (Our teacher) noticed because when she called on me I more or less answered with no enthusiasm or excitement and I was rather monotone. Anyways, we didn't really do much that class because she got sidetracked and then I brought up some obscure point about 15 minutes before class ended so that we wouldn't finish the work and we wouldn't have homework for monday. Anyways after class I was a little better because I really hadn't thought about Ralph much towards the end of class which helped to make me feel a little better. After everyone got what they needed done on the internet we walked back to Los Remedios. I got home and had been there for a little while when mom called. So I went to my room and we talked about what happend with Ralph and it was nice to get to talk to the family and be with everyone even if I can't physically be there. It was really hard to be here and know that they were all there together. It was like the goodbye that I had said before I left had finally hit but it was different than anything I had ever felt. I was in a foreign country, with people that relatively, I barely know. I mean other than Hannah Duna Christine and Kati I didn't know anyone before I came. And other than Kati and Hannah it was more like acquaintances. Kati was out of town with her mom in Paris so that more or less left Hannah, who eventually was the first one to find out here. It was nice to talk about it with someone here but it was just different not having people that I knew really well around. I wished that I was back at Chapel Hill just for the day, to hang out with Rachel and Chasity, cuz they can always make me feel better when I have had a bad day. Someone that I share my feelings with on a regular basis. Life is different here, I pretty much share my feelings with my journal and esteban occasionally but we really don't talk about anything too deep. I have learned how relieving having a journal is. You can be as raw and honest as you want to be and it never condemns or judges, it just is there listening and never responding. Allowing you to release what you are thinking and move on. I think that one day it will be nice to look back on and see what I was thinking and why. Anyways, the rest of the week has been pretty quiet. I didn't have class on Thursday because a professor was sick, and I don't have friday classes so the majority of the week has been spent in the house just resting the foot and playing some online poker haha. I think I may go out tonite but I'm not sure. Anyways, the foot is feeling a lot better. Mom and Corey both said that the service for Ralph went well, I think they taped it so that I can see it when I get home which was nice of them. It still seems surreal, I've been expecting the call I got on Wednesday for a while now but all the same it still doesn't seem like it has set in. I don't think it will seem real to me until I walk into the basement of Mema's house and he's not there watching something interesting on TV or just hangin out in the basement. Good times in that basement is something I will definitely miss...Thanks to everyone who has written an encouraging note on my wall or sent me an encouraging message, they have been dearly appreciated!!! I love you all and Mom Dad Corey Abbey Mema Wayne Joy and Don I wish I could have been there with you to share in the celebration of Ralph's life, but I know that yall did him justice and thank you for what each one of you means to me and for the support you have given me over the last few days and over my entire life!! Miss you all so much right now!! Hasta Luego!