I love Barcelona!

Well we arrived in Barcelona yesterday and I LOVE it!  This is an absolutely beautiful city that is extremely unique.  I’ll even say that the bus rid was worth it although it took us 14 hours to get here stops included.  I am not good at sleeping on buses and planes but I tried my best to sleep a lot yesterday in order to make the trip go by faster.  I definitely passed out for the first couple of hours because I was running on about four hours of sleep.  I’m lucky that I got that much because I definitely wouldn’t have if my host parents were amazing and drove me to the school.  They had to wake up at like 5:15, which is beyond early for a Spainard.  Also, they got me there early so I was able to get two seats for me to sprawl out in!  It’s the little things… 

Around lunch time we stopped in Zaragoza, got to look around the main square for 30 minutes, then got lunch.  The main square was absolutely gorgeous.  The cathedral was massive; also, there were fountains and a few sculptures in the square.  It was the one day I might have regretted not having a tour (not to suggest I don’t enjoy tours, they just get tedious when you go on as many as we go in a day that’s already miserable because of a bus ride).  We ate lunch at a very nice little restaurant and I had “lasagna” that tasted more like an enchilada to me because it had shredded chicken and cheese.  I ate every bite because it was delicious and then was shocked when they brought out a whole rotisserie chicken for the next course.  Spanish lunches are so huge!  Also, I saw a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel while we were at lunch and that breed has made my list of possible future dogs!  … yes I have a list and it is quite long…

At lunch, our table somehow got on the subject of concealed carry on campus.  If I remember correctly, it was because a professor received a death threat from one of his graduate students.  Just to be clear, I am not for concealed carry on campus.  Most of that table didn’t agree with concealed carry although that is usually an issue on which there are varying opinions.  It was interesting to hear some of the students share their thoughts, but I was most interest in Maia’s opinion (Maia is one of the girls that organized our trip).  She was just taken aback at the fact that we (as a campus) would even consider such a thing.  We talked about gun laws in general, and she thought it was craziness that an individual could shoot someone breaking into their house.  I’m not trying to stir up issues, just trying to point out the differences between her views and the majority view of Texans.  Never ceases to amaze me how different we can be and yet how similar depending on what is being discussed.

I know I posted about the windmills earlier this week and how interesting they were.  It was therefore super amazing to see a field with literally hundreds of modern windmills.  The place we went on Monday and AT MOST 20 windmills and that’s being generous.  Whereever we were yesterday, there were literally hundreds of windmills on either side of the road.  I was blown away!  (haha unintentional pun!)

We visited Las Ramblas (the main street in Barcelona) last, but didn’t do much else.  A group of us ordered a few sangrias that we later found out were 15 euro for a pitcher.  That was a lot more expensive than I was expecting!  Afterwards, I came back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

Today, we stared the day with a good breakfast!  I got my favorite kind of melon even though I don’t know what kind of melon it is.  I’ve had some at my host family’s and it is delicious!  A good breakfast always starts the day off right.  We left on our bus tour and headed immediately for Sagrada Familia.  Oh my goodness, I guarantee you that you have never seen anything like it.  You can definitely tell it’s a church, but it looks nothing like the typical Gothic cathedral that is so common in Europe.  Or even cathedral’s made in the other style.  It is much more modern but without the usual connotations modern has.  It was designed in part by Gaudi in the style that he decorated what seems like much of Barcelona in.  If you have seen architecture from Barcelona, there is a good chance Gaudi designed it.  Work was started on building the Sargrada Familia in 1882 and still isn’t finished.  They are hoping to finished around 2030 give or take some years.  It was imposing when standing in front of it, but it is very amazing to go the any hill with a view of the city and immediately spot the massive structure along the skyline.  I can’t wait to go inside when David and I come back.

We continued our bus tour around the city after leaving that amazing structure.  We saw other fabulous buildings that Gaudi had designed and saw beautiful buildings of an overall beautiful city.  We took a drive up Montjuit which gave us a beautiful view of the city below.  We also got to see the stadium used for the 1992 (I think) Olympics.  That was really cool in my opinion, even if I wasn’t old enough to watch those Olympics. 

I hate to say it, but some of the scenes started to run together as my usual lunch time (1:30) drew near and then passed.  It is very hard to pay attention when your stomach starts growling.  We did get to see an actual cathedral (the Sagrada Familia is a bascillica minor I believe) that was beautiful.  I wasn’t wearing appropriate clothing to go inside, but the outside was very pretty and in that square there was remains of the wall the Romans had built when they founded Barcelona.  I enjoyed some lunch and then we headed on to Park Guell.

Park Guell was also designed by Gaudi and lies outside of the central part of the city, but you have probably seen pictures from it.  It is the epitomy of a specific style of architecture art nouveau.  If you have ever seen pictures of a lizard made of colorful tiles or benches that are curved with colorfile tiles inlaid in the backrest, you have seen pictures of Park Guell.  Guell was a rich man that sponsored the construction of this park in hopes that upper middle classes would help establish a neighborhood around it.  I can’t remember all the history, but I can remember all the beautiful sights.  Flowers were everywhere!  And rocks were used to create unique walkways and the like.  The most amazing parts were the houses at the bottom that (as someone pointed out) looked like houses from a Dr. Seuss book.  Those along with the lizard and the benches were just so one of a kind that I can’t compare them to anything else I’ve ever seen. I am so glad we got to see this park and I will no doubt be taking David back.

After napping in the hotel, Holly and I ventured down Las Ramblas in order to find dinner.  We ate at Maoz vegetarian, which was perfect for Holly since she is a vegetarian and Spanish people have a hard time understanding that concept haha.  I wasn’t initially willing to eat there because it is a falafel bar and I have no prior knowledge of falafel.  It eventually looked and smelled good enough that I figured it was worth a shot.  I definitely made the right decision!  It was delicious!  I know it wasn’t a new Spanish food that I was trying, but I was still proud of myself for trying something new. 

We explored Las Ramblas a little more before we eventually made our way back to the hotel, which brings me to my blog (even though this will be posted late because internet is down).  I hope everyone is having fun back home and I love and miss everybody!

 Beautiful cathedral in Zaragoza

 Pretty fountain in Zaragoza

 Sagrada Familia

 Sagrada Familia

 Olympic Stadium

 Olympic Torch

 Park Guell

 house that Gaudi designed at Park Guell

pretty flowers!

Another early morning = Another amazing weekend trip

So, if you didn't already know, I am leaving for Barcelona at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning.  While I may be a little less than excited about the early morning, I am super excited to get to Barcelona!  I hear it is an absolutely beautiful city, it's much cooler than central Spain, and they are having a festival tomorrow night!  How lucky are we?  The ONLY downside I can foresee is the lack of internet.  In Portugal, there was a fee to use the internet.  Hopefully, this hotel is nice enough to not charge us!  If that isn't the case, I'm sad to say I won't get a post up until Sunday night or Monday sometime.  Just wanted to give everyone a head's up!

Tonight, my host mom made lamb, fried eggs and "patatas fritas"!  Yum!!!  Lamb is an interesting meat that I'm not sure I've ever had before this trip.  I enjoyed the way it was prepared tonight so I'm gonna go with I like lamb lol.  I'm also used to having my eggs scrambled, but the fried egg went good with the meal.  And homemade (I think) french fries definitely made me happy!  And as always my magnum ice cream was delicious.  America, why have you not discovered magnum before now?!?

I think it's very strange how Spanish people love American music.  They have their Spanish artists, but I still seem to hear American pop songs everywhere.  And they are usually some of the older ones in the US.  Just a random comment =)

I don't have anything else that is very interesting.....

I love and miss everyone back home!  Can't wait to see y'all =)

Why hello again...

So I have received complaints on no new blog posts *cough, cough, D'Ann* so I figured I better get another one up here so that I don't lose all my followers because I know I have oh so many!  It is now officially the fifth week I've been here in Spain so that means I have less than two weeks until David comes (Woohoo!) and less than three weeks until I am back in the good ole' USA (mixed emotions).  I am not terribly homesick, but I do miss everybody.  Why can it not be simpler for people to visit me while I am here?  Oh well, I am enjoying the time I have left while looking forward to home sweet Texas despite the miserable heat I have been hearing about.  

Not to take away from how awful it must feel back home, but Spain finally decided to get HOT.  Maybe it wouldn't seem as hot, but for the most part air conditioning doesn't exist here (at least not where I live) and I have to walk to and from school.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting to walk because it is my excuse for daily exercise.  And in the mornings, walking is refreshing.  But oh my goodness if it isn't hot when I walk home.  Doesn't even matter when I walk home.  Once noon hits, its hot until the sun goes down.  And the sun doesn't go down until almost 10 o'clock.  I appreciate the Spanish dedication to using less energy, but what I would do to have my window unit from Winnsboro with me now haha!

It becomes obvious why swimming pools are so popular here.  Most host families that I have heard of at least have a community pool.  I know my family does and they love it which means I love it.  It opened last Wednesday and I think today might be the first day that I'm not going at least for a little while.  Its about a block away from my house, so it's very easy to just walk down, soak up some sun, take a dip and either relax there or come back here.  It's perfect!  My goal is to make enough money as an engineer to have my own pool because it makes summertime infinitely more enjoyable.  And David can be my pool boy!  Perfect =)

This weekend has been amazing!  I am sorry that I won't get to see Sevilla while I'm in Spain, but spending time relaxing with my host family was priceless.  Essentially, I ate better lunches (not surprising, I eat at the school everyday), got tan so I look like a native, and took siestas.  What is not to love about that?!?  I have to say, it is hot in Spain, but at least they are smart enough to take a siesta during the worst part of the day.  Texas is just as hot and should adopt the same tradition.  Its only reasonable!

So, I had some more amazing food this weekend although that shouldn't come as a surprise.  Friday, my host mom, my host sister and I went to an Italian restaurant for lunch.  It was called La Mafia which I find amazing lol!  I can't remember at the moment what we had Friday night, but I know it was good!  Saturday I had chicken which was made like roast beef with potatoes in the bottom of the pan.  It was delicious along with the sauteed jalapeños that went with it!  Again, can't remember dinner from Saturday night (I've slept since then!) but Sunday was great.  For lunch we had a dish that I cannot remember the name of.  It was essentially paella with the same seasonings, same meets, etc, but it had pasta (macaroni type noodles to be exact) instead of rice.  It was amazing!  I have been hoping my host mom would make some paella because I wanted some homemade paella, but this was just as good!  You should have seen the pan it was cooked in!  Absolutely huge!!!  And then last night, we had a Mediterranean type salad, some melon with bacon-esque style "jamón" on top (LOVE) and some fish.  Going off of what my host dad says, fish isn't as common, but my host mom and host sister like he.  He always makes sure I know what is typical Spanish food and what isn't.  Sometimes, I even learn if its Modern Spanish food (like last night).  My host mom says that if he likes something, he says its typical Spanish but if he doesn't like it, it isn't typical Spanish.  They're funny :)

Okay, so I've covered the weekend, but I still actually did something cool today!  Today, we got to go see windmills!!! YAY!  I think it's so cool that we did considering how popular Don Quijote is in the region I'm living in (just to clarify, I'm in Castilla-La Mancha).  Don Quijote is everywhere!  And today we got to see windmills that are some that could have been the ones Don Quijote was supposed to have fought.  We also got to see modern day windmills which was amazing.  The company that told us about the wind energy is the fifth largest company in Wind Energy in the world.  I think.  And the four companies ahead of them are owned by the government while they are still a public company.  They even have windfarms in the US (even in Texas!)  How awesome is that?!?  Wind energy is very interesting to me and it's definitely a popular concept in Spain so I think our visit was very informative.  

Anyways, I think that covers everything you might have missed since last Wednesday.  I could probably add more, but I have two exams on Wednesday and then I leave for Barcelona on Thursday so I need to get some things done (i.e. studying).  I hope everyone is surviving the heat and I'm praying for rain in Texas.  I love and miss y'all!

 Windmills!

 This flowers are intimidating...

 Look how many!

 Inside of an old windmill 

 These look very flimsy up close..

Picking up the Pieces

So today has been uneventful overall so no need in going over boring details there.  I do have a few things that I forgot to post from this weekend so this will be a short blog, but I didn't want to forget again.

First of all, I talked about the image of the Rooster (or translated to Cock) everywhere in Portugal.  Literally, every Portuguese town/city/village had the image of the Barcelos Cock on souvenir items.  I tried to take a picture of the postcard I got so hopefully you can read the legend on it.

If you click on the image, it should take you to a larger file on its own webpage.  That might make it large enough to read.  I really hope it does.

Also, in one of the suburbs of Lisbon I tried something I had never had before.  After I finished my lunch for that day (the strawberry pastry I mentioned yesterday), some of the other students talked about this cherry liquor the had tried.  It was a Euro and you got a small shot of cherry liquor in a chocolate cup.  You drank the first half, and then put the rest (cup and all) in your mouth.  It ended up tasting like a chocolate covered cherry!  I would have bought a bottle because it came with the cups, but I didn't expect chocolate cups to survive the Spanish heat.  Sorry to everyone that was dying to try it ;P


I have failed to mention this up til now, but Dr. Bracci (the civil professor not teaching me) reminds me so much of Mark Bosold!  So, needless to say, I have taken a liking to Dr. Bracci lol.  He is trying to help me get an internship with a Spanish company that has a project in Dallas :)

The last thing I have to write down happened tonight.  I went with my host mom to the neighborhood pool earlier today.  She made sure I knew where to get the key and where it was and that I can go whenever I want.  At dinner, she also said I could bring friends to the pool if I wanted.  My host dad looked kinda confused and then said "This is your home."  Mind you, my host dad doesn't speak English save maybe one or two words at a time.  To hear him say this is my home meant so much to me!  Ah, I could not possibly love my host family anymore!!!

I hope everyone's week is good (now that its half over!) and that the end of the week goes good too.  I love and miss everyone!

A Weekend In A New Country

I am finally able to sit down and write a blog that I should have written yesterday!  I'm afraid I won't remember as much, but I am going to try anyways.

After I posted my blog Saturday night, I did absolutely nothing except watch a not very good American movie on tv.  I tried to find Holly, but she had fell asleep so I figured there was nothing wrong with being lazy for an evening.  It wasn't completely necessary because we didn't do anything too extensive the next day.  For our tours in Lisbon, we did bus tours with our tour guide talking as we passed different landmarks.  It was nice to be out of the hot sun, but we all have been trained to sleep on the bus.  For the first week and a half we were in Spain, the best sleep we got was on the bus.  And when we left Friday, they expected us to go to sleep.  So, is it really the students fault that we weren't was attentive as we should have been?  I definitely tried to pay attention, but with the warm air, I didn't last terribly long.  Thankfully, we had opportunities to get out and see a few sights which helped break the monotony.  It was really disappointing to not be able to pay more attention because our tour guide knew so much about Lisbon and all of Portugal for that matter.  She kept pointing out apartment buildings that the government built to replace the slums people had been living in.  It was very interesting to see this metropolitan area that looked to be very up to date and think about slums being all throughout the city.  Portugal is in a bad place as far as economy goes; its interesting to see that other economies are hurting in the world, not just in America.

On Sunday morning, we left the hotel at 9:30 to start another bus tour.  First of all, we stopped at a coach museum.  I cannot describe the intricacy of these coaches, some of which were only used once.  Don't worry, I'll include pictures!  After this, our focus was on communities outside of Lisbon (basically suburbs).  I was very excited because I knew at the end of the day, we would get to spend time on the beach.  I love all the history in these old cities, but it doesn't mean I can enjoy my UV rays too!  (don't worry, i wore sunscreen!)  The towns outside Lisbon were really very pretty.  We stopped in one around noon and everyone went and bought pastries.  Oh my goodness, pastries in Portugal are amazing!  I had a strawberry pastry that was to die for!  Anyways, we got back on the bus, listen to Margarita (our tour guide) talk about meeting Bush Sr and how Barbara wears pearls lol and headed to the beach!  We dropped people off the casino first (the largest in Europe I believe) and then the bus took everyone that wanted to go to the beach to Carcavelos.  That evening, we went and watched Pirates of the Caribbean 4 in English!  With Portuguese subtitles haha..  It was a nice way to end the day...

We left at 9:30 again yesterday morning.  The first part of the trip wasn't too bad because we stopped after 2 hours for a tour around a beautiful medieval city on a mountain.  Our tour guide said it only has around 60 inhabitants today, so it was very small and quaint.  The view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking!  Unfortunately, that was our last good stop of the day.  We got back on the bus at 3 and didn't arrive in Ciudad Real until 10:30.  Thankfully, we had two stops on the way back, but that long on a bus is still rough on anybody.  I'm excited for Barcelona in 2 weeks, but the bus ride will again be extremely tedious.  Oh well, that is not what these trips are about!!!

Anyways, I loved my weekend trip, but I am happy to be back with my host family even if it does mean classes have started again.  I will try and post shorter blogs this week, but if nothing interesting happens, there might not be any blogs lol.  I love and miss everyone and I hope you enjoy the following pictures!!

 beautiful coach at the coach musem... so of these coaches were used for a few hours and then never used again!

 Portugal loves their roosters!  I'll have to post the legend later because I bought a postcard with it typed on there (although the translation was a little rough lol)

 Beautiful beach in Carcavelos!  It was soooo crowded but it was a perfect day for the beach!

 view from one of the towers of the castle/fortress in Monzaraz (sp?)

 the castle/fortress from another angle

 Very strange trees I've seen in Spain and Portugal... Anyone know what it is?

 Such a beautiful village!...

... beautiful flowers even!

Portugal!

Yesterday morning I woke up at 4:30 in order to be at the school at 6 to leave for Portugal!  Needless to say, yesterday kind of dragged on and on.  It was still a great day though because I entered a brand new country!  Portugal country-side is basically indistinguishable from the Spain countryside.  It took a sign to tell me we had entered Portugal haha.  Even after we entered the country, we had a little while before we reached Evora, the first city we visited this weekend.  The entire drive yesterday wore me out.  After playing basketball Thursday, sitting in a bus for 6+ hours just about killed my back.  I need a massage (hint hint David)!!!  Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait 3 weeks for that...  

Anywho, Evora was a beautiful city, somewhat similar to the Spanish cities we've visit.  It had an old Moorish palace (part of it), a lot of Catholic influence and an old Roman temple.  Something interesting observations in Evora:  they appeared to be having an old car rally, felt like I was home for Autumn trails haha.  They had a park with wild peacocks and an adorable old couple sitting in the park.  In Portugal, a popular type of architecture is the Manueline style.  It incorporates ropes and seaweeds and other maritime symbols.  It is very unique to Portugal and I am glad I got to see several examples of this while in Portugal, one in Evora and another in Lisbon today.  Also, cork either originates in Portugal or has become extremely popular here.  Also cork can be used to make clothes, jewelry, umbrellas, postcards, coasters, hats, etc...  As I said, it is VERY popular here.  

Last night, we went to a huge mall to find some food.  We ended up eating Pizza Hut, so I sorta consider it a success.  But I was glad I went and got to see this ridiculous mall.  It literally had a roller coaster in it along with every kind of store you could want and a supermarket that was at least as big as a super wal-mart.  We should have wal-marts in malls!  Its just convenient!  It also had touch screen interactive mall maps.  Makes our malls look shabby haha.  I got some snacks to hold me through the weekend because I'm eating cheap meals since I forgot to withdraw money before we left Spain.  Tomorrow we are going to tour a neighboring city which also means we get to go to the beach!  Yay for getting tan.  Hard to believe I've traveled from one side of the Iberian peninsula to the other in a week.

Random fact: Asian tourists love Americans.  We were taking a group picture and they came up to take a picture of us, then wanted to get in the picture with us.  It was a whole big mess of craziness that I couldn't even understand haha.  That's all I can think of right now because my brain is a little tired, but I'll post again Monday when I have wifi again!  I love and miss everyone from back home!

 statue in the park in Evora

 Roman Ruins!

 I really liked this picture of the ruins

most if not all of what you see is cork (as in corkboard)... Crazy!! Notice the shoes and hats...

 Beautiful view of Lisbon

 cathedral!  so pretty!

 Manueline style cathedral 

 can't remember the store on this one..

 this tower was used to defend the border and to make people pay a toll when entering the country

 beautiful statue!

 Inside of the above pictured Manueline cathedral

 Can't figure out how this guy was floating... saw someone wave paper underneath his feet

 This guy definitely got some of my money bc the chihuahua was so adorable!

another beautiful statue in Lisbon!

Basketball today, Lisbon tomorrow

To start off, I finished all my homework today so I won't have any left to do next week!  That alone makes today a good day.  I'm so thankful I don't have to worry about all those problems (unless of course he assigns some more).  We worked through an example in class today that literally took almost 4 hours and that was with all the students working together.  Today was definitely a tedious class day, but I got ahead of the group by a little so I think I'm doing alright in this class.  I really would like to make A's in these two classes so I am working hard to keep up in order to reach my goal.

After lunch today, I took a short siesta on Holly's couch at the hotel.  I am very thankful I took the break because I played basketball afterwards and I would have died without that little bit of rest.  We are apparently playing sports every Tuesday and Thursday here in Ciudad Real.  The idea is good, but there is huge discrepancy in the talent of the players.  On Tuesday, we played soccer (fútbol).  When I say we, I don't mean me because #1 I forgot appropriate clothes and #2 I don't know if I've ever kicked a soccer ball in my life.  There were a lot of people (a lot of Spanish students) that knew what they were doing, and the rest pretty much did their best.  It was entertaining to watch and I must say, I'm somewhat glad I wasn't playing.  Fútbol is intense!  Today there was basketball and volleyball.  My team started out with basketball, but when we were supposed to move to the volleyball court, I joined another team and played more basketball.  I played four 10-minute basketball games today with very short breaks in between.  If this doesn't sound bad to you, congratulations, you are in better shape than me!  I am sorely out of shape and I hustled in all four games.  I'm just proud that I didn't fall over or anything.  I consider myself a success.

I have a sword that I am unsure of how to get back to the U.S.  I don't want to put it in my suitcase because my suitcase was already over 50 lbs on the way over and Shere Con (a.k.a. my wonderful Mama) paid the ridiculous fee.  I can't afford another fee on the way back, but my host mom said she thinks it'll be 30 euro to ship the sword.  If anyone has suggestions on how to take care of this sword, please let me know.  I wish I could get it back by Father's Day, but I'm afraid that isn't going to happen.

I know I'm getting repetitive, but I am SO happy with my host family!  I am reminded of this every day so I blog about it every day lol.  My host mom is an amazing cook!  Tonight we had grilled zucchini, chicken and pepper kabobs and gazpacho with a ham and hard-boiled eggs garnish.  I cleaned my plate completely.  I am glad that my host mom is such a good cook, because it means I actually enjoy eating.  I was afraid I would have to force myself to eat certain foods, but that has yet to happen with her cooking! Oh and here is an example of a midmorning snack (minus the coke, I bought that to help me through class).  This doesn't show the chocolate snacks or the peach.  How amazing is she!

So, tomorrow we are leaving for Lisbon, Portugal, at 6 in the morning.  I have no idea how I'm ever going to wake up that early.  I still have to pack tonight as well.  Oh boy this is going to be fun...  I am excited about Lisbon though!  And it has a beach so I will be a happy girl this weekend as long as I use my 70 SPF sunscreen! I will try and blog this weekend, but the hotel might not have wifi, so I will update everyone as soon as I can.  Love y'all!