Granada/Sierra Nevadas/Flamenco

The flamenco dancer tried to make me dance with them... it didn't go too well

New Pictures of My Spanish Life

My Roommates!!! Kim and Brittney <3

My Spanish 21st Birthday Cake

(Side note, mom I still want you to make me one upon my arrival in May)

Spanish Familia<3 

Left to right, Maria (Our host sister who doesn't live with us), our host madre Fina, Me, Brittney, and Kim

Recent Misconceptions With the Spanish Language

In Recent Conversations with Our Host Fam...

-"Yeah, and this turkey doesn't have enough fat in it"  (Instead of trying to say that I was glad we were having turkey burgers instead of hamburgers because there isn't as much fat)

-"I want to paint my nails with pistachios"(No not nail polish)

-"I need to wake up early in the morning because I'm skinny" (Instead of slow)

Año Nuevo - Vida Nueva

My new favorite Spanish saying, A New Year, A New Life.

Day Trip to Ronda, Spain, my new favorite place in the world

Hey! So this past Thursday I went with four friends to this place about an hour away called Ronda.  I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go, but the round-trip bus fare was 20 euro and I had nothing else going on so I decided to go, and I am SO glad that I did.  On the bus ride we drove through a lot of Spain's country side.  I was really surprised to see so many huge rolling green hills, it looked just like what you would imagine Ireland looking like.  When we got to Ronda we went to some park because we heard that it was really cool.  We got there and there was some grass then a huge cliff.  The cliff over looked a huge gorge that had a little waterfall.  Just beyond the cliff were more of the rolling green hills and behind those was a beautiful mountain range.  The rolling green hills were full of trees that were blossoming and were covered in light pink flowers.  It was the most beautiful thing I have seen in my entire life.  Behind us there was a man playing Spanish guitar and there were birds chirping.  The sun was shining (my face got SO tan that day!!) and it was the perfect temperature.  We decided to be adventurous and climb into the gorge.  There are really steep stairs that you can climb that bring you down pretty far but we decided to go off of the trail a bit and do some exploring.  We found the waterfall and another nice little cliff to hang out on, the view was even more beautiful than before!! We explored for a few more hours and when we decided we couldn't walk anymore we climbed back up then went to find some lunch.  I got some chicken meal and it came with a glass of some delicious sangria yum! We explored around some more then got the bus back to Sevilla around 6:00.  Everyone fell asleep as soon as they got on the bus, it had been a very long day! I couldn't sleep but I'm glad that I didn't, after about an hour of driving I saw the most incredible sunset.  The sun was enormous and bright pink setting over the rolling green hills.

Perfect day.

Trips Planned!

Greece! - April 24-27

Prague/Barcelona! - Last weekend in Feb!

Los Lagos, Portugal - April 8-10!

Germany/Amsterdam/Paris/South of France with Fam :) - Semana Santa, April

And HOPEFULLY Italy first week in May!

hopefully squeezing Ireland in there too at some point, SO EXCITED!

Worst Parts of Life in Spain ((sorry to any Spaniards reading this))

1. There are bakerys on every corner.

2. There is no YMCA

3. At every grocery store I've been to there is usually only one cash register open.  Regardless of how many people are in line.

4. I don't sleep. Ever.

5. There is fish in everything.  Good for normal people, bad for me.  *Brief sidenote, I still try the dishes that have seafood in them!

6. I am forced to eat a ton of food at every meal even if I don't like it.

7. Their notebooks are weird shaped like too long I guess and their pages are not periforated for easy tearing.

8. If you drop your coins it actually matters because 1 euro and 2 euro are coins not paper money.

9. No one wears sweatpants, uggs, or sweatshirts.



So all things considered life is pretty darn easy and amazing.

Best Parts of Life in Spain

1. I don't know if its just Sevilla, but there are ADORABLE cute little kids everywhere.

2. I can drink legally.
Even in the street!

3. There are pastry and ice cream shops on every corner that I turn... Double edged sword.

4. Being 15 minutes late is acceptable, not so much to classes as I've already found out, but to everything else it is.

5. The bread is delicous. And cheap!

6. It isn't considered weird to spend your day walking aimlessly, it's actually the thing to do.

7. It is conveniently located near other countries that are cheap to fly to! Sorry U.S., Canada's just not as appealing as being able to spend a weekend in Prague.

8. There are a lot of parks.

My Arrival to Sevilla!

Just arrived in Sevilla!  Well so far, I am absolutely LOVING it!  Minus the fact that the apartment where our family lives is FREEZING! (No heat :( ) and the room I share is really tiny and there’s no room for any of my clothes. When we got off of the bus our host madre was waiting for us.  She is a very sweet woman in her mid-50s named Fina, short for Josephina.  She couldn’t believe how many suitecases my roommates and I had (ooops!!).  Her husband was waiting in the car for us.  When he saw us the asked si estamos quedando por siempre,, if we’re staying forever/moving in haha.  Thank goodness they had a big car (very rare here!), but even with a big car, our stuff almost didn’t fit!  We then went to their apartment, its kind of small and REALLY COLD but its nice.  My roommate Kim from Long Island has her own room and I share one with my other roommate Brittney from Texas.  Brittney and I couldn’t fit all of our clothes in the closet/the tiny dresser we share so that kind of stinks.  It turns out that our family has 3 kids, two daughters and a son.  The daughters live around here but the son is married and lives in Granada.  The family has had a lot of foreign exchange students before, but they don’t speak English.  I’ve been able to understand them so far for the majority but its hard sometimes to converse with them because my grammar is so terrible in Spanish, but they typically understand me.  I can’t wait until my Spanish starts to improve!!

First Days in Madrid!!

hola! Today was my first day in Madrid, Spain.  What a cool city! When we were first driving into the city yesterday from the airport I wasn't that impressed, it looked just like any other city.  But once we got into the heart of the city, my feelings changed completely.  The architecture is so different than anything I have seen before.  The buildings are all so beautiful, the post office looks like a palace! Last night I had my first "legal" drink at a local cerveceria it was pretty cool! Today we went on a tour of the Palacio Royal,, the Royal Palace.  It was an amazing experience.  We first went into the armory where they have a display of all of the past king's armor it was fascinating to see how detailed the metal work in the suits was! Then we went on a tour of the actual palace.  I freaked out at first because our tour was in Spanish but I actually understood mostly everything! (they slowed everything down a lot). The inside of the palace was so beautiful! I don't think that there is anything in the U.S. like it! There were beautiful paintings, rugs, chandelliers, everything was beautiful!

El Escorial = AMAZING.

Holaaa.  Today was my second full day in Madrid, Spain.  Our program took us to El Escorial which is a little bit less than an hour away from Madrid.  I had heard of El Escorial many times before, but I had no idea what it was.  It turns out that it is an old Spanish monastary.  Some of the first kings lived there and they are buried there.  El Escorial is in a smallish mountain range that is so beautiful, a lot of the mountains had snow on top and as we were driving up the mountain there were a lot of goats, cattle, and horses.  Once we got to El Escorial we first went into the monastary, where we met our tour guide.  She gave our tour in Spanish, but luckily she spoke English as well so she was able to clarify things that we did not understand.  I was pretty excited though, I understood most of what she was saying!! (but she was speaking very slowly).  I cannot believe how much she knew, she was also very funny and made the tour very entertaining.  For anyone in my family reading this, I swear that she was the Spanish version of Nonny, which was awesome.  She first showed us around the kings' rooms and stuff like that, these were the Catholic kings who came before the Bourbons (I forget their names).  They all lived incredibly modestly for kings, because they were so religious.  My favorite part of the trip was going into the room where all of the dead kings are.  Our guide brought us down several sets of stairs under the monastary and into a beautiful marble room with an extravigent gold chandellier.  There were about 12 or 15 fancy marble tombs stacked in sets of 3 along the walls.  In these tombs are the kings of Spain! Apparently when a king or queen or someone closely related to the royal family dies, they are put into something called a "rotting room" (it sounds less gross in Spanish I promise) for about 40 years.  After these 40 years there are only the bones left of the corpses.  They are then put into the tombs in the fancy shmancy room.  It was such a strange feeling being in that room, strange, but cool.  That specific room only had the Kings and their wives who had produced sons, if one of the wives hadn't bore any sons or children, they were buried in a less special room.  Our guide then showed us other tombs of kings/princes/queens/etc in other rooms, they were all so cool.  Then we went into the Cathedral.  It is modeled very similarly to the Vatican.  I cannot describe how incredibly beautiful this church was.  The ceilings were all very high and painted with "frescos" (ceiling paintings) of saints/Jesus/Mary and stuff they were so so so sooo beautiful.  The guide said if we want to get married in that church you need to reserve over a year in advance, so in a few yrs from now when I get married I hope you are all okay with visiting Spain for my wedding! (Joking I promise).  After the church we went into the library.  The library was almost as impressive as the church.  The ceilings were painted with beautiful frescos of the gods.  All of the books were covered in some kind of gold, and apparently some of them were thousands of years old.  She said that they had about 30,000 books just in the main room of the library that we were in.  Their coolest book is something religious I can't remember but the writing itself is in gold.  They paid  50,000$ (I think) for it because it is the only copy of the original, I cannot imagine how much the original must be! Thats all for now, I'll try to post some photos of El Escorial soon!

Teaching Europe How To Fist Pump..

Well I must say that my first night out in Madrid was a great success.  Me and a bunch of the kids in my program went to a Tapas bar for tapas (small appetizer type things) and sangria (a wine based drink thats really fruity and delicious).  As soon as we got into the restaurant, all of the spanish people left. I guess they didn't really want to hang out with a bunch of loud, obnoxious Americans? Weird.  After that a few of us went to a club or a "discoteca" as they call it.  After a few shots of free tequila we hit the dance floor.  I was pleased to find that this discoteca was playing all American songs, such as Katy Perry and Willow Smith.  All of us Americans thought it would be a good idea to share our culture with the Europeans and teach them how to fist pump.  They were naturals.