Holy Moly...

HI EVERYONE!

It's hard to even know what to say after so long away! I want to thank everyone for all of your support and apologize that my communication has been sporadic at best. But, in only one month I will be back in the States! 

So. I would LOVE to post a huge update right now, but because of my masterful procrastination skills, I do not have time to do so. I am leaving tomorrow for a nine-day trip! I am going to Berlin, Amsterdam, and Prague with my friends because we have a bunch of days off next week. So, I do not have time to fill you in on all the details of my Spanish adventures recently, or my trip to Marruecos (Morocco) but I will upload a bunch of pictures here to tide you guys over. I promise I will do my best to do a big update when I get back to Madrid on May 5th, but until then this will have to do.

The girls who came to Morocco from Madrid: Neha, Amy, Mica, and me! We were super lucky to have each other and got along great!

Me and Amy in front of the Palace in Fes.

The stingray in the Fes medina was happy to see us.

Carpet co-op there were thousands and thousands of hand-made carpets.

Leather tannery. It was huge and it smelled terrible. But all of the leather products were incredible.

Ceramic store. I couldn't get a picture that accurately captured just how much stuff there was!

Fes medina from the outside. They call it the Mysterious City because you can't see all the chaos that goes on in there!

We spent nearly 60 hours on the bus throughout the week. I basically lived off of muffins and bottled water on bus days.

Oasis in the desert.

Our 4x4 driver (we took 4x4s into the desert) was so nice and stopped to help out some girls who got their car stuck in the desert.

These guys ran the tent camp where we stayed in the desert. They were awesome. They spoke smatterings of 8 languages that they learned from tourists. They made our time out there absolutely wonderful.

Endless Moroccan desert.

The very nice Berber (indigenous) man who took us to see the sunrise was a photography genius.

Sunrise over the desert. Breathtaking!

Camel riding!

Me with my camel, Henry. He was quite agreeable.

Madrid girlies with our director, Nuria (she's in the center).

Adorable son of one of the ladies doing the henna (also, I got awesome henna!)... Mustafa and I played peek-a-boo all afternoon.

Another child of the henna ladies! He was a total sweetie.

O-H-I-O in Africa!

Our tent camp.

As you guys can see, the trip was amazing. So when I get back from this next trip I'll do a big fat update on Morocco, my parents' visit, Kyle's visit, etc. 

Can't wait to see you all soon. Lots of love =)

So much to say...

Hello hello hello, everybody!! I am way overdue on a new post, and every day I put it off the task seemed more and more daunting and I was unable to even start, so here goes. 

Having Mom here last week was awesome. I got to show off my new city, and the best part was that she could just relax, because usually she works so hard making sure our vacations go off without a hitch We spent the week doing a mixture of tourist-type things and just hanging out. I took her to the Royal Palace, Retiro, on a walk around the old parts of the city, and of course la Puerta del Sol (the main plaza). We went to the Prado, an art museum, and a flamenco show as well, two things I hadn't done yet! 

We tried new restaurants every day, and of course sampled the local sangria!  Mom remembered all of the awesome tapas from when we were in Barcelona and was eager to try some more! Tapas are very typical in Spain and consist of small-ish portions of one type of food. For example, one of my favorites is "patatas bravas" which are fried potatoes with a spicy red sauce on them. Many of the tapas, as you can imagine, center around ham and cheese, two of Spain's favorites. Mom had plenty of ham while she was here... I think she may have even been a little sick of it towards the end! She had ham sandwiches, plain ham, ham and cheese in fried breading, etc. But she never got sick of the cheese... in fact, she ordered an entire kilogram of brie (kind of by mistake) at a cheese store. Probably the best food we had all week was at Botin, which is the oldest restaurant in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. They are famous for their "roast suckling pig", so of course we got it! Mom said the outside tasted like bacon, and declared that no bacon would ever live up to it ever again. We also visited the famous Chocolateria San Gines! 


No Madrid vacation would be complete without a little shopping, so of course we checked out all of the trendy boutiques that are all over Madrid. So many of them are right in the area where Mom's apartment was, called Chueca. It is a very lively "barrio", or neighborhood and there are a million restaurants and stores! Mom commented that there were so many shoe stores all over the city she had no idea how any of them stayed in business! Without further ado, here are some of the highlights from Mom's trip!

Mom with Velazquez, one of the most famous Spanish painters.

She loved the churros y chocolate!

Awesome tapas dinner: patatas bravas, sangria, and lots of cheese!

Outside of the Palacio Real.

We went to dinner with my friends. From left to right: Matt, Sinead, Mom, Neha, and Stephen. Matt and Stephen live in Farmington Hills, Sinead is from Kansas City, and Neha is from Houston. Nikki was there too, but she left before the pictures were taken!

Mom wanted to see my school!

Mercado San Miguel, where there are tons of stations and you get tapas to go and sit and eat! We had fantastic calamares and fresh mozzarella.

We took my host mom out to dinner. Now you can finally see Angelina!

Oldest restaurant in the world.

Roast suckling pig.

Mom at Retiro.

Mom and I spent Saturday through Thursday together, with me running around like a crazy person from school to home to Mom's apartment and back again! We had some crazy packed in days, and a few where we spent most of the day just moseying around the city. The only thing that wasn't perfect about the trip was that I had to leave for Granada with my program on Friday and her plane didn't leave Madrid until Saturday. So on Friday Mom went to see Toledo, one of the cities I had visited earlier. She went with a group from Corte Ingles, which is the largest department store in Spain. They of course have a travel agency! I was bummed I couldn't spend that time with her, but I also didn't want to miss Granada!


Alright, well I have lots to say about Granada as well, and I had a day trip this past Saturday to Segovia as well, but I think I will leave that for another post. I'm hoping I will get to it tomorrow, or even tonight if I'm really on a roll, but I have a lot of homework! We're getting into the thick of the semester, and I have lots of papers to write and reading to do. Again, sorry all of that took so long, it's now been more than a week since Mom left and I'm just getting everything up, but you guys will have to bear with me as my work load gets heavy! 


Lots of love to everyone, and I will post again ASAP!

Crazy, crazy, crazy!

HI! I am very sorry for not updating at all for the past week!! It has been insane. I just got back from a weekend trip to Granada, which overlapped with Mom's stay. Needless to say, it was uber fun, exhausting, and exhilarating, but I had no time to write! I have a bunch of homework to do tonight, but I'm going to catch you guys up this week and will post lots of pictures, I promise.

I'll write soon!

Time to be a tour guide!

Hola a todos! I am very excited as I write to you this afternoon, because in two hours I'm leaving to pick Mom up from the airport! But first here is the update I promised you.

First of all, blogging is still a little strange for me. I never know if what I'm writing is interesting or just silly. To add to that frustration, I think of funny little one-liners while I am out completing every day tasks and think "hehe I'll put that in the blog, they'll love it!" and then promptly forget whatever genius comment I had. So I apologize that my posts are never as funny in reality as I intend them to be.

Anyway, on the excursion we had last Saturday (once I had finally caught up with the group) there was a decent amount of time spent on the bus. I spent that time doing what I normally do on long road trips: reading. But I wasn't just reading any book, I was reading the book that Mom and Dad got me for Christmas, which happened to be a graphic novel from the "Trinity" series, featuring Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. So I was reading a huge comic book. The book was awesome and gripping, but it served another purpose: it outed me as the nerd I actually am. While at home I tend to wear superhero shirts often which speak to my thoughts on the issue, here in Madrid I try to dress like  "normal person" on a daily basis. This means no sweats, no work out t-shirts, and more time spent getting ready in the morning. The moral of the story is that when everyone walked past me reading Trinity on the bus, my true identity was revealed (yay for extra superhero joke!). Some of the guys said it definitely earned me more points, and some of the girls looked at me like I was a total weirdo. But all in all it was funny, and the people who I enjoy spending time with were amused. 

While I said I do not wear work out gear on a regular basis anymore, there is one clear exception: when I go running. It is the only time that I leave the house knowing I look completely like an American. I really don't have a choice, all of my t-shirts, sweatshirts, and shorts have either the OSU or NFHS logo on them. Here in Madrid, every single runner is outfitted in the best running gear. Everyone has very nice leggings, windbreakers, iPod armbands, everything you can imagine. No one has logos anywhere, so it is always easy to identify the other American college girls running in the park. Even though I have fallen into a routine and I like the park that I run in, I still HATE running. But joining a gym is too expensive, so I do the best I can. 

Hmmm how about a few random facts to end today's post? Well something that is strange that I've been meaning to tell you guys is that when I add a new post it always shows up in California time, which makes no sense to me. So if you're curious what time something is actually posted, you have to add nine hours to whatever it says under the post.

Something we realized when we went to Paris that made us very sad was that when we travel within the EU we don't get any more stamps in our passports. We were all pumped to get France stamps, but we didn't even have to go through customs! I guess it makes our travel more efficient, but my passport will not reflect all the cool traveling I've done.

And finally a random fact from school: one of my teachers taught us something interesting. During the dictatorship of Franco (1939-1975) it was required that ever female child born be named "Maria", to give homage to Mary the Virgin Mother. As a result, the women born in that generation all have names like "Maria Luisa", "Maria Jose", "Maria de la Paz", "Maria de Pilar", etc. These multiple part names allow them to still be differentiated. For example, my politics professor, who told us about this in the first place, is named "Maria Luisa", and she goes by "Marisa". In fact, I have two professors right now named "Maria Luisa"/"Marisa". 


Well I think that's enough for one day! I'll be leaving in 1.5 hours to go collect Mom from the airport and go to the apartment where she's staying for the week. I'm very excited about that, because it's in my favorite area of the city, Chueca. It is a very trendy district and very fun! I'll be staying with her a few nights this week and I'll try to update at some point to tell all of our fabulous stories! I'm especially excited/nervous for her to meet my host mom, Angelina... I will have to do 100% translating! 


Oh! One more thing, my Chinese roommates left this morning! Yay! One of them didn't even say goodbye to Angelina. How rude!


Hasta luego!

Una gran aventura!

Howdy, everybody! Hope everyone had a marvelous Valentine's Day yesterday! I personally bought a Twix bar from the market and ended up sick because I almost never eat chocolate anymore. Good times!

Anywho, I promised I had a story to tell you. So here we go. I mentioned previously that we had a day trip through ISA this past weekend. It was a trip to some of the pueblos (towns, suburbs) of the Madrid state (or province). We had to meet at 9am at a certain metro station to catch the bus, so Friday night I went out for tapas with some friends, got home around 1am, set my usual three alarms for around 7:30am, and went to sleep.

The next thing I know, the bottom is dropping out of my stomach as I wake up and turn over to look at the clock, which says 8:57am. Of course, my first thought was that it has to be a dream. I'm never this late for anything. I closed my eyes and then looked again... same thing. So. Time to make a decision. These trips are not mandatory, but they are already paid for, so I had the option of staying home and just having a lazy day, or trying to catch up with the trip. ISA gives us a packet before every excursion listing the places we will be seeing, as well as some bus and train schedules in case some moron oversleeps. So I decided to embrace my role as that moron and try to meet the group in our first destination, Aranjuez.


I should mention that things were not exactly stacked in my favor... I was supremely sore because I added lunges to my running/workout routine on Friday afternoon, so walking was a struggle. And the more problematic obstacle was my phone. It was not working, and I could not figure out how to fix it online. I could not make calls or send texts, but I could receive both. 


By the time I had considered all of these things, my friends were slightly worried. They know that I am always 5 minutes early for everything, so at 9:05 Neha finally called me. I told her what had happened and that I was going to catch a train to Aranjuez. I asked her to call me when they were done with the first activity of the day, which was the palace tour, since otherwise I had no way to contact anyone. I got dressed, brushed my teeth, and it was time for my adventure to begin!


Luckily one of the train stations is decently close to my apartment, only one metro stop away. I had never taken one of the Renfe trains before, so that was the first challenge. It went very smoothly, I found the ticket machines, bought my ticket for only 3.25 euros, and I got to the platform right as the train was pulling in, around 10:15. I figured the trip would take about an hour, which would be perfect, because ISA's palace tour was set to end at 11:30. I was reading on the train when my phone rang again. Neha said they were done with the palace tour, but it was only 11. They were headed to the royal gardens next, so I told her to keep an eye out for me, and call me in about 40 minutes if I still hadn't shown up. When the train got to Aranjuez the adventure got a little bit interesting. The train station was not directly in the city, it was a few kilometers away. I had no idea how to get where I needed to go. So I found an off duty bus driver and decided to ask for directions. Time for my Spanish work to pay off! He was super friendly, and told me to wait for his route to start in five minutes and he would pick me up at the bus stop at the other side of the parking lot. So I waited, and when he came around I got on the bus with everyone else and the driver only charged me half fair and had me sit in the front seat so he could tell me where to go. As we were driving I told him what had happened throughout the morning and whatnot and he told me a little bit about the city. He told me there was another bus that would get me closer to the palace, but I would have had to wait another half hour. I told him that I totally didn't mind walking (even though my quads were screaming at me!). 


So my new friend dropped me off and pointed me in the right direction and I finally felt relaxed. Like everything was about to work out, and my silly mistake would be corrected. I got to the palace and started looking for a map of the area so I could figure out where the gardens were. I decided to just go into the ticket office and ask instead. I told them I was with a group of students and asked if they could point me in the right direction for the gardens. They all started to give me worried looks, but one of the security guards said he'd show me. So we went outside and he pointed out an archway and said that was the direction I should go it. Perfect! So right as I walked away Neha called me again. I told her I thought I was right around the corner! Unfortunately, she informed me that they had in fact taken the bus to some gardens that lay outside the city. Oh goody. So at that point I had no idea what to do. I asked Neha to ask advice from Leticia, the ISA rep who was on the trip with them. Leticia said she didn't know how to give me directions there, but I could catch a cab and ask to be taken to the gardens, or I could find a restaurant called "La Rana Verde" (the green frog) and just wait to be picked up. I was worried I wouldn't be able to find them, so I decided to wait.


They said it would be about 45 minutes, so I wandered the grounds of the palace a little bit. It was chilly, but very sunny, so after a while I asked some people for directions and found the restaurant I was getting picked up at and sat on a bench and read! It was very pleasant and relaxing, especially when I saw the bus pulling up to get me! I had made it! Once I got on the bus, I learned a few things. First of all, I don't think any of the ISA people expected anyone to actually try and catch up. I think that if people oversleep they just stay home, because Leticia and Carmen were shocked that I made all the effort. Second of all, about fifteen people had skipped the trip. Third, my plan should have worked. If all had gone as planned, I would have met up with the group at the palace, but half of the palace was under renovation so the tour was shortened. The ISA people were quite upset, because no one had informed them that was the case when they bought the tickets for the group. But everything ended well and then the day proceeded!

We went to Chinchón next, a typical pueblo outside of Madrid. It was small and picturesque and had a fantastic inner plaza that houses a small market during the afternoons. It hosts bull runs in the summer as well! We were given an hour and a half to hang out and eat, so we wandered the streets, checked out a few artisan shops, and then sat in the sun for about 45 minutes and ate "patatas bravas" which are potatoes with some kind of delicious sauce on them! It was nice and sunny and we didn't want to leave. When the time finally came to board the bus, everyone was rather tired. My adrenaline from the morning had certainly worn off by then. We had about a 45 minute ride to our next destination, Alcalá de Henares, and most people just slept (I finished my book, which I will discuss shortly).

There were two main sights to see in Alcalá de Henares: the (possible) birthplace of the writer Miguel de Cervantes, and one of the oldest universities in Spain. The house of Cervantes (author of Don Quixote de la Mancha) was rather underwhelming, especially since no one really knows if he was born there. The university tour was very interesting, but unfortunately the sun was setting and it was very cold and people were mostly ready to go home. 


So that's the story of my Saturday. As I said in my previous post, I had an adventure, made friends, and spoke a lot of Spanish! That was the most rewarding part for me. I was pretty much on my own and I managed to get where I thought I needed to go, get help from native Spanish speakers, and eventually reach my destination! 


So apart from all of that I have some random things to tell you all, but I think I will save them for tomorrow, as this post is already rather long. Here are some pictures from Saturday's trip!

El Palacio Real de Aranjuez.

The adorable pueblo called Chinchón.

Chinchón's central plaza.

Plaza de Cervantes in Alcalá de Henares.

With my favorites, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

One of the oldest universities in Spain, and the oldest that made a "University City", with dorms and whatnot.

Main courtyard of the University. So pretty!

Ok. Well I think that will have to do for tonight. In my next post (tomorrow or Friday) I will give some more details about the university visit, including the story of the university prisons, tell you how I have officially outed myself as a nerd to my friends here (I think it's more of a miracle that I held it in for six weeks!), and discuss our walk through the old parts of Madrid which occurred last week. And I'm sure I'll think of some random bonus facts to throw in as well!

Exciting fact: Mom will be here in less than three days!! 

Toodles!

P.S. I figured out why I didn't wake up on time on Saturday. I managed to set the correct time on all of my alarms, but not actually press "set alarm". FAIL.