SALUDOS DE BARCELONA

it's been awhileee

2009-04-22T21:55:00.002+02:00

I'm sorry I haven't written in awhile. I've been so sooo SO BUSY! These last two weeks in Barcelona are going to give me gray hair. Side note: I actually plucked a gray hair from my head the other morning...sweeeet. Anyway! This week I had a presentation and project due in Psych, a 8 page paper for Sport and Culture, a cumulative final in Macro, a 8 page paper for Religion, andddd a spanish presentation. Adding to my stress levels, that just so happen to be through the roof already, is the fact that I have 4 finals next week. 3, yes T-H-R-E-E, back to back to back on Tuesday, 1 on Wednesday, and then I leave bright and early Thursday morning. I'm pretty sure when I walk off the plane I'm going to immediately collapse and sleep for 17 hours right in the terminal. Hear that, Dad? Bring a tent.

Thankfully, I started my Sport paper two weeks ago, so I just had to put some finishing touches on it this week. My sport paper was an analysis of global sport superstars like Michael Jordan and David Beckham, and whether or not we'll ever see atheletes, like LeBron James and Cristiano Ronaldo, reach that level of superstardom. I handed a rough draft in early and my teacher loved it, so it was good to have that one outta the way. The paper was due on Tuesday and we had to hand it in at the bullfighting ring in Barcelona, where we were having a field trip. I start making my way to the ring (about a 10 minute walk and 5 minute metro ride), and I'm jamming along with my Mp3 player, thinking about how beautiful it is outside, and I say to myself, "It's gonna be a good day." I haven't been having a great past few days so I was just trying to remind myself to stay positive. I'll let you know how that worked out for me. Our class was supposed to meet right outside of the Monumental metro stop. This sounds corny, but I love coming up the escalator from the metro station and out into a new part of the city that I've never seen before. It's kind of like an exciting, big reveal for me when I finally get to the city street. So I'm going up the escalator, theres a blue sky above me, I'm in a good mood, and I'm totally enjoying the new view as I come out of the metro station. Once at the top of the escalator, I go to walk out into the street and put my "best foot forward". Yeahhh. My "best foot" stepped directly into a pile of vomit. I was wearing flip-flops. There was major slippage. It took place infront of my entire sport class. You can guess how my day went. :)

Studying for my Macro final was a pain in the butt x's 487539. Our teacher told us material from the entire semester would be "fair game" and that we should be prepared for anything. So I proceeded to make a study guide from over 250 pages in the book and all of my class notes. I stayed up til 3 am to study Monday night, 1am Tuesday night, and woke up at 7:30am to study this morning. I probably spent about 15-20 hours studying for this thing and I STILL didn't feel confident walking into that exam. I initially had no idea how to do the first question on the test. Great confidence booster. Pissed off at the world, my test, and my Macro teacher, I was incredibly tempted to write, "Your the teacher, why don't you tell me?" as the answer to the question. I ended up skipping to the other two questions on the test and had some sort of idea how to do them. I've learned over the years that if I stare at the test questions long enough, sometimes the answers come to me. Thankfully, that was the case with this test. I was really unsure of everything in the beginning, but ended up leaving with answers I was pretty confident with. Right after the test I went back to our room and looked up answers in the book. All my answers were right as a whole, I just had a few mistakes with minor details. I guess I should just be happy I didn't fail it; lord knows me and economics don't mix well. Oh, and the questions on the test only covered material from half the semester. Thank you Mr. Macro Teacher...I definitely had time to spare to study for things that weren't going to be on the test at all. Let me impart some of my unnecessary knowledge on you. I sincerely hope your taxes increase, causing your incomes level to decrease, as well as your consumption levels, causing a decrease in aggregate demand, thus causing a decrease in YOUR EMPLOYMENT!!!!!!!!!!! :)

The Psych presentation went well. The teacher is insane...probably clinically. I'm afraid to speak in that class because she snaps at you if you get the answer wrong and accuses you of not reading the homework assignments. As you can imagine, that makes class, especially presentations, pretty tense and scary. Our group did well though. She said she liked it and actually cracked a smile. We'll see how we actually do though. Last presentation/project, one group got a 100 on their presentation and a 65 on their project. Now, the presentation is based on the project, so how one can get a 35 point difference on two things that are essentially the same, is beyond me. I try not to question. My other presentation, for Spanish, was supposed to be Monday, so I worked my nerves up nicely for that one. Monday comes and my teacher tells me I'm going Wednesday. Alright..I'll take it. Today rolls around and I'm sweating bullets again, reciting my entire 6 minute speech outloud on the street, like a crazy woman, as I walked to main campus. I get there, get up to the front of the classroom to do my presentation, and try to load my flash drive to open my powerpoint. Just my luck. For some reason unbeknownst to me, my powerpoint would not open on this computer. Thankfully, my teacher is the nicest lady ever and said I can go on Monday. MONDAY?!?! I just want to get this freaking thing over with. But nooo, I will anxiously wait for Monday to roll around so I can finally be done with this thing. Lord knows I don't need the stress. Presentations in English make me nervous enough. Presentations in Spanish? Let's just say: Quiero orinar en mis pantelones. Translation: I want to pee my pants.

So what's up for me this weekend? Studying. Studying. Writing a paper. Studying. Going out at night. Studying. CAN'T WAIT! I can't believe it's my last weekend in Barcelona. I can't believe I'm going to be spending 80% of it studying. Oh well, so it goes. If I don't blog much the next week, I hope you can understand. I love and miss you all. BUT DON'T YOU WORRY...I'll be taking the States by storm in approximately 7 days.

See you all soon! :)

Pictures from Santorini<3

2009-04-15T21:50:00.005+02:00

Spring Break - Santorini

2009-04-15T18:24:00.004+02:00

**Please excuse any and all typos in this novel. It only took me two hours to write...it would probably take me an hour to revise. So forgive me when I don't! :)

Our ferry for Santorini left at 7:30 am and you had to be at Piraeus Port by 6:30am. It takes about a half hour to get there by metro...aka we had to get up around 5am. I wouldn't say I enjoy waking up that early, but I like to think I'm a trooper and suck it up. Sara, Jess, and I were all up and ready to go by 5:30 with no problems. We didn't exactly feel safe taking the 20 minute walk to the metro station, so we decided it would probably be best to take a cab even though it was really close. At first, the cab drivers didn't understand what we were trying to say. I thought communicating in Spain was difficult. Hah! It's ten times worse when you don't know the language AND the country has an entirely different alphabet. We couldn't even attempt to pronounce words. A can of Fanta soda...as in F-A-N-T-A...was written as NBN in Greek. HOW DO YOU GET "FANTA" OUT OF N-B-N?!?! I got a good chuckle out of that. After we were finally able to convey to the cab drivers where we needed to go, they were hesitant to take us because it was so close. Finally, one agreed to take us. We're all in the cab and about aout 2 seconds before we arrive at the metro stop, I notice that the fare counter thinger-ma-jigger isn't on. I couldn't even begin to say "turn it on" in Greek, so I had to just sit there. We kind of motioned the question "How much?" and the driver told us we owed him 5 Euros. Now I was ready to drop kick this guy on the spot. We were in the cab for no more than 2 minutes. There is no way on God's green earth that a 2 minute cab ride cost us 5 Euro. A 7 minute cab ride, through multiple blocks, costs me about 5 Euro in Barcelona. I swear to goodness, the next cab driver who rips me off is going to get smacked side the head. I wish I was kidding.

We got on the metro and made it to the port without a problem. We were the only idiots who actually showed up an hour before departure time, so we had a lot of free time on the ferry. I've only been on crummy ferries before and this one was SWEET. It was decorated nice and had comfy seats and what not. Having only gotten like 8 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours, I zonked out for the first 3 1/2 hours of the 5 hour ferry trip to Santorini. Unbeknownst to us, the ferry made multiple stops on various Greek islands. We had assumed that the ferry would only take 5 hours from Piraeus Port to the port in Santorini; Thira. Jess had told our villa owner that we would be at the port for pickup at 12:30. WHOOPS! We didn't get there til 1:30, but it wasn't really a problem because the entire ship was late for their pickups too. Our villa owner's name is George and he was freakin' awesome. Horrible driver, but other than that, he was incredibly helpful with tips of places to go and places to eat, etc. By the end of the week we were pretty good buddies with him. As I mentioned, dear George wasn't exactly the best driver in the world. In order to get from the port to Fira, the main town in Santorini where we were staying, you have to drive up this HUGE cliff on these incredibly windy roads. I have never been more scared for my life. Ok, slight exaggeration, but it was bad!

It took us about 10 minutes to get to Fira and our villa; Villa Evgenia (we never really did learn how to pronounce that...). Our villa was so freakin' cute and SO cheap. It was pretty much a house that had multiple rooms in it. But it was more like a hotel than a hostel. It only cost us 15Euro a night to stay there. I found that amazing since I typically paid around 20 a night for hostels in the various countries I've visited. We had ordered a room for three. It was a nice little surprise when we walked in and saw two beds: one double, one twin. Sara and Jess took the big bed and I took the twin. My bed had the squeakiest bed spring I have ever head. I would roll over in the night and scare myself from the noise. Other than the noisy bed spring, the room was perfect! We dropped off our stuff and decided to just walk around Fira that day.

We were totally starving so we wanted to grab some lunch in the town square. The location of our hostel was perfect. It was only a 5 minute walk to get to the town center where all the restaurants, shops, bars, and clubs were. We grabbed some lunch, I had pork steak. MMmm! We walked around to the shops after for a few hours and did some souvenir shopping. At that point we were all exhausted and made an executive decision to head back to the villa to take a nap. A solid decision if you ask me. After the power nap we all showered and got ready to go out for dinner. We went to this cute little restaurant called the Roof Garden. I know I'll sound like an idiot but I had pork steak again. IT WAS JUST SO GOOD THE FIRST TIME! I couldn't help myself. After dinner we acted like total grandmas and went home to go to bed and rest up for the next day.

We decided to do an excursion our first day. George suggested a few to us and we went with a half day excursion. It included a boat ride out to an island that is a volcano and swimming in some hot springs. This excursion left from the Old Port in Santorini and the only way down is either by foot, cable car, or...donkey. Foot is really only an option on the way down because you literally go down a cliff and there are 600 steps. George suggested the cable car on the way down and donkey on the way up. The first sounded good to me...the latter I was a little hesitant about. We took the cable car down to the port and got on our ship. It was modeled after an old pirate ship, but instead of sails it had a motor. The boat ride only took about 10 minutes and the weather was absolutely perfect! We got to the volcano and we were told that we had an hour to get up and back. Oh, no biggie, right? WRONG! I know you will all be proud of me when I tell you that I climbed a volcano in flip-flops. Yes, flip-flops. Listen, my packing skills have not progressed as they should have, but I'm getting there. I guess my mind just doesn't work that way. When people travel to Santorini, you have the majority who will think, "Ah, yes. Vacation = lots of walking... I should pack sneakers." Then theres me who thinks, "Santorini. Ah, yes. Above 50 degrees?...FLIP FLOPS!" I'm an idiot, I know. It wasn't the most pleasant experience but I made it up the volcano...with time to spare. Only the view from the top would have been worth the 40 minute hike, but seeing the crater was pretty cool too. We took some pictures of the view and the volcano when we looked at our watches. We had about 10 minutes to get our butts down the mountain it took us 40 minutes to get up. You can probably imagine that there was a lot of accidental sliding down the rocky paths. We made it back to the ship in time, thank goodness, and headed off the hot springs. I was pretty excited for this part of the excursion. First, I found it pretty cool to be able to say I've swam in the Aegean Sea. And then there's the fact that its pretty cool to be swimming in the ocean and its actually warm. The springs were in this cove that the ship couldn't pull into, so you had to swim about 200-300 ft to get them. Now, I figured the swim in the ocean to the springs would be a little chilly, but I did NOT think that it would be downright FRIGID. The guy who was in charge of our trip was pushing people into the water who wanted to go to the springs. You could tell by their screams that the water was a bit cold. Sara was the first to go in. Being a smart girl, she knew she had to keep a calm and straight face when Jess and I asked if it was freezing. She said, "Oh no, its really not that bad at all". Jess decided to go for it and jump in. Her leap was followed by blood-curdling screams. "NOT BAD AT ALL" MY FOOT! So poor Hannah is sitting there on the deck not wanting to be the loser who doesn't go in. Just as I'm working up my confidence to jump into the Artic, I hear some screams. An old man who jumped in totally went into shock and was pretty much drowning. AH COOL! That did wonders for my motivation to jump in. I had to say, "Do it. YOU WON'T!" to myself a few times before I finally lept in. Worst. Decision. Of. My. Life. I have never been SO cold in my ENTIRE life. Only 21 years, I know, but you get the point. I felt like I was swimming in a pool of ice cubes. I swam SO freakin' fast toward the hot spring, just waiting to swim into warmth. I kept saying to myself, "Keep going Hannah. Only a little further!" Yeah, that moment never came. I contemplated suing the excursion company for false advertisements. We did not swim in hotsprings. We swam in "20-degrees-warmer-than-the-ocean-water-but-still -40 degrees" springs. After like 5 minutes of working up the confidence to re-enter the colder ocean water, I finally made a mad dash for the ship. It took me about 30 minutes to regain feelings in my body. It was the coldest 10 minutes of my life but a very cool experience. No pun intended.

After the hotsprings the excursion was over and we headed back to the port. It was time for another executive decision. This time it involved the mode of transportation we would take up the cliff back to Fira. We went with Donkeys. Before I got on mine I was just thinking about how I'm probably going to crush this poor little fellow. I was wrong. They are ALOT bigger and stronger than they look. I got a cute little white furred one; he seemed like a sweetheart. WRONG AGAIN! I rode the anti-christ up that mountain. I got on, they slapped his butt, and the freakin' donkey started BUCKING UP THE MOUNTAIN. I, naturally, start screaming at the top of my lungs. Which caused the donkey's owner to scream in broken English, "NO LOUD! QUUUUIIIIET!!!!!!!" I had to cover my mouth to keep the screams from coming out as my donkey continued to sprint up the moutain. As we're rounding corners, that lead to steep edges and hundred foot drops, wayyy to fast for my liking. I'm thinking to myself, "This would be how you die, Hannah. You WOULD go flying off a cliff with a donkey." Seriously, that would have been a horrible "Hannah Moment", but definitely one of my finest. After about two minutes of sprinting my donkey decided to slow down and let the rest of the pack catch up with us. He proceeded to follow this brown donkey up the moutain. This was fine by me because, unlike my donkey, this one believed in obey speed limits and was walking at a nice pace. NOT fine by me when this donkey raised his tail in the air, inches from my legs, as if he was going to...relieve himself. I let out another scream and was immediately yelled at again. "NO LOUD! BE QUUIIIIEEETTTT!" Now, this probably sounds like the donkey ride from hell, but it wasn't totally horrible. The view during the entire ride was looking straight out into the port and it was absolutely AMAZING! It took the donkeys about 15 minutes to get to the top, so it was pretty nice to take in the view and not have to climb another mountan in flops. We were in the last straight away of the trail and I was finally able to loosen my death grip on the saddle. I swear my donkey hated me. With my feet firmly stuck into the stirrups and saddle, I wasn't able to move them until we came to a complete stop. My donkey walked right up to the brown donkey and I can already see where this is going. I'm trying to move my feet, mainly my knees, out of the stirrups and out of the way. Unable to do it in time, my donkey had parked himself in such a way that my kneecap was firmly planted in this brown donkey's BUTT. After quite the struggle, I am finally able to remove my knee from the donkey's BEHIND. I had some donkey excretion and hair on my kneecap, thankfully I was wearing pants. At this point, I can only laugh. Seriously Hannah?!?! I would get the donkey that hates his job. I would get the donkey that force my knee into the ass...of an ass. I came to the conclusion that my donkey was just that, an ass.

I found the whole donkey riding experience hilarious. It's definitely something I will remember the rest of my life; for some good and not so good reasons. After our trek up the mountain we decided to check out one of the famous beaches in Santorini, Perissa, a black sand beach. The bus schedule in Santorini is ridiculous, they only come about once every 45 minutes. We really had no idea when to get off and the guy spoke no English, so when we heard "BEACH!" we bolted for the door. Yeah, wrong beach. In fact, this wasn't even a beach...it was a rock and some restaurants that spanned a length of about 40 feet. We figured the bus would be back again in 45 minutes so we had to make the most of it. We walked around the pier...sadly it was 5 feet long, so that was done pretty quickly. Then we opted to find a nice place to lay down our towels and sit in the sun while we waited for the next bus. The flattest, softest surface available was a concrete slab. Amazing "beach", let me tell you. After about 40 minutes we decided to walk the 10 feet to the bus stop. We did NOT want to miss this bus. We got there in plenty of time though, believe me. The bus didn't show up for another 2 hours. I, Hannah Kinzelmann, as well as Jessica Levy and Sara Bonomo, fell asleep on the cement in a parking lot by the ocean. Probably my classiest moment to date. Adding to the splendor of our afternoon, was the fact we all got scorched while we slept. The bus finally came and we sprinted onto it. Two stops later was our intended destination...it was beautiful. This whole day in general just makes me laugh when I look back on it. I really did have an awesome day though. Riding up a mountain with an angry donkey is pretty awesome. Falling asleep in a parking lot in paradise is fine by me. There were some interesting moments but it was definitely a solid day. After our 2 hour tour of a rock/parking lot we went back to the villa to get ready for dinner.

Again, dinner was absolutely fantastic. Greek food is hands down the best food I've encountered in my European travels. I wanted to TRY everything, but I had to refrain as much as possible. In order to keep my consumption under control, I only allowed myself to get appetizers every other day. It was THAT good. During dinner we decided that we wanted to check out the beaches on Santorini the next day. There are probably a million stores in Fira that rent ATV's to people for the day. Since no beaches were in walking distance we thought it would be a good idea to rent some ATV's and drive to the beaches. After our debacle earlier that day, we really didn't want to sit in parking lots waiting for buses all day. Plus, we would be able to knock out more beaches if we traveled on our own. The island seemed simple enough to navigate so we decided to give it a whack.

After dinner we had to take this little pathway home to our villa and a stray dog started following us. He was this cute little german shepard and followed us all the way back to our villa. When we got back it was pretty late, so reception was shut down and what not. We thought it would be funny to walk him into the little lobby area like he was ours. So we did that, he came in and laid down, and we're like...OH NO! So we tried to get him out and we were able to, but then he would just follow us back in. We would run down the street, he would follow and sprint ahead. When he wasn't looking we would turn around and run back to the villa. He would hear us and come running back too. FINALLY, we made it back to the villa and shut the door before he had a chance to sprint and catch up with us. We went in our room only to hear the sound of a dog outside our door. We open it up and see that the dog has opened the door and let himself on in. We are cracking up at this point and begging him to leave. NOPE! We fell in love with this poor thing, so of course we had to give him a name. Another girl, named Emily, was with us when we were brainstorming. We came up with JESH!..the first letters of all our names. We're all sitting there in the lobby thinking of how we can get him out. We're calling for him and he's just laying there...falling asleep. It was precious. We went into our room after trying to get Jesh to leave for about an hour. We were very unsuccessful...he laid in the lobby for about another hour before he decided to leave. Sadly, we didn't see Jesh again.

We were up and out the door by 9 that morning to rent the ATV's. We found a little place that rented us the ATV's for only 10 Euro for 24 hours; a bargain if you ask me. We decided to head to Perissa Beach, our intended destination from the previous day, the black sand beach. The drive on the ATV took about 35 minutes. I was SO SO SO SO SO scared when we started off but 2 minutes into I was having the freaking time of my life. I'm riding on an ATV, on the most beautiful island ever, heading to a beach. DOES IT GET ANY BETTER?! Probably...but you get the point. I cruised and sang at the top of my lungs the entire way. Perissa Beach was beautiful. The sand is more gray than black, but it was awesome to see. We sat on the beach for a little. It was only in the low to mid sixties the entire time we were there, but the sun was SO intense. After Perissa we wanted to drive to Vilchadi Beach. Every single moment we were driving, even with a full tank, I was terrified that I was going to run out of gas because I didn't know how quickly the gas went. After Perissa I made everyone pull over so I could put a stick in my tank to see how much gas I had left because my gas gauge didn't work. I had like 3/4 of a tank left, so that should've put me at ease for a few minutes. We went to go and Jess couldn't start her ATV. Ironically...she was out of gas. We were in the middle of nowhere and thankfully we found someone who pointed us to the nearest gas station so we could get some gas to bring back to her ATV. About 45 minutes later we were finally able to all get going and head to Vilchadi. This was another black sand beach but it had some pretty neat cliffs behind it. It kind of looked like you were on a different planet. You'll have to see pictures to understand. We laid on the beach for a few hours and just relaxed. After about 3 hours, and the scorching of my face, we decided to head back to the villa and rest before dinner. I, in my infinite wisdom, set my ATV key in the sand when we arrived. And of course, I couldn't find it when it was time to go. FEAR NOT! I found it after a 5 minute frantic search. So we were all ready to go and ready to pull out of the parking lot anddddddddd...Sara's ATV won't start. She was not out of gas. It just randomly stopped working. Sweet work ATV company. Over to save the day, came a short, fat, creepy, little man named Sampson. He pretty much pushed us out of the way to try and get the ATV started, but to no avail. He called up the ATV company for us to let them know where to go to come fix it. There was going to be about a 10 minute wait til they got there so we had no choice but to chill with Sampson. He kept saying to us, "It fine. NO PROBLEM *insert creepy laugh here*". He was totally messing with us and we were totally messing with him. It was hilarious. We learned alot about Sampson in our 15 minute chill-session. Here's what he told us: He has driven the same moped for 35 years and it has never needed any gas. He ate only fruit for two years straight...stawberries and bananas to be specific. And my personal favorite, he is 45 years old but has somehow managed to live on Santorini for 50 years. Ohhh Sampson. The company finally came after about 20 minutes and made a quick fix on the ATV. We bid Sampson farewell and drove off into the sunset...literally. What an interesting and memorable encounter.

We decided to rent the ATV's again the next day, Easter. We wanted to knock out the other two beaches: Red Beach and Kamari Beach. We went to Red Beach first and you had to climb a huge mountain to see it, and climb down a mountain to get to it. It was freezing out because it was so early so we just took pictures and headed to Kamari. We figured we would just stay there for the day and have a relaxing Easter. Kamari was on the other side of the island and we had some minor difficulties getting there. We drove in the entirely wrong direction for about 20 minutes before someone finally sent us the right way. We had to take some really small, rocky roads that were in the middle of nowhere to get there. Normally, the ATV order of driving was Jess (because she knew the directions), Sara (because she was a grandma driver), and Me (because I needed to keep Sara moving faster than a snail's pace). For some reason when we headed to Kamari I took the lead on one road, followed by Jess then Sara. Now, I have to backtrack a little so you can understand the next part of this story. Jess was a little spastic when it came to driving the ATV. If there was a big bump or pothole in the road she would kind of panic and jerk the wheel. We tried telling her that she can't do that, that it's an ATV...as in ALL TERRAIN vehicle, but it still happened. In the 24 hours of our ATV posession, Jess had managed to go off the road twice; strangely enough, it was in the same place. The first incident, on the first day, she just had a few scrapes on her legs but the second time, on the second day of our ATV rentals, she cut open the top of her big toe. It was bleeding pretty badly so we had to go find some bandaids and disinfectant stuff. We found the bandaids but couldnt find any cream so we went with....a bar of soap. OK! Now back to the story. I was leading the way on the road to Kamari beach and it was a really rough road filled with potholes. As I'm driving, probably like 100 ft ahead of Jess, I noticed some HUGE potholes. I want to panic but I just drove through them smoothly but I'm thinking to myself, "Ohhhh no. Jess is gonna panic and this is not going to be good." So I immediately slow down to tell Jess not to jerk her wheel and to go through them smoothly. As I'm turning around to warn her, Jess sees the pothole, totally whips her wheel to avoid it the moment she's about to drive through it. She hits a 2 ft cement wall on the side of the road and her and the ATV flip into the air. Both Jess and the ATV flip into a tree and the ATV lands on top of her. And then she fell out from underneath the ATV, off of the wall, and back into the road. My heart seriously stopped. I immediately slammed on my breaks and ran back to where she was. I'm wanting to panic because her legs are all covered in blood and her hand looks like its broken, but I was just trying to keep her calm so she wouldn't freak out. I took my water bottle and her towel and tried washing off some of her cuts so it didn't look so bad to her. The ATV was still on the wall, in the tree and it was spewing gas....soooo we turned that off. Jess was as ok as she could be at the moment. She didn't go unconcious or anything, thank God. There was just a lot of blood and her hand was really injured. She still wanted to go to the beach. We we were like, "JESSICA! Your hand is the size of a boxing glove, you are covered in blood, and we have a totaled ATV. WE ARE NOT GOING TO THE BEACH!" Then she really started crying. I'm trying to crack jokes to make her laugh. I told her I turned around, saw it all unfold before my eyes, and that I was honored to have been able to see the first triple axel, double salchow, ever completed on an ATV. She was incredibly brave and was able to stay relatively calm and collected while we were waiting for someone to drive by. Cars didn't drive by very often because we were in the middle of nowhere. Finally, after a few had passed, one finally stopped. The guy spoke Greek and English. He called the ATV place for us to tell them there was an accident and where they could get the bike. Jess was calmer at this point and one of the guys offered to drive her to the hospital in Fira. She went with him and Sara and I sped the entire 20 minute drive into Fira. They took xrays and her hand wasn't broken. She went to the hospital again here in Barcelona to make sure. It's not broken but they did end up putting a cast on her. It was a really scary moment on the trip but I think we all handled it well. We all kind of look back on it now and laugh. Seriously, who crashes an ATV into a tree in a field full of GOATS?!?! We do :)

We laid low the rest of that night so Jess could ice and rest. We went out for one last dinner and it was FANTASTICCCC! I had chicken that was stuffed with spinach and cheese with grilled vegetables and rice on the side. It was an emotionally draining day and Sara and I slept good that night; Jess not so much. The next day we needed to be at the port to leave on our ferry back to athens by 4:00. We returned 2 of the 3 ATV's the next morning and went back to the villa to check out. After checkout we went into town, got some crepes for lunch, and walked around the shops because souvenirs were still needed. We headed back to the villa around 2:30 because George was going to give us a ride down to the port. We got a picture with George and he went on this way after he dropped us off. We had about an hour and a half before we had to board so we laid in the sun and then had some lunch. I got a gyro for my last meal in Greece.

On the ferry I was the unlucky one who had to sit alone with random people. My seat happened to be at a table for six. Only one of the seats was taken by the creepiest, wormiest, scariest man I have ever seen in my life. The entire time he just started at me. I would look at him, catch him staring, and he would laugh to himself, keep staring, and wink. I was soo repulsed. Repulsion increased when he proceeded to lay down on the seats with his head below the table so he could get a shot of my legs. I covered up with a sweater and he sat back up. At this point I'm thinking that this is unbelievable. After about an hour and a half of him just staring at me, I kid you not, he starts rubbing himself under the table. After a few minutes, he gets up to go to the bathroom, which is in my peripheral vision. I'm not looking directly at him but I can see that he is just standing outside the door. And I'm thinking why isn't this guy going inside. He opens the door a little, like hes about to go in, and pauses again. I turn and look at him and he gets this disgusting smile on his face and motions for me to come into the bathroom with him. I shot him the dirtiest look I have ever sent someones way. If I had a cannon, I probably would have taken it out and shot it at him. He finally went in and I proceeded to grab my bags and move to an empty seat nearby. If one person told me I couldn't move I was going to flip. Move the pervert at my table and MAYBE I'll sit there. The men here are unbelievable. SERIOUSLY EUROPE!??!? Thankfully, he got off at the next stop and that was the end of that. Not the best ending of my trip, but hey...it happens.

The trip back was long. Ferry, 4 hour wait in an airport, 3 am flight home, back to the Residencia in Barcelona at 6:14 am. But I wouldn't have traded it for anything. I had the time of my LIFE. I did NOT want to leave. Athens was awesome but I absolutely loved Santorini. It was so beautiful, people were so nice, and I had such a good time. I ate gyros, I swam in the freezing ocean, I climbed a volcano, I had memorable encounters with Jesh & Sampson, I relaxed on beaches, I drove an ATV, and I freakin' rode a donkey. I am so blessed to have been able to go on this trip and I really am so incredibly thankful for the opportunity. This is seriously a week that I will remember the rest of my life. I had the best Spring Break everrr. I guess really, really, REALLY long story short... I loved Greece.

The End.

I love and miss you all so much!<3 15 days!!!!!!!!!!!

Pictures from Athens

2009-04-15T16:26:00.004+02:00

Spring Break - Athens

2009-04-15T12:55:00.003+02:00

I'm back! We got back from our trip at about 6:15am on Tuesday morning. As you could probably guess, I was exhausted. Vacation for 7 days and 12 hours of traveling back to Barcelona reallllyyyy took its toll on me. BUT! I had the most amazing spring break EVER! I didn't want it to end and I absolutely LOVE Greece.

The night before the trip I spent about 3 hours figuring how to pack 7 days worth of clothing into a small duffle bag. Now this is more complicated than it sounds. I had to pack a towel, a hairdryer, outfits for the day...and outfits for the night. I opted to go with the rolling method for my shirts because they were thin and the folding method for my pants. It probably weighed about 20lbs but I did manage to get all of my clothing in the small bag. I managed to get to bed around 1 am the night before we left and I ACTUALLY fell asleep. Around 4:30am I woke up to a HUGE thunderstorm and thought to myself...SERIOUSLY BARCELONA??!?! I was just talking with some of my friends that it's only rained in Barcelona once while we've been here and we've never had any thunderstorms. Of course, the night I need to get some rest, there is a two hour long thunderstorm. I tried to sleep through it but it was so loud. I ended up getting up around 5:15 and watching the end of the NCAA Championship Game online (UNC FREAKIN' WON!!!!!!!!! WEEEUUUU). When that ended I took my sweet ole time getting ready to leave, seeing as we weren't leaving til around 8am. When 8am rolled around, we rounded up the troops (just me, Jess, and Sara) and headed to the airport.

Flights went off without a hitch, thank goodness. We arrived in Athens, Greece around 2 and got to the hostel around 3. Walking around the city part of Athens, I was really kind of sketched out. It's very dirty and kind of scary, even during the day. I'm thinking to myself, I really don't want a crummy hostel. After walking around for about 10 minutes we arrived to the street that our little hostel was on, turn the corner, and waaaa-LA! Absolutely BEAUTIFUL neighborhood. Our hostel was in this little section of Athens that kind of seemed like "Old Athens". If I had to compare it to anything I would probably say like the street and small neighborhoods you always see pictures of in Italy. We checked into our hostel and found out we had one roommate, an 18 yr old boy, who has been backpacking in Europe since January. I was in total awe of him. Only 18 and he has gone to nearly every country in Europe, all by himself, just winging it as he goes. Definitely an experience of a lifetime for him. He was real cool and we talked for a little about his travels. He was only there for one night because he was leaving for Prague the next day. The following day we had a guy from Germany, who spoke English, and was in Athens to give a presentation for his PhD. He was nice too. We lucked out with our roommates, thank goodness.

The first day in Athens, we only had a few hours left of daylight after we settled into the hostel, so we decided just to walk around and explore. We walked by the Temple of Zeus but it was closed for the day. You could still see it from the street, so we were able to get some pictures of it. Traffic in Greece is CRAZY! We spent literally 10 minutes trying to cross a street to get back to our hostel neighborhood. We walked around there to find a place to get some dinner. This proved to be quite difficult because there were literally like 200 restaurants in that area. It was the perfect location. We got recruited by this flamboyant guy and decided to eat a meal at his place. I went with Pork Souvlaki for my first meal because they didn't have gyros. DELICIOUS! I know I'll say it again after this but Greek food is absolutely AMAZING. I have never eaten so much in my life. After dinner we walked around some more in our neighborhood and I did a little souvenir shopping. Stuff was relatively cheap for the most part. The really beautiful things were an arm and a freakin' leg though, but I still managed to get some good stuff for people. I have so many gifts I'm not going to be able to remember what I got for who. Oh well, there will be a time and place for figuring that out. Anyway, after walking around for a bit, we decided to get some dessert. I figured HEY, I'm on vacation, I can treat myself to some dessert. We went to a little gelato place and I had 2 scoops of gelato: cookies & cream and black berry. It was really good and I loved the way they served it. They brought the scoops out in this pretty bowl with sparklers stuck into the scoops of ice cream. I tried to get a picture. Naturally, with my luck, right as my camera took a picture, my sparkler went out. We decided to call it an early night because I hadn't slept at all the night before and we had a big day planned ahead for tomorrow. We got a map and made a plan of attack for our full day in Athens. Our hostel was in the PERFECT location; it was close to everything.

The next day we decided we wanted to be up and out of the hostel by 9:30. First, we decided to go to Acropolis, which was only a 2 minute walk from our hostel. I was so excited to visit Acropolis, it's really what I think of when I think of visiting Greece. We paid our admission and proceeded to hike up the freakin' MOUNTAIN. Little did I know, we would be doing a LOT of climbing during our vacation. The view was spectacular on the way up. When we got the top it was pretty crowded, but not too bad. I think it was smart to go early because I can imagine it being absolutely packed later in the day. Acropolis is basically the name given to the area that holds other ruins and the famous Parthenon. When I walked into the main entrance of the Acropolis I was just in awe. It wasn't the most beautiful thing I've ever seen but I just couldn't believe I was there. In moments like that, I can't help but think, how the hell did I get so lucky? The things I've seen, the places I've been, it truly is incredible. I paused for a moment before walking around, just taking everything in, and it sounds stupid, but I was just thinking to myself over and over...I'm standing infront of the freakin' PARTHENON! Woooo! So anyway, we walked around to the different ruins, saving the Parthenon for last. Unfortunately, there was a lot of scaffolding on the one main side of the Parthenon. You still could see it from other angles, but it would have been nice to be able to see it in its entirety without the scaffolding. The Parthenon is larger than life, and SO beautiful. I was walking around and looking at the detail on it. I find it fascinating to think of how this thing was built so long ago, and is still here today. We were up at Acropolis for about an hour, just walking around and taking pictures. We decided to walk down and head to the next point on our map; the National Garden.

The National Garden was only about a 10-15 minute walk from Acropolis. Walking around Athens, you notice very quickly that they have a stray dog problem. We asked someone about it and they said that its really common to see strays everywhere. The majority of them are well fed though. Apparently in Greece they will take strays and give them their shots. If a stray is wearing a collar it means they have their shots, if not, it means they haven't recieived them. After I heard that, I couldn't help but laugh because I had seen a bunch of dogs with collars up at Acropolis (as I mentioned before, its on top of a mountain) just hanging out in the sun. I wanna say to the dogs...little buddy, do you know where your sitting?!?!? Your chilling in the presence of greatness! Haha...but they really have no clue. I found it kind funny. We eventually got the National Garden and we were quite famished becaused we had not eaten breakfast before we went to the Acropolis. This guy was selling some pretzels and doughnuts outside of the gate of the park, so we decided to get these HUGE fried dough donuts to hold us off til lunch; they were only .70 cents. Probably the cheapest food I bought all week. Donuts in hand, we walked around the garden. I'm glad we went because it's a big part of Athens, but I really wasn't impressed. The Garden had a TON of potential and I can see it being absolutely gorgeous, but it really wasn't. It wasn't well kept, weeds everywhere, and just kind of messy in general. I'm thinking maybe because it's only April they hadn't really spiffed it up for the season. But like I said, I'm glad we went because you can't really go to Athens without seeing the National Garden.

After the National Garden we headed to the next stop on our own personal tour of Athens; the Olympic Stadium for Track. I'm not sure if I'm right, but I think the Olympics were held in Athens in 2004, so the stadium was relatively new. It was cool to see it and imagine all of the athletes there. I snapped a few shots and we moved on. On the way to our next stop, the Royal Palace, my dear friend Jessica got pooped on by a pigeon. We were just walking and talking and all of the sudden she just screamed. As you probably know, I'm a very easily scared and generally jumpy person. So when I heard her scream, naturally, I screamed too. Little did I know, she had only be pooped on...poor thing. I washed it off her arm, shirt, and bag with some water and a map so she could be a little clean until we could find a place where she could wash herself. We finally found a little cafe that gave her some napkins to wash up with. They kept saying, "It's good luck, it's good luck!". HAH! Maybe it's good luck, but it certainly sucked. Poor Jess. After she cleaned up we continued on toward the palace. Now, we thought this was a place you could tour and take pictures and what not. We couldnt finds the main entrance so we asked one of the guards which way to head and if admission was free. He pointed the way, said that admission was free and proceeded to laugh at us; we didn't know why. Turns out, the President of Greece lives at the Royal Palace. We probably looked like total idiots asking if we could get in for free. We had a little chat with another guard at the main gate. He was the one who told us about the President, who just so happens to be a she, and the fact that she is currently living in the Palace. We joked around with him saying, "Oh yea, she invited us for lunch". He got a kick out of us and eventually we decided it's probably not a good idea to just chill like idiots outside of the Presidents House. Interesting side note, you might think its bad that the poor guards at Buckingham Palace have to wear a giant fuzzball on their head...well the guards in Greece have to wear skirts, wools socks, and shoes with a giant PUFFBALL on the tip. STYLING!

After that we decided to head to Monastaki Square to find some lunch and this flea market. This is where I got my first REAL GREEK GYRO. Now, gyros just so happen to be my favorite food, bu they have to be GOOD gyros. The fake, gross ones they serve at school are a sorry excuse for a gyro. I'm very particular about the ones I eat, and as it stands, the only ones I eat and like are at the State Fair...aka I only get them once a year. So, as you can imagine, I was STOKED to be able to have real gyros. When my gyro came it was all on a plate, not on a pita, which kind of confused me. Apparently that's how gyros are really served when they aren't "To-Go". It was absolutely DELICIOUS! You'll be pleased to know I had 3 on the trip. After lunch we walked around the square, the flea market, and another some other streets. We were in the main part of Athens and I must say, it's really dirty. I wasn't really loving it, but I did absolutely love the area we were staying in. So I guess we kind of were lucky in that regard.

We decided to pick up our ferry ticket to Santorini the day before we left. We had to be there at like 5:30 in the morning and we didn't think the place would be open so wanted to make sure we had them in our hand the day before. We trekked out to the port and like total idiots, we did not bring the directions to agency we had to pick our tickets up from. We were all optimistic thinking, "Oh yea, we'll recognize it, there can't be too many". Right? WRONG! There were 56,824 ferry ticket sale stores on the main street. We spent about 20 minutes just pacing the street trying to see something that look familiar. We found this one store that suggested the store we needed was across the street, so we crossed the street to see. It wasn't the right store, but this store suggested we cross back to the other side of the street and try another store. Let me just say, we probably crossed that street 45 times in the hour it took for us to find the place. Finally, after a great deal of ridiculousness, we got our tickets. I'm really happy we got them the day before because we passed by the store early in the morning walking to our ferry and it wasn't open...aka we would have had no tickets to Santorini. That night, we got dinner and decided to go to this bar called Bretto's. It's pretty cool inside; all the walls have a light behind them and they are entirely covered with liquer bottles which are pretty colors. It's like this giant glowing, rainbow room when you walk in. I got a glass of raspberry liquer...it was disgusting. I've come to the conclusion I just don't like the taste of alcohol...oh well. After that we walked around a little more and did some more souvenir shopping. We had to call it a REALLY early night because we need to get up at 5am to head to Piraeus Port to catch our ferry to Santorini.

Sooo, what did I think about Athens? It was alot different than I thought it would be. I was picturing the whole city to be like the area our hostel was in. I was wrong. It's very big and very dirty, but there are some nice areas. I think spending 2 days there was the perfect amount of time. We were literally able to see all the big sites and do some exploring of the actual city itself. I was just in awe of all the history that is in that city. I always have this same cheesy thought at every destination I go to. When I see locals just walking around, and I think to myself...These people walk by the Parthenon everyday; they live in the shadow of the Acropolis. Do they know how awesome that is? Do they appreciate where they live? I always wonder. Then it makes me think about being home in the U.S. Ya know, what do I walk by everyday and not appreciate? It really makes you want to see things differently. Anyway, Athens was amazing; I loved it. I was definitely tired after the two days of non-stop walking. I was very ready for some beaches, relaxation, and adventure in Santorini. And boy did I get it.

Parc Guell Pictures

2009-04-05T23:20:00.002+02:00

ventures in BCN

2009-04-05T22:28:00.003+02:00

Greetings everyone! I'm sorry I haven't written in quite some time. My grandma said it perfectly the other day, I've kind of gotten into a routine here and nothing blog-worthy is happening anymore...hence my lack of writing. Not to mention I have a butt-load of work I have to do in my remaining 25 days. 25 days?!?!?! Holy CROW! I can't believe it.

Anyway! It's my spring break, thank God! I have about a week and a half without classes. Let me tell you, going this long with no break from school has been KILLER! This little vacation was much needed. I don't leave for Greece until Tuesdsay, so I've had some time to kill. I was hoping to knock out two of my papers but my motivation levels are at an all-time low. I haven't been completely lazy though. I guess you could say I did some exploring. I think I've been in Barcelona for so long that I've stopped being "in awe" of it. So the past few days I've taken some time to go and sight see in Barcelona. I find it absolutely fascinating that I can live here for almost 4 months and still go visit things that I haven't come across yet.

My friend Jess had a bunch of her friends here visiting for their spring break. She was going to take them to this place called Font Magic. It is basically this MASSIVE fountain infront of a castle in Barcelona. Everynight when it gets dark out the fountain puts on this show. Now I assume your thinking, "Wow, a fountain spraying water...cool?". But I promise you, it is INTENSE. The water shoots up to different heights and in different patterns. Inside the fountain are different lights that make the water and spray look colorful. To top it all off, the entire show is done to blasting music. We caught the last showing of the night and I absolutely loved it. Not to mention, I got some pretty sweet pics too.

Carly's family is visiting her for the week and they invited me to come out with them today. We went up to Parc Guell, which surprisingly, I have not seen yet. Parc Guell is probably one of Barcelona's biggest tourist attractions. It is basically a little city that Gaudi designed and lived in. I remember seeing it in Vicky Cristina Barcelona & America's Next Top Model and thinking it was absolutely gorgeous. Little did I know, I'd be in it someday. I'm a huge fan of mosaics and Parc Guell is basically one giant mosaic. I was in heaven! Everything in Parc Guell is so unique. It is almost like your in a fairy-tale; kind of like Alice and Wonderland. It was definitely the most beautiful place that I have visited while in Europe. I took tons of pictures but they really don't do it any justice. I wish you all could have seen it.

I'll post some pictures from my Font Magic & Parc Guell excursions below. I leave for Greece on Tuesday and I won't be back until the 14th. I'll try to update the blog as soon as I can when I get back. Hopefully some spring weat her is comin g your way. Love and miss you all! <3

Portugal pictures

2009-03-29T23:09:00.004+02:00

Lisbon, Portugal

2009-03-29T22:03:00.003+02:00

So we got back from Lisbon, Portugal last night and I am STILL exhausted. This traveling business really does wear you out. Anyway, Lisbon is actually pronounced Lisboa by anyone who is actually from Portugal. That made for some slight confusion in the beginning of the trip, but I got the hang of it by the end. I don't think I can pick a favorite place I've traveled to so far because they are all so different. However, Lisbon is definitely one the most beautiful places I've traveled to during my time here.

I knew waking up at 5:15 am was going to be difficult even if I went to bed at 11. What I didn't know was that I wouldn't actually fall asleep until 3:00am. You can imagine the joy I felt as my sweet sounding alarm rang at 5:15. I have never wanted coffee more in my life and I hate coffee. We got the airport in time and checked in without a problem. I'm seriously surprised I haven't had any major airport glitches yet. KNOCK ON WOOD! We arrived in LisBOA on time and made our way to the hostel. We had some complications finding our way there. We pretty much spent an hour walking around a sketchy neighborhood with our luggage. The entire time we were really only like 20 feet from our hostel. Did we find it? Of course not. Eventually Carly and I thought, "Maybe we should walk a little further down this road". That decision turned out to be key. We found the hostel. THE BEST HOSTEL EVER might I add. Although the location was quite sketchy, it was cutest place ever with a great view and staff. I absolutely loved it.

After we settled into our hostel Carly and I decided to head to the city center and look around. Quite famished, we decided to get some lunch. It was like 75 outside so we decided to eat in an outdoors cafe. I had steak, eggs, fries, rice and salad. It was delicious! After that we walked around, did a little shopping, and explored the area. I bought a few things: clothes, souveneirs, and postcards. Lisbon is absolutely gorgeous. The city center is part of Old Lisbon, so the buildings are older and really pretty. I took a bazillion pictures. When we got to the actual center plaza we got some gelato. I got mango and strawberry scoops. SO DELICIOUS! I could eat gelato for the rest of my life and totally be ok with it. At this point we had walked around for about 4 or 5 hours so we decided to make our way back to the hostel and rest for a bit. When our other friend, Shanna, arrived, we decided to go out and grab some dinner. I got steak again...it wasn't cooked. The rest of my meal was really good though. After dinner we went back to our hostel and made friends with the lobby lady. She gave us some suggestions and directions for beaches to visit the next day. Having slept only two hours the night before, I went to bed around 11.

The next morning we had breakfast the hostel and went out the door around 10am. In order to get to the beach we had to take a train to a place called Estoril. On the way to Estoril is this place called the Belem District. The Belem District has some really pretty buildings but is mostly known for their world famous "Pasteis de Belem". So of course we had to find some of these things. They are these little soft dough pastry/custard thinger-ma-jiggers. Actually, I don't really know what they are. I guess you could describe them as warm-doughy-GOODNESS! We had some of those, walked through a huge garden, and started to make our way to the train station. Half way through the garden I saw a palm tree that was probably 3 feet tall. I had to take a picture with it. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to put my wristlet down on the ground so I could more easily leap over a bush to get to the palm tree. I took the picture and proceeded to leave the scene WITHOUT my purse. About 5 minutes later I realized I didn't have it. In a panic I sprinted back to the scene to look for my purse. I was already picturing the phone call to my father. "Hello, Daddy. I lost my purse which has my money, ID, and credit card in it, in the middle of Portugal. HOW ARE YOU?! :)" God was smiling down on me that day. Leaning against the palm tree was my wristlet. PHEW! So we walked back to the train station, headed towards the Estoril station, and arrived at Tamariz beach. The beach was absolutely GORGEOUS! Right on the beach is this castle that the royal family of Monaco lives in periodically throughout the year. We spent the whole day there just relaxing and laying on the beach. It was a WONDERFUL day. And good news, NO SUNBURN! :)

We headed back to the hostel to shower at the end of the day. After we showered, we got a little spiffed up so we could go out to a nice dinner. We went to a place called Senhora Mae's. The food was DELICIOUS! I had a vegetable soup and penne with salmon and shrimp. For dessert I had apple pie with hazelnut ice cream. The meal was great except for one minor detail. I've grown accustomed to every restaurant in Europe charging you for bread regardless of whether you ask for it or not. However, at this place, they charged us one dollar for a little dollop of butter, a dollar for a dollop of sundried tomatoes, and a dollar for some green GOOP. Then, me and Carly asked for water. Water is NOT free in Europe...this I know. However, we were both anticipating our own bottles of water. We eneded up getting one bottle of water split between the two of us. THEY CHARGED US BOTH TWO DOLLARS FOR THE WATER. Nuh uhhhhh, I think NOT. The bottle of water is two dollars. NOT TWO DOLLARS PER PERSON. I was kinda pissed. Oh well. Moving on. Moral of the story....Dinner was expensive, but really good. After dinner we mozied on home and went to bed.

The next day we had a little time to kill so we walked around the city some more. I don't mean to sound mean or anything, but the men in Europe aren't exatly polite. Not all...but quite a few of them are pigs. I have never been cat-called, followed, or stared at more in my life. I've accepted the fact I cannot wear shorts or skirts while I'm here because I will be totally harassed. In Lisbon, men would just follow us on the street. The last day was especially bad. When we were walking in town Carly and I had a guy get in our faces and make sounds like he was..."excited". The worst incident was when Carly had a man reach up her skirt and grab her. Not good. Theres nothing you can do because these guys are likely drugged up on things and would hurt you if you tried to do anything. Not to mention, the police to don't give a flying whoop-de-doo about any of it. Heck, the police do it themselves sometimes. The last day kind of put a damper on the entire trip because of our experiences with the guys in Lisbon. At that point I was kind of ready to leave Lisbon. We just headed back to the hostel, grabbed our stuff, and caught a cab to the airport.

Overall, I had a great time in Lisbon. When I'm older, provided I have the money, I would definitely like to vacation in Portugal. The city is beautiful and there is definitely a lot to see. I also hear that the south of Portugal is amazing too. I just wish we hadn't had so many negative things happen to us in the streets with the guys. Oh well. I'll pretty much be forced to pull my ninja moves out of retirement if it happens again. BUT! I won't let that put a damper the trip. I definitely had an incredibly fun time on the trip. The beach day was amazing and incredibly relaxing. I'll be sure to post some pictures when I get a chance.

I hope everyone had a good weekend! I love and miss you all! <3

Is today over yet?

2009-03-25T20:37:00.002+01:00

I just wanted to write a quick blog because I'll be gone for a few days in Lisbon. I have to get up bright and early tomorrow at 5:15am to get to the airport for our 8am flight. I'm pretty excited for Portugal. Everyone who has been to Lisbon this semester has said it's amazing. Not to mention, it's going to be in the mid to high 70's while we're there. Wooo! We plan on shopping around when we get there on Thursday and exploring the city center. Friday we want to head out to a beach. Our flight doesn't leave till later in the day Saturday, so we'll probably do something then too. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures!

Soo my day hasn't gone too well. I had my Macro test and it went horribly. I studied a ton and it still didn't help. I just don't get macro at all. It's frustrating because I know what I did wrong after I saw my mistakes and realized they were stupid ones. I just have to accept the fact I can't do anything about it. I think I just over-analyze the problems and look to far into them, make them more complicated than they reallly are. I missed some stupid easy ones. So I think the A is definitely not even possible anymore, who even knows about a B. Wonderfullll. Andddd I got my first haircut here. The salon I went to basically has a deal with CEA. Who knows what CEA does but the salon gives the students discounts and guarantees that there will be an English speaking hairdresser there at all times. I'll start off by saying I did NOT receieve my discount and my hairdresser spoke absolutely no English. Guess how this went. I prob got 5 or 6 inches chopped off. I only asked for 3. :) Solid day if I say so myself.

You could definitely say I'm being a negative Nancy or pessimistic Polly, take your pick. I wouldn't even argue with you. I'm hoping to forget about my test and just have a good time this weekend. Sooo I'm off to Lisbon tomorrow morning. I'll be getting back late Saturday night so I probably won't update til Sunday when I'm rested. I hope everyone has a good weekend, doesn't fail a Macro test, andddd keeps all of their hair. I love and miss you all<3

crazyyy stuff.

2009-03-23T15:54:00.004+01:00

So the story I'm about to tell you is pretty much gossip magazine cover material. It's pretty intense. There is this boy in my program, we'll call him Bob, and he is quite the character. I think he is an incredibly nice guy. Bob is the one who organized the residencia dinners and what not. How to describe his personality? Hmmm. FREE SPIRIT! He was really carefree, almost too carefree, and really friendly. Mysterious would be another word to describe him. Everyone here joked that Bob was just a walking mystery. No one really knows what his deal is.

From the beginning of the program he kind of made it known that he was different than most people. He would just knock on peoples doors, walk in, and make himself welcome for an hour or so. Sometimes he would just go into someones room and use their computer for awhile, all without asking. One time he walked into Carly and I's room just buckling his pants, with wet hair, having just gotten out of the shower. We hadn't invited him in. One time we were walking around La Rambla with him and he would just disappear into the crowd without saying he was going anywhere. So yea, basically everyone knew Bob was a little different, but everyone just assumed that he was like the epitome of carefree. Ya know, just kind of did his own thing at all times and went about his business as if there was no one else in the world.

A few weeks ago Bob's weirdness level shot through the roof. It seriously went from a 2 on a 1-10 scale, all the way up to a 58. Everyone had a new story about Bob that was even weirder than the previous. Bob would brag to people that he just slept on a bench in the middle of Barcelona for the night. In fact, he rarely came home at night at all. Now, you have to be crazy to sleep alone on a bench in this city. Unless you have a death wish, you just don't do that. Basically Bob just started freaking out for no reason at random times. He would explode out of nowhere. A few weeks ago he went out to dinner with a group of my friends. When they were taking the metro to the restaurant Bob would just randomly disappear for a few minutes, come back, and disappear again a few minutes later. During the meal he was totally silent, which was really weird because Bob was typically quite the conversationalist. He also kept leaving the table randomly. While everyone was eating, these annoying people who sell fake roses everywhere tried selling them to the group. Yes, these people are incredibly irritating, but everyone is used to them by now. Bob apparently lost his cool and started freaking out on the rose seller. Everyone was telling him to chill out, that wasn't a big deal, but he was just furious for no apparent reason. Other kids were telling me that he would walk down La Rambla and get into peoples faces and scream, "COMO ESTAS BITCHES?" Not cool. And most of all, not safe. Everyone was really starting to get freaked out by his behavior and wondered what the heck was up. Two weeks ago he took a CEA trip to San Sebastian. He thought it would be a good idea to purchase a liter of vodka for the bus ride back. Not only is that incredibly against CEA rules, but your stupid to drink all of that on an 8 hour bus ride. He eventually had to go to the bathroom and there wasn't one on the bus. CEA had planned bathroom stops and one wasn't coming up for a while. Bob lost his cool x's 47549875. People on the bus said he got up in the face of the driver and the CEA chaperones, screaming wicked loud, and threatened to pee his pants, urinate on their heads, etc. Eventually the bus driver had no choice but to pull over because Bob was freaking out. Two girls who live in my building were on the bus and incredibly freaked out, rightfully so. They ended up writing to the head of CEA making a complaint saying that they were really concerned about their safety with Bob in our building. CEA emailed a few people and asked them to corroborate the stories they had receieved. Last night we found out that Bob had been kicked out of the program and went back home to the U.S.

I can't help but feel bad for this kid. He only had about a month left of the program and he got sent home. However, CEA obviously felt that he had done something to merit being kicked out. It's just unfortunate because he won't get a refund and he is now going to be a semester behind at school. Still, I can't really say that I feared for my safety, but I was definitely growing more and more uncomfortable around him as time went on. There was definitely something not right with him and he obviously needed help. People wonder if he got into drugs out here or if there was something wrong upstairs that just got magnified due to the intense stress we're under. It's probably in his best interest that he was sent home because he was just losing it here. Not to mention, he couldn't really have gotten any help out here if he actually needed it. I can't help but wonder what was really wrong with Bob to cause him to pretty much go crazy out here. I guess we'll never know.

OK! Just wanted to at least get something up in a blog. I figured this would be an interesting read. Mental health update for me? I'm doing just fine...no threatening to urinate on people..PROMISE! I'm off to study for my test tomorrow. ICK! I love and miss you all!<3

myyy weekend

2009-03-22T20:49:00.002+01:00

How is it Sunday night already? I don't know where the time goes! My weekend was really uneventful but it still managed to fly by. I figured I haven't really written a ton lately so I'll bore you with a play by play of my weekend :)

I had the place to myself the entire weekend because Steeter was going on a trip to Ireland. She got up to leave for Dublin at 5:30am on Friday morning...aka Hannah woke up at 5:30 am too. I'm the lightest sleeper ever. As soon as her feet hit the floor to get out of bed I was awake! It's a curse a tell you. Once she was out the door I had a pretty hard time falling back asleep. However, in true young adult fashion...I managed. I got up for good at about 11am, grabbed some study materials, and headed up to the roof top pool. It was kind of nice out, a little windy, and I figured I should at least sit out and enjoy the weather for a bit. I did that for about two hours, got some good studying in, and went back inside to morph into a couch potato. I don't really have a couch here, so I guess you could say a bed potato. I think you get the point though. I parked it in my bed and just relaxed for the rest of the day. My wooonndderrful boyfriend sent me a package a few days ago with some pretty sweet stuff in it, including a DVD (weeeuuu!) and some gummy bears. I decided to plow off the entire bag within the day and watch the movie too. I also watched some of the NCAA tournament basketball games online. Thank God for espn.com. I don't know what I'd do without it. My bracket was completely annihilated thanks to the Mid-West Region. Good news though, UNC is still in itttt. WEUU!! I ended my day with a horrible sinus headache. These headaches are kind of messing with my head, no pun intended. It's just getting really old having had these things everyday for the past two weeks. Friday nights was so bad I couldn't even open my left eye or stand up without pain shooting throughout my face. I tried a warm washcloth on my face and ibuprofen...NOTHING! Thankfully, that was the only one of the weekend.

What did I do on Saturday? Pretty much a repeat of Friday, minus the roof and headache. I got some more studying in and relaxed and watched some games/movies. It felt so nice to do absolutley nothing this weekend, especially after the crazy week I just had. Not to mention the crazy week I am ABOUT to have. I have a Spanish test Monday, Psych test Tuesday, and a Macro test Wedesnday. SHOOT ME NOW! I do have my trip to Lisbon, Portugal this weekend and I'm pretty excited about that.

Sorry for the horribly boring entry. I probably won't have much time to write this week because of all of my tests. I will try to though. If not, I promise I'll have lots of good stories when I return from Lisbon on Saturday. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. HAPPY SPRING TOO! I love and miss you all! <3

I'm officially a horrible blogger.

2009-03-19T18:39:00.004+01:00

No blogging for a week. Gosh. If there were a hell for bloggers, I would surely be sent to it. I'm so SORRY! I really don't know where this past week went, that's how busy I was. I had a huge 10-15 minute presentation to give in my Sport & Culture class this morning. I spent most of my week preparing for it. I was really nervous for my presentation today because the class size is one of the biggest I've ever been in. There are probably close to 40 or 45 people in this class. The typical class size at Le Moyne can be anywhere from 10-25 people. I used to have a huge fear of public speaking but I think I'm slowly growing out of it. I'm still at a the point where I stumble with my words, especially when I start out because of the initial fear levels. Knowing this, I pretty much plan out every single word I am going to say in my presentation and practice it over and over and over. Alone in the bathroom this morning, I stood there drying my hair and lecturing the mirror on Sports & Business. I then proceeded to walk to class while going over my presentation out loud. In retrospect, people were probably thinking, "Look at that crazy American talking to herself." Once in class I could no longer go over my lines out loud so I was forced to rehearse them in my head. 5 minutes into class and sweating like Shaquille O'Neal, my group headed up to give our presentation. Anddddddddd! It went really well. At least I think so? Everyone who has given presentations before us just read lines off of their slide. They never made eye contact with the audience or elaborated on concepts. They just stared at the powerpoint screen the entire time and read it. Our teacher mentioned that those people would not receive good grades, so our group made a concious effort to just bullet point ideas on the powerpoint and develop them out loud to the class. Anyway, our teacher really liked it. When we finished he said, "This is the best presentation I have seen yet in this class". That comment created quite the conflicting emotions within me. Part of me was like, "SSWEEET!". It's obviously a good thing that he liked it and thought that it was one of the best presentations he's ever had in class. That's a pretty good indicator we're going to get a good grade and that obviously makes me pretty happy. However, PLEASE DON'T SAY THAT INFRONT OF THE CLASS! That will only make the entire classroom HATE US. Let me tell you, the looks of disgust that were shot towards us at the front of the room were prrrrrobably equivalent to those directed at Sarah Palin post-Katie Couric interview. Oh well, my classmates can hate my group because our teacher liked our presentation...at least I'm getting a good grade. And for the record, I CANNOT see Russia from my house. ;)

What else has happened this week? Hmmmm. A bunch of my friends in the building decided to have a little dinner party in a downstairs lobby in our building. We sent out invitations to everyone that said, "BYOP"...bring your own plate. A couple people made food, I made dessert, others brought drinks. I figured dessert was the dish I could do the least amount of damage with. No one has ever died from some bad whipped cream. Raw chicken on the otherhand? I'll leave that up to someone else. Anyway, I went with "Dirt Cups". All the "cool kids" would bring them to their classroom birthday parties in elementary school. Dirt cups usually consists of a plastic cup filled with whipped cream, crushed oreos, chocolate pudding, and gummy worms. I went on an hour long shopping hunt for these products. I guess Spain does not believe in gummy worms. All I could find were...no joke...gummy FINGERS. Seriously?! I was not about to have fingers sticking out of my dirt cups. I decided to substitute the gummy fingers with little candy berries. After I got everything I headed back to the room to attempt to assemble the dirt cups. Now, dirt cups typically look...dirty. However, I wanted mine to look pretty because I'm ridiculous like that. After about 45 minutes of assembling ten dirt cups, the kitchen looked like a tornado had hit it, I looked like I had oreo dandruff, but I had a pretty snazzy looking finished product. Anyway, the dinner was alot of fun. The food was great! And best of all...my dessert killed no one.

It's really starting to get warm here in Barcelona (HALLELUJAH!). It's like PERFECT spring weather; temperatures are in the mid to high 60's everyday. One big difference here...the sun rays are STRONG! I made the nearly fatal mistake of laying out by our roof pool the other day. It was only 63 degrees and I still managed to back into the building a few hours looking like a freckle-faced LOBSTER. Fear not! My sunburn was gone the next day. I know, I know, I knowwww...SUN TAN LOTION. With my face looking like I was constantly blushing, I decided to go shopping for some spring/summer clothes. I ended up getting a few shirts and a dress. I WANTED to get two dresses but I resisted.

I'm also officially done booking trips! Everything is COMPLETE! I have Lisbon, Portugal next weekend. Ibiza the second to last weekend, and GREECE FOR SPRING BREAK! Weeeeuuuu! Me and two other girls, Jess and Sara are going to fly to Athens and tour around there for 2 days. Then we are going to hop aboard a ferry and head to Santorini. We plan on staying in Santorini for 5 days. I hear it's amazing there. I don't think there is going to be much to do, but I am definitely looking forward to staying in a beautiful place and just relaxing. I'm still gonna scour the internet for things to do there. We'll figure something out! I'm incredibly excited to go there and I'm sure I'll be taking a million pictures to show everyone.

One of the biggest downsides of being abroad right now? I'M FREAKING MISSING MARCH MADNESS!!!!!!!! Ughhhhh. I'm going to try my hardest to find something online but that's not looking very probable. Most US sites with video don't work here in Spain. I still completed my bracket though! As I have put for the past three years (and I have been let down every year), I have UNC winning it all. I sadly had to have them knock SU out in the Elite 8. I have a little contest going on with Jamie. Whoever has the winning bracket wins a prize...I still haven't decided what I want. I'm not too worried though. Even if I lose...I still actually "win", it's common knowledge! SO yesss, EVERYONE ROOT FOR UNC. As it stands, I'm not starting off very well...2 first round losses already! Woooo GO ME! :)

Carly and a bunch of my friends going to Dublin this weekend, I decided to save some money and sit out on this one. Probably a good idea since I have crazy amounts of work I need to get started! I'll definitely sit outside a bit because it's supposed to be gorgeous this weekend. I figure I can do some studying outside because I have a HUGE spanish test on Monday. I thinkkk I'm gonna get cracking on that study guide now. I love and miss you all! LOTS! <3

lonnngggg week

2009-03-12T21:21:00.002+01:00

Thaaaaaaank GOD it's Thursday. This week flew by but was so incredibly stressful at the same time. I'm so over tired because of traveling non-stop and I haven't had an opportunity to catch up. I think SLEEP will be my main goal this weekend. I can't seem to kick this sinus infection, so rest is probably a good idea.

Hmmm. What happened this week? I guess you could say it was pretty uneventful. I got a lot of my grades back for mid-terms, projects, quizzes, etc. I ended up getting an 8/10 on my Macro mid-term. I'm not happy with that grade but I'm trying not to beat myself up for it. I don't understand Macro at all and I put in a solid 5-6 hours of studying, I know I did my best. Plus, a B isn't the enddd of the world...sort of, kind of...ok it is. I got a B+ on my Religion mid-term which drives me offfffff the wall. This is the teacher that can't speak or understand English at all. During the test I raised my hand and asked him, "How long do you want our essay to be?". His response: "YES!". I think that should help convey what kind of teaching experience we're dealing with here. I would have preferred an A, but again, I'll take a B+ considering I essentially don't have a teacher for this class. We also got our Psychology mid-terms back and I got a 93 on it. I'm happy with that grade for the most part. It was an incredibly hard exam with ALOT of material, so I'm glad my hard work paid off. Jamie quizzing me on all 50 of my vocab terms/concepts at 2am probably helped too. After she returned the tests, we got our critical incidents back (the project where that girl plagiarized my work). I'm pleased to say our group wasn't negatively affected by the IDIOT that IS a fellow CEA student. We got a 96 on the project itself and a 90 on the presentation. In comparison with other grades in the class, I was very happy. Classes and tests are so difficult here its ridiculous. Some students here joke and say, "I thought I signed up for CEA Study Abroad, not Harvard Study Abroad." This is without question the hardest semester I've had in college thus far. I'm trying to accept the fact that I will likely break my 4.0 streak this semester, so I guess my goal is to just make Dean's List. I think it's possible. Hopefully...

In travel news, I just booked two more trips today. In two weeks I will be going to Lisbon which is in Portugal. Then the second to last weekend I will be going to an island off the coast of Spain called Ibiza. Both should have warm and sunny weather so I'm pretty excited. In comparison to my normally tan self, I pretty much look like an albino rat at this point in time. Yes, an albino RAT! Laugh all you want...I wish I was kidding. I have one more trip to book for spring break. We did want to go to Egypt but we read up on some stuff and it doesn't look very safe for us to go there. Greece and Italy were next on the list, but they turned out to be too expensive. So now we're looking at Croatia and another place in Southern Portugal called Vilmoura. We should be finalizing those plans soon. I get pretty proud of myself when I think of all the trips I've booked and gone on. I was scared to do it all by myself but I've managed just fine. I guess you could say I'm pretty much a seasoned traveler now. Except when it comes to packing appropriate clothing for inclement weather conditions! :)

It'll probably be a low key weekend. I think I'm gonna be a responsible adult and stay in tonight and rest up. Most everyone is gone on a trip this weekend so it's going to be just me and Carly. It's gonna be about 68 degrees here so we're thinking of heading down to the beach for the day. I also need to do a little clothing shopping. Yes, Dad...NEED to, not want to. I, in my infinite wisdom, only packed winter clothing for my time here. Apparently I thought I was studying abroad in Antartica? Anyway, I can work with jeans until May but I need to get some shortsleeve shirts and what not. Maybe a dress...or two. Ok, just one...PROMISE!

I hope everyone is doing well! I love and miss you all very much! <3

pictures from Dachau

2009-03-09T18:06:00.002+01:00

Dachau Concentration Camp

2009-03-09T16:13:00.004+01:00

When we decided to go to Munich, we all had a little discussion about what everyone wanted to do while we were there. On everyone's list: Dachau Concentration Camp. For me, personally, I feel that if given the opportunity, everyone should visit a concentration camp. It is such a sad, but very real, part of our world's history that people need to see. However uncomfortable and depressing it may be, I felt it was my duty to take some time out of my day and visit the camp. I may not ever get the opportunity to do so again.

Before we left for Munich, I did a little research on Dachau: how to get there, prices, hours, tours, etc. I was pretty excited to see Dachau in particular because in 8th grade I did a school project on it. It sounds stupid, but I find it pretty amazing that 7 years later I would be touring the very camp I presented to my class. The actual camp is now called the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. It is open year round, and absolutely free to enter. I loved the fact it was free. They could have very easily charged 10 Euro to enter, but they don't. This is something that people need to see, need to experience, and no one should be turned away because they cannot afford it. Entrance is free, guided tours are only 3 Euro, and audio guides are only 2 Euro. If you want to hear more detailed information on the camp you can pay the cheap fees for the tour or audio guide. If you can't afford it, you still have free and total access to the entire camp, you just have to do it on your own. I think it's great that anyone can enter through the gates and experience Dachau.

The English tours are held three times throughout the day. We decided on our train ride over that we wanted to take a guided tour. I had read some reviews online, and the writers highly recommend taking a tour because you learn a lot more from the knowledgeable guides. Our tour guide was pretty nice and really knew his stuff. We started off in the museum, the only heated part of the camp, and learned some basic stuff. He showed us a map of Europe that had all of the concentration camps, including subcamps, that existed during the Nazi reign. Standing before this giant map was pretty intense. There were probably close to 200-300 dots on the map that represented camps. In the museum we got to see a camp uniform, the patches that the prisoners had to wear, and photographs taken by SS guards. He gave us a little background information on Dachau too. Dachau was a working camp for men only; there were no women and children. The prisoners were forced to work, sometimes to their death, making things for the war, governement, etc. It was the first concentration camp in Europe and it was originally used for criminals. When Hitler took over he started using it for people who opposed his ideas and went against him. As time went on, it was being filled with criminals, homosexuals, gypsies, Jews, etc. Made for only a few thousand people, by the end of the war, it was holding over 60,000.

After we got the brief tour of the museum and a little information on Dachau, we went outside to have our tour. The first thing you see at the camp is the main gate. When it was actually up and running, Dachau only had one entrance/exit, everything else was surrounded by electric fences. Built into the iron gate entrance are the words "Arbeit Macht Frei", which means something along the lines of "work will set you free". It was kind of surreal seeing that because in my presentation in 8th grade, I remember showing a picture and telling my class about the gate. After we saw the gate, we immediately headed over to the barracks. When the U.S liberated Dachau they were forced to quarantine and eventually destroy all of the barracks because of the disease that had run rampant in them. There are no original barracks left, just the foundations remain. When the camp was made a memorial site, they built two replica barracks that are perfect copies of the original. Inside these barracks are three different rooms. The first room shows what the barracks looked like when Dachau first opened, just for criminals. Each barrack room held about 50 inmates and they slept comfortably in their own beds; an entire barrack could hold about 200 people. The next room shows what the barracks looked like once the war started. These beds were far smaller and about 80 prisoners were held in one room; full barrack capacity was now at about 300. The third room represented Dachau at the height of the war. The beds, referred to as "endless beds" didn't even look like actual beds. It was basically one giant platform that covered the length of the entire room; two more platforms were stacked above it like bunk beds. At it's population peak, a room like this in a Dachau barrack, originally meant for 50, held over 250 people; putting nearly 2,000 people in a barrack meant for 200. I remember seeing the last room, with the endless beds, and just having this total wave of sadness wash over me. The room was probably 20x20 and I couldn't even visualize over 200 people trying to sleep in that one place. You can't help but want to cry when you remind yourself that although it is hard to visualize, it did in fact happen.

After the barracks we walked by the memorials for the victims. One is a giant iron statue that shows people entangled in the electric fences and another that showed the ways the victims at Dachau were labled. Both were incredibly powerful to see. After walking by those, we made our way over to the other side of the camp. This pathway passes right in between the foundations of all of the barracks. There were hundreds of foundations left behind that stretched as far as your eye could see. At the end of the pathway was the Catholic Memorial for the victims of Dachau. Within close proximity of this memorial were the Russian Orthodox, Jewish, and Protestant Memorials. As we approached the Catholic Memorial, you could see a man kneeling infront of it with flowers. It was just a small reminder that this still affects people today, almost 65 years later.

We then made our way over the Krematorium area. This area was for guards only and totally off limits for prisoners. In order to gain access, you had to walk through a gate in the middle of the electric fence. He explained that these fences killed on contact. Along the entire length of the fence was a giant ditch. The Nazis put this here so prisoners were slowed down if running and attempting to make an escape at the fence. When trying to escape, they were either killed by guards from watch towers or by the electric fence. Our tourguide also mentioned that some people simply couldn't bear to live anymore and would try to "escape" knowing that it meant a quick death. There are no accounts, written or from survivors, that indicate that anyone ever was able to escape from Dachau.

Once we got into the Krematorium area, I got this horrible feeling, a huge pit, in my stomach. I kind of expected it though. You hear about it in all of your history classes, you read about it in books, but nothing really prepares you for seeing these things. Dachau has two crematoriums. The first was used when death tolls weren't incredibly high. As the war went on, people were dying at much higher rates from disease, starvation, the cold, abuse, etc. The single crematorium, one that was actually used in the real world for cremating one person at a time, could not handle the large numbers anymore. They were forced to build another bigger building, that housed an industrial sized crematorium. Inside this second crematorium was a gas chamber. Interestingly enough, Dachau was never considered an extermination camp. Hitler made sure that none of these camps resided in Germany. He wanted them to be in the countries that he occupied so it would be easier to transport the foreign people to them. So, knowing this, many wonder why Dachau had a gas chamber in it. The most popular theory is that since Dachau was one of the first concentration camps, it acted as a model for others. When Germans were trained to work in concentration camps, they were trained to use gas chambers, and some were trained at Dachau. With that said, survivors have reported that the gas chamber was not regularly used like at extermination camps. However, they did say that it was used on individuals or small groups on occasion. Our tour guide gave us all of this information before walking in. I really wanted to cry at this point, and I hadn't even stepped inside.

First part of the building was the gas chamber. I can't really describe a single emotion that I felt when I walked through it. It was a mixture of things: anger, sadness, frustration. How could anyone do this to a fellow human being? Above the entrance of the "shower room", was a German phrase that referred to the importance of cleanliness. I couldn't help but be so incredibly angry by the cruelty of that, the trickery of getting these people into the room. I entered into the room and sadly enough, it does look like a giant shower. There are drains in the floor and things that appear to be shower heads on the ceiling. Along one wall are these two grates that turn into a slot; this is where the poison, Zyklon B, was slipped into the room. At this point, I was feeling nauseous. Adding to the horrible emotions, were these other people in the gas chamber at the same time. These people had the audacity to act in an entirely disrepectful and disgusting manner when they were in the room. They were taking pictures of eachother standing under the shower heads like they were dying. Then they would take a group picture against a wall, all smiling with their thumbs up. I have never wanted to punch someone more in my entire life. How could anyone make light of a situation like that? How can you find anything remotely funny about the events that took place in that room? In any other circumstance, I would have gave them a HUGE piece of my mind with some choice words. However, I didn't feel right doing that. That room is a sacred place that is meant to be respected and honored, not a place to voice my anger towards these boys. I would have only added to the nonsense that was taking place. I opted to keep my mouth closed. They did, however, get quite the staredown as I exited.

The second room in the building was the much bigger crematorium. You could tell that this room and these ovens were designed for a lot of use. About 40,000 people were documented as having died at Dachau (the number is believed to be far higher). The ovens were used to dispose of their bodies. Our tour guide told us that the ovens were used so frequently that the Nazis ran out of coal a few months before Dachau's liberation. When the US soldiers liberated the camp they found a stack, in the buildings last room, of nearly 2,000 bodies. Standing in the room was such a hard moment for me. On one of the walls, was a picture of that room three days after the liberation of Dachau. The entire thing, floor to ceiling, is filled with bodies. The picture shows shocked and disgusted Dachau residents looking into the room of bodies. Many residents of Dachau tried to say that they had no idea what was taking place in the camp, that they thought conditions were bad, but had no idea that people were being murdered in mass numbers. I don't know if it was the intention, but I got a powerful message with that being the end of the tour. There was hell on earth in Dachau, and just a few hundred feet away, the people of Dachau were going about their daily lives. How could you NOT know what was going on? They were only lying to themselves when they said they had no idea. U.S soliders forced the residents of Dachau to come view the bodies, so they could see what happened when they stood idle, what happened when they did nothing. And that is the message I got out that room. When you stand there and do nothing, you are not innocent, you are just as guilty as the perpetrator. Maybe if people had stood up and helped, things would have been different. Dachau should never have happened, the whole Holocaust never should have happened.

I'm a thinker. Always have been, always will be. I analyze things until they cannot be broken down any further. My mind was racing about 600mph the entire tour. I kept on imagining what it was like to be a prisoner there. I kept trying to mentally put myself in their shoes. I think this is why Dachau may have been so powerful for me. I became engrossed in the experience and I think I got alot of it because of this. In the barracks, I just tried to imagine laying in those beds, with 200 other people around me. I would have been exhausted, hungry, and cold. How can someone not be thankful for the little things after experiencing something like this? Things I take for granted, like having my own bed, food, heat, etc., were unheard of at Dachau. When we were taking the 5 minute walk to the Krematorium area, my feet and fingers went completely numb. It was about 30 degrees out and I believe I already had a fever running; it wasn't a very pleasant experience. Everything in me wanted to complain, but then that "thinker" inside my head was like, "Hannah...are you kidding me?" How could I ever complain about being cold at Dachau? How could I, in my boots and a jacket, no matter how lightweight they were, complain about the cold? The prisoners at Dachau wore paper thin shirts, pants, and wooden clogs in the spring...and the winter. Jackets were not allowed and they could not keep their hands in the pockets for warmth. The same pathway I walked was where roll call was taken everyday. For 45 minutes, in sun, rain, wind, or snow, the prisoners were forced to line up as their numbers were called. Sure I was numb, sure I was sick, but this was nothing compared to what these poor people went through day after day. I am genuinely glad the weather was freezing. For me, it totally made the experience that much more powerful and humbling.

I don't think there is anything I could say that can fully convey my experience is a whole. My visit to Dachau was nothing short of powerful, mind-blowing, and entirely humbling. I am so glad I went. You can't help but be moved and even changed by the visit. It made me take a good look at myself, recognize the things I take for granted, and try to develop a new way of thinking. Is there one main thing I took away from my Dachau visit? Definitely. It may sound cheesy, but kindness, caring for one another, cannot be optional...we must do it. Dachau reminded me of what happens when we do not look out for eachother, when hate takes over. You cannot deny we are all different. I may look different than some, speak different than some, believe different than some, but at the end of the day I am a human being just like everyone else. That simple fact alone is reason enough to care for the person next to you. Hate gets you nowhere.

pictures from Munich

2009-03-09T12:55:00.005+01:00

Munich, or should I say...MUNCHEN

2009-03-08T21:31:00.003+01:00

I just got back from Munich a few hours ago and I am exhausted! I had a wonderful time this weekend and I absolutely loved the homeland! Germany is definitely a lot different than any other place I have visited while I've been over here. Just having been to London the previous weekend, it was nice seeing something TOTALLY different from it. Munich was absolutely beautiful in it's own unique way.

So, where do I begin? Well, we left Barcelona around 10:25 am on Friday, and arrived in Munich around 12:30pm. The second I stepped off the plane and onto the little connector-walkway-thing-ma-jigger, the freezing cold air hit me. First thought that came to mind? Solid work Hannah, you have, yet again, managed to be totally unprepared for the weather. You think as I get older I would actually be a little more prepared. You know, actually pack appropriate winter gear? Pft. Why would I ever do that? I mean, who really wants to be warm when walking around a city in 20 degree weather for 9 hours? Did I mention I came into this weekend with a sinus infection/fever? I'm thinking there is a definite possibility my germs froze to death...it was THAT cold in Munich.

After freezing to death in the 20 foot walk from the terminal to the train station, we proceeded to buy our tickets for the S-Bahn. I can proudly say I have done my first illegal thing in another country (God, I'm SUCH a rebel!!!). Seeing as the train ticket purchasing machine was entirely in German, you can guess we had a little difficulty finding the correct ticket to buy. And yes, you guessed it, we did in fact by the wrong one. About half way through our ride to our hostel, the train people came around to check our tickets and informed us that we had bought the wrong one. The penalty? A 40 Euro fine. Hah, that's a funny joke! I would absolutely NOT pay a 40 Euro fine for a mistake, this was not an intentional violation. So we were told to make our way to another random U-Bahn stop, find the office, and plead our case. After some discussion, we were able to argue our fee down to 10 Euro. I was still pretty angry. I could have used those 10 Euro for I dont know something useful like...A JACKET!!!

About 2 hours later than expected, we arrived at our hostel. This hostel was AWESOME! I've only experienced 3 hostels in my day, but this one was definitely my favorite. It had a real cool atmosphere to it. They had a free German beer tasting at night and the rooms were actually really nice. So, we set our stuff in our room and decided to go out and look around. We grabbed some lunch and started walking around. Within about 10 minutes it became incredibly clear that I needed to purchase some gloves of some sort. I managed to find the ugliest pair of gloves in the country and bought them. Oh well, they kept my poor fingers warm. I couldn't help but laugh when I purchased them. I always manage to have the most random first purchase when I visit another country for the weekend. London: ear plugs to fend off the onslaught of Pablo's snoring. Munich: the worlds ugliest pair of gloves to prevent frostbite from being my only German souvenir.

Now, the best part of my trip to Munich was the fact my cousin, Carina, would be meeting us there. I have only met Carina once, about two years ago, when she came to the U.S for the first time. Her flight wasn't getting in til way later and she wouldn't actually be at the hostel until 10:30. I was pretty nervous to see her again, so I decided to drink my feelings at the free beer tasting. KIDDING!!!!!!!!! (Yes, Dad...I swear I am kidding). But, I did actually go to the beer tasting to kill the time. They served little glasses of different kinds of beer. I don't really like the taste of any kind of alcohol, especially beer, but I figured I'd try because hey, I'm in Germany...they are known for their beer. None of the beers were mind-blowingly good, but I did enjoy the wheat beer to some degree. Around 10:30 I got a friendly tap on the shoulder at the bar, turned around, and there was CARINA! Wooooo! We gave eachother a big hug and I helped her check in and bring her things up to the room. We talked for a little bit and she gave me a gift; a scarf and some German candies. We were all exhausted, so we decided to go to bed after that.

That morning we got up, had breakfast, and made our way into the city center; Marienplatz. Trying to turn over a new leaf, I tried to dress as warm as humanly possible. I wore a pair of stockings under my jeans, 4 pairs of socks, boots, 2 camis, 2 sweaters, 2 cardigans, my northface, a scarf, and my heinous gloves. It pretty much could have been Halloween and I was dressed up as little Randy from a Christmas Story....ya know, the one in the huge snowsuit. Had anyone pushed me over...there would have been NO getting back up. I felt somewhat successful in my attempt to stay warm. It took about 20 minutes for me to go numb, not 2. When in Marienplatz, we saw the giant clock, the Glockenschpiel, ring and rotate on the hour. We walked around and went in some souvenir shops to get postcards, gifts, etc. I really enjoyed the city center. I felt lie I was walking around in a fairy tale, it was great. After about an hour or so of walking around, we decided we wanted to head over to the Dachau Concentration Camp. We all decided that that was something we definitely wanted to do. When we got there we decided to take a guided tour that took about 2.5 hours. I'm going to write a separate blog about the entire experience, but let me say for now, it was a powerful one.

After Dachau, we decided to head back into the city center and get some dinner. We were in Munich and everyone said you HAVE to go to the Hofbrauhaus. The Hofbrauhaus is a giant beer garden that holds about 400-500 people. We walked in and my jaw just dropped. It was a CRAZY atmosphere. You were in charge of find your own seat and hope that a waitress, dressed in full bavarian garb, would see you. There is a Bavarian band playing, and everyone is singing and chanting along. They served giant 1L mugs of beer as well as HUGE Bavarian pretzels. I know it makes me sound ridiculous...but I probably had been this excited to eat in a LONG time. Walking around for 6 hours in the snow did not help the fever at all. I was pretty much dying at dinner. I didn't think drinking a giant mug of beer would be the best decision when I had a fever and was on pain meds..so I skipped that part. The one part I did not skip out on? My meal. I ended up getting a pork roast with bread dumplings and coleslaw. DELICIOUS! I had a great time at dinner. My cousin Carina was having a great time too. We sat next to eachother and just chatted like old friends the entire time; her English is really great, I was quite proud! She recommended we get an apple strudel for desert and of course, a pretzel. We did and both were to die for. Eating at the Hofbrauhaus was quite the experience; a fun and delicious one to be exact!

After the Hofbrahaus we made our way back to the hostel. I looked and felt the living dead. Carina's friend, Ann-Christine, lives in Munich and wanted to take us out to show us the nightlife. The responsible adult in me, that usually wins over, said, "Hannah you are going to make yourself more sick..I think you should stay in and get some rest". The irresponsible side of me, that rarely comes out when it comes to clubbing, said, "Oh Hannah, you're only in Munich once, go have FUN!". I listened to the latter. We went to this club that had three different clubs within it. One club played techno, the other played pop, and the last played hip-hop. It was definitely a fun place to be, but I just really couldn't have any fun because I felt so sick. It was so bad, I ended up getting soda to drink at the bar. That should be a good indicator of how I was feeling. BUT! I'm glad I went out so I can say I at least experienced Munich nightlife.

We ended up getting in really late, getting up really early to check out, and making our way to the train station. It was really hard saying goodbye to Carina...she cries quite easily. She is actually coming to visit the U.S in June with her father and little brother, so I just tried telling her it is only 4 months. Not toooo long! I said I'd be feeling better and I would get to show her around this time! I had a great time with her this weekend. I definitely feel like I've known her for forever, even though I've only met her twice. I would definitely think of going out to visit her in Germany someday. She is a sweetheart and I am so happy that I got to spend time with her this weekend. However, I must say, she is quite the bad influence. She encouraged and laughed at my use of the word SCHIZA. Let's just say it's one of three words I know in Germany...and it's a swearword. :)

I had a fantastic time in Munich. I wish I had been feeling better because that would made my trip a LOT more enjoyable. I also wish I had more time in the city. We really only had one day to do things...but we made the most of it. I am definitely looking forward to returning to Germany some day and really taking in the sights. I loved what I saw this weekend and cannot WAIT to see more. This is going to sound like an Academy Award acceptance speech, but thank you to my wonderful Grammy who helped me out with this trip! This wouldn't have been possible without you! I LOVE YOUU!!! The return to the homeland was a success!

Please excuse any and all typos in this blog. I need to head to bed so I'm going to have to skimp on the revisions. If I'm not too busy I will post some pictures tomorrow, as well as an entry on Dachau. I love and miss you ALL! <3

P.S - The German language has the LONGEST words I have ever seen in my life! I found it humorous, so I kept my eye out for some of the longest I could I find. I have no idea what they mean, and they come from random places like buildings, signs, etc, but here are some of my favorite finds: Fahrplananderungen, Landeskrankenhilfe, anddd last but not least, Anschlussubersicht!! :)

idiots.

2009-03-04T17:10:00.003+01:00

I need to get this off my chest...Let me just say, I am studying abroad with approximately 500 complete and total idiots. Why my words of hostility? Let me explain. About two weeks ago we had a project/presentation due for Psych. It involved you and your group members writing things called "Critical Incidents", assembling them all into a catalog, and presenting them to the class. Not a huge deal. Most groups had 6 people in there group which worked out nicely because you needed 6 critical incidents complete. My group had 5 members so I offered to be the person in the group to do two. They were due/we had to present them on February 19th. My group didn't really know how to format their critical incidents, not to mention our teacher is a tough grader, so I decided to get my critical incidents done in the beginning of February to have my teacher look over them. I figured if I had them done early she'd look them over, I could make any changes she suggested, and then send it as a rough guide for the rest of my group members. So about 3 weeks before the due date, I wrote both of my critical incidents. It probably took about an hour max. Really easy assignment. A few days later, I sent them to our teacher to have her look over them, she gave me a feedback, and I sent them to the rest of my group members. I made the catalog when all of my group members e-mailed me their critical incidents and then I made a powerpoint for our presentation. We presented everything the next day and I was pretty excited because I thought it went really well. I felt like she liked it. Wooo! Done with this project...no more stress. Or so I thought...

There are 3 different sessions of this Psych class I'm taking. Mine is on T/TH's and the other two are on M/W's. ALL of them are taught by the same teacher. Carly, who is in a different section of the class, had her critical incidents presentation the Monday after my Thursday presentation. CEA is really strict about having phones go off in class, so mine is almost always off. I was walking to my Macro class, during the time of Carly's Psych class, and decided to turn on my phone quick to see if I had any missed calls or texts. As I'm walking into my Macro class, I see I had gotten a text from Carly that said, "OMG Hannah. Someone copied and is presenting your critical incident word for word." AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I proceeded to pretty much have a panic attack. That Macro class was the longest hour and a half of my life. All I could think about is how strict this teacher is and how she can't stand the majority of the CEA students. It would make her DAY to fail someone for plagiarism. After class, I sprinted back to my room to talk to Carly. A girl had my same critical incident, word for word, with only the name of the character and the nummerical order of my answers changed. SERIOUSLY?! I'd like to know this girl's train of thought. I assume it's something along the lines of..."Wow, I put this project off til the last second. What am I going to do? Ahhh yes, let's copy a fellow Psych student's project. Even though I know we will both be handing it in to the same teacher." In the words of SNL....I mean, REALLY?!?!?!?!

You have to be a complete moron to think you are going to get away with that. How do I think this happened? I have my theories. I had my critical incidents done well before the due date and mailed them to my other group members. I know that the girl who copied me lives with one of my group members. This means that the copier had access to my example I sent my group members (the same exact one that just so happened to be copied). So two possible things happened. My group member knowingly gave her friend the critical incident to copy. The girl procrastinated...maybe it was a help-a-sister-out-type-deal. However, that doesn't seem all that logical to me. Why would my group member help her friend plagiarize with something from her own group? If she was caught, not only would this girl be in trouble, that means our group would be penalized too. It is far easier to track down who helped this girl plagiarize if the work comes from the "helper's" own group. Giving her other material, from say the internet, would have had my group member likely in the clear. You can't really trace it back to anyone specific, so just the plagiarizer would be in trouble. So why someone would help someone plagiarize with there own material, is beyond me. Second scenario I've come up with, the one I like to believe is true, is that my group member gave her friend my critical incident for the same reason I sent it to my group; to have an example to work off of. Then I think the girl must have gotten lazy and went behind my group members back and just copied the whole thing, with some minor changes of course. Either way...I'm not a happy camper.

I don't really need this added stress in my life right now. The teacher did notice the plagiarism, as well as others cases in the other classes. She right off the bat knew that I wasn't involved because of how early I had mine done. So thankfully, shes on my side. I also have old emails, Word document dates saved, and drafts that I can use as evidence if it comes to that. Hopefully this girl just fesses up, because if not I'll probably get dragged into the Dean's Office to defend myself. Which I have no problem doing, but I really have better ways to spend my time than sitting and figuring this all out with the dean, my teacher, and this girl. If it comes to that, I already know what I will be saying. I'll start by asking her what my name is. I have no idea who this girl is, I have never seen her in my life, bottomline, we don't know eachother. She probably won't know my name. Why exactly would I help someone I don't even know, someone who doesn't even know my name, plagiarize? I also have to prepare for the possibility that she has seen my name on Facebook. That works just fine as well. I'll still ask her my name...you can bet money she won't pronounce it right. Again, you think if I helped someone plagiarize they would at least know how to say my name. I think that right there might put her in a little hole. Hopefully, if she hasn't already, she'll just fess up and get this over with.

Thankfully, I have other things up my sleeve to defend myself with if the simple doesn't work. I also have the teacher in my corner which helps ALOT. I just hope this ordeal doesn't affect my grade at all. It's been about a week and a half since this all transpired and we get back our grades for it tomorrow. So I guess we'll be seeing how things work out. Worst comes to worst, I have to go defend myself at the Dean's. I'm confident I'll be fine. Until this is all behind me, I am stressed out like nobody's business. Oh well.

In other academic news...I got a 96 on my first Spanish Test (pure luck...I really don't know what I'm doing), a B+ on my Sport and Culture Mid-Term (I plan on trying to argue up to an A- because I don't think I should have been docked on one of my short answers), and I took my Macro mid-term today. Let's just say, no exaggerations, I probably did something that rhymes with SCHMAILED :)

Other than the huge test I have to study for tomorrow, the 1,9635 pages of reading I have to do, and the fact I think I'm getting a sinus infection, I'm doing real well!!! I'll be sureeeeee to let everyone know how this all ends up. Love and miss you all! <3

pictures of London

2009-03-02T20:38:00.004+01:00

I am in love with London.

2009-03-02T12:52:00.003+01:00

I am alive! My biggest fears about this weekend were not arriving in London and not making it back to Barcelona. GOOD NEWS! I did both successfully! Our flight left at 8:55pm at the Barcelona Airport on Thursday, and we arrived in London at about 10:55pm. We flew into Gatwick which is about an hour and twenty minute drive outside of London. We decided we were gonna take a train into Victoria Station, which is in the center of London, and then take the tube to our hostel. The train ticket cost 16 pounds...that should have been a good indicator of how expensive our weekend would be.

We arrived at our hostel at about 12:45. By the time we checked in and got to our room it was about 1:15am. We had originally booked for a 6 person mixed dorm. Luckily, they moved us to a four person mixed dorm, so we were only with one person we didn't know; Pablo. Our dear friend Pablo, from Argentina, had quite the snoring problem. I don't mean like a little snore-snore here and there. I mean a snoring problem of EPIC proportions. The poor guy sounded like he couldn't breathe. My bunk was on top of his bed and whenever he would snore the whole bed would shake. I wish I was exaggerating. Let's just say I slept 2 hours the first night. I am sad to say my first purchase in London was a set of ear plugs...

Everyone else "woke" up...I sat up, around 9am. We got a free breakfast. Breakfast meaning...toast and juice. I had 8 slices. Hah! Then we showered in the hostel locker room where I proceeded to scald my skin for the sake of hygiene. There was no adjustment for the temperature of the shower. It's safe to say it was probably 2,000 degrees. After we finished getting ready we made plans for the day. We decided it would be a good idea to pay for a bus tour. We found this tour group called "The Big Bus Company" and they offered a hop-on & hop-off bus tour. It cost 22 pounds but we thought that that was a reasonable price because the tube prices are through the ROOF! One single trip costs 4 pounds. With the distance between all the sights we wanted to see, we figure that would cost us a ridiculous amount of money. Not to mention, the bus tour ticket was valid for 48 hours, so we got to use it all weekend. The ticket also included a free river cruise on the Thames. In retrospect, it was definitely a good decision. There was no getting lost and we saved ourselves a LOT of money that would have been spent on transportation.

I was only expecting to see a few things in the city. It's a huge city and everything is spread out. I was so wrong! It was me, Carly, Jessica, and Rachel on the first day, and we were on a MISSION! We knocked almost everything off of our "Must-See" list on the first day. Day 1, we saw: The Somerset House, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. Margarets Church, St. Paul's Cathedral, London Eye, Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London. I may be forgetting something...I don't think so though. Anyway, everything was so BEAUTIFUL! It sounds cheesy but it was surreal walking around and looking at these things you've only seen in pictures your entire life. My personal favorite was Big Ben. It is so...regal, for lack of a better word. The whole design of it is intricate and so beautiful, I was just in awe of it the entire time. I probably took ten million pictures of it. Connected to it is the House of Parliament and together they were just absolutely beautiful. I also enjoyed the London Eye, which is one of the highest observation tower/ride thingers in the world. It was great because you just got to see all of London. Not to mention it is right next to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and you get to see a great view of them from hundreds of feet in the air.

We walked around for about 6 hours the first day. We got back to the hostel and decided to go grab some dinner. London is supposed to have some of the best Indian and Thai food so we really wanted to find a place to have some. We found this little restaurant that served Indian food we decided to eat there. I had never had Indian food before and I am game to try anything, so I was pretty excited. I got Lamb Passanda and this egg and rice mixture. SO SO SO GOOD! One of the best meals I have had in a long time. The fact we're making our own meals here probably doesn't help any...but honestly, the meal was SO delicious! We ordered this little desert that was a ball of vanilla ice cream coated in toasted nuts with raspberry sauce on top. I was in heaven. Definitely one of the best deserts I've ever had...and I'm usually not a huge desert fan. After the meal we decided to head back to the hostel and get a good nights sleep. Earphones in hand (actually, ear), I had a solid nights sleep. Except for the occasional stir of Pablo, I didn't wake up too many times.

The next morning I had my 8 slices of toast an apple juice, showered, and we were OFF! We wanted to go to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards but they didn't do it that day. Apparently in their winter season, or off season, they only do the change every other day. Oh well! Buckingham Palace was AWESOME! The decorations were so elaborate; everything was covered in gold-leaf paint. I also really enjoyed seeing the guards with their huge FUZZY hats. Buckingham Palace was our last stop on our list of things to do. We decided to head over to Oxford Street which is known for its great shopping. First store, Primark, was heaven on earth. One of the cheapest stores I've ever been in...with GREAT clothes! I could have easily spent $100-$200 in there. Unfortuneately, I had to hold back. I got a sweater, a dress, and a shirt for 24 pounds. A GREAT DEAL!...or so I thought. A few stores later I saw a sign that said the current exchange rates. For every pound I spent in London, I was actually paying $1.57 in U.S money. SERIOUSLY?!?! I wanted to vomit. Everyone else continued shopping but I decided it would probably be best to stop, for my debit cards sake.

We headed back to our hostel around 4 to try to find some tickets for a show. We decided we wanted to see the show "Dirty Dancing". We asked the box office for the cheapest ones and the guy said, "62 pounds!". Haha, that's a funny joke. Let's just say the show didn't happen. Then we walked around London trying to find a place to eat. After some walking around and looking we found this little Thai restaurant. Again, I've never tried Thai food so I was pretty excited. This was hands down my favorite meal of my study abroad experience. Carly and I shared this appetizer platter. It had chicken wings filled with Thai pork, fish cakes, spring rolls, chicken wrapped and seasons in this leaf thinger, and some salad concoction. It also came with all of these Thai dipping sauces. It was SO SO GOOD! I don't know exactly what I ordered for my main meal because I couldn't pronounce the name if I tried. I basically got this beef-egg-veggie-sauce noodle plate thinger-ma-jigger. It was so good, I DIDN'T WANT IT TO END! Those of you who know me, know I inhale my food like a vaccuum when I eat. This was so good, I literally tried to eat only 2 or 3 noodles at a time. It lasted me a solid 25 minutes and I seriously contemplated ordering another plate. I opted not to. I blame it on the pound to U.S dollar exchange rate.

After that we walked around and tried to find a little cafe to have some dessert and drinks at. While we were ordering Carly proceeded to accidently light her menu on fire with the candle on the table. When I say light on fire...I literally mean the menu was engulfed in flames. That was a rather embarassing/hilarious experience. HAH! New menus in hand, I ended up getting this ice cream dessert with hot chocolate. Sadly, both weren't very good. I don't think the person at the expresso machine knew how to make real hot chocolate. Mine just tasted like heated up water with a little chocolate powder in it. I should have gone back there and shown him my Mojoz skillzzz. Oh well! It was fun to just go out and sit at a cafe and talk for a bit. After that, we went back to the hostel, packed up our stuff for checkout in the morning, and went to sleep. Again, the ear plugs did their job nicely.

Check-out at the hostel was at 10am and our flight didn't leave til 4:55pm, so that was a slight problem. We checked out and decided to go find a "traditional English breakfast". After about a ten minute walk, we found a place that served them for relatively cheap. We ate there and it was delicious, but I must say my father's "Truck Driver Breakfasts" are better. We had to kill time so we sat in the cafe and talked for about an hour or so. Then we had to take the huge trek to Gatwick airport. We decided to take a bus this time because it was about 10 pounds cheaper. Random funny story: We were standing in line to get our tickets at the bus station. This random man who barely spoken any English kind of skipped everyone in the line to get to the window. He was quite obviously stressed out, like he was going to miss his bus or something, so no one was really mad that he had skipped everyone. Then there was this one lady who acted like he had literally robbed her for all she was worth. The line was still moving pretty swiftly and she was going to be at a counter in a matter of 2 or 3 minutes. Still, the crazy lady felt the need to be yelling at him. At one point she screamed, "There's a BLOODY QUEUE here! Get back there!". I almost peed my pants...they really do speak the way you think the would. Anyway, this woman provided some brief entertainment with her British tirade of this poor man. BLOODY BRITS! :)

We got to the airpot with time to spare. We decided to get some dinner and wait around for them to post our gate number. The flight ended up leaving early and we got back to Barcelona around 8:15. We took the train/metro back into the city and then walked back to our residencia. I was exhausted. I certainly need to rest up this week because I do this all again this weekend with Munich. Anyway, I had a fantastic time in London. I would definitely like to go back someday. I think it would be a great place to go during the spring and summer when it's a little bit warmer. After this trip, I can't help but think how incredibly I lucky am to be having this experience. Not many people are going to be able to see all the places I am in their lifetime. I really am blessed. I could say it again a million times, for the rest of my life, and it still wouldn't be enough: Thank you, thank you, thankkkk youuuu, to everyone who has helped me out with this trip. I love and miss you ALL! <3

pictures <3

2009-02-25T21:43:00.003+01:00

I have officially LIVED!

2009-02-25T21:23:00.002+01:00

Sooooo the end of Carnaval was last night! It was basically the culmination of the weeks festivities...one last hoorah if you will! I had the time of my LIFE! I totally made an "irresponsible" decision and went, but I'm really glad I did. The biggest celebration in the area is about 45 minutes from Barcelona in this town called Sitges. The party doesn't really get kicking till like 10 or 11pm and keeps going till about 5 or 6 am. We ended up taking a Renfe train out to Sitges around 11pm. I, personally, was ready for bed. I knew we wouldn't get back until incredibly late and I happen to have a huge mid-term tomorrow, as well as a presentation (and my group members haven't emailed me their slides yet for the powerpoint I have to make...JOY!). So I knew how exhausted I would be and I didn't think going would be a good idea. However, I'm only in Spain once and I probably won't get to experience a Spanish Carnaval again...so I WENT! I totally did the "unlike Hannah" thing...and I'm happy with my decision. It was probably the most fun I've had here yet!

Everyone dresses up in costumes for this last night. The Spanish people, my gosh, GO ALL OUT WITH THEIR COSTUMES! There were people who made themselves into giant pacmen, legos, barbies, etc. It was hilarious and so much fun to walk around and just look at all of the people. I, being the broke girl that I am, did not want to spend money on a costume. I ended up taking one of my scarves (purchased in NYC with grammy!) and made it into a toga shirt. Then I went to this little dollar store and got myself some gold string and flowers for my hair. I don't know what I was exactly...I guess I'll go with greek goddess?! Some of my friends went all out with costumes. We had Dylan, the sombrero wearing spiderman and my friend Mike, who wore a Flinestone-eque dress with a red wig and cowboy hat. Then there were others who went costume shopping on a budget. My dear friend Sara went with a hat...in the shape of an actual turkey.

Anyway, we got there around 11:40 and walked down to the area where the parade was. It was basically a huge MOB! People climbing on walls, dancing and singing, etc. It was like what I imagine Mardi Gras to be in New Orleans. It was QUITE the experience. After about 2 hours of getting crushed,dancing, hit on, and pictures taken with others, we decided it was a good hour to head back home. We ended up waiting in the cold for the train from 1:30am...to 2:30. I had no jacket...and it was 40 degrees out. Woooo! After the train ride, cab ride, and late night ramen-noodle-soup-eating-session, we went to bed at about 4:30 am. I had to get up for class at 9. HAH! I did it though. You will be pleased to know, out of the 17 students in my morning Spanish class, I was 1 of 3 people who showed up. I was pretty proud :)

I had so much fun last night! The best way I can really describe it is CRAZY and FUN! I'm sure that really does no good though. I'll be sure to attach some pictures to show you all. I won't be able to write till at least Sunday because I will be in London all weekend! I'll be sure to be safe and take lots of pictures! I love and miss you all! :)

STEP!

2009-02-23T21:50:00.002+01:00

So I made the decision to join the gym this past weekend. I figured it would be a good idea even though it cost me 130 Euro and I really only have two months left. During the weekdays I tend to get incredibly homesick and I think its because I do a lot of sitting around. So I figured joining the gym and getting out of the room everyday would help with that. I sure hope so. My membership is for off-peak hours only (7-11, 3-5, 8-close). I didn't think abiding by that schedule would be much of a problem. As long as you are entering the gym before the off peak hours end, you are free to stay and work out. I entered at 4:56pm today...off peak hours ended at 5. WOO! Anyway, the gym membership comes with access to the gym, pool, sauna, and to all of their classes; spinning, step, kick boxing, pilates, yoga, etc. I think classes are going to be a lot of fun for me. I'm someone who needs to be told to workout. When it comes to motivating myself to get up and exercise, we have problems. However, if I have someone screaming at me in Spanish to keep moving my behind...I'll do it.

First class attended? STEP '45. Carly and I decided to try that one out this afternoon. Boy, was that an adventure! Step is exactly what it sounds like...stepping. You get one of those exercise boxes and basically tango with it. We were new to the class so everyone was staring at us. The tall, awkward girl, and the short, blonde...we were a spectacle. The whole class was taught in Spanish which was a small problem at first. The instructor was trying to...instruct us...and we weren't really understanding her that well. Luckily, there was a woman in the class who spoke Spanish and English. The woman said, "She is telling you to stop looking so scared, breathe, and relax.". GOOD ADVICE!

We got started and I was lost like nobody's business. You would learn one step, then add another, and another, and another, until basically after 10 minutes you had an entire dance. Not understanding the first step kind of started me off on the wrong foot...literally. Before long I got into the groove of things and was rolllllllling. There were moments where having two left feet really became an issue, but I worked through them. The instructor was getting a kick out of Carly and I. Basically, my fellow class participants got a free comedy show with their step class.

WHAT A WORKOUT! Oh my gosh. I have not sweat that hard since we lost at sectionals for HS Basketball....AND THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO! It was 50 minutes of non-stop cardio...I wanted to DIE at first, but then I caught my second wind. I absolutely LOVED the class. Despite the confusion in the beginning, I really did get the hang of everything towards the end. The instructor was so much fun and so were the dances. I definitely want to attend the class again next week! It feels nice to know I have something going on every Monday now. It'll keep me busy and I'm getting some exercise out of it; I'm thinking I made a good investment.

SO! I'm thinking I'll sleep like a baby tonight. Scorreeeee! Before I sleep, I should probably go finish studying for my Sport&Culture Mid-Term thats tomorrow. Wish me luck! I love and miss you all <3

The rundownnn...

2009-02-22T22:32:00.002+01:00

So I had a pretty uneventful weekend, again. As planned, I spent Thursday afternoon in my bed with my gossip magazines and about 8 packages of my favorite gum. I plowed through my magazines within a few hours, my gum as well. For those of you who know me, know that I am a compulsive gum chewer, even more so with my favorite kind of gum (EXTRA Bubble Gum Flavor...HOLLA!). I don't think you know how badly I have missed my gum. I was overjoyed when father sent a giant pack of it. Unfortunately, I had missed the flavor so much I felt the need to chew a fresh piece about ever 10 minutes. Great for the taste bads...bad for my gum supply.

This week is the start of a festival called Carnival in Spain. It is essentially a week long celebration that ends on the Mardis Gras equivalent in the U.S. The majority of the people here don't really do the whole bead thing, they actually wear costumes. I guess you could say its a week long party/Halloween. Anyway, I had been looking forward to sleeping in alllll week long. Thursday night Carly and I decided to stay in and just get a good night sleep. I have basically turned into a Grandma here...but I'm ok with that. Come 9am, a concert of some sort had started up outside our window...I mean literally ouside our window. I listened to a fine assortment of music that included, amongst other songs, JUMP, JIVE, AND WAIL! You could say it started my day off on a good foot. How about a good night sleep the following night? Not quite. We had a mariachi band playing outside our window the next morning. My dorm room would be right above the stage for our area's celebration.

Carnival isn't alllllllll that bad though. I plan on going out to this town called Sitges for the celebration on Tuesday night. The festivities start at 10am and end at 5am. I do believe I will be calling it a night at about 2 or 3 am because I have classes the next day BRIGHT AND EARLY! I figure half of my classmates won't be there so it might look good to make an appearance. I plan on doing so. A lot of people wear costumes to this Carnival party in Sitges but that involves spending money that could be put to better use. I'll probably just end up buying a little masquerade mask. If I can't find one of those, I'll probably end up doing the incredibly creative pet ears with a black dot on the nose...cat? mouse? Takeee your pick :)

I went out last night to this bar called Pippermint. They specialize in EXTRA LARGE DRINKS. Basically the smallest drink you can have is 1 Liter. Carly, Sara, Jess, and I went and ordered a 6 Liter drink. Bad decision in retrospect...but we are all ok! Anyway, it was a nice bar because it was filled with mostly locals. It's nice being around non-study abroad students and actually meeting non-Americans. We met some nice people and some not-so-nice people. We were chatting with these guys at the table next to us and they decided to randomly become all creepy. It started to get scary and they were getting out of control so our bouncer friend, Benedict, kicked them out. Thank God. That's one downside of going out to Spanish bars...I don't really feel very safe at them, especially when it's just us girls. I think being by being girls, who are quite clearly not Spanish, we have a giant sign above our heads that says, "Hey! We don't speak your language so come mess with us." Luckily, 90% of the time we were some of our guy friends, which makes me feel a little safer.

LONDON THIS WEEKEND! I'm really really excited but really nervous at the same time! I just want the traveling to go off without a hitch, thats all I'm asking for. If we make the plane there and back, I will have nothing to big to complain about. I really can't wait to get there though. I have SO much I want to see...Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, etc.

This next month is going to be non-stop for me. I have a ton of mid-terms...ick. On top of that, I am traveling almost every weekend. I'm sure that will make time pass a little faster. Hopefully with the traveling I will have more interesting stuff to update y'all on. I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I love and miss you all SO MUCH! <3

week from hell

2009-02-18T23:07:00.002+01:00

I'm so sorry I haven't been writing a lot lately. My workload this week went through the freakin' roof and I've been trying to keep up. I've had 3 tests: Psych, Macro, and Spanish. And I have two project due dates this week. I only think I did bad on one of the tests, Spanish. I did a lot better on my Macro test than I thought I would (8 out of 10) and I got a 100 on my second Psych Test. I have a huge presentation in Psych tomorrow but I have that all prepared and ready to go. I'm feeling pretty good about it. I cannot WAIT for tomorrow at 3:45 when this week is completely done. When I get back to the room I am going to hop into bed and read my gossip magazines (thanks, Dad!) until I can read no more; it will be FANTASTIC! Did I mention I will be chewing my favorite gum at the same time? Yup! Freshly shipped from the U.S!

I have been having some issues with booking my trip to Munich. For reasons that I will never know, the flights to Germany are SO expensive. I don't understand how I am paying 86Euro round trip to go to London...and the cheapest I can find to Munich is 176Euro. After looking at prices I decided that I didn't want to spend that much money on a trip. That sick feeling I had in my stomach when I got my banking statement seems to reappear whenever I retrieve my debit card to book trips. Then I got an e-mail from my cousin Carina, who I had planned on meeting up with, that said that she had officially booked her ticket to Munich and that she was "counting the days till we meet again". AWESOME! Now I HAD to go and I had to book a ticket. After scouring the internet for hours my heart lept with joy when I found a round trip flight to Munich for 82Euro. I fill out my info and get to the final page where it tells me my total price. Ready for this? 210Euro. That's right, 128 dollars in "taxes and fees". Tax and fee MY @%!.... Absolutely enraged, I ended up finding the cheapest ticket after about 2 hours of looking. After the fees, taxes, and additional rip-offs, I ended up paying 186 Euro....aka I just spent $234 to fly to Munich for TWO DAYS! I know I will have a great time and I am so excited to see Carina. My friends and I have already discussed how we want to try to see a concetration camp and take a brewery tour when we get there. We'll see how that turns out. So I guess it's official GRAMMY! I'm returning to the homeland on March 6th! Woooo! I'm sure I will have the time of my life and completely forget that I spent an entire Mojoz weekly paycheck in the click of a button.

I must be heading to bed to get some rest for this presentation tomorrow. I love and miss you all <3

10 things I've learned in Spain:

2009-02-15T22:15:00.005+01:00

Today was a totally uneventful day...by uneventful I mean I literally did not leave my room. I didn't write yesterday and it would be absolutely unacceptable to go two days without an update. So that got me thinking about what I could possibly write about in my blog if I didn't go anywhere or do anything. Then I came to the conclusion that I could make a list of 10 things I've learned here in Spain so far. Here goes nothing:

1. If you're ever in the mood to get ripped off...take a ride in one of Barcelona's fine taxis.
2. There is no such thing as the refrigeration of eggs in Spain. Surprisingly, you will not vomit from eating a warm egg that has been sitting out for two weeks. They actually taste quite delicious and are rather fluffy.
3. Being stared at like you have a giant "L" on your forehead as you walk the streets is almost as common as hearing the Spanish language.
4. Pigeons in Barcelona think they run the place. They have no problem flying inches from your head or cutting you off as you walk through town. They get so close, you could literally PUNT a pigeon...and if they catch me on a bad day, I probably will.
5. I'm convinced Barcelona is currently in the 1980's because the mullet is very much alive and well. If there was such thing as a mullet census..the most populated country in the world would, without question, be Spain.
6. If you're ever thirsty, head to the local bus station, find a vending machine, slip your change in, and purchase a 1.5 LITER BOTTLE of water. I promise you, you will never be parched again.
7. It's safe to say the majority of people in Barcelona have a thing for pockets. It is particularly evident with their innate tendency to reach into tourists pockets....and take things.
8. If you are ever feeling lonely and in need of some loving, just head down to La Rambla where you can ALWAYS find some great company...for a small fee...after dark...with risk of STD.
9. If you are ever in the mood to do an impression of a can of sardines, find a few friends and book ANY hotel in Spain. Y'all laying down in the can, I mean BED, should work just fine.
10. Whenever you need someone to speak English, they can't. However, to say Spanish men do not speak English at all would be grossly inaccurate. In fact, they seem to have mastered the phrase, "HEY SEXY LADY! I LOVE YOU!".

That's all folks. Love and miss you all.<3

Pictures :)

2009-02-13T21:55:00.003+01:00

Dali Museum & Girona

2009-02-13T20:47:00.003+01:00

I just got back from my day trip and I am exhausted! My group went to the Dali Museum in Figueres and then we took a tour of a town called Girona. The bus ride to Figueres took about two hours but I slept the entire way. We arrived at the museum at about 11:30 am and were given some directions about meeting points, times, etc. After that we were let loose and able to go off on our own in the museum. Let me start off by saying one thing: Salvatore Dali was a crazy son of a gun. Our tour guide told us about how he would put honey on the tips of his funky mustache and wait for flies to land on it. Once they landed on it he would grab the fly and eat it. Delicious? Not so much. Now on to his artwork. When my grammy and I took a little trip to NYC this fall we went to the MET. I remember walking through the painting part of the museum and seeing Dali's paintings. They definitely stuck out and were probably some of my favorite pieces there. Remembering that, I was pretty excited to go see a museum dedicated entirely to him. How to describe his artwork? At times crazy, at times intricately detailed, at times simple....mostly crazy. But there is totally a method to his madness. At first glance the paintings just look like madness on a canvas...but with a closer look, and some explanation, you can definitely see the deeper stuff and the work that went into them. The museum had his paintings, sculptures, and even entire rooms he decorated with his artwork. The weirdest thing we saw? A giant upside down boat with what appeared to be falling raindrops from the base of it. Our tour guide asked us what we thought the droplets were made out of. No one guessed correctly so she finally told us. Dali made the raindrops out of condoms filled with water. As I said before...crazy son of a gun.

We were responsible for getting our own lunch before we returned to the bus to drive to Girona. After we left the Dali Museum we found this cute little tapas cafe only a few feet from the museum. I ended up ordering paella and bread with tomatoes and olive oil on it. Then the waitress brings us a basket of bread that everyone shared. That would happen to me. I would order more bread when there is free bread on the table. OR SO I THOUGHT! I get my bill from the waitress and I see that I, along with everyone else, was charged 1Euro for the bread baskets she brought to the table. Awesome. She totally put the bread on the table like it was free, and NOWHERE did it say that the bread they bring to you was not complimentary. Additionally, she charged EVERYONE for the baskets of bread...even if a person didn't eat it. Basically at the end of my meal I had eaten so much bread I had turned into a loaf, I was angry at the waitress, and I had totally forgotten how delicious my paella was.

We were supposed to meet back at the bus at 3:50 and we were explicitly told they would leave without us if we weren't there. Come 3:55 there are three people missing and by 4:20 they still weren't back. We finally left without them and turns out they just decided they wanted to stay in Figueres but felt no need to tell anyone. Have fun getting back to Barcelona! Idiots. ANYWAY! The drive to Girona was about 45 minutes...I slept...again. Not thinking logically, I neglected to realize we were driving north and that weather would be a lot colder than Barcelona. Yes, I froze. I'm really starting to think it might pay off to invest in a pair of gloves so I am able to return to the States with my fingers. Then there is the part of me that doesn't want to spend the money after seeing my banking statement the other day. Then there is the part of me that realizes amputation surgery is probably quite pricy. I think I'll get some gloves...

Girona...Hmm. It was a very nice city but I felt like it was a lot like the older parts of Barcelona; kind of like I had already seen it before. We walked around for about an hour and twenty minutes with our tour guide. She was able to tell us some interesting facts about some of the buildings and what not. I guess that was reason enough to go, I learned something new. I basically spent the entire tour taking pictures because the place was absolutely beautiful. I'll be sure to post some pictures up in a blog after I post this one. All in all it was a good day and I'm glad I went. I enjoy just tacking on names of places I have visited to my ever-expanding list. I hope everyone had a good day. I Love and miss you all! <3

one of those days...

2009-02-11T13:13:00.003+01:00

In reference to one of little Hannah and Trevor's favorite childhood movies, you could say I had a "terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day" yesterday. Just one of those days I guess. It's kind of frustrating because I seem to have them a lot here. I'm sure its because of the homesickness, stress, over-tiredness, etc.

I was supposed to go to Camp Nou to have a tour with my Sport & Culture class at 10:45 in the morning. Camp Nou is on the other side of Barcelona in comparison to where I live, so I planned my metro trip out and left with what I thought would be enough time to get there. I still arrived about 6 minutes late. Now if you know me, you know I cannot STAND being late. Being late is probably one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to other people and I get incredibly upset with myself when I'm late. So I started off my day being a little ticked off at good ole me. Then my teacher, the nicest man in the world, didn't want to leave the meeting point because he believed that more people would be coming. No one else came for about 5 minutes so he decided we should start walking over to the stadium. Then we got the stadium and he decided we should wait about 5 more minutes for people before we went inside. No one came. Once inside, he decided we should wait another 5 minutes before we bought tickets. No one came. FINALLY, he took attendance and purchased the tickets. By this time it is 11:30 and I have a class, on the other side of Barcelona, at 12:30. Awesome. I really, really, really wanted to at least see some of the tour so I tried to stretch my time there out as long as humanly possible. We walk in and I'm feeling kind of optimistic, "At least I'll get to see a little bit of the stadium". Nope. We proceeded to walk over to a huge line that was waiting for a 3D tour of the Camp Nou. Now, I could have missed my next class because technically it is excused because I was on a field trip. But still, my teacher in my next class is really strict, hates people being late, and I don't feel confident enough in my knowledge to miss a class...so I had to go. I was so looking forward to this trip because we were going to get to go down on the field, in the press box, and see the locker rooms. To say I was bummed is putting it lightly. At 11:45 I decided I needed to go so I could give myself 45 minutes to get back. I told him I had to attend my next class, that I was sorry, and I then proceeded to BOLT back to the main campus. I made it to campus at 12:28, totally drenched in sweat. Ironically, my psych teacher ended up being 10 minutes late. Figures.

Further dampening my mood was my psych class. I'm not a huge fan of my professors style of teaching but she does seem like a very nice lady. A bunch of kids found out the other day that they had booked a trip to another country on the same day as our mid-term for that class. They wanted her to move it and she said that mid-terms are set in stone and non-negotionable. Plus, the syllabus had the mid-term date written right on it. Your an idiot if you schedule a flight to leave during your mid-term time. Anyway, they got incredibly mad at her for their own stupidity. They spent pretty much ten minutes ganging up on her and yelling at her. The conversation ended with this overly tanned, overly hair-gelled, overly ASSHOLE (pardon my french...) boy tell her "Oh well, we'll see how this turns out now won't we." Since when is it ok to talk to a teacher, let alone a human being like that? I don't understand alot of my classmates and their treatment of the professors. It was embarassing being part of that class.

Then it was off to my favorite class of the day (NOT); religion. I took my dreaded quiz, 5 questions, and lets just say my results were the icing on the cake that WAS my horrible day. What did I get? Let's just sayyy...my grade is the equivalent of my age last year, the equivalent of the years in two decades, the equivalent of the height of a building I wanted to jump off of. Ok, I don't want to jump off a building...but I think that gets the point across. About 80% of the people in my class got either 0 or 1 of the 5 questions correct; there were some lucky people who guessed 2 or 3 questions right. I think that should say something about the teacher. I studied my notes, and NOTHING from them was on the quiz. So I'll try to be positive here...how can I turn the fact I got a 1 out of 5 on my first religion quiz into something positive? GOT IT! I've officially failed an exam on a continent other than North America! :)

You could say I had an enjoyable 5 hours of classes yesterday. I got back and worked on a Spanish project that I had due today (I think I'll get higher than a 20). Then Carly and I went grocery shopping because our fridge was filled, pretty much, with a solitary egg. It was my turn to pay and the cashier had to rip my debit card out of my fingers. When grocery shopping, I treated myself to an 80 cent package of 10 chocolate covered croissants. You can bet my 20 on the quiz that I ate all of them in nearly one sitting. Did I feel a little better? Absolutely. My stomach? Not so much.

Capping off my solid 24 hour period was my random bout of insomnia. I slept approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes last night. Why couldn't I sleep? I have no idea. They always recommend counting something, like sheep, to help you fall asleep. So I was like, "Oh Hannah, why don't you count the number of questions you got right on your quiz today." You can imagine how that went...

I'm exhausted today, I have a ton of homework, and my cold is getting progressively worse. But, in the words of my wise grandmother, I am trying to make myself a good day. So far, its infinitely better than yesterday, so I can't complain too much. I'm starving right now, so I need to go make myself some lunch before my Macro class (which I don't understand at all anymore). Too bad I don't have any chocolate covered croissants for dessert...

love and miss you all<3

gooooooooooaaaalllllllllll.

2009-02-09T12:59:00.003+01:00

FC Barcelona soccer game, or should I say FUTBOL game, was last night! It was FANTASTIC! I could barely contain my excitement on the metro ride over. This is going to sound really cheesy but when I go to sporting events I absolutely love the moment right when you walk into the center of the stadium; the lights, the people, the sound...it's just awesome. Anyway, that moment was unlike anything I've experienced in my sport/stadium experiences. FC Barcelona plays at a stadium called Camp Nou, which holds 98,000 people. So right off the bat, you are just blown away by the magnitude of the stadium and the amount of people in it. NBA stadiums typically only hold anywhere from 10,000-20,000 people. I thought that was a lot when I went to my first NBA game. However, it simply pales in comparison to the number of people that were at Camp Nou for the game last night. As corny as it sounds, the moment we walked into the stadium was something I will always remember.

In true CEA fashion, we had nose bleed section seats. I was totally ok with it because I was just happy to be there. Aside from being up so high, it really isn't all that bad because you can see the field no matter where you're sitting in the stadium. The major downside of being up so high...the temperature. It was a night game and I have never been SO cold in my entire life. Yes, Dad, I did wear my Northface. BUT! I layered like no other. I had two shirts on, a sweatshirt, my northface, a scarf, pants, stockings under my pants, two pairs of socks, and sneakers. Ironically...I felt as though I was naked..it was THAT cold. At the beginning of the game I was thinking, "Oh I'll be alright...this isn't that bad." 15 minutes into the game, "Wow, let's see if my jacket can zip up anymore." End of the first half, "I will likely return to the U.S without fingers and toes due to frostbite." It took about an hour after the game, still in all of my clothing, wrapped in my burlap sack of a blanket, to regain feeling in my extremities. :)

So the game itself...AWESOME! FC Barcelona played this team called Sporting. They didn't seem like they were very good because Barcelona always seemed to be on offense...which I didn't mind at all. I'm not one to really enjoy watching soccer on T.V. I think the basketball girl in me wants constant scoring and soccer doesn't really have that. But seeing the game in person is a totally different story. Listening to the crowd, who is totally obsessed with their team, made it fun. When FCB scored the entire stadium went nutttssssss. Most of the game I just spent time either staring at the field or staring at the people around me; I wanted to take it all in. FC Barca fans are so proud of their team, the city, and you can really see it. Even if the team isn't scoring, the fans are going crazy, waving their flags, doing chants, etc etc. One funny moment...Sara and I sat next to eachother the first half and we tried to cheer along with the crowd but we couldn't really understand what they were saying. You can imagine our excitement when we thought we knew the chant they were doing. So Sara and I are doing the "dun. dun. LETS GO! dun. dun. LETS GO!" chant with great pride. Turns out the entire stadium...except Sara and I...were saying "dun. dun. BARCA! dun. dun. BARCA!" Oh well, it's the thought that counts. ;)

FC Barcelona ended up winning the match 3-1. The game itself wasn't really all that exciting because Barca just dominated the entire time. It was intense though whenever Barca scored or came close to scoring. The crowd went CRAZYYY!!! I finally understand why my dear grandfather goes crazy when he watches soccer (love you grandpa<3). All in all, the experience itself was incredibly exciting. I would definitely like to go back to watch another game...my only request is that it's not 30 degrees out. I also want to purchase some FC Barcelona gear. Alot of the fans had on FC scarves and had FC flag type thingers. I definitely want to get those before I go home. Definitely an A+ night.

Hmmm, what else to discuss? I think I'll start with the fact that I have come down with something again. Not as painful as my strep but it is making my existence miserable. Being sick just makes my homesickness 10x's worse so I'm really just trying to rest up and feel better. I'm thinking its a nasty cold since I'm so congested I can barely hear and I'm coughing like a smoker. No one has died from a cold so I'm sure I'll be fine. But seriously, I'm not going to be surprised if I come down the Spanish Plague. My health hates me here. In slightly better news, I got my first Spanish quiz back and I got a 100 on it. Any good grades in that class I will take because I'm already not understanding the new material. Fantastic. :)

Well I have to work on some homework for my next class. I hope everyone has a great day! I love and miss you all more than you know! <3

trips

2009-02-08T14:20:00.002+01:00

I have officially booked my first trip in Europe! Carly, Jess, and I have been researching flights to London for quite some time now and last night we finally found one that we were happy with. We plan on going there February 26th and staying until March 1st. The round-trip airfare is going to cost us 86 Euros...not to shabby if I say so myself! We are having small issues finding hostels or cheap hotels to stay in though. As we learned in Valencia, location can make or break the trip, so we don't want to make the same mistake twice. We really don't know what area is best to stay in if you want to be near the tourists sites (Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, etc, etc.). Some friends of ours took a trip to London last weekend and said the location of their hostel was horrible and they ended up spending over 150 Euro in cab fees; I certainly don't want to do that! We're also worried that we'll book a hostel that ends up being a party one or a total piece of crap. We've been doing a lot of research but we're having a hard time committing to one because we're just too scared. Carly and I have been asking people we know who have studied abroad or live London for any suggestions. We'll see what happens...

We have also tacked down the date for our next trip. Carly and I plan on looking for some flights the next few days. On this trip I will be returning to my native homeland when I go to Munich, Germany from March 6 - 8th! I e-mailed my cousin who lives in Germany, Carina, to see if she had any recommendations for sites to visit and/or hostels or hotels to stay at. Maybe we'll even be able to meet up; that would be nice. I'm kind of nervous because I don't speak any German whatsoever. The only word I know can be accredited to Heidi Klum and the masterpiece that IS Project Runway; AUF WIEDERSEHEN! ;) My Dad says a lot of people speak English there so I'm hoping that is the case. I'll be sure to let everyone know more when we tack down plans for sure. I'm pretty excited!!!!

So other than that I have no more news. The soccer game is tonight and I am BEYOND excited. I wanted to get a jersey to wear to it but our Sport & Culture teacher said thats a bad idea. Apparently no one in Barcelona wears jerseys to the game because they don't like to support only one player, they like to support the whole team. Basically, if you wear a jersey to the game everyone knows your a tourist and you stick out like a sore thumb. So I think I'm going to buy an FC Barcelona scarf to wear and just save the jersey for a personal souvenir later in the semester. I'll tell you guys all about how the game went tomorrow! Hopefully I survive! :)

Love and miss you all! <3

Flamenco

2009-02-06T22:46:00.005+01:00

So I went to the flamenco show last night and...I LOVED IT! I don't know what the haters were watching because what I saw was absolutely amazing. The show lasted about an hour and featured four dancers. They started the show as one group, eventually had their own solos, and finished the show together again. I don't really know how to describe Flamenco besides saying that there is a lot of stomping of the feet. These people are like tap-dancers on speed; it's intense. Their feet move so fast, to such crazy rhythms, that they almost disappear. Ok, slight exaggeration, but you get what I'm trying to say. It was a simple show in nature. They had spanish singers, who really just wailed the entire time (but it really did sound fantastic), sitting at the back of the stage, two guitar players, and some guy who played a drum. There was simple lighting and no scenery. They basically just let the dancers do their thing and it was amazing. The ferocity of their foot tapping was insane and the passion on their faces showed that they really enjoyed what they were doing. I have some videos so I will definitely show them to everyone when I'm home...or when I figure out how to get them on here. Whichever comes first! Anyway, I would definitely recommend going to a flamenco show if you ever get the chance!

I slept in today...it was fantastic. I made myself some fried eggs. I tried to flip them but that failed miserably (they still tasted good). After that I basically sat and did work all day. I got part one of my Psychology project done and finished my final draft of my paper for the competition. Depending on the motivation levels I might try to do some more work tomorrow.

Sorry there is not much to report again today. Tomorrow should be pretty low-key as well. BUT SUNDAY! yessss SUNDAY! I have my first European soccer game and I am pumped x's 84684. There should be some good stories after that one. Anyway, I think I'm staying in again tonight; not really in the mood to go out. I hope everyone had a great day! I love and miss you all!

no exciting news...

2009-02-05T17:02:00.003+01:00

Hey everyone! I really have nothing exciting to report today. I guess I could tell you that it's unusually cold and rainy here today, but that's not very exciting. I suppose I could do what I do best and ramble for a little bit. So let's see where this goes...

SO! It's the end of the school week, thank God, and I have a ton of work to do. I've decided I'm not going to go out tonight so I can get a good nights sleep and a solid sleep-in session in the morning. I have a lot of projects and tests coming up in the next few weeks so I want to get some of them started tomorrow. Then I figure I can go out on Friday and Saturday night if I really want to.

I had two quizzes this week: one in spanish and one for my psych class. I got a 100 on the psych quiz and I don't know how I did on the Spanish one yet. I have a feeling I did decent. I have my first religion class quiz on Tuesday and I literally have no idea what to study because we really have not learned anything. I thought I had the worst teacher that existed on this planet when I took Microeconomics with T.Shep...I was wrong. My religion teacher, Victor as we call him, seems like he is high half the time (I don't think he actually is). He has no sort of lesson plan and rarely seems like he knows what he's talking about. We are supposed to be learning about Islam in Spain, a potentially interesting subject. All we have learned, or should I say looked at, is maps. Along with his "palm-grenade" mishap, this man let our class out a half hour early one day. The best part...he thought we had gone over the alotted class time. All classes at CEA, no matter what day or time, are an hour and a half in length. He seemed genuinely surprised, even though he's taught here for 2 years, when a few students and myself stayed after to inform him that class was an hour and half and our time had not actually expired. As most students would do, the majority of the class had already bolted out the door. This class is going to be a disaster, and I'm feeling as though my quiz will be the same.

Tonight I'm going to a flamenco show at a local theater with other CEA students. I'm pretty excited to see it because I've never been to a Flamenco show before. Hopefully the show is decent. Some people have said it was pretty bad, but I guess it can be a matter of opinion. Even if it isn't the best, at least I can add that to my list of worldy experiences! I'll be sure to let everyone know how that went tomorrow.

So, I have a crazy amount of homework I need to get started on it. I'm on a slight wave of motivation at the moment and I feel as though I should ride it as long as possible. Off to work I go. Love and miss you all. <3

pictures<3

2009-02-04T16:57:00.004+01:00

who wants to buy me a drink when I get back?!

2009-02-04T13:27:00.002+01:00

I, Hannah Kinzelmann, am officially 21. I cannot believe it! The legal drinking part doesn't excite me that much, it's more the part where I am officially an adult. I may not act like one sometimes, BUT I AM! Woooo!

So my day started off with waking up and having my roommate forget to say Happy Birthday to me. It was totally ok because she was incredibly sick. Plus, I'm used to people forgetting to say happy birthday at monumental ages...achemdadachemm! :) Anyway, I got up and went to my 5 hours of classes. It was relatively depressing because nobody knew it was my birthday. At home, everyone is telling you "Happy Birthday!" all day. Here? Not at all. It was expected though because these people don't even really know me at all, let alone my day of birth.

My religion class had a field trip. Yes, a field trip. My first one since probably middle school. We had to navigate the metro system and find our way to what is considered "Old Spain". We walked around for an hour or so. It was absolutely gorgeous! All the old buildings were still in relatively good condition. This sounds corny but ever since I have been here, I have a new appreciation for architecture. The stuff I've seen here is incredible. So I loved just walking around this part of Barcelona and looking at all the old buildings and their intricate stone carvings. Wow I sound like a nerd, but I'm totally ok with that! :)

Now for the birthday festivities. I get out of class @ 3:45 and usually walk right back to the residencia. I get out, walk home, and walk into my room to see it decorated with these little party decorations. My dear roommate, Steeter Maghee as I call her, went out and bought them for my birthday. She also made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich which sat so nicely on a birthday party plate. I wasn't having the greatest start to my day so this definitely helped! Further adding to my relative happiness was my package from my wonderful boyfriend, Jamie. He shipped out my birthday gift to me so I could open it here in Spain. I loved the gifts and they certainly brought a huge smile to my face...and some bling to my neck. I'm a lucky girl right? Believe me, I know! :)

I originally didn't want to go out for my birthday because it was a school night (yes, I know, I'm a huge loser). Buuuuutttt, you only turn 21 once and my roommates pretty much forced me to. So we all got spiffed up and went to this mexican place for dinner. I had my first legal drink (had I been in the U.S), a margarita, and it was disgusting! After that we went back to our residencia to "pre-game" a little before we went out. All of my friends surprised me with little random gifts that ranged from: earrings, a necklace, chocolate 21 candles, and croissants. After that, my friends Mike and Dylan brought out a cake! I was really surprised and I also felt really bad. I hate it when people spend money on me, especially when they don't have to. Carly also had purchased these little mini cakes that were served too. Mike and Dylan's cake was probably the best one I've ever had my 21 years on this earth. You all should be jealous! I mean, who doesn't want a Winnie the Pooh cake with a giant "4" candle, for their 21st birthday? I loved it! :)

After presents and cake it was around 12:30am, which is prime go-out time in Spain. We all decided to go to this karaoke bar for the evening. We took some cabs over there and walked in. The place only had about 15-20 people in it, mostly couples, and wasn't the most visually pleasing place ever. But let me tell you..it was a BLAST! We ordered some drinks when we got there and started to look through the song books. The spanish locals who were there were so fun to listen to and watch. They would pick these American songs and they knew the words PERFECTLY! We also got to hear some spanish music too. Mike and Sara were the first in our group to go up to sing. They went with a personal fave: The Backstreet Boys. The crowd loved it! Then there was Jess who went up for a solo act. Before she sang her song she told the crowd, in spanish, that it was my birthday and dedicated this song to me. She did great and from then on a few people would say "Feliz Cumpleanos" to me before they sang. After a few fantastic hours at this place, I was feeling...confident enough to go up on stage and sing. Me and four others belted out LeAnne Rimes' How Do I Live? It was almost 3am so most of the crowd had dispersed, but those who were still there loved us. I had a great time! :)

So here I am, the day after my birthday, running on 4 hours of sleep. How did the day go? Not to shabby. I would have much rather been home for my birthday so I could have spent it with all my family and friends. I really do miss everyone a great deal and that made parts of the birthday a little difficult. However, my friends here were able to make it pretty special! Thank God for them! :)

I'll post some pictures of the day! I love and miss you all<3 Thank you for your birthday wishes throughout the day.

2009-02-02T17:24:00.003+01:00

what a weekend...

2009-02-02T16:16:00.002+01:00

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay in postings but, as you know, I was in Valencia for the weekend. I guess I'll give you the run-down of my weekend. I apologize ahead of time because this might be a long one.

Our bus was scheduled to leave at 7am from this bus station across the street from our residencia. I had to get up around 6am so I really wanted to go to bed early the night before. I didn't lay down as early as I wanted but I did get to bed at like 11:30pm...not too bad. I usually listen to my Mp3 player to wind down before I sleep, so I did that for a little bit. I was totally ready to doze off so I turned it off and got myself comfy. The second I am ready to fall asleep the kind people in the room above us decided it would be a good idea to be ridiculously loud for an hour or two. I couldn't tell you exactly what was going on up there. All I know is they were speaking, more like screaming, a foreign language, while doing something that was reminiscent of tap-dancing. Come 2am... I wanted to tap dance on their heads! :)

I was quite the grumpy gills when my alarm went off a few hours later. I scrambled to get ready/finish packing up my stuff. We all met, relatively on time, to walk over to the station together. I'm really glad we decided to take a bus to Valencia; it was super convenient and cheap. It left at 7am on the dot and arrived 4 hours and 15 minutes later. Leaving early turned out to be a good idea as well. The bus was empty so there was plenty of room to sprawl out in a row. Due to the tap-dancing schenanigans the previous night I was able to sleep almost the entire ride.

I woke up about a half hour before we got to Valencia. We took (I think) a major highway almost the entire way. Part of it was along the coast and the latter part of the trip went through this valley-like area. The last half hour of the trip I saw some of the most gorgeous scenery I have encountered in my life. Driving on the road, there were miles of Valencian orange fields on either side of you. In the distance of these fields were these gorgeous, red-toned mountains. Being the idiot that I am, I totally didn't take a picture, but trust me, it was gorgeous.

We got the bus station that was located in the center of town. We immediately hailed some cabs to take us to the hotel that we had booked online. We arrived at the hotel and opened the cab doors to the harmonious sound of construction. Carly had done the booking online and was completely unaware that the hotel was underconstruction. So we walked in and went to the front desk to check-in; or so we thought. When Carly booked the hotel online she reserved a room that was described as a "family" room, or a room that could fit 4. When we said our names and tried to check in they started saying that we couldn't do it. They kept saying over and over, "You don't have two kids." They said that you needed to be a couple and have two kids to stay in this room. Hah, good one. Then they tried to say we had to book rooms for two...aka we're going to get more money from you. They only spoke spanish so we had no way to argue back with them. These people totally took advantage of the fact that we were tourists and didn't speak the language. Incredibly angry, we all walked out of the hotel to find another place to stay. You don't want to give us a 4 person room? Ok then, we'll be staying somewhere else.

Not a great way to start off the trip. We ended up walking around Valencia with all of our bags for 2 hours. We were on the outskirts of the city so there weren't hotels left and right. We found a hostel, but again, the owners tried to rip us off. After three failed attempts at finding a place to stay, we found an internet cafe, and looked online for places near us. We found a Holiday Inn, in the worst possible location, that would only cost 30Euro a person for the two night stay. Beggars can't be choosers, and it was getting dark, so we took it. Learning from the previous hotel incident, me and Carly went in as though we were the only ones staying in the two person bedroom. Thankfully, we got the room and snuck everyone in without a problem.

We get to our room, swing open the door, and find, yet again, two small twin beds pushed together. Is this common practice in Spain?! Is everything miniature for a reason? All we really could do was laugh. At least we had a place to stay and at least we would be warm...only because there would be 4 people sharing that bed. One thing I never thought I would miss when I'm here: T.V. I have my regular shows that I watch every week but other than that I rarely watch TV when I'm at school. BUT I MISS IT SO MUCH! What I wouldn't give to just be able to turn on the TV and hear something in English. Anyway, there was a TV in this room. Great, right? Wrong. Every program was either totally in German or had German subtitles. German in Spain? I don't even try to make sense of these things anymore. At least I got to watch some good ole American MTV...in German.

None of us had eaten that entire day, so as soon as we got the room we decided to go get something to eat. Our hotel was located in EAST GUAM so we had to trek approx. 15 minutes to get to a place that had food. After about 20 minutes of walking, we saw arguably the most magnificient site I have viewed here thus far: The Golden McDonald's Arches!!!! Never have I been so excited to see a McDonalds in my entire life. I don't even really like fast food that much but my mouth started salivating like Pavlov's pooch. I ordered a Quarter Pounder with a large soda and large fries. Don't judge me.

It started raining while we were in this wonderful American establishment so we decided to walk around the mall for a bit. I bought a dress to wear for my birthday dinner. Then we went back to the room to take a siesta. After that we all took showers and spiffed up to go out for the night. Having no idea where to go, we just had the cab drivers take us to the city center, and we would figure it out from there. Valencia is absolutely GORGEOUS! I actually prefer it to Barcelona. It has more of a Spanish feeling to it, whereas Barcelona almost feels like New York City in some parts. We eventually found this cute little restaurant called "The Ginger Loft". This place was owned by a guy named Santiago and his partner Mark. Both of them spoke English which was wonderful. We spent about 3 hours at this place just eating and chatting with eachother. Santiago even spent about an hour with us telling us all about Valencia, his life travels, etc. So, I'm sure my Dad is wondering what I ordered. I got a potato and corn chowder with chicken quesadillas. Santiago also gave us a free glass of Sangria because of the wait for our food. I don't really like Sangria at all, but this glass was the best I've had thus far. A bunch of the group wanted to go out, but I wanted to call it a night after dinner. It was 2:30 am already and I had just started feeling better the day prior, so I didn't want to push it. I had I gone out to a club I probably wouldn't have made it back to the hotel until 4 or 5 am.

The next day we woke up and had the free breakfast at the hotel. After that, we looked for attractions to see in Valencia that were inside because it was raining incredibly hard. The weather was HORRIBLE the entire day. We ended up choosing "El Museo de las Ciencias". It was pretty much a bigger and better MOST museum from back home. Hands down the best museum I have been to...and we only saw one floor. My favorite exhibit? The Marvel Superheroes exhibit. They had all the superheroes life-size and you could play games that tested your "super hero skills". It was just a great time. After the museum we trekked the mile or two back to our hotel. We rested for a little bit then made plans for the evening. We went to another restaurant where I had Pasta y Jamon (Ham). After that we went to this bar called La Bolseria. We got in free (it's good to be a girl at times) and got coupon for a free drink (scratch that, all the time). I had a really good time at this place because it was an actual Spanish bar. A lot of the places we go to back in Barcelona are filled with American study abroad students so you really don't get the Spanish experience. We all wanted another early night (3am) so the girls headed back to the hotel to go to sleep.

The next day we woke up, checked out, and headed to the bus station a few hours early. Exhausted, we pulled back into Barcelona around 7pm local time. Right as we got back to the room Carly realized that she didn't have her iphone. We hurried back to the station to try and look for it. No luck. We think that someone pick-pocketed her on the bus right before we got off in Barcelona. It wasn't a great evening at all.

So, the first trip...not all that great. I loved Valencia itself but things just didn't go very well hotel wise, weather wise, etc. Everyone was very stressed and frustrated from the hotel situation at the very beginning, and that kind of set the tone for the weekend. Everyone I've talked to has said that the first trip you take never really goes all that well. We just have to learn from this one I guess! I have one trip under my belt and I think the next one will go better. But don't get me wrong, Valencia was great, and I would definitely like to visit again.

I'll post some pictures from this weekend in another entry!
I LOVE AND MISS YOU ALL SO MUCH!

pictures

2009-01-29T21:06:00.004+01:00

hola!

2009-01-29T17:58:00.005+01:00

Good news and bad news. The good: I am feeling almost 100% better. The bad: I've lost my voice for 2 days now..and I have no idea where Barcelona's Lost & Found is. Ok, bad joke, but my voice really is gone. I'll take it though. It's better than feeling like I'm swallowing fire 24/7.

Second week of school is done! Woo! I know we've been over this but I really don't enjoy any of my classes except Sport and Culture. The teacher is just awesome to put it simply. The material is good but the teacher just makes the class. He loves what he teaches and teaching isn't even his first job. He is actually a sports broadcaster that works for FC Barcelona, the city's soccer team. So during the week he teaches at CEA and when there are games he is working at them. It totally doesn't matter that he doesn't speak English very well and sounds like Borat because he is incredibly upbeat and positive all the time. A group had the first presentation of the semester today. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't like award winning or anything, just your average oral presentation. He starts clapping and saying, "BRAVO! wonderful! GREAT JOB!" Everyone in the class is just looking at him and he goes "Come on people, lets clap them". "Clap them" we did. Gosh I love this man.

After a failed attempt at booking online, a failed attempt to buy them at the train station, and yet another failed attempt online, we finally have tickets to Valencia. The round trip by train was around 63 Euros which was cheaper than a flight. Then I suggested looking into taking a bus because we are literally next door to the bus station. So I go online to research prices and we can get a round trip ticket for 50 Euros. SCORE! Due to minor communication issues (who are we kidding, they're major issues) we had our friend, Jorge, who speaks Spanish fluently, come help us buy the tickets at the station. Turns out the bus station has a deal that is buy two tickets, get one free. Essentially everyone that was going got a round trip ticket for 33 Euros. DOUBLE SCORE! We leave tomorrow morning at 7am (ew.) and get back February 1st, sometime in the late afternoon/early evening. I'm pretty excited to take my first trip! Valencia is a few hours down the coast from Barcelona. It is the third largest city and Spain and is known for its wicked good paella and nightlife. WOO!

So, I obviously won't be able to write for the next few days because I won't be bringing my computer with me. I'll be sure to update y'all on how the trip went and upload some pictures as well. I hope everyone is surviving the snowstorm back home...I know I am! :)

Love and miss you all!<3

I'm alive

2009-01-27T15:34:00.003+01:00

I'm alive - BARELY! I went to the Emergency Room yesterday because I couldn't get a doctor's appointment until Thursday. With a fever and my throat swollen shut that simply wasn't going to cut it. Turns out I have strep throat. The doctor prescribed me some antibiotics and pain medication to take for the next few days. I'm already feeling a tiny bit better...thank God. I just need to rest every second I get because I don't think being as tired as I am helps any.

In other news, our day trip to Calcotada and Sitges was cancelled. We walked outside to leave for the trip around 10am on Saturday and we were nearly blown over by the wind. I have never experienced gusts of wind that strong in my life. We weren't really sure if it was normal or not but we assumed it was ok to walk around because everyone else in Barcelona was too. On our way to the meeting point we saw trees uprooted from the cement, signs that had blown off their posts, and furniture that had been swept from balconies, etc. We finally got to the meeting point and the lady told us that the trip was cancelled because of the wind conditions. She said wind like this was not normal here in Barcelona and that traveling in it would be very dangerous. Apparently we had to go over a bridge to get to our destination and they were worried that the bus would blow off the bridge if a gust was strong enough. Not to mention, the winery we were going to had no power because of the weather. I was surfing the internet later and when I went on CNN.com I saw a headline that said "Severe Wind Storms in Spain". I was pretty surprised the storm had made international headlines so I opened it up to read it. It talked about how Barcelona was experiencing uncharacteristic winds that had reached up to 99 mph. Buildings had their siding ripped off (see my picture below, HAH!) and there were dead birds everywhere that had met their fate...a wall...due to strong winds. Anyway, note to self: When the wind literally can blow you over...stay inside.

Classes are going decent this week. I love my Sport & Culture class a ton. The other 4? Not so much. Oh well, nothing I can do really. Hopefully I will be feeling 100% in a day or two. I'll try to keep writing but if I'm not feeling to great I hope you can understand. Love and miss you all! <3

It was only a matter of time...

2009-01-25T20:09:00.004+01:00

Nearly everyone I know here at CEA has come down with something these past two weeks. All of the teachers have said that sickness levels go through the roof the first few weeks because of stress, fatigue, new germs for your immune system to fight, etc. I have pretty much been living in a hospital here at Residencia Onix because almost all of my suitemates have been sick. With all necessary precautions taken, I somehow managed to hop on the band-wagon and get sick. I've been dead for about the past 24 hours or so. What started as a little tickle has since progressed into the swelling shut of my throat/fever. I think I'm going to try and find a pharmacy tomorrow and see if they have any medicine for sore throats. I really don't want to miss any classes so I know I'm going to have to be drugged up to get through both of mine tomorrow. If after my classes I'm still not feeling any better I'm going to try to find the doctor that CEA recommends we visit if we become ill. Until then I'm going to lay around in pain, be miserable, and wish I was home. Here's to you anti-bacterial hand sanitizer...thanks for nothing!

pictures

2009-01-24T14:58:00.005+01:00

La Rambla

2009-01-23T21:16:00.003+01:00

We left to go the Barcelona Aquarium at about 2 in the afternoon. It was about 62 degrees and a beautiful day here in Barcelona. We figured we would save ourselves some money and walk the ten million miles to the aquarium. About two miles before the aquarium you get to this street called "La Rambla". It's a pretty famous street here in Barcelona and very popular with the tourists. The whole street is lined with little cafes, stores, street vendors, entertainers, and pick pockets.

So the adventure began at the beginning of La Rambla where there is a big plaza called "Placa Catalunya". Placa Catalunya is this big walking area that has been taken over by pigeons. When we got to the plaza there were probably thousands of pigeons just chilling there. Unfortunately, we had to walk through the mini pigeon army to get to La Rambla. While it was one of the most scariest things I've ever experienced, it was probably one of the funnest things that I've been around here. Yes, sounds stupid I know, but the pigeons were fascinating to me. This one man came and had bread in his hand and literally ALL of the pigeons swarmed to him. I would have freaked out had I been him. There were these precious little kids who were playing with the pigeons too. Then there was this HUGE gust of wind and all of the pigeons started flying RIGHT at us. I was so scared I was going to get hit or pooped on by a bird; either would have been mortifying. If both had happened simultaneously I probably would have sat in a box and shipped myself home.

Then we got on La Rambla where I witnessed my first pick pocketing incident. The guy was looking like a total Creeper McCreeperson when we saw him walking our way. He slowed down near this one person and all of the sudden you see this person's wallet in his hand. Within seconds he had disappeared into the crowd. All in one swift motion this persons wallet was gone and they didn't have a clue. Scary stuff! Everyone spent the rest of the walk clutching their wallets and purses for dear life. Me? I took an extra level of precaution and walked around the rest of the afternoon with my wristlet in my pants :)

The rest of the walk down La Rambla I just took a million pictures and took in the sights. Every few hundred feet there are these entertainers that paint themselves to look like scultpures and what not. Then there is this stretch of street that has artists who sell their drawings and paintings along the side. I also found this nice little gelatto place about half way down La Rambla. I bought a large (I had to) and that meant I got to have 4 different scoops. I chose raspberry, kiwi, mango, and cookies and cream. All of the flavors were delicious but raspberry was by far my favorite. I definitely want to try some more another time!

We finally got the end of La Rambla where we thought the Aquarium was located. Turns out it was about two miles down another road. We were exhausted from walking around all afternoon so we opted to go to the Aquarium another day. I'm so overly tired it's not even funny anymore. I could probably sleep for two weeks straight and not wake up once. All in all it was a good day and I am really excited for tomorrow (the day trip to a couple towns). I'll be sure to post some pictures from today and tomorrows trip next blog. Love and miss you all <3

mas picturas<3

2009-01-22T21:27:00.006+01:00

TGIT

2009-01-22T18:43:00.003+01:00

Thank God it's Thursday! I don't have classes on Fridays so today is my "Friday". So I officially just completed my first week of school in Spain. The classes were a lot harder than I expected but I'm starting to feel a little better about them as time goes on. We're going to have to wait and see how hard actual tests are though.

My poor, poor History teacher has such a thick accent, no one can understand him. It really sounds like a mixture of French and Spanish...I don't know if that's possible. We'll just say he a "Frenish" accent. On top of that, he barely speaks English and has a really hard time getting his point across when hes lecturing. For example, today we were going over historic Spanish symbols and their meanings. We had gone through a couple of them when he arrived to the last one. In his broken English he points and says, "This is palm grenade. It symbolize things like fertility, life, abundance. I'm thinking in my head...how does a palm grenade symbolize life?. The symbol looked NOTHING like a grenade...more like a flower of some sort. He repeated himself over and over and over; "It a palm grenade". Probably after reading the looks on the faces of his students, I think he started questioning his pronunciation. He proceeded to elaborate and said, "It's a kind of fruit". Simultaneously, everyone was like, "Ohhhhhhhhhhh pomegranate". Ehhh, palm grenade...pomegranate -same thing.

In my psychology class, where ironically, my teacher is psycho, we talked a little about the inauguration of our new President (GOBAMA!!!). The professor wanted to know our feelings on the moment and whether or not we were disappointed by not being in the country for it. Personally, I followed the election so closely from the time the primaries began, all the way to CNN calling the race on November 4th, so it would have been really nice to have had a chance to go to the Inauguration. However, I can still appreciate the magnitude of the moment and I did feel as part of it as possible. I was in my room when he was sworn in, trying, to no avail, to find a live feed on my computer. I called up Poppa in a panic and he told me where to go. Good ole HuffPost had it on their website and it actually WORKED on my computer! There were tons of people here in Spain, some Americans, some locals, who went to local bars to watch the inauguration. Obama's picture was plastered on every newspaper that day as well. I find it fascinating that the majority of these people were looking forward to the inauguration as much as the rest (well some) of America. Although I would much rather be able to say "I was at Barack Obama's inauguration", I still think it is pretty cool to be able to say, "I scoured the world wide web in a fit of panic until I found a website that televised one of the most historic moments I will likely encounter in my lifetime...and oh yea, I was in Barcelona, Spain." I will fondly remember January 20th, 2009 for the rest of my life :)

SO ITS THE WEEKEND! I don't know if I'm going out tonight or not. I'm exhausted x's 487. I do know that me and a group of friends are going to the Barcelona Aquarium tomorrow. I am really looking forward to that. Then the following day is the CEA trip to Sitges and Calcotada. Action packed weekend I have ahead of me -- I'm pretty much stoked!

Love and miss you all!

P.S - This website is not letting me post pictures at the moment. I'll be sure to add some as soon as it decides to give Hannah a break!

low key day

2009-01-21T23:59:00.002+01:00

Hello everyone! Today was a nice low key day. By low key I mean that I did nothing but school and homework all day. I had my second Spanish and Macroeconomics class. I'm feeling pretty good about both of them. I enjoy both of the teachers and feel like I can do well in the classes. Tomorrow is my 5 hours of class day and I can't wait! NOT! Sometimes I wish that the Spanish siestas (naps or where they shut down business for 2 hours during the mid-afternoon) for businesses applied to students as well. So after completing Tuesday with only a clementine in my stomach, I'm thinking I need to prepare for that stretch of time a little better tomorrow. Mayble I'll pack a lunch...aka Carly is making me a PB&J sandwich :)

Anyway, sorry for a boring blog today! I do have a CEA trip this weekend where we head out to wine country for the day. I get to do a wine tasting and have lunch and some restaurant out there. Should be pretty exciting with some good pictures too. CAN'T WAIT! I'll have some juicy details when that day comes. I love and miss you all and I hope you have a great day! :)

I need a nap.

2009-01-20T16:04:00.003+01:00

So I just completed my second day of classes. 5 hours straight with no lunch makes for a tired, grumpy, and hungry Hannah. Starting off my day right, I didn't fall asleep until 3:30am and woke up exhausted. The shower helped wake me up a little and I was off to my first class with time to eat a solitary clementine...you should hear my stomach rumbling.

My first class was Sports & Culture in Contemporary Spain. This is going to be my favorite class without a question. The teacher seems incredibly nice and laid back. He introduced himself and then said, "YOU CAN FRIEND ME ON FACEBOOK IF YOU WANT!". He gave us his cellphone numbers and said if we had any questions about class or even where to find a nice cheap meal then we could call him. Anyway, the class pretty much covers, you guessed it, sports and how they are part of the culture in Spain. They want us to start viewing sports as more than the athletic task itself. We talked a bit about how sports have evolved into so much more than that (sports now involve business, advertisement, politics, etc). For example, you don't want David Beckham on your team purely for his talent (I'd take him for his good looks....). Teams want him so badly because of what comes with David Beckham and his talent. You have things like his modeling campaigns, advertisements, and his celebrity in general, which in turn create buzz for your team...aka money for you. So yea, like I'm starting to realize with all of my CEA classes there will be a ton of work. We have a huge paper to write but it's on any topic of our choosing. We just have to incorporate sports in Europe (ideally Spain) and the United States. I think I want to write about the trend of European players coming to play in the NBA and how we are starting to see a reverse trend where playing in Europe has become appealing to NBA players. I just have to see if we learn anything in class that I can tie in with that. All in all, I think I'm going to love this class.

Now this is where my day went downhill... My psychology class has probably the largest amount of reading I have ever had to do for a class. She says we are guaranteed at least 30 pages of reading a night and that it is mandatory because she gives pop quizzes. Woooo. We spent the majority of class introducing ourselves and going over the rules of the classroom. After that we talked a little about the basics of culture and ethnocentrism. Thennnn she released us from class where I heard nearly half of my classmates saying they were going to drop the class. What will I be doing tonight? Reading.

To end my three consecutive class streak of 5 hours I have class with the most boring teacher I have ever encountered in my life. Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Contemporary Spain could potentially be a very interesting subject. However, I don't believe that is going to happen with this class. I think the man has anxiety with public speaking because he was whispering and getting incredibly nervous looking the entire time (Little did he know his fly was open the entire class). The genius that I am, sat waiting in the wrong classroom for class to begin for about 10 minutes. I realized I was in the wrong class and got to the correct one right before it started. I found myself the only available seat in the back corner. Conveniently, sign ups for a oral presentation started in the front of the classroom on the polar opposite side. You guessed it. I was left with the least desirable slot: first presentation of the semester.

I was just talking with Carly and we're totally surprised with our courses and their difficulty this semester. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, says classes in study abroad are somewhat of a joke. Not here. This is hands down going to be the hardest semester I have taken in college thus far. The class that I was most scared about, Spanish, is looking like it's going to be my easiest. Hopefully I am able to manage time to do my work but still find time for fun, trips, and what not. Maybe all the teachers are just trying to scare us with their syllabi? Maybe the classes are actually really easy? I sure hope so.

Anyway, I love and miss you all! Grocery shopping is calling my name!!!
(Please forgive any and all typos and grammatical errors. First two days of classes and my brain is officially fried.)

First day of class COMPLETE!

2009-01-19T21:22:00.002+01:00

So I successfully completed my first day of classes and it went well. I left for my class at the Main Global Campus (the 15 minute walk) at about 10:00 so I had 45 minutes to get lost, find my way, and get a notebook. You'll be pleased to know that I made it to the building on time AND without getting lost. I walked into about three stores that appeared to have notebooks. I don't know if people in Barcelona are against lined paper notebooks because all this city sells are graph-paper notebooks. And yes, you guessed it, I'm that cool girl in class taking all my notes on graph paper :)

I had Spanish at 10:45. I was really, and still am, really nervous about it. I haven't taken a Spanish class since last May and that might take a toll on me in this class. Anyway, my teacher seems really nice. She actually kind of reminds me of my Spanish teacher I had at Le Moyne and I loved her. Professora Hernandez started off class by introducing herself with an activity she called "Cierto o Falso"; True or False. She made a list of things about herself like age, hometown, interests, etc. Out of all of the information there were three "lies" and we had to guess which ones were false...all in spanish of course. After that we sort of introduced ourselves to the class and other classmates. We closed class with a little competition that she called "Que sabes de Espana?". She put us in groups and we had to think of Spanish actors, actresses, monuments, festivals, etc. If they didn't originate in Spain (ex. putting Salma Hayek who is actually from Mexico) then you did not get credit for them. Our group came in third place...out of 4! HAH! :)

Next, I had Macroeconomics. My teacher seems pretty cool so far. Now for the uncool...the first thing he said at the beginning of class was "This is hands down the hardest class available here at CEA". You can imagine the pure joy I felt wash over me. As you all know, Microeconomics gave me quite the hard time at Le Moyne two semesters ago. I'm hoping I had a difficult time because of a poor teacher, T.Shep, and not the topic of economics itself. Anyway, there is a lot of work in the class. We also have a 20 minute presentation at the end of the semester (can't wait for that one!), along with a cumulative final worth 35% of our grade. Ughhhh. He said if you work really hard then it is possible to get an A in the class. So basically I need to work hard x's 436687 and I should be fine.

Speaking of Macro...I need to go do my 20 pages of reading for my macro homework. I have the rest of my new classes tomorrow: Sports & Culture in Spain, Intercultural Interactions: A Psychological Perspective, and Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Contemporary Spain. Class from 10:45 to 3:45 will pretty much kick my butt, but I am excited to be back at work! I'll let y'all know how it goes tomorrow. Love and miss you all <3

More PICTURES! :)

2009-01-19T16:49:00.003+01:00

you could say I'm nervous...

2009-01-18T22:57:00.002+01:00

Oh my gosh am I nervous! I have my first day of classes tomorrow. My first class is at 10:45 about a 15 minute walk away. I'm taking intermediate spanish and I am incredibly nervous because I haven't taken a spanish class since last May. The class goes till 12:15 then I have a break until 2:15. Thankfully, this building is only about a two minute walk from our residencia. Unfortunately, it is a Macroeconomics (we all know how much I loved Micro!). I feel like I'm starting college again freshman year. I know nearly no one and don't know any of the teachers. I just need to keep in mind it went just fine freshman year and hopefully it will tomorrow too. I'll let y'all know.

Today we took the 15 minute walk down the beach! It was gooorrrggeeousss! I can't wait for some warmer weather so I can go down there and just enjoy the sun and water. The entire boardwalk is filled with these nice clubs and restaurants. We mapped out a few we would like to go to before our time is up here. My poor friend Yaffa was at the beach earlier that day. She was climbing down some steps and tripped and fell. She unfortunately broke the fall with her chin and had to get 6 stitches. Luckily everything that the hospital worked out fine and she is doing well.

Other than that today was a totally uneventful day. The nerves have been steadily building throughout the day and will be at full blast tomorrow morning. I figure I will leave around 10 am here and give myself about 45 minutes to walk to class and find my way if I just so happen to get lost. AND! I need a freakin' notebook to take notes in for my classes! Allllll I want is a little Wal-Mart! I could get EVERYTHING I need! But seriously, there are no notebooks in Barcelona. Hopefully I will discover one on my walk to school. If not, looks like I'm gonna have to rely on the good ole stone tablet and chisel.

SO! If any of you so happen to wake up around 4:45 am, think of me, and how I am most likely peeing my pants as spanish class begins. Kidding...sort of. I love and miss you all! Wish me LUCK! :)

Pictures :)

2009-01-17T15:34:00.005+01:00

I MADE EDIBLE FOOD!

2009-01-16T21:44:00.002+01:00

Wooooo! Carly and I made our first meal tonight! And yes, I actually did some cooking. IT WAS DELICIOUS! We made shrimp scampi from this recipe book that Carly brought with her from home. I crushed the garlic, diced the carrots, and sauteed the shrimp in butter! Weeeuuuu! I'm pretty proud of myself! You all know I am cooking challenged so this is kind of a big deal. *pat on the back*

Other than that today was a pretty uneventful day. We got up at a decent hour to go grocery shopping again. Turns out the supermarket that was like 6 blocks from our place isn't the only one in the area. There is actually one literally BELOW our hotel! HAH! Good move Hannah & Carly! Anyway, we picked up some groceries and it cost an arm and a leg (I appreciate you foodmakers/buyers).

Last night we went to this place called Espitos Chupitos. It only served shots and they had like 400 to choose from. We had some really fun ones! There was one that you took and then had pop rocks right after; delicious! Then there was another one called "The Boy Scout" and you roasted a marshmellow over a flame that was set on the table. Then you had the shot which was chocolate-y tasting and chased it with the roasted marshmellow. ALL IN ALL, really fun night!

We also went to find our school building today. My first class on Monday is about a 20 minute walk through the city. I could take the metro but its 1.35E for one trip so that would add up BIG TIME! I think I'm just gonna have to leave super early and make the trek. The other school building where 4 of my 5 classes are, is only a two minute walk, thankfully.

Don't really know whats on the agenda for tomorrow. I think we might go shopping a little bit! Other than that, I know I'm staying in for the night. I want to get two good nights of sleep before school starts on Monday. It's almost time to crack down so I gotta get ready for that. This week of free time has been nice but I am really ready to have some work to do. Also, I have a meeting on January 22 for possible volunteering opportunities. There is only one thing I am eligible for (thankfully it was the one I wanted to do) and it involves volunteering at a hospital for really ill children. You basically spend your time reading to them, playing with them in playrooms etc. I really think it would be a good way to work on my Spanish (the kids don't really judge you when you mess up). Also, I think with all the money people have given to me to make this trip possible, I should do something good with it. What better way to do that then help out at this place? So, its unlikely I get it because there are so many people in this program but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed!

We're heading out tonight for one more night on the town! It's one of my friends 21st birthday tonight so we're going out to celebrate. I hope everyone has had a great day! I love and miss you all soooo much! :)

2009-01-15T19:50:00.002+01:00

I had my first night out on the town in Barcelona last night. This club in the city was having an open bar from 12-1:30. So we had a late dinner (as is typical in Spain) and left for the club around 12. It had American music and was filled with what looked to be mostly study abroad students. I had a great time! It was so weird walking up to a bar and just being able to get a drink. Anyway, we went out with around 15 people so it was SUPER SAFE (don't you worry dad). We took a cab back around 3 am and I skyped my boy with Carly. SOLID NIGHT IF YOU ASK ME :)

After sleeping in for the first time in FOREVER, we went out to run some errands in the city. I took the metro for the first time and made it SUCCESSFULLY to the desired destination. Barcelona has this huuuuuge 9 story store called El Corte Ingles. It's kind of like a GIANT department store that's a little more expensive than a Macy's type deal. I needed to get a hairdryer and a blanket because the one on my bed looks like something that belongs on a prison cot. Got the hairdryer! Did NOT get the blanket because there was not one below 80 Euro. So, I will continue to freeze until I find a cheaper blanket. I'll look some more tomorrow.

I also made my first clothing purchase here. I got this cute "going out" red dress for about 13 Euro. NOT TO SHABBY IF YOU ASK ME! The clothing here is amazing. I want to buy everything! Unfortunately, I cannot. I'm going to try reaaaaaallyyy hard to budget my purchases over the next few months.

I'm feeling kind of homesick today but I think that's expected. I'm really ready for school to start on Monday because I think that will help keep my mind busy a little. My first class is Monday at 10:45 and it's only a two minute walk so thats good! I can sleep in a little.

So we're off to dinner and a bar in a bit! SPEAKING OF FOOD! The food has been fantastic! I had paella marisco (seafood paella) the first night and last night I had macarones (pasta); BOTH WERE DELICIOUS!

Sorry this is boring! Not much went on today! I love and miss you all sooo much.

BARCELONA! :)

2009-01-14T16:21:00.002+01:00

FINALLY! We arrived in Barcelona about 9:31 local time on the 12th. We got our luggage (thank God mine was there!) and made our way to this area where they picked up all the other CEA students! Instead of going right to our residencia, they took us to this hotel for two days called Duques de Bergara. We schlepped all of our luggage up to the 5th floor and open up the door to our room. It was legitimately 5x5 feet. The two twin beds in the room were pushed together because there wasn't enough room for them to be any other way. Good thing Carly and I know each other because that would make for one awwwkward night with a stranger. Further adding to the wonderful romantic mood in our room...a 6 ft painting of a naked women hanging over our bed(s)! :)

The next day we had CEA orientation for a few hours. Then we took this 3 hour bus tour of the city. The drive took us to some of the highest points in the city where you could see all over Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea. It was sooooooooo beautiful! I was in my glory! We also got to go see some of Gaudi's famous works in Barcelona. We saw two apartment buildings that he designed and then we got to go to La Sagrada de Familia. These places were so intricately designed it was absolutely amazing! There is this HUGE church that towers over the rest of the buildings and ever single square inch was decorated beautifully. I didn't get many good pictures of it because it was later in the day and dark. I hope to go back when its lighter out and take a tour on the inside.

Today we finally moved into the place where we are staying; Residencia Onix. It is really really nice. Our room is a little bit run down but my pictures liven it up! I've already settled in nicely! :) In the CEA program you are responsible for your own food AKA I'm going to lose 50 lbs. We have this cute little kitchen area in our room (comes with pots, pans, silverware, etc.) with a stove and tiny little fridge. So me and Carly ventured out into Barcelona to find a supermarket. We had to walk about 5 blocks to the closest one. EVERYTHING THERE WAS IN SPANISH! I know, I know I know, I'm in Spain. But seriously! Never have I been so confused about something I know SO well...food. We got the basics: chicken, pasta, soup, bread, etc. I'll be sure to report how miserably my meals go! We also spent about 10 minutes looking at the wall of hygiene products. We couldn't figure out the difference between the body wash, shampoo, and conditioner (my pocket spanish dictionary would have been handy, but NO, I left it in my room). We thought we figured it out...turns out Carly purchased two different bottles of body wash. Still on our list: lotion

We got our course schedules and I got all the classes I wanted! I'm taking Macroeconomics (ew), Spanish, Judaism and Islam in Spain, Sport & Culture in Spain, anddd Psychological Interactions! All of the classes are an hour and a half long (uughhhh) and my school for 4 of the 5 classes is only a two minute walk from here. I'm probably going to have to take the subway to get to the other building. Andddd that means I will probably manage to end up somewhere in Poland the first day!

So far I'm really enjoying myself! I have met a bunch of wonderful people! I think we're all going to go out and LEGALLY have some wine and tapas (small appetizer-like means) later. Hopefully I feel a little more settled in once classes begin. BUT SO FAR I CAN'T COMPLAIN! I'm in a beautiful city and meeting some wonderful people!

love and miss you all! :)

AND WE'RE OFF...soon!

2009-01-06T00:02:00.004+01:00

I have been preparing for this moment for about a year now. Finally, the time has arrived...I leave for SPAIN in 6 days! I will be studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain from January 12th to May 1st. 3 1/2 months! Oh goodness what have I gotten myself into? I am really nervous, incredibly apprehensive, and very excited (I swear I am) all at the same time. For those of you who know me, know I love being a little globe-trotter. You must also know that it is going to take quite the swift kick in the pants to get me on the plane (Thanks ahead of time Dad!). Am I ready?! Not quite. But I am ready to see where this trip takes me and I couldn't be more excited to find out.

I have so much to do my mind is running 75 mph. Not only to do I still have to get a lot of odds and ends for my trip, but I still need to pack! How does one pack for 3 1/2 months? I have yet to figure it out! I'm starting to accept the fact that I cannot fit my boyfriend in my suitcase. But what about my clothing? I have no idea what to pack weather wise. Is it a warm 55 degrees?! Or a cold 55 degrees?! There is a difference, you know! I will essentially be spending the next six days packing and re-packing my luggage. Hopefully, I will keep cursing it to a minimum when I go over my 50 lb weight limit over, and over, and over again...

One more thing, before I have to stop procrastinating, this trip has really reminded me how truly blessed I am. Among other people, my wonderful grandparents have helped support me from day 1 when I said I wanted to take this trip. In any way they could, they have helped me make it possible. I cannot thank them and others who have helped enough. I love you more than words can say Grammy and Gramps! :)

Soooo. I suppose I should pack? Or I could eat away my nerves. Who knows? I really am excited! I can't wait to update daily (I will try my hardest) and let everyone know what is going on over here in Spain! So check back here every now and then and read up! I will miss you all <3

P.S - I am most definitely of legal drinking age when I arrive in Spain! Wooooo! As I get off the plane I am TOTALLY saying, "¿DONDE ESTAN LAS CERVEZAS?" Translation: WHERE ARE THE BEERS!??! (just kidding, Dad... kind of) ;)