do not be afraid to die; be afraid of never having lived

home

2007-05-16T16:02:37Z

so all in all everything went smoothly, all 55 kilos of my crap made it through and all the flights were on time and the rides were smooth. my connection at heathrow went well, security went fast and i had just enough time to go to the bathroom and get a sandwich and hopped on the next flight. only complaint is that i didnt sleep on any of the 9 hours of flight and i was just going crazy cramped in the little space being overtired. anyways, my bags came through nothing broke and i was excited. i walk out and my family says i look rested im like umm i havent slept in like 24 hours so thats strange. but it was nice to get back to my usual balloon (this one said 21 tho) and my funfetti cake as always and my nice comfy bed, which i passed out upon my head hitting the pillow. the next day i went to my familys mothers day party which was really fun. ive been enjoying talking about my trip as always. i havent really had anything to do during the day cause people work ya know, but its been nice chilling at the house catching up on some tv and napping. im still somewhat jet lagged. last night i went to dinner and a movie (hot fuzz) with josh and was so tired at the movie and exhausted when i got home even though it was only midnight. i need to start waking up later. all in all its good to be home with people around me who actually enjoy my company, although i do miss europe. its been nice to drive and be able to order alcohol (got carded for the first time haha) but not at the same time... gary sent me a message saying he hoped i had a good time in spain. i sent him a message saying that he shouldnt contact me unless hes going to apologize. and he did i guess. but i really dont want to talk to him ever again. im still angry. i dont think im even going to hook up with anyone while im home. i dont think it would be a great idea. i need to continue the healing. tho if something comes up, maybe cause i do miss kissing. absolutely nothing else tho. i could use some cuddling tho, that would be nice. lots of hugs. i miss debbie and i cant wait till she comes home too!! then we could talk about our trips for a long time and cook yummy food. mmm. we have plenty of spices now and a lifetime supply of saffron. haha.

saying goodbye

2007-05-11T18:07:26Z

ok so thursday i went off to retiro cause it was a beautiful day (28 celcius) and it was as beautiful as ever. they were building a stage in the middle of the lake for some concert. then i went to gran via and bought some tea for my mom and salud. Salud was happy that i remembered what her favorite tea was and i also got her a nice mug with flowers on it as she loves to plant. i found this really wacky store and i got rocio this mousepad that has like liquid and fish in it that move around when you move the mouse. i thought it was pretty cool. i got her a purse too. i was happy with my gifts. i ate at pans and co. again and i got a tortilla sandwich but it had green peppers in it too which made it AMAZING. ill have to remember that. then i went back and started packing. i am bringing back alot of crap. ive got 2 suitcases of 19 kilos each and my backpack carryon is 14 kilos. its friggin heavy. im afraid the straps are going to break haha. so then we went down and exchanged presents and took pictures. we had to say goodbye to rocio cause she was going to mayorca the next day (so jealous). she wasnt very good at saying goodbye, but shes 13 what do you expect. they were surprised that i started packing a day beforehand, they were like wow you really want to leave, but in actuality it took me many hours to pack so i needed to start early. so then we had the cena de despedida at the same restaurant we ate at the first night. it was like everyone left their hate for everyone (that was aparent at the last dinner) at the door. it was a great dinner. such good food and i had like at least 4 glasses of sangria... i lost count... unfortunately 2 of my professors couldnt make it. so i was kind of sad. they had this picture slide show that made me think you know i did have fun with these people. and then there was gift exchanging, we gave the teachers picture frames and candles and they gave us juanes cds haha. then everyone started crying but i didnt. then i was talking to maricarmen and my internship professor and maricarmen was like oh danielle she never let me know anything about her. always so quiet. never complained never said anything. and she was like why arent you crying? did you not enjoy your time here? and i was like no its not that its just that i wish that these people would have called me every once in a while, and thats when i lost it. i could not stop crying. but at this point i was pretty drunk from the wine, and having extreme emotional pms this week. but also, then again i had been holding alot in, and i have been through alot this semester. its not that i dont like spain, its just not the lifestyle im used to and it has been kind of hard on me, but i really did enjoy myself. so then we all went out drinking of cource seeing as how its our last night. so already drunk off the wine, we proceeded to get a free drink at this one bar, and then we went to this like salsa dance club where marta begged the ppl to let us in for free instead of 10 euro cover. it was really cool. the drinks were expensive but i was already kind of drunk so i only had a mojito and a really strong rum and coke. (i will miss the way spaniards do drinks) so the more wasted i got the "better" (at least i thought i was better) my salsa dancing got. it was alot of fun and i was dancing with people (had to turn away many creepy spanish old guys ew). a few of our people went up to the stage and it was fun watching them. then they were doing wierd things with midgets dressed as doctors. i love how getting drunk makes you either more emotional or just more aware of a feeling you had but maybe have been repressing. about halfway through the night i just got really really jealous of evan dancing with leeza the entire friggin night and chasing after her and marta. then i tried to dance with him and i got totally snubbed. i was pretty much ignored by evan the whole night as he chased after other people. but anyways so when iwas dancing i felt totally fine and not that drunk, but when i went to the bathroom i was like almost uncapable of going by myself. i wonder why when i was dancing i felt fine? i asked someone else and they said thats normal. so i had alot of fun, it was a great way to end the semester. so evan and i take a cab home and im infuriated at this point and im drunk enough to start saying some things i know i really shouldnt say and if i wasnt feeling more sober by the time i got home i might have said them. so anyways, he realized that something was up and kept asking me if i was okay, im like yea im just mad. and then he was like what are you mad about and i was like i dont want to talk about it or something and he said something about how he was concerned, and that if i was still angry in the morning we could talk about it. and i just said im angry at you and walked up the stairs. he was just kind of like oh and didnt bring it up till like 12 hrs later. we got home at 4am and like i just could not go to sleep. my body was telling me you are way too drunk to sleep right now. so i woke up like 6 hrs later and i was still really dizzy. about an hour later a headache set in, which i combatted by drinking some juice. evan didnt talk to me the whole morning until we went out to lunch with salud. we went to ginos which is an alright italian place. we got menu del dia, im going to miss the multi cource cheap meals. tomato and mozarella salad, spaghetti bolognese, and profiteroles mm the sauce on top was warm and yummy. the bread was nice and fresh and warm too, with spanish olive oil. great way to end it. it was a good time, and we were supposed to take her out, but she wouldnt let us pay. shes so nice. she told us that we can come stay here whenever we come back to spain. so then i went shopping bought some extra food to bring back and packed some more. this is about the time when evan finally was like so why are you mad at me. and i was like cause you ignored me the whole night. and he was like well i was dancing with leeza alot, but i didnt purposely ignore you. and he said he was sorry, which was all i wanted. well im done packing and its almost time for dinner. i plan on just watching tv shows and going to bed cause when i get up i start the like 12 hour trek home. im going to be so tired when i get back. ill also need to survive the one and a half hour layover in heathrow. lets see if i make it through second customs with my 14 kilo bag and make it to my flight in a different terminal on time. all my crap better make it too or i will be upset. thats alot of moneys worth of crap traveling in those bags. im going to need alot of luck and maybe some coffee to keep me awake and going. ill see everyone soon!! yay!

good day bad ending

2007-05-09T20:54:10Z

so today was my last final and yay it was this movie that i really wanted to see called 'lucia y el sexo'. i would have rented it but, like all the movies i wanted to watch in spain, i wanted to see them here in particular cause the versions are different between the us and europe but i really cant watch it here in a conservative household with a 13 yr old whos not allowed to see stuff like that. so anyways it was a really fucked up cool movie, of which the first half was pretty much a porno. but thats not why i wanted to see it, it was a great movie and won lots of awards and i love paz vega. and so the final was write a review of the movie which we could do at home yes! so anyways after that i printed out my plane stuff (as it was my last day at the school) and like as i was walking away it hit me that ill probably never go back to this area of town again. but why would i want to? all there is is my school, starbucks and vips, but still. the sadness started to set in. so anyways then i went down to gran via which is like my fav place in madrid and ive made a point to go down there as much as possible this past week. i first went to this tshirt store cause my family wanted tshirts and i was having conversations with the lady in spanish about what to get for my family. then the guy at the register looked at my credit card and asked me which state i was from, but in spanish. in fact everyone the whole day even at the touristy shops spoke to me in spanish and didnt even try to speak to me in english even tho they saw my credit card was in english and i paid in us dollars. that is one good day. so i had lunch again at pans and co. which is good for spanish sandwiches (spanish sandwiches are really blah and awful most of the time) and got a banana chocolate java chip frappuccino at starbucks, which was dissappointing cause the banana was kind of fake tasting. im really going to miss the mango citrus frappuccinos from here. why dont they have those in the states? it doesnt make sense. ill miss the european starbucks baked goods too for sure. *tear* and so then i was looking for a present for rocio when i found these cool sandals that i just had to buy. all in all i spent like 100 euros today oy... im bringing back more stuff than i brought. good thing i brought a bigger second suitcase... im also not bringing back alot of crap that i brought. i was having a great day, but then i started to get upset (im a little moody this week) cause i thought i was going to get to hang out with evan the last 2 days with no class, but he is hanging out with ivonne and im not invited apparently. stephanie is gone too, so looks like ill be spending it alone. just as well, i do have alot of things i need to get done tomorrow anyways. i hope to go out drinking before i leave, seeing as how i havent gone out drinking in over a month. im trying not to take out more money from the atm, and looks like i might not have to. 2 more days. im just so tired cause ive had so much on my mind that i havent been sleeping well. i cant wait to get back to my own bed and actually hang out with people who enjoy my company. it will be nice. i think im also not as sad about leaving cause i know ill be coming back to europe in the future. its my second home haha. my favorite vacation destination. but nonetheless, im eager to get back and finish up my senior year of college and be an adult! this semester has changed me and im interested to see how my new personality will fit in with my old life...

boys are confusing

2007-05-06T17:29:32Z

so since ive gotten back from rome its just been a blur, mostly cause ive been sleeping in every day and then spending the entire day doing papers. tomorrow is my first final (thank god i only have 3). ive been spending alot of time with evan lately too and hes been acting strange. i really do not understand him. if he likes me he should grow some balls and do something about it. not like im going to do anything about it tho either, im a chicken haha. plus i really could care less cause im going home in less than a week. today i went to my last rastro market *tear* and bought a crapload of pasminas, a present for katie and some new sunglasses that are painfully blue but i like them. haha. today was mothers day in spain so the whole fam was over for a party and evan was mentioning how hes going to miss the giant multi cource meals and i was thinking about how im so sad that my italian side of teh family moved to florida, which means no more giant multi cource meals for me (that is until i get a house of my own and start making them myself). the search for a room isnt going as well as i had hoped, but theres still alot of time so i shouldnt start getting worried yet. sucks that i cant go visit any of them, i guess i will have to make one visit if theres something im seriously concidering. anyways, i really dont feel like studying, im procrastinating horribly. but just ughhhh for boys...

speaking of boys, happy bday fred. 21! woot!

Rome

2007-05-01T19:43:32Z

DISCLAIMER: yes i realize that going to a foriegn country where i know nobody and dont speak the language was probably a bad idea. i was scared out of my mind pretty much the entire time that something was going to happen (but the things you are afraid of are the most worthwhile). since i was by myself i had tons of time to stop and write about what was going on. i tried to leave out the petty details nobody wants to hear about, but its still a super long entry. 6 pages single spaced in word. i had a great time tho in case you were wondering. it made me never want to go on vacation with other people ever again haha! i am proud to be italian : ) there was so much to do in italy i didnt even get to do it all!!

Rome

So Thursday my presentation wasn’t as great as everyone elses, but we all got A’s anyway. I didn’t work too hard on it/ wasn’t worried cause Maricarmen is too nice and I knew she wasn’t going to give people bad grades. Then I was invited out with everyone but I had to go home and pack. Evan begged me to come out with the rest of them… like really begged which almost made me think like why does he want me to come out that bad…? So I go home and packing didn’t take as long as I thought so I watched the new Lost. It is starting to make me upset because I really just want to know what is going on already I cant wait another like 5 seasons. So anyways at dinner evan gave me a plate that he supposedly spit on and he was like we’re friends so it doesn’t matter and I was like uh I don’t want a plate with your spit on it. Then after dinner he was worried about what to wear out, and then he was worried about what I thought of him asking me what to wear. So then Katie called to tell me what I should do in rome and evan is like tell her to hold on and I protested but he insisted. So I put down the phone and am like what? And he comes over and gives me a hug (he has never hugged me before) and asked me if I was still meeting someone in rome ( I lied) and he said cause I worry about you you know. I was thinking like who is this person. He was not being himself. On another note everyone has been being nice to me including ivonne. I guess it took a month or more of not looking like an idiot to prove to them that’s not really who I am. Or it was that I stopped caring if everyone accepted me or not? I think maybe I made a statement by going to rome by myself instead of inviting myself on someone elses trip which I think is what everyone expected me to do. too bad I go home in like 10 days.

All the super shuttles were full so I had to take a taxi to the airport. I called one for 5am and it cost 42 euros. Ugh, but I had no other choice. The lines were bad tho at the airport, even worse then semana santa. (its europe’s labor day weekend. People in Madrid have an extra day off cause of “Madrid day”) and to make everything worse they were playing musical lines. One would close then another would open up and this happened repeated times. Then some woman who was very bilingual flipped a nutty at the person at the desk who didn’t do anything really except work at this company. She was saying how she could have been sitting down drinking a coffee and I was thinking well if you stopped yelling you could go do that now geez. Surprisingly the security lines were short. I went to the mcdonalds again there to waste some time and got an egg mc muffin, I wish they had breakfast later in the states. So vueling. For their slogan being the “on time airline” they are consistently late. Tho I was impressed, the planes were super nice and they have tv shows on all the flights. In their pamphlet it was saying that lower prices shouldn’t mean lower quality, and they got that one right. Its like easy jet prices (sometimes cheaper) with really nice planes and customer service and everything from the more expensive planes. It has become my new favorite airline. The magazines they give you were actually entertaining, not like the air mall magazines you usually see, and they were talking about places to go in the cities they go to and I actually used one. So I get off the plane and it takes forever to get my bags and I was scared like what if something goes wrong, im an idiot what am I doing here by myself? So I get on the train to rome from the airport and I was pissed cause it cost 22 euros but it was a nice train with those compartments like you see in harry potter/ eurotrip (complete with the rolly thing of candy coming by) so this lady comes in and asks for this greek guy to lift her 52 pound bag to put it up top. Anyways, she was super talkative and I asked her where she was from cause she was speaking American English and she told me that she was there to visit her friend and friend’s daughter who was from AU. Small world. So I went with her to meet them and they gave me their phone number and were like if you need anything call us (I told them I was alone). I probably sounded like a deuche bag imposing because I was like yea im alone, I have no money on my phone, I dunno what im going to do here yet. This made me feel better (what luck) but I was still scared something was going to happen while I was there. So the hostel is near the church santa maria maggiatore and termini station. Great location I walked everywhere. The hostel is on the top of a building up 6 flights of stairs but seems very safe. Sat and had a coffee and figured out what I wanted to do. then I did:

Piazza della republica

Santa maria degli angeli church

Piazza barberini (fountain del triton)

Piazza san bernardo

Santa maria della Victoria (extasis of santa teresa)

4 fountains

Piazza del quirinale

Fontana de trevi

Santa maria Maggiore (berberinis tomb)

Got amazing gelato (had a lot of this during the trip)

The churches were amazing in this city. I thought I had seen some cool churches until I came here. The Spanish helps me understand the Italians, but they cant understand me at all hahaha. So in the room in the hostel there were 6 ppl (including me) with our own bathroom (shower was being fixed) there were 2 Australian girls working in London who I became somewhat friends with while they were there. 2 Spaniards who I didn’t see much, and this Canadian guy who was there most of the time I was who was traveling alone for like 3 months quit his job at ups. Talked to them most of the evening.

Woke up at 730 to go to the Vatican museum. Found it by just following the tourists (which never fails) Got there at 9 when it opened but there was already a long ass line winding around almost to st peters square. 2.5 hrs in the hot sun, thank god I had my ipod. The girl next to me in line went to northeastern and was in the architecture program and was roommates with liz kiely and knew vinsu and michaele. Small world! Then some people from malasia talked to me and that was cool. The Vatican museum was somewhat boring, mostly cause im only interested in art and there were no descriptions on anything so I didn’t know what anything was. I liked the school of Athens painting, the decorations on the walls and the Sistine chapel of cource which they take you on a wild goose chase to get to. I took some illegal photos and got yelled at. Then went over to st peters square. I went into st peters basilica which was impressive but ive seen smaller churches with just as much beauty. Then I went to the papal tombs. No pictures allowed of cource. Pope John Paul II’s tomb was a marble slab surrounded by flowers and notes people were kneeling and crying. The music they were playing was inductive to crying. He is bueried right by st peter’s tomb which is this elaborate room with fancy staircases and wall decorations. Oddly enough, not many people were at st peter’s tomb. I decided not to go to the cupola because I was feeling sick (literally), also sick of waiting in lines. I sat in the square and some lady was feeding pidgeons which makes me mad. She threw them a hard one and when they pecked it, it bounced and it looked like a soccer game. There was a boy who was chasing pidgeons and one hurt its leg cause it was scared and jumped I guess. So then I went back to the touristy shop area to buy this shirt I wanted. The guy who sold it to me was a slightly skinnier Italian speaking gary. It was really uncanny the resemblance, so uncanny that when he spoke it sounded weird to me cause I expected to hear a gary voice. But anyways then I walked to piazza navona on the way there near the river there was like a market. I got this cool painting thingy of st peters at sunset. Piazza navona was pretty, hard to imagine it as a fighting ring tho. Then I went to the pantheon and on the way found passion fruit flavored tic tacs and was excited. I really liked the opening at the top of the pantheon, it was super cool. On the way back I walked by the monument to emmanuel II, and the foros traiano, augusto, cesare and nerva. Then I had dinner at a place across the street where they first made fun of me for eating alone (also made fun of another woman for the same) and then proceded to hit on me. It was kind of uncomfortable but nothing I couldn’t handle. The food was good, but expensive. I feel that they overcharged me on something, but I hear that happens a lot from the girls at my hostel. They “fixed” the shower but it only had 2 temperatures: burning and freezing. Needless to say I only took 2 showers the 4 days I was there, which is rare for me cause I love my showers.

Next day went to the hard rock café and got a shirt, and then went to the Spanish steps and went to the cool mcdonalds and got some vegetable hot pocket thingies and gelato (which was horrible, surprise surprise) then went to the piazza del popolo, couldn’t find the church but climbed the stairs and there were good views. Then I was walking around and found the gelato place in the magazine from the plane and went there and it was really good. Walked by the Marcello theater ruins which was supposedly the inspiration for the colosseum design. There were lots of ruins in this area. Saw the synagogue and walked around the jewish ghetto where there were kosher restaurants galore. Sat in a plaza there. More idiots feeding pidgeons. Its their mating season and its funny to watch the males puff up and chase the females and they ignore them or fly away. Then I walked to the same church that had boca de la verita which is some manhole cover from the movie Roman Holiday. The legend is that it bites of liars hands so people go and stick their hand in it. Id love to see that thing chomp down on someones hand haha. Then I walked by circus maximus where someone asked me what the time was. It was this Italian guy named Fabio and then he chatted with me for a bit and wanted to explain rome to me but I was like umm I gotta get going. (gotta play it safe when im by myself). So I went to the colusseum and instead of waiting in line I paid 10 euro for a guided tour (totally worth it) the guide was funny and had a thick Italian accent. He picked out the oldest lady in the group and linked arms with her saying “virgins first” and making virgin jokes. He showed us some stuff on the walls tha the said was ancient graffiti but I dunno. It was a giant penis and he said it was pointing in the direction of the nearest brothel (the oldest lady turned to her friend and said “I guess even back then little boys liked to draw naughty pictures” and I chuckled a bit) then he kept talking about how women had to stand and weren’t allowed any of the free food and then he would say “follow me lets kill the women! Lets kill them all!!” which was funny. It was cool that we got like listening devices so you could hear him from wherever you were (necessary for large groups) I felt like we ran through the colusseum, it was cool tho. Below the stage there were elevators for the lions. The reason half the outer are is missing is cause of an earthquake and the holes are where they stole marble from the outside. There was a winners exit and a dead exit. Just walking out towards it from the entrance they used watching the whole thing unfold was so amazing. I can only imagine if it was filled with people. Then I switched tour guides and went to the forum/ palatine hill. This guide was from England. Easier to understand. She explained the history of rome in like 5 minutes. 2 brothers raised by wolves, had eagles sent to them then one killed the other and built a huge palace with many diff colors of marble and its own stadium. After dinner supposedly the king liked to watch a bunch of naked men compete to put up tents first. The girl said that’s something shed like to watch too haha. There were a lot of courtyards with water that were used to reflect and let the sun into the house. There was a botanical gardens with lots of pretty roses. Then she told us that when people spilled wine on their togas they boiled it in urine and they started using bay leaves to put in it to overpower the smell so it didn’t smell as bad, then people started selling urine so it was taxed. There were virgins who kept this eternal flame lit, which was a job that lasted most of your life (but once you were done you could do whatever you want) if you had sex during it tho you were bueried alive kind of. They put you in a box underground with like a glass of water and a piece of bread for 60 days to see if god would save you. None lived but only 6 had to do this. The men were whipped to death publicly for doing this to the girl. Another story she told was about how ceasar was killed on the steps of parliament but only the makeshift parliament for that year and it bothers her when people reinact the death of ceasar on the steps of the wrong parliament. Went back to the hostel talked to the Canadian guy who did pretty much the same stuff as I did that day and even had the same tour guide. Funny.

Woke up next morning chatted with Canadian guy before he left. He only has a small backpack for 3 months. No souvenirs. Then I went to the church with the relics heads and across the street kneeled up the steps that jesus supposedly walked up to pontious pilates home (hurt my knees). Then like an idiot I decided I don’t need to take the bus, ill walk to the catacombs. Then it started to rain and I got lost a few times and the roads had no sidewalks. Took me like an hour and a half almost to get there… in the rain without an umbrella, but I had no choice but to keep walking. I made the last tour which English happened to be called first. The guide barely spoke English he was thinking about the names of words a lot and didn’t say much. You could tell the language barrier was keeping him from saying more. It is the biggest catacomb in rome, and it was cool, but I thought there were going to be skulls and bones and such (on the way back to the airport I found out where that one was… lovely) so this wasn’t really worth all the pain on the way there. My feet were killing me but I had no choice but to walk back. But since I knew the way this time it only took me like 40 minutes. I got this pizza by the fountain di trevi and it was the most glorious pizza (I dunno if it was good or I was just really hungry) It was like focaccia bread with sauce with some kind of seasoning on top then the toppings were lettuce, chunks of tomato and huge chunks of melted mozzarella balls. So good. So then I walked over to the ruins the Canadian guy told me he thought was the cat sanctuary and it was! There were so many of them. (mostly napping hiding in the grass) they were so cute. So then on the way back I stopped at the spar supermarket and picked up some of this stuff id been seeing advertised everywhere. It was by barilla and its like chocolate cake with cream in the middle and crunchy stars on top. So good. I also found cherry tic tacs there but they are too minty for my taste. Then I was watching this guy in a gladiator outfit charging to take pictures with him. He was making a killing because hed go and put a crown on someones head and do a funny pose and people cant resist but to take a picture. I stopped to get gelato remembering my new tip that if the banana is brown instead of yellow then its good gelato. This one was amazing. I got frutas del bosque and strawberry mm for fruit gelato. After that I went back to the hostel even though it was like 6. I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed early so I got up in time for my flight. 2 canadian girls (from quebec where they only speak French) came and one you could tell English was her second language (her English was as good as my Spanish) but the other girl sounded like an American. I guess her parents are American and spoke to her in English and she only learned French when she went to school and made friends and such. Theres something to be said about parents teaching their children to be bilingual, all the ones I know turned out amazingly bilingual. I guess this girl also works at chappaquidick in marthas vineyard in the summer at a private beach where celebs come. Cool. They were really nice and gave me a maple hard candy which was really good. After they went out for the night I read angles and demons which was exciting cause now I know where they are talking about. I went to bed but I kept waking up worried my phone was going to shut off and the alarm wouldn’t sound (which my phone shuts off a lot randomly in foreign countries). I got up in time but I couldn’t find the people at the hostel and I was angry because they owed me 7 euros, but I had to make my flight so I had to abandon that idea. I ended up missing the 830 train to the airport by like a minute, but got a nice seat on the next one. Since the ticket was so ridiculously expensive on the way there and they never checked tickets, I hopped on without a ticket and nobody checked. Usually when they have those validation boxes, ive found, that the system is usually on the honor system.

Got to the airport at a fine time, only had to wait around for a half hour till boarding. Not many people on my flight at all, I got the whole row to myself and it was a nice flight. I cried on the flight because I realized that I only have one more week left in Europe. I was (and still am) happy to leave Madrid, but after going to italy I realized that I will miss Europe (and spain as a whole) terribly. I really like their style of living there and ill miss going on cool trips every other week (even if they were tiring) I feel like I was just getting used to everything and starting to be happy and comfortable there and now im leaving. (but that’s always how I feel). Then I was thinking about me on January 8^th and who I was as a person and just wow how ive grown up these past few months. I don’t even recognize myself (literally and figuratively – im tanned (which is fading) and freckles and new hairstyle). This trip has really helped me a lot to define myself as an adult and helped me to figure out what I want/ need out of life in order to be happy. It also reminded me how fun it can be to be alone. Before I got my car, I loved being alone. As a kid I spent a lot of time alone; it was part of who I was really. Once I got a car and became popular and started having contstant boyfriends I got used to being around people constantly, which is why I became depressed in college (I had less friends than I was used to). I thought I was healing from all the hurtful relationships I had been in (and stayed in because I didn’t want to be alone) and how I thought that gary had destroyed my healing. In actuality, gary and my relationship wasn’t anything different than the other ones. I was headed on the same path of needyness. I am proud of myself for leaving gary, but I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t given me the easy exit probably. Being in Europe was the best situation to get over gary. All the new things new sights, it was easier to forget about him in a new place where I loved. I was hurt that people rejected me but I see that there were reasons for it, and once I started acting socially acceptable again people came around. When this whole thing with gary came about I regressed into high schoolish mode but there was nothing I could do about that until I realized it was happening, and by then it was too late. By not being close with everyone it saved my money cause I didn’t go out as often, and I was forced to spend some time at the house which helped my Spanish cause I hung out with the family more. But this trip to rome more than ever helped me to realize how much fun being alone is, and that I don’t need to be afraid of it. Its part of my personality to want to be alone sometimes, I had just forgotten it. When youre as strong willed as me, when youre around people that don’t want to do what you want to do it is very frustrating. Especially cause im such a fast paced person. I would never have gotten all that done in rome if I had been with other people. nor would anyone have done it metroless without me (except for maybe Debbie). I really had so much fun by myself and wouldn’t have spent the trip any other way. After this trip I will step forth with all the worldly knowledge I have gained from this trip, all the growing up ive done will hopefully carry over as well. But most importantly I hope most of all that I will continue to not be afraid of being alone. It is the only way that I can be happy (because ill never be surrounded by as many people as I was in high school) and it is the only way that I will ever have a healthy relationship with anyone in the future. Hopefully the first step onto the united states will begin a new life for me. I have a lot to be grateful for that i didnt think i did, and I need to start acting like it.

busy get in touch with my italian side week

2007-04-25T09:04:57Z

so i should not have been lazy on sunday turns out cause i have had so much schoolwork and stuff to do! i even forgot that i am going to italy on friday!! crazy. anyways, this is my last week of classes and internship. i will miss the kids (except for the 16 yr olds) younger kids are much nicer than older ones for sure. so someone friended me on myspace and i looked at their profile and i was like who is this? but i friended them anyways then i get another add and im reading that page and im like what the hell is this married person with a child friending me for ? and i was like and shes not into movies? who isnt into movies geez. but then all at once it hit me that these 2 ppl are my cousins haha im a dumbass. i havent seen mallory in years. last time i saw her she was pregnant and now the kid is 2! its so adorable too, but looks nothing like our family. it doesnt even look anything like my cousin almost like it didnt even come out of her haha. myspace brings families together i guess. hopefully now that i have some way to contact her we can get together so i can meet the baby, and keep in touch with my cousins cause my great aunt moved to florida now so no more italian holidays (i am super sad, italian food trumps polish food by a ton!) and they were like off the boat italian so it was damn good food. so anyways, yea just thought that was craziness. but at least i have a way to contact them now which is good. always good to keep in touch with family, especially as i am going to our home country soon hehe. anyways, presentation tomorrow and i still havent slept all week, i wont be able to go out drinking with lauren which is a shame cause she is leaving. damn. almost time for me to leave tho! crazy after italy i will have to start packing for real.

Canary Islands - Lanzarote

2007-04-22T15:21:20Z

so much fun sitting by the pool/ beach with a drink in hand doing nothing all day. also the closest ive ever gotten to the equator!

So the night of my birthday I was packing and doing things on the internet and talking to my mom until like 1am. I had to get up at 6am to go to the airport. Now I was disappointed about going to this island because everyone had told me that it was horrible, that there was only a volcano and no plant life whatsoever. We roll in and I find that the island isn’t too small actually, half of it is beautiful and half of it is covered in over 32 volcanoes where if there is a hell it probably somewhat resembles this half of the island. So we get there and the hotel is really nice, lots of palm trees, beautiful clear bluish water pools. We got like apartment style rooms that had like a kitchen and a living room too, except you had to pay 3 euros a day for the friggin tv. But anyways, walk out the back sliding glass door and beautiful view of the pool. Also really close to the beach and stores along the beach and supermarkets. So we head down to the beach and the sand is so dark because of the ash from the volcano erupting forever ago and there are volcanic rocks on the beach. The darkness of the sand makes the sand SUPER HOT and you couldn’t walk on it without sandals. Someone stood on it for less than a minute with nothing on his feet and burned his feet. We just plopped ourselves down on the closest stretch of beach (there was nobody there) and began to eat our lunch and drink some breezers. The sand was getting everywhere and it was so hot you could see the heat radiating off the sand and im really not kidding, you know when you can see the heat radiating off the pavement? It was even more than that. The sand was really hot, I do not lie. So we decided to go into the water, which was somewhat cold tho not really cold (only compared to the hot temperature but it was nice) but the area in the water where we were in was very rocky so nobody could bare to go in all the way (feet hurt). (later on we figured out that nobody was in this area of beach cause other areas had beach lounge chairs and umbrellas and the water wasn’t so rocky). There wasn’t really any waves either, it was the most calm ocean ive seen. Then we went back and lied around by the pool and went swimming and the water in the pool was freezing. So I lied out by the pool until dinner. The meals there were buffet style and that day happened to be canary food day. To no surprise they eat a lot of fish. Haha. Then after dinner some drinking. Out on their patio. Btw its so nice out at night there. Supposedly this island has one of the best climates in the world. Its 80 year round with a breeze and never rains.

So then they made us get up at 8 so we could go touring the island. The breakfast there was the best ive had in a really really long time. There was a section catered to Spanish tourists and a section catered to people from the uk. So I got yummy thick barely cooked bacon (I like it that way, perfect), baked beans (which are surprisingly good for breakfast), and sunny side up eggs mm. every day I stuffed myself at breakfast and was surprisingly not too hungry the rest of the days after that (I guess that’s why breakfast is important). Ok so after that we got on a bus with a local woman who was our tour guide and her accent and vocabulary was very south American. (no s and used gua gua for bus) This day we went to the north of the island (we were in the center). You could see the volcanoes of the island wherever you went tho. So first we went to cueva de los verdes which was a giant cave where people actually hid when pirates came to raid the island or something. It was kind of creepy walking deep inside a cave. I felt like I was either going to fall down the steep stairs or I was going to get trapped like in the movies you see. It was really cool tho, there was this one part that was like an auditorium that they made and it absorbed like every sound, which made things sound super amazing. There was a Gregorian chant recording playing and seriously felt like you were in a church when you closed your eyes. And then we went to the second level of this cave to an area that was right above the auditorium and there was a patch of water that was so still that it was a PERFECT reflection. So real that she was like ok im going to throw a stone down into the auditorium area. At this point I was looking at the rocks and the reflection and was like something doesn’t look right with this, the auditorium walls didn’t really look like that, and just as I was thinking maybe its water, she throws the rock down there and it made a giant splash that scared everyone. Haha. Only a few people had even thought any different than it was a big hole. It was the most amazing water reflection. I was glad to get out of the cave tho. Then we went to this place way up on a hill to look across to a small island very close to Lanzarote. It was really pretty and windy up there. Then we went to this place called jameos del agua which was another cave (tho small) where there was a pool of beautiful water inside where some species of white crab only lives. Lots of beautiful plants there too. On the bus they played really old soothing music and people fell asleep. So after that we went back and ate lunch at the bar that was near our pool and I got a nice chicken salad sandwich for like 2.50 and I was very happy. I however was not happy that they didn’t sell island drinks anymore at this particular restaurant bar. But anyways, they had good music a lot of the time too which kind of made up for it as well. So after this I decide that I don’t want to get burned and I haven’t slept enough in like 3 days so I was going to take a nap inside. I slept for like 3 hours and then walked around for a bit and sat by the pool a little and drank a little more before dinner. I think this was the time where we broke 3 glasses in the span of like 20 minutes. A glass got accidentally hit out of someones hand, then someone threw a ball that hit a glass (these happened within 2 minutes of eachother) and then a little while later someone stepped on a glass and it broke. Later on that night someone broke a glass bottle too haha. So dinner sucked and when we got back everyone was playing beer pong for evans birthday. They stole ping pong balls from the front desk and had two small circular tables with a giant gap in between. Also the cups they had were so flimsy and light plastic that they had to put water filled ones behind them to keep them up. So mostly the 2 ppl from ma were on a team and won like 3 games in a row (they only lost one all night). Im surprised ive never played beruit before, tho it was really fun to watch. I almost wanted to play but then I remembered how horrible my aim is haha. Nonetheless I had fun and wasn’t tired cause I had that nap.

Next day woke up early again, breakfast was good again mm. this time we got on the bus we went to the south of the island where all the volcanoes are. This made me kind of nervous. I don’t really want to be near volcanoes that erupted only a couple hundred years ago. And more than 32 of them too ugh. So on the way there shes telling us that in the 1700’s 32 of them erupted for 6 straight years and only 80 percent of the people left the island. Some idiots stayed hiding on the other side of the island. However, when they stopped exploding people came back but since there was no plantlife and the atmosphere was filled with chemicals many people died even after they stopped erupting. Then in the 1800’s another one erupted again. So we are driving and suddenly its just a sea of black cooled lava rocks. Apparently there are many types of lava, but really to me lava is fucking lava. So the area of volcanoes is now a national park. There was this restaurant someone built out of volcano rocks and its like the entrance to the park so we went up there. Someone came out with a shovel and the tour guide told us that just like a few inches under the surface the rocks are still 80 degrees cause the lava hasn’t cooled yet and so he shovels down into the earth a tad (only a few inches) and then shovels up some of those rocks and we all put out our hand and he put them in our hand and we all had to drop them immediately cause that’s how hot it was. Crazy. So then they had a hole in the earth deep and they poured water down it and the pressure caused the water to come shooting up with tons of steam. They also cook all the food from the restaurant on this giant hole dug way into the ground that we got to see that was super hot. Talk about saving energy… and also the symbol for this island is a devil holding a pitchfork in his hand. Lovely. So we walk back to the bus which by the way was parked on a hill so steep that if we all stood on one side of it, it would have tipped over for sure. Then we took the bus driving around all the lovely volcanoes and lava area which was really cool, but like I said, if there was a hell this is what I imagine it would look like. A lot of people said it resembled the moon surface, which I could see too. So as we are driving they are playing this tape with like scary music explaining what we are driving through. It was kind of cheesy. You could see all the layers of lava and the openings of volcanoes and while we were doing this the bus was driving horribly up the sides of mountains (we had been doing this the whole trip but these were the scariest cause its all friggin lava) and we thought we were going to fall over. Someone even said they saw a rental car that had fallen down the mountain, im glad I didn’t see that. So surprise surprise that are is called tierra del fuego which means land of fire literally or hell if you want to go with a concept translation. So then we go to this black sand beach right under a volcano where apparently the end of the movie planet of the apes’ last scene was filmed. This beach was made up of volcanic rock, it was interesting. This beach really did look like something probably would after a giant world war or a destruction of the world as we know it. But it was kind of cool, I stole a lot of rocks from there and there was this slime green lagoon near it that looked just really out of place. You should see the pictures of it. I could have spent all day on that beach, it looked so cool and there were people with big backs collecting the volcanic rocks. So then after that we went back and I got one of those cheap sandwiches again and this day I decided to actually lay out by the pool, and what do you know? I got burned lol. But anyways, then I went down to the stores area with steph but then I lost her and on my way back I met the rest of them who were going to take a walk down the beach I said sure. By the way all the stores had horrible souvenirs that weren’t good at all and they all had the same crap. Blah. Saves me money I guess. I did get a 3 euro towel map of the islands and a shirt that said lanzarote cause I liked the lizards on it. I really wanted a cool canary islands shirt but oh well. I want to go back anyways and explore the touristy islands cause I hear they are beautiful. So anyways, walked down the beach and back and came back took a shower then time for dinner. After dinner we decided to go down to this casino that turned into a big deal for no reason at all. It was like a half hour walk and it wasn’t even that great it had like all this security they took a picture of me and everything, for like this one tiny room with like 5 tables. I did like however that they had a piano player, he was really good. So I just sat at a table and talked to people who didn’t want to gamble either and some people lost money, won money and broke even as always. Marta didn’t come with us she was at a bar next door drinking a huge pina colada and then some of us joined her and I got a strawberry daiquiri that came out with a sparkler on it haha it was really cool. On the way back everyone was telling jokes and some were good and some were horribly not funny.

So on Saturday we got to wake up later, but I still woke up to get breakfast cause it was so good. Then attempted to lay outside but the sun was too hot for my sunburns so I just sat in the shade. Packed up everything and then checked out. Sat outside talking to everyone and then went to lunch at some English place and got a pretty good sandwich. When we got back just laid out some more before it was time to go. By this point I didn’t really want to leave the canaries. It was fun doing nothing lying in the sun. Madrid hasn’t had the greatest weather. Its been having freak rain and cold days. But now its hot out here finally. the pain in my sunburns only lasted for a day and now they’ve turned into an orangy tan so im happy. I had wanted to go to the rastro this morning but I was so tired and couldn’t get up for the life of me. Tomorrow I get to sleep in too cause we are going to the reina sofia in the afternoon instead of in the morning. I have so much schoolwork to do now as this is the last week of classes. Omg so crazy how the time flies!!

my 21st birthday

2007-04-17T23:05:40Z

Debbie sent me a message at midnight letting me know that I was 21 in Russia which was kind of cool. Then I was online talking to people and downloading some more south park episodes which ive become addicted to recently. Then at midnight in spain Salud (my senora) called to wish me a happy birthday from her work. Rocio came down to give me a hand made card. Aww so nice. I had some rum and coke to say cheers to my 21^st and watched some south park and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep really I don’t know why, maybe cause it was the first night all spring where I didn’t go to bed freezing my ass off. I kept having these random dreams about chris b. I kind of miss him. Hes the only guy ive hooked up with that hasn’t caused me emotional damage. Plus hes cool and really hot. But anyways I woke up late relaxed morning of taking a shower and going online and getting ready wearing my new favorite shirt I got in spain which I look so good in. so 2 hrs of waking up and I was on my way to sol where I proceeded to wait in line for a half hour to get free ben and jerrys. Im still upset that I didn’t know that free ben and jerrys day was on my birthday every year. Ive missed 20 years of ben and jerrys. Crazy. So anyways, I got a new flavor called chocolate therapy which had chocolate pudding swirls in it mm. there were a lot of people out there for free day, and it was a gorgeous day so a lot of people were out and about. After that I went to dunkin donuts where I got like 4 donuts and they were yummy. Unfortunately I got the same deuchebag guy I got yesterday but w/e. then I got a quick sandwich at mcdonalds and read the paper then headed off to school cause I had a meeting for my presentation with the group. I was surprised that everyone said happy birthday to me. It was like people noticed I existed today so that was really nice. I have a sneaking suspicion that evan told everyone it was my birthday cause he saw that birthdays were a really big deal to me. If he did that was really nice of him. Then there was talk about the VT school shooting cause people in my program know people there since its relatively close to AU. We talked about our project while I ate yummy dunkies and then went to martas tutoring session and then to class. (with a stop at starbucks in between where I got some mango frappuccino yum!) At seminar class everyone sang happy birthday to me in the Spanish and Mexican way (Mexican you add on the for shes a jolly good fellow esque verse except in Spanish). I like being the center of attention sometimes. They said that they would celebrate with me tomorrow in the canarys tho ive barley gotten sleep the past 2 nights so ill be super exhausted but whatever. So after seminar this guy came in to talk to us and I swear to god if his hair was curly he would look exactly like chris b. and really I didn’t listen to a word this guy said his voice was so soothing. Then fred tells me that he got me a signed penn and teller bullshit disk and I think hes a filthy stinkin liar haha. I need to see that to believe it. So I was thinking about how 21 is the last good birthday and its all downhill from here. Im so old ugh. 20 was traumatizing enough but now im 21. its too crazy. Life goes by so fast. So then I went home and for a present from the family they gave me some sandals and a chocolate cake (so nice) with 21 candle number shapes on it and sang to me. Then my mom called and we talked for an hour that went by so fast so now im only going to get like 5 hrs of sleep probably. Lovely. Well at least I took advantage of most of the 30 hours of birthday I have since I think it counts in spain and US and the diff of time zones extends my birthday haha. Hopefully ill have fun on the trip to the canaries and drink lots to make up for not drinking today. All in all tho, it was a way better day than I thought which made me happy. : )

oh people

2007-04-16T21:03:36Z

so today was a beautiful day and i went down to gran via cause i was feeling energetic (amazing after the horrible morning i had almost throwing up on the metro) and so i went to dunkin donuts (where i got a boston cream mm) and first of all the guy wouldnt give me the breakfast deal even though there were 10 mins left in breakfast, and second of all he insisted in speaking to me in english and i spoke right back to him in spanish throughout the whole conversation. he really irritated me. i hate it when people speak to me in english it makes me angry, its the same reason ive never talked to people in america in spanish (tho i hear it can get you extra stuff at chipotle and wendys... hmm...). then after that FINALLY the information booth was open so i could get a bus map (about time seeing as how im about to leave in a month) and she kindly asked me where i was from and was like oh cool and continued to speak to me in spanish. thats the way things should be handled. bravo to whoever hired this lady for an information booth. look i know i sound like a new englander attempting to speak spanish but what i say is right (even if its not in a great accent) and i understand them, theres no need. i guess if they are trying to practice their english its different, but when its at a store it makes me really really angry. english is ugly and if i had my way id never speak it again muahahaha. thats one of the things ill miss the most about spain (also the mcdonalds and dunkies there too haha) birthday tomorrow. hope it goes well. you only get one 21st birthday. too bad 6 hours of it is going to be classes and meetings, but oh well what can you do. im hoping to cheer myself up with free ben and jerrys and some dunkies and maybe mcdonalds. hopefully steph will go out for a drink with me, but if not ill just get waaaaaaaaaaaaasted in the canary island (seeing as we are going to lanzarote which is a shitty canary with only a volcano i will need to be wasted to make it 5 days there haha)

im done

2007-04-13T19:22:28Z

fuck this. i want to go home now. ive been watching too much lost and now i feel like im never going to get home. my birthday is going to suck. my TWENTY FIRST birthday is going to suck. my friend who i had thought i was going to hang out with her parents are in town and she has finals as well so she cant do anything and the people in my program dont like me and some of them are driving me crazy. i guess i could just sleep in and go to dunkies and ben and jerrys or something but then later i have meetings and class and crap. but on your 21st birthday youre supposed to drink right? ugh so anyways. so i was like okay well i will just celebrate it in the canaries the next day. turns out we are going to a shitty island where all there is is a volcano. lovely. hopefully there will be bars cause im going to need to get wasted enough to forget that the volcano could erupt any moment and kill me. and then theres the fact that i just spent a crapload of money to go to rome and now im thinking maybe i shouldnt go. maybe its the depression, i dunno. i was excited about the fact of going on vacation by myself a few days ago, but now i just feel lonely. steph might come but i doubt it cause shes broke too and the girl i know studying in rome is going to be gone that weekend. tho really i bet id be more depressed if i stayed in madrid, and frankly i think later on i wont be able to forgive myself if i cancel the tickets cause ive really wanted to go to italy my whole life. my family is from there. well sicily but thats still sort of italy...
and i used to go out and go shopping when i felt lonely and horrible but now im broke and also dont know how im going to take everything home so im not allowed to spend money on anything that could possibly be taken home anymore.
i dont know why i have this fear of never coming home. its strange. a month seems like forever. i feel like ive been in europe forever. if i had friends i would prolly never want to leave, but the fact is i dont have many people. (okay yes i have a few people and im grateful for that) i just miss my friends and i want to go home or transport them here. either way.

katies visit

2007-04-13T18:51:52Z

Katies visit

So Katie got there before I even did. Fortunately for her and unfortunately for me, she got to see the last days of the parades of semana santa which I did not know ended on holy Friday. I just have to remind myself how much I hate parades, and then I don’t feel as bad. After all, Amsterdam was amazing and im glad we spent 3 days there. Got back pretty late on Friday and so Saturday went out to meet her at her hostel and then we walked around and saw all the touristy sights pretty fast such as sol, plaza mayor, gran via etc. Then we went back to my house for comida with everybody. I must say, Javier is pretty cute and hilarious. Hard to believe he “doesn’t have a girlfriend” which I really don’t believe. Unfortunately, the hottest kid ever did not show up, tho it was interesting meeting evans parents. I was informed that my university had been all over the news because of the idiots that go there. Apparently Karl Rove was invited by none other than Will Haun (he seems to always be creating controversy) and the media somehow said that people threw rocks at him, but I guess that’s not actually true. What really happened was that people tried to stop him from entering so they could make a citezens arrest of him, and people laid in front of his car and had to be dragged away. Someone assaulted a secret service officer and someone mooned his car. It was a big fiasco. The idiots that go to my school. I really don’t like about 90 percent of them, whats funny is most people from my school feel the exact same way. So anyways, yummy lunch then we went out again and went to the archaelogical museum I think. But anywyas, we showed up there right before it ended and were rushed through. It was alright but not amazing (im not a big museum fan). Then we wasted some time and then went to eat at some really typical meson place. I tried the garlic soup that everyone raved about and it was really actually very good and didn’t taste too much like garlic. Then we went out to Dubliners and I got a long island iced tea cause it was on special that night, except it tasted horrible.

The next day was easter Sunday, but apparently madrilenos don’t do anything on easter Sunday, they just go to church and eat a special egg pastry and that’s it. So we went to the prado cause it was free prado day, but the line was out of this world so we killed time in starbucks until the thyssen opened and went to that. I really liked the impressionist paintings there. Then we headed off to the rastro, where as always I wanted to buy up the whole place. It made me happy that I didn’t buy pasminas in morocco cause I forgot how cheap the rastro was. I bought 2 pasminas there. We lost track of time and bolted to the templo de debod which is this old temple they shipped to Madrid from Egypt for some reason. It was cool with great views of the city. After that we ran to the museum of the Americas where we rushed through that. For lunch we had a huge meal sitting outside at the plaza mayor which ive always wanted to do. I had paella, ensaladilla russa and calamari yum. Then we were exhausted and so we went to retiro to chillax. I forgot that everyone takes their family to retiro on Sundays, and this being easter Sunday im sure it was more packed than usual. Lots of pooh and Disney characters handing out balloons and magicians and people giving massages. Call me crazy but I don’t want someone off the street giving me a massage… so anywyas we napped under the trees near the water and then went to see the crystal palace. I saw someone holding a hard rock café bag and I asked them how to get there. First tho we went to the teleferico which is this cable car ride thingy that takes you across casa de campo. It was cheap and it had great views of the whole city. Tho there is absolutely nothing but trees in casa de campo and I did not see any prostitutes. After that we headed off to the hard rock café which was very exciting. It was a cool hrc. I got sex on the beach mmm and a salad which I haven’t had in forever. I bought a shirt (cause I always do from the cool cities) and it was a lot of fun. Katies drink was good too pickled tink? Or something like that. After that we parted ways cause we were tired.

Monday I had to get up and go to pacos art class. Then I met Katie at opera cause we were going to the palacio real. But I had to go to the bathroom so I wandered into mcdonalds and what was new on their menu? Pancakes with liquid chocolate on them. For only one euro and fifty cents. I could not believe my eyes so I ordered some and they were even more delicious than I could have expected. You had a choice of caramel chocolate or strawberry sauce. Amazing Spanish mcdonalds. You never cease to amaze me. I will miss Spanish mcdonalds for sure. So then we were off to the palacio real which was the most beautiful palace I have seen thus far, and ive been to quite a few palaces as of now. Lots of pictures were taken, some didn’t come out so great, but I remember. So after that we were going to wander around the campo de moro but it started pouring so we went into principe pio and got lunch at vips. Oh how I love vips and their club sandwich mm. and I decided to be un cheap and get dessert too. I got a cookie cake and it was delicious and Katie got the bizcocho surprise and it was yummy too. So then had stopped raining so we went to the park where there was a peacock walking around which amused me a lot. After that we went to the church next to the palacio real which was pretty cool. Then we went to this other church near lavapies where we got to see some of the pasos from the parades I missed haha. We went to ventas to see the bullfighting ring and then we went to get some tapas at the most random ass backstreet places my book has in it. Tho it was really good and filling. Then we went to my house cause Katie was staying there for her last night. I gave the present I got for rocio (sparkly snow globe with Eiffel tower) to her and I showed up evan with presents finally muahaha. It was kind of hilarious. You had to be there. So anyways, on Tuesday we woke up late and went to the prado where the line actually went faster than it looked. I realized that I had seen most of the prado and was excited to explain the paintings to Katie. I need to go back to that store and buy some prints (even though im broke and have no room in my bag…) after that we went to the botanical gardens which are right next door and I didn’t know they cost money. I asked the guy does this cost money? And he said to me of cource it costs money it’s the botanical gardens like all assholish. Geez. So we payed 2 euros to see the crappiest botanical gardens ive seen in my life. And I looked at the plan of it, and only ¼ of it is supposed to be colorful, the rest is just trees. Too much green. Anywyas, then after that we went back to my school and I said goodbye to Katie cause I had class.

Wednesday I woke up super early to register but my advisor apparently hadn’t cleared me when she told me that she did. I hadn’t slept in a really long time so I wasn’t feeling so great at around 730 when I had to wake up to go to the prado. I felt so bad that I decided to skip the prado which if you know me and the prado youd have to know that I was really not feeling well. I managed to get up for cine class and watched the rest of mi vida sin mi and the ending I had to use all my strength not to cry, my heart just hurt. The second movie we watched was just complete shit. Horrible. After that I went into internship for an hour and last block kids just don’t pay attention no matter what you do. There was nothing I could do. Luckily I managed to get my birthday off from internship. When I got home after that my advisor had cleared me and thank god I got all the classes I wanted.

Thursday I went into internship with the little ones and there really was like nothing for me to do so I left early and went home and got a much needed nap, had lunch with the family (Javier is hilarious) and then went into school and used the internet before class. I just could not pay attention in class my head hurt so much. Internship class I felt a little better but not really.

The Netherlands i.e. Holland (Amsterdam, Haarlem, Delft)

2007-04-10T21:38:16Z

seriously, I friggin loved holland and I never wanted to go home or even go back to spain. I was very content. I could totally live there. I was so sad to leave *tear* Amsterdam is totally the way life should be. they dont waste money on stupid things like the war on drugs. why cant other countries take a page out of hollands book and see that pot isnt such a bad thing. and when its legal you can controll it like the age limit and allowing it in certain areas. they dont spend tons of money on a losing battle and put harmless people in jail crowding up the jails and wasting police officers time. alcohol and cigarettes are way more dangerous and cause many many more deaths and are waaaaay more addictive. and all this is coming from someone who doenst even smoke pot. seriously, the people in holland live in happiness and peace, why cant we?

Wednesday, April 4^th

We went down to breakfast but this time there was a breakfast nazi. He made us sit at certain tables because he kept yelling about how some tables were restaurant tables, yet nobody was at this imaginary restaurant. There was this group of Asians who just sat there and calmly ate their breakfast while this guy was yelling at them to move, which made them my heroes. We got on the train to Amsterdam and these people left their suitcases right by the door kind of blocking it and went to sit elsewhere in the train car. These suitcases caused so many problems for so many people ugh and the people were jerks. When the girl put down the suitcase she said to her mother that she thought it was going to fall over and then when erin went to get her suitcase, the girls fell over and the girl got mad. Then we saw them at the info desk and she asked the info people if the light rail cost any money! Um duh of cource it does! On the train ride you could see fields of tulips that looked like rainbows. It was so amazing. When we got to Amsterdam, there were so many canals and so much water and houseboats, I can only imagine that it looks like Venice would. The canals make it a giant grid so its impossible to get lost really. Most of the trip I felt like I was going to get run over by a bike, there were more bike trails than roads I think. And bikes lined every railing it was pretty cool. There are also “free” bikes that are just shitty bikes that if you see one you can ride it to your destination and then just leave it there for someone else to use. Our hotel was this small sketch hotel in the red light district. It was so small, reminds me of the dorms. There was no tv which I was mad about cause I wanted to watch more American programs. I miss them. Ok now let me break down the pot scene. Coffee shop = pot/ hash and no alcohol. Café = coffee/ alcohol and no drugs. Don’t ask me why this is a law they can only serve one or the other. And in these places there is a menu of pot and most of them have baked goods too. The most amazing thing about these places was that there was ventilation systems that made it so your clothes didn’t reek of pot which I thought was so amazingly cool. The drinking age is 16 and the marijuana age is 18, I got my id checked a lot too. See this is how it should be in the states. Lots of sex shops and coffee shops. A lot a lot. I got this free magazine that said a lot of interesting things too. It helped out a lot. We went to a falafel place that they like called maoz and I got some fries with curry sauce on them, which they also had at burger king too. So good. Why cant we have that in the states? Then we went on a canal tour, and the canal tour next door was talking smack about our canal tour saying that the drivers were drunk and the windows weren’t clean, but I didn’t care cause it was cheaper haha. It ended up being a good tour. Then we went to the Anne Frank house which I was super happy before I went into it was hard to get into a sad mood to go in there, but it was really interesting. Its crazy to know like this is really where they were in hiding. The attick was pretty big tho, but not big enough to not be leaving it for 2 years. They had lots of testimony videos from a friend of annes that was at the concentration camp with her, and also her father who survived and is the reason that she is so famous. He published her diaries, which I got to see the original versions in this museum. Then we were walking around and in a random shop there was a fridge of magic mushrooms right in view of the street and I was like whoa. There were even whole shops of them we saw. Then we went to this pancake place where I had a pancake with tomato, mozzarella, mushrooms and onions on it. Interesting… and I had a Heineken for the first time, which was amazing. I wish we had enough time to go visit that factory. *tear* we went to this placed called the grasshopper which I guess is pretty famous. It’s a restaurant/ coffee shop in the basement. Then we went to another coffee shop that had amazing chocolate cake. After this day I decided I love Amsterdam haha.

Thursday, April 5^th

So the streets get really dirty in the red light district at night apparently so they clean them every day. They do a good job. We went out and at 9am there was nobody but tourists. Also none of the non touristy stores open till noon. What a life! We got on a train to Haarlem to see the tulips, but realized there were no tulips and that there was nothing to do there, so we hopped a bus to Keukenhoff i.e. the “greatest flower show on earth” for 13 euros I was thinking yea it better be the greatest flower show on earth. It really was worth the 13 euros. It was so amazing and beautiful. And it also had a view of one of the big fields with the flowers growing on it and a windmill too you could climb up. So pretty, and advertisements for ikea everywhere cause there was one super close. I had some doner in haarlem which was too expensive but really good. Even better cause I hadn’t had one in forever. I need to do that more in spain. Then we got on the train to Delft. Saw more flower farms on the way. There we went to get some delft ceramic stuff. We saw this leaning church and I thought it was kind of strange that they didn’t fix it. I bought a windmill delft thingy for my parents maybe they can put it on the xmas tree or something. We got some ben and jerrys mmm and some passion fruit juice. (why doesn’t spain like passion fruit?) I decided then and there that I need to take a road trip to the factory in vermont when I get back. We got on a train back to Amsterdam which was really full and the bathroom wasn’t open. I hate how you even have to pay to use mcdonalds bathrooms in these upper countries. Ugh in spain and france these were free. Its alright tho cause I use up all my worthless 1 euro cent coins on it. Then we walked around some more and ate at the pancake place again. The girl who was in the bathroom there was taking forever so I used the mens bathroom cause it was like only one room ya know? And so I walk out of there and theres a guy waiting and he just looks at me and I had to be like um yea you can go in… before he actually went in. weird. But anyways, so this time I felt like regular pancakes so I got silver dollar ones that were really big puffy circles. So good. I got this awful lemon juice tho that was prolly tap water with lemon in it. It was cheaper than water which I found strange. We looked for a tattoo place because some ppl wanted to get tattoos but nobody knew what a compass rose was. So then we walked around the red light district, which I thought nothing would be there at 9pm but apparently it was in full force. There were alleys and streets with all red florecent light bulbs at the top and then inside their doorway there were red/ blacklights that made their clothes light up. Some of them had stairways and some had beds right there. Of cource they were scantily dressed and making faces and motioning to the outside. It was kind of awkward walking by there, esp with guys discussing which one they wanted. It was interesting tho, defiantly an experience. A lot of normal to fat people which I found interesting. Not good for American taste I guess haha. Then we went to another coffee shop.

Friday, April 6^th

The guy at the hotel knocked on our door an hour before checkout to wake us up and then came back a half hour later and was like why haven’t you checked out yet, but we still had time. Ugh. Anyways, we just spent most of the day wandering aimlessly trying to find a tattoo/ hair place and after a while I was starting to get frustrated but they ended up finding a good hair place that was in a commercial area so I just went shopping. I was also frustrated because there was so much to buy but I didn’t want to go to the atm cause it would rape me up the ass with fees. I got this thing called wok to walk which is an interesting concept I got like chicken and rice with curry peanut sauce. The haircuts that they got were really drastic haircuts but they all looked really good. While I was waiting we were reading magazines and this country Dubai made islands in the shape of the world. It was really cool looking. We then got some lunch I had pizza with bananas on it which was interesting. We got on the train to the airport and I didn’t want to pay cause they hadn’t been checking tickets, but we bought them anywyas and then they didn’t check them urgh. The airport in Amsterdam was really nice and new looking even thought it wasn’t new. The flights were coming in from everywhere too. It was huge. I guess Amsterdam is a popular destination… there was even a direct flight from Seoul which is a crazy long flight! So we go through security and one of our bags got flagged but the guy at the end picked the wrong bag so one of the people in the group got hassled over a mini bottle of hand sanitizer, and he kept asking her why didn’t you put this in a bag before and was annoying so we just left the stuff there. I was so tired at the airport but I couldn’t sleep for the life of me. We saw the most vivid sunset on the plane that ive ever seen. I was sad tho that we couldn’t see the fields of flowers from the plane. That would have been really pretty. I was reading the free paper and they translated ace ventura pet detective as “ace ventura: un detective diferente” and I thought that was funny. When we got back it was raining which was super ass annoying and the friggin long shuttle from terminal 4 too. I had an umbrella but I didn’t feel like using it cause it wasn’t going to help much and I had too much stuff to carry, so me and my suitcase and stuff got not only soaked but muddy somehow. I still don’t know how that one happened. The important thing is that I made it home (even if it was around midnight), made sure Katie was alright and passed out.

Belgium (Brussels and Bruges)

2007-04-10T21:29:46Z

everything stereotypical was amazing here: waffles, chocolate, beer, etc.

Monday, April 2^nd

We got up way too early to catch the train. It was a pleasant one hour ride to Brussels. I read my cine article, which was about the movie we are watching “mi vida sin me” so it was really sad, but good. Glad I got it out of the way. We got there and found the hotel very easily. We had a pastry which was like a donut covered in sugar, so good. Then we walked downtown. A lot of the restaurants said they had stella on tap which made me happy. The downtown area looked exactly like munich’s downtown plaza. We saw the little peeing boy who is the symbol of Brussels but I was kind of disappointed because he was much smaller than I imagined him to be. I wished he could be life size so you could stand in front of him and take a picture where it looks like you are peeing but no such luck. There were lots of statues of him in all the shops no matter where in Belgium you were. There was even one with a corkscrew for a penis which was hilarious. I got a waffle with whipped cream and chocolate on top which was very yummy. The store next door said no eating in front of our shop and had a picture of a waffle with a big red x through it. 5 mins after reading this my whole whipped cream drops on the ground and makes a big mess haha. But I was mostly done by that point. then we attempted to find the chocolate museum but gave up (it ended up being in another town we found out later) and went shopping for some chocolate. I splurged on a nice box and ended up liking every single chocolate in it which rarely happens with me and mixed boxes. They were all tired and wanted to go back to the hotel, but it was like 3pm so I decided to go to mini Europe. It was way cooler than it sounded. I learned a lot about the EU and its countries and it was cool that everything was on the same scale so you could compare the sizes of everything. It wasn’t really so mini after all, the Eiffel tower was 3 stories tall. Each station played that countries national anthem too which I thought was cool. It had an extensive info packet too which I was happy about. It was cool that some of the stuff that was there I had seen before or had just seen in paris. When I walked in they took my picture with this orange rabbit and at the end I saw that the picture actually came out really good, but I wasn’t about to pay 6 euros for it. Then I had a passionfruit icecream, so good! Then went downtown and got some cans of stella and some thai sweet chili chips that I remembered from GB. I went back to the hotel. The metro/ lightrail there is really cool and efficient. It goes everywhere and is clean. It is expensive but the tickets are on the honors system. Nobody really checks if you pay… they expect you to validate it yourself. I got away with paying only 7 euros the whole time we were there. The electronic map above you tells you where the trains are and when they will come. The TV was in English with subtitles mostly which I liked. Mm how I love going to countries with minority languages hehe.

Tuesday, April 3^rd

Finally, a good breakfast. Lots of hard boiled eggs and muesli with raisins and coconut pieces. We took the train to Bruges which was ½ price cause we are under 25. I love student discounts! There were no more seats in the second class section and even though first class was pretty much empty we still had to sit on the floor in the hallways. We got there and walked around and it was really pretty/ cute/ adorable city. The houses and streets reminded me of visby (without the roses). We went to this church and it was so simple but beautiful, ave maria was playing and it had this cool wooden staircase. It almost made me want to be religious again. Outside there was this cute old man making money letting people turn the thingy on the music box. We got some chocolate then went down to the market area which was really pretty. We found out at this point that the chocolate museum (choco story) was actually in this town but decided not to do it anyways. We also found out that we were missing the chocolate festival (free chocolate) only by days urgh. Then we went back to this place we had seen before to get some lunch and had traditional beef stew. It was really good. I tried this local beer called Jupiter with it, which was really good. On the same par as stella. I decided after all that I needed to buy a statue of the little peeing boy. I almost got one for fred too cause I thought he might think it was funny, but then I forget to pick one up later on. Oh well. Everyones getting souvenirs from spain and only spain lol, cause that’s where I am. We just made the train back, it was perfect timing. There was a little French boy sitting next to us playing uno with regular cards with his mother. He kept winning and he smiled at me every time he won because I was smiling too. It was cute until I realized that his mother was letting him win. Parents shouldn’t really do that that often. We looked for a pizza place with no luck and no help from the woman at the desk. The woman at the desk liked to pretend she understood English, but really the only words she knew were “yes” and “I understand” so it was very frustrating. And then we gave up and watched grounded for life and 8 simple rules and took a nap. Woke up and ate some chocolate. I had some pretzels and stella too. Great dinner… haha.

France (Paris and Versailles)

2007-04-10T19:34:50Z

thought it was finally time to update this. i finally have a free moment thank god

Friday, March 30^th

I slept at Erin’s house and got like 3 hours of sleep then took a taxi to the airport at 4am. There were no lines which was nice. Terminal 4 is kind of futuristic looking in design and it has really nice stores, but it’s a bitch to get to. There was a lot open at 6am which surprised me. Mc Donalds was open and I got an egg mcmuffin. It was the most glorious egg mcmuffin of my life. First of all, cause I haven’t had one in FOREVER cause I cant wake up early enough for mcdonalds breakfast. Second of all, cause the yolk of the egg was drippy and mmm. I slept on the plane for once with my head on the tray, which is way more comfortable for me than sitting up and trying to sleep with nothing to rest my head on. When we got to orly we took a cheap bus to the metro to the hotel. The paris metro wasn’t clean, but not dirty really either. I thought it would be nice like London and madrids metro, but it is very efficient and has many stops. We decided to go do something and wandered out and ran into the Moulin Rouge, which you can tell is coming because the sex shops increase in frequency. After that we decided we were really tired so we ate at a place across the street. The food was good but they charged us 7 euros for a friggin bottle of water. So ridiculous. We stopped by a pastry shop on the way back to the hotel and I got something simple that was called bread with rasins and it was amazing. We went back to the hotel to rest for a bit and slept for like an hour which made me tired (I was awake before) and then I didn’t want to wake up, but they were going to the Louvre, so yea… needless to say I was up and ready. The first sight of the triangle got me super excited. Its so beautiful and that is one fucking huge museum. I was kind of disappointed because I thought it would be all paintings and sculptures but there was other stuff too, tho most of it was pretty cool I will admit. The room structures were amazingly beautiful and especially the ceilings. There was less security than the prado which I found amusing. We went on Friday night so it was free for students and there wasn’t that many people there. We barely had to wait in line. I wished there were more Da Vinci but the ones that were there were really good. The shops were nice too. Also, it was cool seeing where the movie was filmed and recognizing areas. The triangle was all lit up at night when we got out of the museum around 9. from the Louvre you could see the Eiffel tower which was ridiculously sparkling in the distance. It was one of the coolest things ever. I tried to take a good picture but my camera sucks ass. Then we searched for a food place for like an hour and found this small place. Hot crepe with ham cheese egg and to drink Malibu with pineapple juice. Cute little puppy at the restaurant too. Nice big screen with good songs, the people were super nice and tried to speak English with us. It was small and we were the only people in the place.

Saturday, March 31^st

We went downtown and on our way to find the Orsay museum, saw some donkeys being lead in the streets and thought that was odd. Then we went to see this obelisk which had hieroglyphics and a cool fountain. We ran across a highway cause we were too lazy to walk to the bridge. A fireman honked at us but we were already in the middle of the road, we weren’t going back. We found the Orsay and waited in line for a while, it was in a cool old train station. The best was monet and van gogh, really famous paintings which I was happy I could take pictures of. We then went to the Roden gardens which was pretty but very few flowers were blooming. There was also this “door to hell” which was really cool looking. Next we went to the Notre Dame which from outside looked unimpressive. It was just like every other cathedral ive seen cause you know they all try to copy this one. But when I went inside I was amazed at the stained glass. It was some of the most intricate and beautiful stained glass ive seen in my life. It had really pricey stuff but pretty Swarovski rosaries. I also did not know it was on an island. That is pretty cool. Next we went to a church down the street cause our art teacher recommended it. It has no walls, only stained glass with all the stories of the bible told in the stained glass. So beautiful, also some of most beautiful stained glass ive ever seen. Then we went to this fondue restaurant that leeza recommended to us. Oh man the steak you dipped in the hot oil to cook and then dipped it in sauce. Mmm so good. And also they gave us baby bottles of wine, and even though I still don’t really like wine I drank a lot of wine. It was a lot of fun. In the bathroom some people from emmerson wrote stuff and I thought of laura and how small of a world it is. Since I was kind of drunk and steph was buzzed we decided to go sight seeing. After all, we are in paris and I wasn’t about to go home at like 10pm. So we went to the arc de triumph and then walked to the Eiffel tower and had good conversation. We climbed to the second level of the tower and it was a really pretty view. The elevator was really sketchy tho and scared me. The tower started sparkling while we were on it but when we got down it stopped. I had a sugar crepe that I had to wait forever for, but it was soooo good. The metro was still open at 1am thank god and there were a lot of people on it. We were talking so we lost track of the stops and then we thought it was parking at the end of the metro for the night and I said that if we had to spend the night here it would just be a “funny paris story” but I don’t think steph found it as funny as I did haha. Later we joked about it.

Sunday, April 1^st

Got up super early and took a train to Versailles. After waiting in line forever on cobblestone (ugh) we finally got in. the gardens were really beautiful and vast. I guess it takes a long time to walk through them. We sat and ate lunch there baguettes and cheese. Haha very French. The palace was pretty inside too. There were a lot of amazing paintings. Apparently the most famous room (the hall of mirrors) was being renovated and so it really wasn’t that impressive to me. We went back to parsi after some shopping and a stop and mcdonalds to use the bathroom. It was one of the most disgusting bathrooms ive seen since like morocco. What I have to say about paris is that I haven’t seen this many Americans in one place since I left America. It was weird to hear English all the time (among other languages of cource). My brain still continued to think partially in spanish though. I decided to split up from them because they wanted to do things differently than I did, and it was my last night there. I went back to the hotel to drop off some excess stuff, took the metro to the Louvre, then walked through the gardens with the tulips blooming past the obelisk and down the champs de elysse and then to the Eiffel tower again. I tried to time it so I could see the sunset. I waited in line for over and hour and a half but I made it to the top for the sunset. At this point my feet and stomach were killing me cause I was starving and tired but it was perfect timing. Even though the sunset was shitty cause there were a lot of clouds, I got to see daytime paris turn into night paris which was really cool. The second elevator was scary too cause it didn’t look like they had repaired it since it was first put in there. When I finally got to the bottom it was sparkling and seeing that up close was one of the most beautiful sights ive seen in my life. A guy I met on the street and I exchanged taking pictures in front of it and ive taken too many videos of it trying to capture it so I can remember. I got a chocolate and banana crepe for dinner and headed back. I wonder, why is it that I enjoy the times I spend alone more on vacations? Lol. The one thing I regret about paris tho is not going to see the sacre cour, but I guess you cant do everything in 3 ish days. All in all, I loved paris even though I didn’t think that I was going to.

oh politics... makes me think of dc

2007-03-29T18:14:06Z

okay so first of all rocio and i have started to become buddy buddy and i think evans maybe a little jealous. he has been looking kind of sad lately, i asked him about it and he denies it but w/e hes been sick maybe thats what it is. so anywyas... i gotta write about this cause its interesting news (funny that i know more about news in spain than whats going on in america haha) but anyways. in spain they copied this show that france had. its called "i want to ask you something" and they get 100 people who they think completes every view of the people and they get to ask the president questions (since he hasnt been doing too well in popularity lately). this one guy was like why has the prices of everything gone up? i cant buy all the things i used to be able to buy with my old salary and my family is suffering. zapatero spouted back statistics and crap saying that spain was doing better than ever and basically said the guy just wasnt looking hard enough for good deals. so when his turn came around again the same guy asked the president "how much does a cup of coffee cost in madrid?" and he was like umm umm and guessed 80 cents. this has sent spain into a rage. the paper today was full of cartoons and articles about this incident. there was even one section where they put the price of coffee in all the major cities of spain. (it costs 1.40 in madrid unless you go to starbucks then it costs like 2 something haha) hes getting alot of crap for this. i dunno since i dont live here and the prices dont bother me too much, i find this situation kind of funny. mostly because it was such a smart question. i really gotta hand it to that guy, he got his point across. zapatero is not getting elected again anyways, everyone hates him. haha. someone was like i wonder what would happen if we did this show in america. bush wouldnt know what to say, he always needs his people probably to tell him what to do. eh but anyways, im leaving in a while to go on my trip. so excited, yet tired because of no sleep. emily says that im not going to sleep on the trip cause we have too much planned lol. we are really going to see everything, but thats good. its going to be super expensive though ugh.

its a little bit funny... this feeling inside...

2007-03-28T18:39:53Z

so tuesday i finally slept, and like its funny i never want to go to tuesday internship and yet every time i do go it ends up being super fun. probably the reason i dont want to go is cause i never know what im going to do with the kids that day. im worried my plans will fail (which they sometimes do, but i think of stuff on the spot). this particular day tho, she gave us plenty of plans to take up the whole class. man i was shocked! tho always with the older kids there is some time left over. so we played a game that my internship teacher told me. where you go around in a circle and tell a story each person tells a part. this is great for conversation class. so the story started out that this princess was living in an abandoned house (he knew the word 'squatter' which wierded me out), and she was a big druggie and had lots of parties, but she stayed on the top floor. apparently then the house was sold but it took a while for the family to realize she was having parties. when they did they told her no more parties. she had another party and then she ran into the woods, and the man from the house chased after her and shot her in the leg. she wrapped her leg with a tourniquette. i forget what else happened but she ended up with 5 kids on the street poor and alone. then i was like no she needs a happy ending, and somebody said that she met some really rich man that married her and then she was rich. i was happy with that ending. so anyways, then i was one of the few who showed up for tutoring with marta so it was just me and her talking for a while. my spanish really has improved. it still sounds forced, but i can exprsess myself freely and am starting to not think about verb forms. they just flow now. then we got out of internship class early cause maricarmen had some speech to go to. let me just say that i love spanish cheese and that my family buys tons of diff kinds all the time. i rarely have the same cheese twice. recently weve had an amazing cheese. its called "teta de monja" which means literally monk's tit cheese. they call it that because its made by monks in galicia and its in the shape of a tit... no lie. but this cheese is so freaking good. mmm. so anyways, then wednesday we went to the prado and my stomach was killing me the whole time i thought i was going to throw up but i didnt. i was fine. then cine class passed in my paper phew and we watched the other half of el otro lado de la cama which was the best movie ive ever seen in my life and so i need to buy it. then we started watching this other movie, my life without me. which is so sad, but very well done. it makes you think about you need to live your life as if you were dying. and also cute guy that i know from other movies but forget his name is in it. anyways, my flight to paris is at 7am which means i need to leave super duper early for the airport ugh. oh well. more time in paris i guess. who needs sleep when you could be in paris psh. im so exhausted tho. i need to pack too. on the better news i got back the rest of my midterms today. A and A- super duper awesome!! okay im out for the next week or so...

insomnia... and shopping

2007-03-26T22:03:39Z

so pretty much during the whole morocco trip i didnt sleep much. the first night being due to stephanie, the second night being due to being in the desert with a rock hard pillow, and the other 2 nights okay i got a little bit of sleep cause of the american pillows mmm but not enough. when i came back i really just could not sleep. i spent the whole weekend in the house resting and doing my paper and talking to people online and such since im going to have a crazy next 2 weeks. but really i would feel tired at midnight but then my dreams would keep me awake. ugh.
ok so then this morning i get woken up by evan being like arent you supposed to be in class. i realized that when it was daylight savings time yesterday i was so tired that i forgot my phone was on 24 hr clock and put 01 instead of 13 for 1pm. so my alarm didnt go off cause it thought it was 8pm not 8am. lovely i missed art history ugh. i love that class. then i went to school for god knows what reason, cause i intended to go there and use the library for my paper but never did. got a muffin at starbucks. it was pretty good, vanilla flavored dough and chocolate chips. the pastries there are much cheaper than the US (and much better!). so then i decided hey ill go to gran via and buy some more of that chocolate chip loaf i like. i didnt even make it to callao before i had spent all my money ugh. i bought a baithing suit and some sandals at h and m, and with the dollar i had left i went to burger king and got an icecream because i was starving. so then i realized fuck i didnt get what i had came for. i went home and realized i could prolly use a good workout and all the while on the search for my chocolate chip loaf. i decided to walk to carrefour to see if the night bus really did stop there and the choc chip loaf. turns out they did not have the choc chip loaf i was looking for but i bought another brand. we will see if its good or not. i also bought a beach towel and some malibu. god i havent had malibu in forever. its so cheap too, maybe cause IT DOENST GET YOU DRUNK well whatever, it tastes good. it will prolly be good for pregaming. but yea it was like oops where did 60 euros go? well at least i figured out the night busses and got some useful things for my trip. depressing day tho. ugh tomorrow i have to go to internship and i have nothing planned. lets hope i sleep tonight. im going to take some sleeping pills and we will see.

muslim country + africa = WICKED CULTURE SHOCK

2007-03-23T19:57:02Z

Ok, well st patties day was a bust. The whole weekend was a bust. I spent all my cash shopping and I really didn’t want to come back on the night bus without evan. Tho I might have found a new night bus that would go to an area I might feel safer in. but anyways, got up to get to the aiport, terminal one was quite a walk from the metro, but I was glad it wasn’t terminal 4 cause that is annoying to get to. The plane ride was alright tho I didn’t sleep at all. Towards the end there was the most turbulence ive ever experienced but oh well we landed safely. The Marrakech airport is pretty sketchy and small. We got off the plane off of stairs and walked right into the passport control area. From there we got into 3 4X4 vehicles and headed off into the Atlas mountains. As we were traveling through the city it looked like anything ive seen on tv. The women were wearing the shawls and never were alone. There were a lot of bikes on the street and some horse drawn carriages. Also a lot of animals like donkeys pulling stuff too. They were so beautiful. I was sad because the pictures did not capture the real beauty that they were. The drivers were speeding so friggin fast I was scared for my life, but all in all we got there safely. We stopped once for a bathroom break in some random town in the mountains. All the men came out to look at us, they probably don’t see white people too often I guess. There were no women in sight. The bathrooms were disgusting I heard so I decided not to go. Outside someone was cutting up meat and there was a bloody ram’s head on the ground. The driver in our car brought along a friend who lived sort of near where we were going so he came along for the ride. He was friggin hilarious. Someone compared it to talking to Borat and I thought that was a pretty good comparison. Some of the things he talked about: black women vs white women, called boobs satillites, in the desert you need to make the woman cum 7 times otherwise she will be mad, no red lights only green, lots of hash in the north that’s why they are crazy, how to get off a camel, women don’t need men only camels, jack Johnson, the song mueve mueve (I like to move it move it). One of the girls in the car felt uncomfortable with this guy, so she put on her ipod which prolly made it worse cause she only heard bits of the conversation and misinterpreted it. By the end of the ride she was crying even though we asked her what was wrong and she said nothing and asked us not to talk to her. She told our chaperones her hearing bits and pieces and the guy almost got in trouble. Really he was harmless and funny, also if she had said something about it making her uncomfortable we would have told him to stop. Anywyas… Along the road we kept seeing people with these massive geodes and I guess the sign said they would only be one euro. I kind of wished we had stopped to get one, cause that would have been cool. We finally got to the hotel and it was really beautiful. The blankets were covered in fuzzies with sequins and the hallways were filled with cool lamps and rugs and decorations. The tv was English audio with Arabic subtitles so we watched fight club. I hadn’t seen that movie in forever! I was excited cause the food we ate there at the hotel was awesome! The desert was orange salad which is orange slices with cinnamon on top of them, which was the desert at every single restaurant we went to in morocco. It was good, I think ill put cinnamon on my oranges from now on. At breakfast I was excited because they eat the sponge cake thingies that I love to eat when I go get Ethiopian food. So we left there which was considered the “door to the desert” cause there was very few civilization after that. The girl who was uncomfortable left our car and so we had a ton of room. 5 more hours in the cars till the sahara desert. We stopped to eat at this place that was kind of dirty, but the food was super good. It was like Arabic pizza which was like a calzone kind of but filled with random meat and spices. It was really a tourist trap place cause we got a sales pitch to try and get us to buy rugs for outrageous prices. Our supervisors were super pissed that the drivers brought us there. So after that we were arriving at the desert. There was this black flat area for a long time and then we could see the huge red sand dunes rise up over the horizon. Then we drove over the black part where there was no roads, the car felt like it was going to slip on the black sand. Right before the sahara started there was a ton of palm trees and a few buildings. The place we went to was a camping place called “suerte loca” which in about 2 years will be swallowed by the desert because it is expanding fast. We slept in tents there made of rugs. The mattress they gave us was pretty comfortable and the blankets super thick, yet itchy. People got bitten by bugs as they slept. I had a hard time falling asleep because the pillow was as hard as a rock and hurt my head and the people in the tent next to me were gossiping about people on the trip and I could hear them loud and clear. Shouldn’t you know not to gossip about people when they are in hearing range? Rugs aren’t exactly sound proof… but anyways before that we got on some camels and rode off into the desert to watch the sun set. Getting on and off camels is pretty scary, you feel like you are going to fall off. It also makes your legs sore cause you are bouncing around pretty much. The camels slobbered on a few people too. Eww. But it was pretty fun. We got off the camels and I took off my sandals and it was so nice to feel the desert sand beneath my feet. We went running through the sand up and over dunes. It was a lot of fun, yet tiring. We sat at the top of a huge dune and watched the sun set. It was really beautiful. The sun was huge! There were a lot of random plants that grew in the sand too, which I didn’t understand how they could grow in sand but w/e. I bought a really cool fossil in the shape of a fish by the people who were leading the camels. so then we rode the camels back and had a drum jam session with the locals who ran the place and then ate dinner which was pretty good. They eat a lot of cous cous and curry chicken. Their salad they eat at every meal is pretty good too its vegetables with rice instead of like lettuce. My favorite was rice with like little white grapes in it. So good. After that we went out to see the stars. There were a lot of stars, but you couldn’t see the milky way so I was kind of disappointed. I had seen way more stars when I went up to my aunts house on the Canadian border. I expressed this disappointment and the city folk who had never seen this many stars before yelled at me. Oh well, they just don’t understand how pretty the milky way is. There were enough stars out to see shooting stars, so that was cool. Since my sight isn’t that great anymore without my glasses I couldn’t see clearly shooting stars. Oh well, ive seen more than most people have seen in their life anyways. There were candels in the tent which was kind of cool. I didn’t get to sleep till really late. We were woken up rudely by the sound of camels screaming. That is their idea of a wake up call. It was one of the most awful sounds ive ever heard in my life. We rode the camels out again to see the sunrise at 6am. I don’t think that sunrises are as good as sunsets personally, but it was still really beautiful. The whole sky turned pink. It was pretty chilly out tho. Without the sun the desert is cold. Theres no humidity yet since its not the summer. I took so many pictures of the desert cause it was just so beautiful. I could just sit on a dune all day and just stare at the sea of red sand. It felt so soft on my feet. After breakfast we took off on our 12 hr car ride back to Marrakech. I didn’t sleep but for some reason the trip seemed like it went by fast maybe cause I was so tired that I didn’t feel the hours pass. I was reading angels and demons for the second time, listend to my ipod and we played 20 questions for a while. then we found out the guy had a tape adapter so we listened to evans ipod which made everyone sleepy, yet it was better than listening to the same tape we had been listening to the whole trip. I had to pee so bad the last like 2 hrs of the trip. We didn’t stop cause we needed to get to the hotel before dinner ended at 10pm. We got to the hotel in time and it was good food. I was so happy to have a shower (didn’t shower in the desert) got to get all the sand off me. I had a lot of sand all over me. It was all in my scalp too. Seriously I don’t know how sand gets some places. I thought I cleaned out my bag of sand but somehow there still seems to be sand. I think it multiplies. My theory is that the sand is asexual and creates copies of itself to annoy the humans lol. One of the other cars’ back door wouldn’t close so the people in that car their faces and clothes turned black. It was crazy. I was so happy to go to sleep on a soft American style pillow (its been a while. I miss American style pillows!) the next day we got up and had a tour of Marrakech with a guide. She spoke Spanish with such an Arabic accent, it was cute. We went to see the big tower out of the mosque downtown which had a rose garden outside of it. It smelled so good. I wish I could capture the smells. Then we went to a place where royalty was bueried. Their tombs were just tiles on the ground. Supposedly the height and patterns mean something about who the person was. Then we went to this huge palace where we learned about how awful the life was for women back in the day. Supposedly the person who owned this palace had 500 wives over his lifetime. Only 4 at a time tho, he divorced a lot I guess. There was a room always for the favorite wife. I guess women only left their homes 3 times in their life: when they are born, when they get married, and when they die. How horrible to stay in the same place your whole life! How boring would that be. I don’t know what youd do all day. The tour guide was obligated to take us to another tourist trap but this time our chaperones knew and actually liked the place. It was a spice place. It was fun cause they let us smell all the spices and try on all the creams and stuff. I got some 35 spice combo that smelled amazing and bought some saffron there. It was the same price as in spain but it was in bigger containers which I like. You can usually only buy saffron in small amounts in spain. Then we went to a restaurant right in the center of town. It was like the most beautiful restaurant ive ever seen and the view was amazing of the marketplace. The food was really good too. Then we got to walk around the marketplace. What I learned on this day: I am not good at bargaining. I got some sunglasses and the guy was originally offering 40 euros for them and I got him down to 20 and I thought that was a good deal, but everyone was like they are cheap fake sunglasses they aren’t worth that much. Emily got some down to 10 euros, but it was really hard they didn’t want to go that low. I found that day that things at this market were kind of expensive. It was super hard to get people down low. Probably because they know that another stupid American tourist will come by and pay more. We spoke to people in Spanish to get better deals, tho people could still pick up on the fact that I was American. Grr. I need to work on my accent. My Spanish seems very forced. It was funny that people would yell out places and names hoping that yours was one of them so that youd turn around and theyd catch your attention. There were also snake charmers. But the music they played was so friggin annoying. If I was a snake id bite the person playing that instrument. I think the snakes were drugged cause even when the people weren’t playing the music they just sat there and did nothing. They charged you to take pictures and walked around with snakes asking you to pet them cause then they would charge you. People were so fucking pushy when I didn’t want them to be, and not pushy enough when I wanted them to. Gr. So then we took a taxi back to the hotel where they tried to scam us cause we were tourists. But we knew better so we didn’t let him. We had dinner at the hotel and it was the same food. And it was katies 21^st birthday so we went to this medieval place which I wish I had known it was outside cause I would have worn a jacket. There was this show where there were people doing stunts with horses like standing up and riding on them, laying on them sideways with no hands, and running along side the horse and then hopping back on. Also there was a belly dancer and they were doing camel rides but on the camel was like a little room like a royal camel ride. Since it was katies birthday she rode on it. Then for the finale there were fireworks. I went to the bathroom with someone and when we came out we watched the show for a bit and when we were going back to the table everyone said they had been looking for us forever and that we had to go. Since I wasn’t there someone drank my beer. I was sort of upset but its not like I had to pay for it and im sure I would have done the same thing in their situation so I don’t blame them. It was fun tho. The place was super beautiful. At least Katie got to have some alcohol on her 21^st birthday even though she was in a muslim country where not much alcohol exists. We got back at midnight and I was super tired and went right to sleep. We got to sleep in tho I was still tired when I got up. Ate lunch at the hotel. Same friggin food. By this time I was getting tired of it, and people in our group were starting to drop like flies cause of the food so I was worried I would get sick. But I did not. We went out shopping again. This time we really pushed hard and got some good deals. I decided the pretty pasminas were not worth 20 euros and could prolly get them in spain for way less since I have 3 pasminas from spain already… I focused on cool stuff I could get for cheap. I got a small porcelin bowl for like 3 euros and also 2 cool local geodes for like 3 euros. I kind of wanted to buy a painting too but haggling paintings takes time and im not sure I could have gotten it for the price that I would have wanted. I also wanted to get some henna I knew. I wanted it on my feet but after realizing that you have to let it dry, it would be hard to do while walking around using my feet. So I decided to get it on my hand instead. I walked over to a place and looked at all the pictures but the people were so fucking pushy as soon as I asked how much for one of the paintings they started doing it on my hand. I kept asking them how much and they said whatever you want and just continued. I kept bugging them but they ignored me. If I pulled away my hand would have looked horrible for a month so I just let them keep going. Then after they wanted to charge me 20 euros for it. It was maybe worth 5 euros. I said no, this is why I asked you before how much it was. And we were yelling at eachother. She says “ I give you good price” but I disagreed because I knew better. They were trying to scam me cause I was a tourist. They were not budging. I gave her 14 euros and said this is all I have, im sorry and walked away. They didn’t chase after me or anything cause seriously that’s more than they should have gotten for that. I really like it tho. Its super pretty. Im so glad I got it done. The brown one is so much prettier than the black one too. Im glad I got it in brown. We took a taxi back and chilled at the hotel for like an hour before we loaded up and went to the aiport. The airport was super sketch. Only a few airlines fly into it. We got waved through the first security checkpoint and then we had to put our bags on the x ray thing, but nobody was sitting there to look at the screen…. So sketch. Anyways, I was happy to bring my bottle of water aboard. At the airport I bought something Moroccan food… I have yet to open it and try it, but from the side it sounded like it tasted good. The flight back thank god was a lot smoother. They paid for our taxi back since it was midnight, and since we don’t really know the city we live in that well (pozuelo not Madrid) we accidently had the taxi driver drive in the long way. Oh well… we weren’t paying for it. It ended up costing 50 euros. Ay. We live so far away from the airport. I went right to sleep. Today ive just been chilling all day. Haven’t gotten out of my pajamas and have been catching up on everything on the internet. Gotta figure out what classes im taking fall semester too. Later I should start working on my paper for cine class. I need this weekend to rest up for spring break which is next weekend!! OMG! Time flies…

tantos compras

2007-03-17T18:10:50Z

so yea this week has been nuts with all the work and finishing midterms and such. i still have one more paper to write. on thursday we went out to dinner with kristin who is the advisor for the spain study abroad program... yet she has not been to spain. glad that she could advise me on my decision to come. but anyways its good that she came and we told her about the program and what they shoudl tell the future students. the food was really good. mm italian. then we were supposed to go out but alot of ppl bailed so i went home. friday i needed to go shopping for the morocco trip. i went to gran via and sol for 5 hrs. i bought so much stuff! 50 euros worth! i bought these like super shiny silver sandals for 4 euros tho i was excited. ive been wearing them since. and also this cool spain shirt that has written all the awesome things about spain on it (in spanish). one thing that annoyed me about the day was that 2 ppl spoke to me in english. i get really angry when people speak to me in english here. granted one of the times was when i was in the tourist section of the corte ingles and i didnt understand what the woman had said to me and the other was at some outdoor market and the guy there didnt speak spanish at all. ok fine, but still. so i bought some sunscreen unfortunately for 22 euros. ugh. oh well i need that much sunscreen and im about to go into the desert so yea. i am glad i walked around tho cause now i realized even more that downtown is so friggin close to eachother!! crazy that the corte ingles at callao on gran via is like 2 steps from the corte ingles in sol!! i was like whats that i see in the distance? another corte ingles?!?!?!?! dios mio! do they really need 2 that close to eachother?! but whatever. oh yea i was also mad cause i went on a search for kebab and i gave up cause i was hungry and ate at mcdonalds (which was good) but as soon as i left mcdonalds i found a place. geesh. anywyas, it was a great day, super hot!
saturday my family invited me to go shopping with them at an outlet mall cause they heard i needed a baithing suit. it took me a while to find one, but i did. its cool its blue checkers. however, in spain apparently they dont make bikini baithing suits with a top bigger than b cup, so im kind of showing off alot but its better than getting made fun of for wearing a one piece. also, with trying on baithing suits ive noticed all my jiggly parts. i dunno if its worth going on a diet to look good in it in the canarys. who do i have to impress? and plus i love eating multi course meals... i refuse to give that up!! im here i need to eat up all the spanish food while i can. my stomach has gotten accustomed to it now. anyways, i never realized how cool the city i live in is (we dont live in madrid). its like another city but like a shopping district city. i should figure out how to use the busses. they are building a light rail to connect it all, one of the stops will be right in front of my neighborhood, but it wont be done till may (when i leave) what luck!
anyways, im super excited/ nervous about morocco!! craziness. im also a big fan of my new facebook photo, which is an ad from the metro. haha recipie for turkey a la whiskey... crack up every time i see it. well anyways, it is finally getting hot hot here. i mean 60's are nice, but i need warmer weather, like 70's 80's. i like it when its hot out! anyways deciding whether i want to go out tonight for st patties day even though i gotta get to the airport tomorrow. oh and my mommy called today. i was super excited!

oh yea, im in spain still...

2007-03-14T21:59:34Z

sometimes you fall into the mundane every day of things and lose sight of the bigger picture. sometimes i forget that im in a differnt country (i know im in a different country, but it just doesnt cross my mind ya know?) until random stuff happens that reminds me. culture shock if you will.

Ugh today I didn’t want to wake up. But as always, I dragged my ass out of bed and went to pacos class as he always makes it worth it. Today I brought my ipod which made the trip better. I should start doing that more often. Then in cine we passed in our midterms (thank god) and we watched most of “el otro lado de la cama” omg. A must see movie for everyone!! Sooooooo good. Maybe ill buy it. Im thinking about trying my luck at the pirated moves they sell on the street (they are regionless). I only want to buy Spanish movies tho cause I hate dubbed stuff. And also (in case you didn’t know) the movies made in Europe have two versions: one for the Europeans (with more sex) and one for the Americans. Isn’t that ridiculous!? We should be doing something about that. Also, ive fallen into the world of spanish movies so much that ive forgotten about american movies, and i dont know anything about any of the ones that are out now! thats rare for me. im such a movie person. i heard about the movie 300 today which apparently is doing well in the us... but anyways... Well then after that I realized I have way too much to do this week and instead of making up internship classes, I got some work done on the comp and went to Carrefour to buy some much needed things for morocco (tho im not finished morocco shopping). I got some really comfy shoes for 11 euros. I was excited. I also got some coke for st patties day pregaming and more soap. I wanted to get a bathing suit but you know people in Europe have smaller boobs than I do. Good thing I didn’t buy one, cause apparently there are better places to buy them where you can buy diff size tops and bottoms. Bueno. Oh yea and this cultural thing struck me as odd… when you leave the dressing room and you don’t want your stuff, you have to put it back yourself (at least at this place, ive encountered places where you can just leave it). Just a reminder that I am in spain. Another cultural thing is that they don’t like to give greeting cards here. Everywhere you go, the greeting card selection is limited to maybe 50 cards for only the occasions that are around . like they had a lot of fathers day ones. All the birthday ones were for little kids. I settled on a birthday card for my mom that said “I carry you in my thoughts and in my heart”. Im so tired. I cant wait till Friday and Saturday. Friday I am sleeping most of the day and shopping the rest. Saturday hopefully I wont spend all day in bed, but I want to sleep in cause its st patties day baby!! I hope we go to Dubliners. That place is an irish bar that is like a little piece of America. Its got great drinks for reasonable prices that are loaded with alcohol for the money, and everyone there is American and they play awesome music. Usually its pretty crowded and im sure it will be on st patties day but oh well. We will prolly go to a bunch of diff places anyways. On a side note, learned how to say dick the other day. Now I can stop saying peine and start saying polla. Sounds more chulo (cool). lol

basque country

2007-03-12T19:13:55Z

ok so midterms i kind of freaked out about nothing. i got an A on my art one even though he took alot of points off for random stuff, but oh well, im happy with the grade. and i think i did well on the seminar one, it was much easier than i thought it would be. the cine is take home, but the answers are all like what do you think about this, so i dont think it can really be wrong. but anyways...

So friday morning got up and actually got a seat on the metro, which was good cause we had a long ride to the way other side of the city. unfortunately the train stopped for a really long time and it was annoying cause we didnt know what was going on. then we get to the station and find everyone except like 2 people, but the masses of us couldnt find the meeting spot (which was where the other 2 people were). anywyas. 6 hour trains are not very fun. especially when the chairs are to awkward to sleep in. the first train had 2 movies: prime and war of the worlds, which i complained about at the time, but the other train ride was much worse. riding through the basque country was so beautiful. it was very green with lots of sheep and cows. its surrounded by lots of mountains, which is why nobody ever conquered them when they conquered spain and they have their own language that is totally different from everyone else! they have a terrorist organization called ETA. ETA bombs madrid because they want to be their own country.
anyways, we get to the hotel. it is a super nice hotel i was psyched. i also got to room with some diff people this time so i was excited to get to know people better. we went down to the beach of san sebastian (Donostia in Euska (their language)) and even though it was raining out, it was so beautiful. it was so windy that it reminded me of scotland and we went down to one side of the ocean to watch the water crash up against the rocks. there were these holes that air randomly came out of and it was funny when people stuck their face over them. lol. then we walked along the beach to the old part. when we got back we went to the supermarket and bought some booze (they had stella so i was excited) before dinner. dinner was at this cider place. omg best food ive had in a while. we had like fish with green peppers and it was so good, and also this egg thingy, and for the main cource. plate after plate of some amazing steak. i think each of us ended up eating an entire huge ass plate of this steak cause it just kept coming and coming and i thnk between 5 of us we ate 5 plates. crazy good steak. the hard cider that they boasted, not so good. it shot out of the wall though into a bucket and you had to put your glass under it. it was pretty crazy. some of them tasted like piss tho. so then after that we went back we had a few drinks and watched euro trip. i just realized that matt damon was the guy singing scottie doesnt know... wow im observant. that movie is better while in europe and drunk.
so the next day we woke up early to go to bilbao. the breakfast at the hotel was pretty good other than the room temperature milk ugh. i stole some tiny jars of pate and peach jelly. this horrible woman came on the trip with us. she is the person who interviews the senoras. she was really good friends with my old senora. she was giving everyone dirty looks the whole time, and is so ugly with her fake purplish redish hair and awful style. she looks like she hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down. but anywyas, i dont know why she was there, but she was late every day and held us up! anyways, on the bus to bilbao once again nobody wants to sit next to me. then evan (who was sitting behind me) asked me if ic ould keep my seat up. and i snapped at him tho i prolly shouldnt have. it was just like i didnt want to sit alone and i didnt bring my ipod expecting to have someone to talk to and i was upset. and i told them this and they were like blah youre lucky to have your own seat... i guess. i did sleep most of the way. their light rail was super cool. i love light rails. but anyways so then we went to the gugenheim. the 2nd and 3rd floors were closed so it kind of sucked, but the building is amazing. and it was the first time i ever got one of those thingies that explains stuff to you thats looks like a walkie talkie. it was interesting tho somewhat boring at times. there was a really cool piece that was led lights streaming from the ceiling saying stuff from diff themes in 3 languages: english, spanish and euska. it was really beautiful. there was also a dog out front made of flowers it was cool. so then we walked around went to the gran via, and then decided to walk along the river area and went to get coffee. it was the best coffee ive ever had in my life at some random ass bar place. it was only one euro too. craziness. so then we went back to san sebastian and once again nobody sat next to me. cause kate isnt here theres an odd number of ppl and i was always the odd man out. oh well, i slept the whole way back anywyas.
when we got back we took a nap and then ordered some telepizza and pregamed the rest of our alcohol. we stayed there until the first half of the Barcelona/ Real Madrid soccer game. then we went out to this sports bar. it was fun. the game was sooooooooo good. it ended in a tie. they were a real match for eachother. then we almost went back, but then decided to find another bar, ended up being a somewhat empty hotel bar with all old people. oh well. this is the bar where i got really plastered and ended up just sitting by myself staring into space thinking while everyone else was off being drunk too so they didnt really notice. i needed to do some thinking tho. ive been kind of depressed and feeling alone pretty much this whole trip. when im sad i never usually act sad, i usually act like a bitch. i have some people toapologize to. but its never too late to fix everything tho right? tho since i was feeling alone i acted more angry, which made people like me less. such a vicious circle downward spiral that was. so ive decided to start over with everyone. just slap myself in the face and say get over it, and be super nice now.
so on sunday the last day, we went to the aquarium. it was fun, they had one of those glass tunnel thingies. they also had shark eggs and you could watch the sharks grow. cool stuff. there was this auditorium part with this giant fishtank. we sat there for an hour naming the fish society. it was hilarious. then this screen came down and they showed the documentary blue planet so we watched that. great documentary. then we realized we had spent way too much time in the aquarium and had to run and get lunch before the train left. san sebastian was lacking fast food places, and we ended up unintentionally in this american food restaurant. really the only american thing they had was burgers, but my sandwich was pretty damn good. then we got some of the gelato that everyone had been talking about. it was good, but the place in dc was better. then we ran back to the hotel to get our stuff and then went to the train station. the ride back was soooooooo long. and they only showed this surfing documentary and then the movie shall we dance which was bad until the end. i guess the end was kind of cute. the dancing was good tho. once again i get stuck by myself. tho i was sick of my ipod after like 2 hours. i couldnt sleep either meh. got home at 11pm. i immediately showered and unpacked and passed out! i was so tired. omg.
today i did not want to get up. i dragged myself to pacos class then came back and slept for 4 hrs. which was a bad idea cause i should have gone out and gotten a bag for morrocco or done my cine midterm. oh well. i didnt waste the day, ive done all the stuff online i needed to get done, such as booking katie a hostel and sending people my real address... since i fucked up the last one. we arent going to avila and segovia tomorrow after all, which means i prolly have to go to my internship. but that in turn means i get to sleep in tomorrow since my internship isnt till later, and i get some time to work on the cine. lovely.

i smiled today

2007-03-06T22:40:02Z

i woke up today not wanting to get out of bed. i thought today was going to be horrible. but in fact, i smiled more today than i have in a while. good day. tomorrow 2 midterms and thursday big big midterm, but im happy anyways.

dunkies is bliss

2007-03-05T09:52:56Z

i dont know why, but for some reason this weekend i felt really depressed and just tired. i could have slept all day if i really wanted to. on sunday i dragged my ass out to gran via cause i needed to get out, and it was really nice outside too. like 70 degrees. so i went to corte ingles and bought some turkish delight and some croissants filled with nutella and more postcards finally. this corte ingles had a bigger tourist section than the rest. i almost bought a cool shirt but they didnt have my size. maybe they will get more in another day. i think im going to get alot of ppl cool fans if i dont get them something from the rastro or from morrocco. anyways, after corte ingles i went to dunkin donuts to get a coffee cause i felt like i was going to pass out. my head hurt massively. its amazing how as soon as the coffee touched my lips i felt happiness. i was happy until i finished the coffee but i didnt go back to as depressed as i was before. i shared my turkish delight with everyone and it was good. all the sleeping is making my spanish get worse (since i am sleeping instead of speaking it) language is a very delicate thing. it needs to be taken care of. i couldnt sleep at all last night which is bad cause i have midterms this week. tho art and movies seem that they might be pretty doable, im still worried about seminar class. and steph wont be at internship tomorrow so that means i get a crapload of kids. lovely... oh well i guess itll help the time go by quicker cause i have more kids to pick on muahahaha. controlling them all is the problem. gah. im off in search of stamps and then home to sleep. i hope this nap doesnt ruin me for going to sleep tonight!

ah weekends of rest

2007-03-03T11:50:27Z

so andalucia wore me out. i took a big nap on wednesday after class and still was able to sleep that night! then on thursday i had my internship. their assignment was to write their own horoscope, but like using what was really true about themselves. this one boy wrote that he was sad and angry and that he had no friends. i asked him is this how you really feel? and he said yes and he really looked sincere. i decided to keep an eye on this boy the rest of the class to see. really i could see how he was treated in the classroom. he volunteered to read something and got chewed out by the teacher. poor kid. he also has like messed up teeth and braces. i just felt really bad for him. he seems like such a sweet kid. anyways... after that i went to the corte ingles and there was just so many sales i went crazy, forgetting that i woudl have to carry it around for the rest of the day. oh well. they were all usefull things that i needed. so then i had class where i realized shit i should read that book for my midterm next week... and then internship class we pretty much just looked at pictures of andalucia. but before that they asked what we dressed up as and i said a witch and evan said in a really serious tone something like yea she doesnt need to dress up much to be that. it kind of hurt, but everyone agreed that evan was in a pissy mood that day anyways. so then after that we went to see pan's labrynth with my movie class. i found out that the coffees at starbucks cost a crapload, but the pastries and sandwiches are very reasonable. the sandwiches are even cheaper than in the states. good to know. i got some bannana bread. might have been the best bannana bread ive had in my life. anyways. so at the movie i bought these licorice stick things filled with this white stuff that i ate alot when i was in sweden. mmm the memories. they are so good. i love how stuff at the movies is actually a reasonable price. unlike america. anyways, the movie was alright. not amazing (it won tons of awards at the oscars) the cinematography was amazing, but the story eh not so much. it was waaaaay over gorey and waaaaaay too sad. i dont really like this kind of sad movie. next i think we are seeing science of sleep. i had wanted to see that in the first place. the only reason we saw pan's labrynth was cause volver went out of the theaters. thats what we had really wanted to see.
friday i slept or read all day and then after dinner i went out with lauren from youthcare and her friends. there were so many guys and only 3 of us girls. it was so nice to be outnumbered by guys. unfortunately the cutest and nicest one (named jeff) is not studying in madrid, he is studying in seville. tho he lives in sharon. crazy how small the world is! we pregamed behind plaza de espana and i drank a liter of rum and coke in an hour. i didnt really want to walk back from the sketchy bus stop all by myself so i decided to go home before the metro closed. good idea cause once i got to the metro i felt so sick. most sick from alcohol ive been in my life. luckily i didnt throw up. i got home and when i closed my eyes it felt worse cause it felt like the room was spinning. luckily i fell asleep fast cause i was really tired. i hope we are going out tonight. i think we were supposed to go to kapital which is the massive club that is one of those places you have to go once, but then dont go again. anyways. i really dont want to eat lunch with the grandparents today, but i guess i have to cause nobody has said they want to go to lunch with me. oh well. i guess ill suck it up. maybe there will be great food. and evan will be there this time. so maybe it will be better.

andalucia

2007-02-28T20:14:31Z

yea this post is super long... sorry haha. but this trip was just so amazing i had to capture it all!! so click the link!!

So andalucia… well we took a bus there. Long ass bus ride. Good thing colleen has dvds from china that are regionless. We watched them on the bus. I got a really good seat. I got the seat next to the middle door so that I could put my feet up on the bar (cause there was no seat in front of me, only stairs) and the television was right in front of me too. We first went to Cordoba. We ate in the nicest restaurant in cordoba for lunch. It was called el caballo rojo or something like that. At the table I was talking about how this past week had been Ash Wednesday and I felt weird cause it was my first time in my life not getting ashes. And I was talking about how I had just left Catholicism, and how ironic it was for me to do that and then come to a catholic country. Then danny started talking about how I turned my back on god blah blah blah and was giving me shit. Maricarmen thought it had hurt me so she talked to me and wanted to know why I gave up religion. Ugh thanks danny. Really I don’t care what people say about me. Most of the catholics ive met are very hateful people and if there is a god I cant wait till their final judgement day. Well anyways… so then we got a personal tour of the city from a local and went to this amazing mosque. It was so beautiful. Probably one of the most beautiful things on the trip. Cole had thrown up on the bus, so then a few of us went on a febreeze hunt which turned out to be somewhat amusing. There were segway tours of cordoba. I was like I need to do that one day. And then someone in our group said something like “yea you need to do that like I need a hole drilled in my head” and some person walking by us replied “yea you do” and it just caught us off guard that someone spoke English. Lol. Anyways, so then we got back on the bus to go to sevilla. We watched v for vendetta. Which, I hadn’t seen because when it came out in the theater it didn’t look like anything I would have liked. It was totally not what I thought it was. Im so happy that they put that on cause otherwise I might not have seen it. It was so amazing, life changing almost. Had a great message. In the end they blow up parliament and having seen parliament, it was all the more amazing.

So we get to the hotel and have dinner at the hotel in sevilla after people find cockroaches in their room. Lovely. Evan switched into our room so that he didn’t have to share a queen with danny, and it worked out cause danny and Camille are … well god knows what but close enough to share a bed. Evan couldn’t figure out the shower and so water got all over the bathroom. It was hilarious. So once again we had a personal tour by a local. Sevilla was amazingly pretty. The plaza de espana here kicks any plaza de espana’s butt that I have seen thus far. It was even used in star wars (which by the way a lot of star wars movies were filmed in spain… that can only mean one thing. STAR WARS MOVIE MARATHON when I get back!) the gypsies were really annoying trying to hand you those palm things saying it’s a gift but then they make you pay for them. We went to a palace which was pretty, but the woman talked for like 20 minutes in each room, only the first 5 mins of which were about the actual room. Then they were talking about name origins. Danny found out that he is part Gitano. It was kind of funny and they are still making fun of him for it. Then we went to the cathedral of Seville. It is the #1 biggest gothic style cathedral in the world and the #3 biggest cathedral in the world. It was amazing!! Stephanie decided that she didn’t want to go, I thought she was crazy cause this place was so beautiful. We climbed up to the top of a tower and instead of stairs it was one huge winding ramp. I really liked it that way. It was much easier to climb. The view from the top was unbelievable. So amazing. Also in this cathedral was Christopher columbus’ tomb. I guess only part of his ashes are there but whatever.

Then we got back onto the bus en route to cadiz which was the part of the trip that everyone had been waiting for. So we pull up to the hotel and omg. First of all the hotel was attatched to a huge shopping mall. Second of all the places were like a miniature house, and the view from the patio a (man made) pond filled with fish and sting rays. Everywhere palm trees and oh god it was so beautiful. The nicest place maybe ive ever stayed. Unfortunately we were disappointed that we were told that the hotel was on the beach. It was on the ocean… but it was like a grassy mucky bay. No sand. You couldn’t really sit by the ocean cause it was all mud. But across the ocean you could see cadiz (oh yea forgot to mention we were in the town next to cadiz… san Fernando) so when we got there we didn’t have much time to get ready for carnival. We went to the Carrefour but I assumed we would be going to a lot of bars so I didn’t get much alcohol. We all got dressed in our disfrazes (I was a witch) and went to dinner at fosters Hollywood. Even though I warned them that fosters is shitty American food (not even really American food) they didn’t believe me and it was crap. Oh well. I was pissed off to find that everyone had one liter bottles of rum and coke that they planned on carrying around with them the entire time. So the bus driver agreed to drive us to cadiz. On the way there we were singing songs on the bus. It was so much fun. I still know all the words to fresh prince tune. So we get there and everyone is just drinking in the street, so basically I didn’t get drunk. Only buzzed. But it was still cool dancing to the drums in the street and meeting people with really cool costumes (a lot of Americans) Some of the better costumes: duff beer ppl, smurfs, m and m’s, nasa, some people were dressed in black with a salida sign hanging off them I was kind of like umm ok…, katies French maid costume was great I must say, so was everyones really. Evan was a huge clown, cole was a cowboy, eric was a pirate, danny was a chino, and then everyone else really didn’t have that much of a thematic costume, just kind of threw it together I think. But they still looked good. There was glass, puke and piss all over the streets. Kind of upset I wore sandals but whatever. We went to pee and believe me when I say this. There was no toilets to pee in. there were soo many friggin people in the city that everywhere said their toilets were broken prolly cause they didn’t want them destroyed. Everyone was peeing on the streets. We found a semi secluded street to pee on. I was kind of proud of myself for being able to pee in the street. It took some guts to pee in front of people. It was then that the alcohol really started hitting one of the members of our group. It was clear that she needed to puke. Then she kept talking about how she was in love with one of the other members of the group. At this point she couldn’t really stand up. Since I was one of the sober ones I offered to help out, tho really some of the other people did way more than I did and I commend them for what they did. It was really a hassle to get her to a taxi cause she could barely walk and kept falling to the ground. She was rolling around in the puke and piss infested streets. Que asco! Anyways, the good thing is after like 2 hrs we got her into a taxi and got her home. I threw in some money for the taxi. I was glad that she didn’t have alcohol poisoning. That’s the most drunk ive ever seen anyone. So then after that those of us helping her went back to the party kind of traumatized and tried to have a good time. It was a good time after that. Everyone was drunk except me and everybody was all touchy feely, which was something I needed. I was always jealous that they were all touchy feely with eachother but not me. But this night they were and the rest of the trip. I guess that night in carnival I earned my stripes for this group. I had a lot of heart to hearts with people since they were open and drunk. It was good I got to get to know a lot about them. Huge bonding experience. Everyone started getting tired around 4am. Even though I could have gone more, I wasn’t really drunk so I guess I was ready to go home. We firs tried to hail a cab by standing in the middle of the street. After no luck and getting honked at by a policeman we went to the square where all the cabs are. There was a massive cab line. Ugh. Anyways so colleen and I got churros (they turned out to be awful) and waited an hour in the cab line. By this point my ankles I thought were going to give way having been standing for 6 hrs. we get to the front of the line and the rest of the ppl show up, ready to go home. We let them cut with us in line, and people in the cab line were not happy about that. They kept yelling. I got in the first cab, but anyways. I guess they were yelling but eric was too drunk to realize it so he thought they were cheering so he started dancing. Haha. Anyways, we got home safe and sound. When I woke up in the morning I felt so nasty. My face even turned the pillow black (I dunno how that happened) and my pants and sandals were covered in piss from stepping in piss puddles and also had some of my own piss on them. I took a really really long shower scrubbing myself. Ugh. So then we had lunch at the hotel which was really good, and then we went into cadiz and went to the beach. Ah the other side of the atlantic, it was beautiful. Apparently cadiz has the best beaches in spain. (discounting the islands). I took a nap on the beach with my ipod. I was happy. Then this Japanese girl joined us somehow and it was neat to talk to her. She came to cadiz by herself, I guess she was studying somewhere else in spain and came for the weekend. We then went to this café and the bathrooms there someone shit all over the bathroom. I don’t know how this was possible, but it was. Then the sun started to set over the ocean. Oh man it was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. I got great pictures of it. I was very happy. So we walked along the beach as the sun was setting and then after it was done we headed back into cadiz to look for a restaurant to eat at for dinner. They wanted to go to burger king, but im glad we didn’t. we ended up going to a restaurant at the mall that our hotel was in and got lots of tapas. Mmm. So good. Then we went back to the hotel cause we decided not to go to another night of carnival we were tired. So I went to hang out at the other people’s house/ hotel room to drink the rest of my 1.50 cent sangria in a bottle that I didn’t bring with me the night before to carnival. We were talking and I maybe said some stuff I shouldn’t have. (gossip) everyone was interested in hearing about it, except I think that evan was kind of upset with me at the time for telling a lot of things that some people might not have wanted me to say. The other people gossiped too, and I stuck up for some people when needed. I wanted to confront evan to explain the thing I think he might have been upset at me for, but I never got up the courage. Hes still talking to me, and I guess if he was mad hes gotten over it, so maybe its not worth bringing up again. We could see the fireworks over the water from our hotel. It was pretty, but im not a big fireworks fan and neither are many of the people in the group so we only watched about 5 mins of it then went back in. I left early cause I was still so friggin tired.

The next day we left for Granada. I was sad to leave the hotel and the beautifulness of cadiz, but this is life. So instead of having tiempo libre in Granada, we decided to go visit a farm of a friend of maricarmen’s. it was a huge farm. They made us lunch. In the south, they eat black paella which is called arroz negro (go figure). It is colored with squid ink. It sounds nasty and looked nasty, but really was sooooo good. The home made cheese and other tapas weren’t too bad either! So then we took a tour of the farm. The notable animals were horses, piggies, baby lambs, peacocks, lots of doggies, kitties and bunnies. I played with the doggies and kitties and took pictures of them. We went horseback riding and then we climbed up over their hill to a beautiful view of Granada and the mountains. Eric learned how to make a turkey noise. It is surprisingly accurate and that’s why its so funny haha. And then we went in for croissants filled with chocolate by the fire and the lady brought in a basket full of bunnies!! They were 3 weeks old. So cute!! Anyways, I have pictures lol. So then we went to the hotel to drop off our stuff and eat dinner real quick, cause then we had the flamenco show. I totally misinterpreted this flamenco show. I thought it would be in like a concert hall and wed be sitting far away watching them dance. Instead, we hopped on a small bus and got off somewhere and given a tour of the Gitano area of town by a real gypsy! And the view of la alambra and granada at night was so beautiful. Then we got back on the bus and were taken to this small cave like room in a building covered in pictures and chairs lined the walls. So basically every seat was a front row seat. The only way I could describe it was a private flamenco show. The lady was dancing right in front of me, and sometimes I thought she would step on my toes!! I got a glass of sangria too with the show. It was good. The show was just amazing. Then at the end one of the ladies went around asking people to dance. Some of the people in our group went and they were really good. Some people have videos. I wish I would have brought my camera. I would have if I knew we were going to be that close! Anyways, I was super tired. We went back to the hotel and I couldn’t figure out the water to take a shower, but ivonne helped me out. I never knew those knobs randomly on the wall did anything. Anyways, when I got out Stephanie was already sleeping and she was snoring so loud that even my ipod wouldn’t allow me to sleep. Oh well. It was hard waking her up in the morning too. We got to la Alhambra at like 830 am ugh. Stephanie said she was too tired to go, which is like insane cause this is one of the best things in spain. But she ended up coming anyways. I wish people wouldn’t have hyped it up for me. Cause it wasn’t as good as everyone hyped it, but it was still really beautiful. It had amazing views of the city and a lot of cats. I was sad that they were fixing the famous fountain. I can only imagine how beautiful it would have been in that spot but oh well. The gardens there were really beautiful too. Too bad we went in winter, I can only imagine how beautiful they are with all the flowers blooming. It was the first time I had been in a hedge garden too. Then we went to the chapel where Isabel and Fernando are buerried along with felipe el hermoso and juana la loca. It was pretty, but they didn’t allow pictures. Their statues above the tomb were really cool, however below them were only simple coffins. To think that in this tomb there lies 4 people who drastically changed the course of spain’s history. The statues above the altar were really graphic. One was of someone headless and another of someone being cooked alive in a pot. Didn’t really get why it was so graphic but w/e. then we got to see the royal crown and sword. Not quite as impressive as the ones debs and I saw in the UK to say the least, but I guess back then it didn’t need to be as fancy. Then we had a bit of free time so we went to eat and that’s when I realized that I had spent like no money this trip. So I indulged and bought myself a few souvenirs. I got a pretty cup and an amazingly beautiful fan. I saw some bags that really reminded me of vinsu, but I decided ill just get her something in morocco. They will probably be better and cheaper there. But after that we met up and got on the bus to go back home. We watched office space which I haven’t seen in forever and walk the line. At one of the rest stops I had an icecream bar with brownie pieces in it mmm. We got back to Madrid and I didn’t want to go back haha. Life is so good when we go on trips. We get taken out to eat for every meal and everything. Agh. Oh well I guess I have to get back to real life. I haven’t had any homework thus far, but with midterms coming up next week I have to start doing work. Cant believe its midterms already. Oh well. Crap ive been here almost a month and a half. Crazy how the time goes! Tomorrow is march!!