On December 26^th, one of my friends from my hostel in Rome got up early with me and helped me with my luggage and walked me to the Metro.  I took the Metro to the train station, and then took a train back to the airport.  My first flight was from Rome to Vienna, with a 5 hour layover.  When I got the airport in Vienna, I was starving, so I had some frankfurter sausage with mustard and fresh sauerkraut and some soda.  I also had some bread, but I saved that for breakfast the next day.  I waited for a while, and then went through security for my next flight.  The security guard spoke English with the cutest accent ever, and he got so excited when he saw my US passport and he was like “I lahf ze United States!” (I love the US)

I think that the Vienna airport is one of the most efficient airports I have ever been in.  It is the only time that my flight has been ready to go early.  We had complimentary sandwiches and tea on the flight, and we landed in Frankfurt at 7 pm.  We had to take a shuttle over to another terminal to pick up our luggage.  After that, I found the terminal for trains, and then got on the train that was supposed to go to my hostel.  The problem was, I unknowingly took the train for too long, and I went past my stop.  Apparently the stop that I was supposed to get off at has 2 different names, and I only knew one of them, so I didn’t know to get off.  Some police officers got onto the train and checked my ticket.  I told them where I was trying to go, and they told me it was the next couple of stops.  The problem was, I needed to go to Hauptbahnhof, and they told me directions to Hanau.  The police officers also told me that the trains stopped running soon (which is not right, they stop running at 1 am, but they meant MY specific train I guess) So…I got off at Hanau around 9:30 pm.  I now know that Hanau is completely on the other side of the city from where I needed to be.  At this point, I had no idea where I was, but I knew that I was not in the right area.  I decided to take a cab to my hotel, since I was tired and I had no idea where to go.  I got in the cab, and told the man the address of my hotel.  I had the specific address written down, as well as the 2 streets that were the corner of where the hotel was.  The cab driver kept telling me he knew where it was, and he got out his GPS and put in some information.  The driver barely spoke any English…he told me that he was originally from Afghanistan.  He kept coughing the whole ride.  I now have a cough, and I think it might be from him.  He dropped me off in the Messe area of Frankfurt and told me that my hotel was down the street.  I asked him the name of the street, and he said it was the street that my hotel was on (not correct)  I paid him and he drove away, so I was standing there in the middle of Frankfurt at 10:00 at night with my luggage and no map and hardly any cash.  It was about 40 degrees outside.  I walked for a tiny bit and tried to find the street signs…but in Frankfurt not all of the stops are labeled.  I quickly gave up on this and decided to walk to a nearby hotel that I could see.  It wasn’t my right hotel, but I went inside and asked for a map and the woman at reception had one and showed me where on the map we were.

I went back out of the hotel and put my gloves on.  I was walking down the street with my backpack, my purse, pulling my rolling luggage behind me, while holding the map in the other hand and muttering curse words under my breath.  There was hardly anyone outside.  A man was walking the opposite direction, and he saw me with the map and said “Are you losing?”  He meant “Are you lost?” If finding the hotel was like a game, then I definitely was losing.  He introduced himself, and his name is Robert.  He is originally from France.  Thank God, he speaks a decent amount of English.  The map was ok, but left out a lot of small side streets that apparently were not important enough to put on a map.  He wasn’t exactly sure where my hotel was either, so we walked and walked and walked and then…we finally saw it!  We had been walking for about an hour, with me still dragging my luggage behind me.  Robert walked with me the whole time, which was very nice of him.  He said “I hope that some day I will go to the America and then if I am losing someone will help me like I am helping you.”  We set a time on the 28^th at 8:30 pm to meet again and have coffee, so that he could practice his English.  I checked into my hotel around 11 pm, totally exhausted.  I went to my room, which I happened to be sharing with 2 Asian guys.  They were already asleep when I got there.  Our room has 3 beds and an attached bathroom.  I went upstairs to the lobby to use the free internet for a while, and then went to bed.

December 27^th: I was so tired from traveling the day before, that I slept in for a while.  The Asian guys got up early and checked out.  I got up and took a long shower and got ready.  I left the hostel, and went in search of a bank with an ATM so that I could withdraw some money.  I found one not too far down my street.  After that, I decided to go to this Egyptian Museum that was close by, and that I had walked past the night before.  I got a discount on my ticket for being a student.  I stayed there for a couple of hours.  It was incredibly busy, and mostly full of German people, not tourists.  I left the museum and went walking down a different street, looking for some food.  I passed a lot of places, but one of them jumped out at me……….it was an Indian place, and you could smell curry and rice and saffron from outside.  I got basmati rice with mixed vegetables and a coke.  It was super cheap, and he gave me a ton of delicious food.  I had so much extra left over that he put it in a box for me to take home.  I walked back to the hostel, and found the guest kitchen and put my food in the fridge.  I was still tired and it was freezing outside, so I stayed in and went to bed early.  I watched some TV in my hotel room-the only channel in English is CNN, so now I am pretty current on my news!

December 28^th: I slept in again.  I am still catching up on sleep from traveling and not sleeping well sitting upright on airplanes.  I still had the room to myself, which was really nice, because that means I had the adjacent bathroom to myself as well.  I got up, and I decided that I needed to walk and find the main Hauptbahnhof train station for sure so that I would not miss my flight the next morning.  I left the hotel, and went walking for about 30 minutes.  I could not figure out where I was no matter how hard I stared at my map.  I finally realized that I had actually walked off the map, so I backtracked for half an hour and went the other way.  I stopped by the hotel to grab my scarf, since it was so cold.  I walked the other way, and after about another 20 minutes, I found the station!  I went in the train station, which is huge, to figure out what level I would need to go to in the morning.  I also bought a streuselstükchen for lunch.  While I was in the station, some guy walked by me and said something in German.  I looked at him, but I have no idea what he said.  He kept looking back at me and smiling while riding down the escalator.  Quite a few people have tried speaking to me in German and said that they thought I lived here.  I fit in much better here than Spain or Italy…I have even seen a lot of other gingers!  Obviously everyone knows I am not German as soon as I speak English, or they see a confused look on my face.

I left the train station and walked to Römerburg square, which was the first place that I saw traditional old-style German buildings.  The majority of Frankfurt is very modern, with lots of skyscrapers and a very industrial look.  The square is decorated for Christmas, and there were a ton of people.  I also walked to nearby St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral.  I circled around the outside, and then finally found the entrance.  I went inside for quite a while.  I am not yet sick of European churches.  They are so much cooler than American churches.  I walked for a while down the Main River, which runs through Frankfurt.  Frankfurt is actually named Frankfurt am Main, since it is “on” the river.  I took some pictures, and then made the trek back to my hotel.  It was so cold outside, and I was glad to get back inside the warm hotel.

For dinner, I had my leftover Indian food.  Then, I worked on writing this post!  My friend Robert came at 8:30 to meet me at my hotel, and then we walked for about an hour into the city center.  We stopped at a café/bar and I had a cappuccino and he had coke.  We talked and he practiced his English.  At the end, he paid and then we walked back towards my hotel.  Our whole trip took about 3 hours since we were walking.  Everyone says you are not supposed to talk to strangers-but then how else do you meet new friends?

Tomorrow morning I am getting up early, then taking the train (hopefully the correct one!) to the airport and then flying to Paris!  I have a 7 hour layover in Vienna, so I will not land in Paris until about 8:30 pm.

Ok, so here is an update on my life and traveling:  There are so many more stories that I don’t have time to write them all, but this is the gist of what I have been doing.

The last few days in Spain I spent with friends, going to our favorite places around Granada.  We got pastries and cappuccino in the mornings, schawarma for lunch, and went out for tapas at night.  Adrienne and I ate out almost every meal for our last 2 days in Granada.  On our last night in Granada, a group of our friends walked up to the very top of a neighborhood where you can see over all of Granada.  We brought some Alhambra beer, and sat on a wall for a few hours and watched the sunset.  We walked back down to the center, and met up with everyone in our program for a final dinner together.  We went to a nice restaurant, and we all had appetizers, a main course, a dessert, red wine, and champagne.  Everyone in our program chipped in a little bit of money to get a goodbye present for our program directors, Mark and Maria.  We got them wine, champagne, flowers, and made a big poster with pictures of everyone from our program throughout the semester as a border.  Everyone wrote a note in Spanish and signed their name on the poster as well.  After the dinner, everyone was hugging goodbye.  About 8 of us went to café futbol one last time to say goodbye to one of the waiters there.  That night, Adrienne and I went home and were finishing up our packing.  Ana came in and was upset that we were still packing even though it was late and we were leaving the next morning.  Typical Ana.  I slept for about an hour that night, and then we got up at 5:40 am.  Adrienne and I took all of our suitcases down to the lobby and then went back up to say goodbye to Ana.  We gave her a hug and kisses on the cheek (it is Spain, after all) and then we left.  Nobody cried.  It was incredibly unemotional, especially considering that we had been living with her for 4 months.

Our bus got to the airport at 7:15.  Iberia airlines didn’t start checking in people’s luggage until an hour before our flight, even thought there were hundreds of students leaving Spain on the 21^st.  A lot of people had to pay exorbitant overweight baggage fees as well.  I was worried about my bag being overweight, since there is no scale at Ana’s house to check how much my suitcase weighed.  On my way coming over to Spain, it weighed 49 pounds.  I left an old pair of shoes at the airport to lower the weight.  I got up to the counter, and my bag weighed 21.5 kg, which is about 47 pounds.  Success!

We got on our flight from Granada to Madrid at 9:40 am……but of course nothing on Spain goes on time.  Our flight ended up leaving an hour late…so we landed at the Madrid airport at 11:45.  My flight from Madrid to Rome had been at 11:45, so obviously I missed the connecting flight since I was still sitting on my first plane.  I was not the only one who missed my flight because of Iberia airlines.  About 50 of the people from our flight also missed their connecting flights.  A ton of students who were supposed to fly back to Chicago all had to wait another day in Spain before they could go back to America.  I said goodbye to Adrienne L and then I had to wait at the information desk to see about a new flight.  Since so many people had missed their flight, I had to wait in line for 3 hours.  While in line, I helped 2 older Spanish women figure out what gates they were supposed to go to for their flights.  One of the women talked to me for a while, and she was so happy that I helped her and could speak Spanish that she started crying and she took out a picture of her deceased son and said that I reminded her of him.

I finally got booked on a new flight to Rome at 4:10 pm.  I also got a free meal voucher for having to wait for so long at the airport.  I used the free meal voucher to get lunch, and then took a shuttle over to the other terminal for my flight.  The Madrid airport is HUGE.  My flight to Rome left a little bit late, and we landed in Rome at 7 pm.  I picked up my checked bag, and then walked through the airport to the train.  I got a ticket to Termini station, which is the main station in Rome.  I waited for a bit and then rode on the train for about 25 minutes.  At Termini station, I figured out how to get onto the metro and buy a ticket from an automated machine.  I rode the metro for a couple of stops, and then got off to walk the rest of the way to my hostel.  By this time it was about 9 pm.  I didn’t have a map, but I knew the street names of where my hostel was.  I walked with my luggage for about half an hour, and then I found my hostel no problem!  I checked in and then went back out to the common area to use the internet.  I talked to a few people that night at my hostel and then went to bed.  My hostel room had 5 bunk beds, so 10 people slept in my room. 

December 22^nd: I got up and took a lovely hot shower.  It is ridiculous…the showers at my hostels are nicer than the shower that I had in Spain.  My hostels so far also have better mattresses, blankets, and they have HEAT so you don’t freeze to death or have to sleep in a coat.  The hostel in Rome had lockout hours from 10 am- 5 pm for cleaning, so you had to leave for that time.  I got a map, and then left the hostel at 9:45 that morning, and came back at 5:45 that evening.  That day, I walked to Castel d’Sant Angelo, several plazas with Christmas markets, a church, and the Pantheon.  I spent quite a while at the Pantheon; it was definitely one of my favorite places.  I had focaccia pizza and an espresso for lunch.  The espresso was the tiniest coffee I have ever gotten in my life, and it was 2,50 euros. 

That evening at my hostel, I talked for hours with different people.  I talked to a guy from Japan, 4 girls from China, a guy from Brazil, a guy from India, 5 guys from Colombia, and 2 people from Peru.  A big group of us went out walking around Rome that night.  We got back to our hostel around 2:30 am.

December 23^rd: I left the hostel around 11 am.  I said goodbye in the morning to the guys from Colombia, since they were leaving.  They all wanted to take pictures with me before they left, since we had spent quite a bit of time together.  Most of them spoke Spanish and a little English.  That day, I walked to another part of Rome.  I saw the Trevi fountain, Vittorio Emanuele, the Spanish Steps, Palatine, the Roman Forum, and the Colosseum.  I stopped in a church that had perpetual adoration.  There was only me and one other woman in the church, which was cool.  It was nice to have a quiet place in the middle of the city.

I bought crackers and Nutella to eat for that day.  The supermarket was about 5 minutes away from our hostel, which was convenient.  I got back to the hostel at 5:30 pm.  I met 2 guys from California, 2 girls from Argentina, a group of 8 people from Georgia (the country over by Turkey, not the state in the US) and a group of 11 people from Mexico.  In my room that night it was just me and then 7 of the people from Mexico.  Thank God I speak Spanish, because most of them didn’t speak any English.  That night, I went out with 2 of the Georgians to get gelato and smoke cigars.  We got back around 2:30 am again.

December 24^th: Christmas Eve!  I went to the Vatican museums for several hours that day.  Some of the rooms I actually went through twice because I liked them so much.  I went to the Sistine Chapel, then to some other displays, then back to the Sistine Chapel again.  I don’t think you are supposed to go twice with one ticket, but no one stopped me.  I got a discount on my ticket for being an international student and having my school ID from Spain.  You are not allowed to take photos in the Sistine Chapel, which is just as well because any photos wouldn’t be able to capture what it is like.  The walls are painted to look like curtains, and it is so realistic that for a while I couldn’t distinguish if they were real curtains or just a painting.  The ceiling is obviously magnificent.  The entire room is not very big, it was smaller than I expected.  There are benches running around the outer rim of the room so you can sit down and look up, and the benches are separated from the wall by plexiglass so that you cannot lean on the painting.  In the very center of the ceiling is the famous painting of God and Adam, reaching towards each other.  The ceiling is actually divided into squares with different scenes in each one.  I had thought that maybe it was going to be just one huge painting with different parts.  There is an altar at one end, but it is pretty simple and definitely not the focal point of the room.  Needless to say, I loved it.

I had pizza with zucchini and other toppings on it for lunch. It was interesting.  I left the museum and went to St. Peter’s square, and then back to the hostel.  On the way, I bought something.  The only item in Rome that I bought besides food was a Rosary from Vatican City.  I actually do say the Rosary or at least part of it fairly often, so I am happy with what I got.

That evening, I went to Christmas Mass at the Vatican.  Myself, the 4 girls from China, 1 guy from China, and the 2 guys from California all walked to St. Peter’s together.  We got there at 8:30 pm.  Since we didn’t have tickets, we stood right outside the church in the square in a huge crowd.  There were 3 huge screens that showed what was going on inside, and a speaker system to hear the mass.  The procession started around 9:30 pm, and mass started around 10.  Mass finished around midnight.  It was really cold outside.  Most of the mass was in Italian, so I could understand parts of it since Italian is similar to Spanish.  At one point, a few bishops came outside with the host, and everyone ran up to the very front and was freaking out and waving rosaries and taking pictures.  They didn’t bring nearly enough for everyone outside to have communion, so only the fanatics at the very front got anything.  The crowd stood waiting outside after the mass for the Pope to come out.  While we were waiting, I met this girl standing next to me who was from Turkey.  She had lived in America for an exchange program, so her English was very good.  She was living and studying in Rome, and she invited me to spend Christmas day with her in her house the next day if I wanted to.  So we waited some more…………and the Pope NEVER CAME OUT!  Ridiculous.  Around 12:30, some police came down and told everyone in the crowd to go home and that there was nothing else to see.  I got separated from the other people from my hostel since I was busy talking to the girl from Turkey and meeting her friends.  It wasn’t a problem though…I can actually walk around Rome without a map and be ok!  It is a pretty easy city to navigate, and ALL of the streets are labeled so clearly so it is easy to figure out where you are.

I got back to the hostel, and everyone was having a party and drinking and dancing and playing Christmas music.  So, instead of going to bed we all had a great time….quite a few stories from that night.  The guys who worked at the hostel joined in our party as well. I was one of the later people to go to bed, around 5:30 am. 

December 25^th: CHRISTMAS! I got up at 8:30 am and took a shower and got ready.  I left the hostel around noon with the Georgians and the 2 Argentineans.  We stopped at a grocery store and bought drinks and some food, then we took the metro to a nearby park.  We all had a picnic outside for lunch.  It was cold, but sunny.  We had pizza and bread and beer and crackers and wine and a pie that the girls from Argentina had made.  We talked and then played football-not the American kind J  I was the referee and took a lot of pictures, since I cannot play soccer to save my life, especially not against people who actually know how to play.  We had split into 2 groups for the day, and then we reunited and walked all the way back to the hostel.  It is without a doubt the strangest Christmas I have had in my life.  I was the only native English speaker out of our group of about 10 people.  Any language or cultural barriers didn’t stop us from having a very Merry Christmas :)

A group of 14 of us from the hostel went out to dinner at a nice restaurant for Christmas.  Most people had some kind of traditional pasta.  I had gnocchi in a 4 cheese sauce, and it was incredibly rich and filling.  Most of us drank coke, which was 6 euros apiece.  Super expensive.  We went back to the hostel and I worked on packing, since I had to leave the next morning.  I didn’t really feel like leaving Rome, and I was sad about leaving all of the people I had met there.

Right now I am at my hotel in Frankfurt, Germany.  Getting here is another long story, so I will have to write about Germany in another post!

It is finally the month I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of for weeks now.  It is December, which means that I am leaving Spain this month!  I leave the morning of December 21st, which is coming up soon!

So far, this month has not been terribly exciting.  Adrienne is still gone traveling with her family around northern Spain, so it is just me and Ana at home.

On December 1st, I had class, and then went to a cafe.  I had toast with avocado and cheese on it.  I liked it a lot, although it is not a very appetizing color.  I had a conversation with Ana that day about TV.  She said “I like to remain ignorant because all of the news is too sad and upsetting.”  She is the one that used the word ignorant to describe herself, and it is an accurate description.  She never watches the news, or reads a newspaper, and she doesn’t have a computer to get information that way.  She doesn’t rent books from the library.  Earlier in the semester, I told her that the dictator Gaddafi had died, she didn’t know who I was talking about.  

We had our last culture exam.  It was over the history and politics of Spain from 1975 to the present.  It is odd that we are totally done with that class, but it is nice to have the test done.

Later that night, I went to flamboyant cafe with a group of friends.  A few of us went to tapas, and then went and got some food afterwards.  When I got home, Ana had changed our sheets since Adrienne told her about her also getting bitten.

December 2nd was the morning that Adrienne left for Barcelona.  I ate breakfast while Ana was gone. (hooray for having control over your own food!)  We had fries for lunch.

I went and saw the movie Pure Steel with a friend that night.  It was a little funny to see Hugh Jackman saying his lines in Spanish.  Before the movie, we had gotten coffee at a cafe across the street from the theater.  I had a coffee that had Kahlua in it.  They guy had made it really strong, with about 3/4 kahlua and 1/4 coffee.  Partway through our coffee, this guy came in, who was clearly drunk, and sat next to me at the bar.  He ordered a tall whiskey with Pepsi.  We finished our coffee shortly after he got there, and we asked for the bill.  He had been watching us for a few minutes, and when our check came I decided to fumble around in my jacket for my money and take longer than I normally would have.  My plan worked!  The drunk guy paid for our drinks.  We thanked him and then went to our movie.

December 3rd I was kind of homesick.  I am definitely getting ready to be home, or at least to not live with Ana anymore.  I did some homework and watched the movie Crazy Stupid Love.

We had fish for lunch and spinach soup for dinner that was from a mix so they both were pretty decent.  I ordered a few textbooks online for next semester (ugh)

December 4th I got up and did yoga for a while.  We had fajitas for lunch.  Ana has never made fajitas until this time.  She tried her best.  She did pretty well with everything, except for she bought pizza crusts instead of tortillas.  Tortillas here are like an omelette, so she didn’t understand to buy a mexican kind of tortilla, which yes they do have in the grocery stores here.  I love the grocery store in Spain, I have honestly spent quite a bit of time there.  So anyways the pizza crusts were frozen.  Our oven is broken.  So she was gonna have us eat them frozen, and I was not eating that.  So I microwaved them.  She thought I was crazy.  She didn’t know that you could put things in the microwave to defrost them.  So it worked out pretty well overall, although they ended up being more like a pita than a fajita.

I worked on my homework for a while, and then I talked to my college friends on skype for about an hour.

December 5th I worked on homework for a while, and went to my classes.  I watched the movie What’s your number? and the movie Thor online.  I have SO MUCH FREE TIME here.  It is kind of making me crazy.  I have homework, but hardly any compared to normal college in America.  I have about the same amount of homework as I did as a freshman in high school.  So that has been a nice break, and I am enjoying my time off to relax, but I am ready to get back to work and school and going at a faster pace and being busier.

December 6th Ana called me for breakfast at noon.  I like that I can sleep in as long as I want here.  I only had class 2 days this week, so the rest of the days I can sleep as much as I want.  I know that is one thing for sure that I will miss when I go back to America.  I’ve been getting probably 9-10 hours of sleep a lot of nights here, but in America I am used to averaging about 6-7 hours a night.

I woke up that morning scratching at myself.  SHIT.  More bug bites.  Lovely.  I hadn’t gotten bitten for about 2 and a half weeks until then.  I got about 6 or 7 brand new lovely bites.  I didn’t tell Ana and I’m not going to.  She went off on me about eating too much chocolate again anyways….even though I wasn’t eating any.  Over the past week she has brought up about 5 times at least how I eat too much chocolate, how much I love candy and sweets, and how it is bad for me to eat so much sugar.  However, she has also brought up several times how I am too thin and don’t eat enough.  She told me that she puts so damn much butter on my toast in the morning to try to have me eat more fat in my diet.  She gets upset if I scrape off some of the butter.  So, I eat too much chocolate but I don’t have enough fat according to Ana.  CONTRADICTION.  I think that I eat a normal amount of candy, and have plenty of fat.  I don’t want anymore.  Ana and I had a conversation about how if you are starving then your body will use your fat, and she told me that is another reason why I need more fat.  I was like what???  I am from middle-class America, I don’t have to worry about starving.  I don’t know what situation she thinks I will get into that I will not have access to any food.

I wanted to get out of the house, so I went and took pictures of the Christmas decorations up around Granada.  I stopped by 2 Christmas Bazaars as well.  I bought one last present, and now all of my shopping is done!  I met up with a friend at a cafe, and had a lovely pastry and a cappuccino.    There are a lot of Christmas lights up around Granada, and I enjoy how festive they are.  I put up a few of the pictures on here for everyone to see what it is like! :)

Granada getting ready for Christmas!

On Thanksgiving day, I got up at 7:30 am to skype with my family for a while before class.  I went to class for 2 hours, and then I went shopping for a while with a friend.  I got back to Ana’s house, and she was eating some weird soup, so I told her that I was going to eat lunch out.  I refused to eat that crap on Thanksgiving day.  So, I went to this restaurant close to our house and had a margarita pizza and a beer for lunch.  I ate 7 of the 8 slices of pizza, and the beer was Alhambra especial, which is one of my favorite beers here.

I went back home, and took a nap for almost 2 hours.  Adrienne got back to our house around 6:30.  Her friend from high school who is studying abroad in London had come to Granada that Thursday morning, and she stayed in Granada until Sunday.  Adrienne had been showing her around Granada earlier.  The three of us walked over to our friends host family’s house around 7 pm.  We had a little trouble finding it, but it worked out alright.  Adrienne’s friend from London and one of our friends here in our program actually both go to Gonzaga, so they knew each other from college.

Paqui and Diego are the host parents of our friends.  Paqui is the mom, and she had just turned 59 the day before Thanksgiving, so we brought her a card.  Thanksgiving dinner was absolutely wonderful.  It was better than I could have even expected.  The table was set for a formal dinner for the 7 of us.  For appetizers, we had some of the freshest shrimp I have ever had in my life, artichoke hearts with mayonnaise and anchovies, bread, cheese, ham, and sesame type crackers.  We also commenced drinking-beer and/or red wine.  

For the main course, we had salad of spinach, apples, cheese, walnuts, and peppers.  We also had beef that was delicious, Paqui told me that she had stuffed it with plums and ham.  She also made a gravy that was wonderful, I am not a big gravy fan usually but I would have considered eating that gravy on just about anything.  Paqui and Diego only speak Spanish, and then Adrienne’s friend knew a little Spanish, and the rest of us are decently bilingual so it all worked out.  Paqui and Diego are both very generous, and they never let our glasses get empty.  Throughout the meal, the 7 of us finished half a pint of beer, 2 bottles of red wine, 2 bottles of Brut champagne, 2 bottles of alcoholic sparkling cider, and some of this Spanish hard alcohol that tasted like anise.  They kept trying to get us to eat more, which is typical here in Spain.

For dessert, Paqui had made arroz con leche (SO GOOD) which is rice and cream and cinnamon and nutmeg kind of in a pudding consistency.  They also brought out a platter of all different kinds of Spanish candy and chocolates.  Their host dad, Diego, decided to put on some of his music.  He has a lot of English music, including Beyonce and some oldies like the Bee Gees in English.  It is always a little hilarious when they love the music so much but they don’t really know what the lyrics mean.  One of the songs that came up was “I will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor.  He had it turned up pretty loud, and we were all singing the lyrics and dancing around their dining room and having a great time.  Diego also likes to make little subtle sex jokes, so obviously I liked him.  Diego and Paqui have been married for over 30 years, so we were telling them to dance and they did.  They were incredibly cute.

It was so wonderful and also depressing that we were at their house.  It was so nice that they took us in and provided so much food for us and welcomed us into their home with open arms.  Paqui also invited us to come back another time.  However, it was definitely sad for Adrienne and I because we had such a great time, but that would never happen at our host stay.  Ana is a nice woman, but neither of us is really bonded to her, so it’s just a little disappointing to see what you are missing out on.  Paqui’s cooking is also about a million times more delicious.  We didn’t tell Ana that we were at another person’s house, instead we told her that we were going out to a restaurant to eat.

After dinner, we left their house completely stuffed to go to Paddy’s Pub, the Irish bar where we go to watch American football.  We met up with some of our friends there and had another drink and watched the end of the Dallas-Miami game.  

A group of 8 girls went to Camborio, a discoteca here in Granada.  We wanted to dance and show Adrienne’s friend what a discoteca was like.  We got in just before 2 am, checked our coats, and danced until a little after 5 am.  Adrienne and her friend left a little early so her friend could go back to her hostel and get some sleep.  We left Camborio and went and got some food.  I got a falafel pita wrap thing.  It sounds weird, but it was good.  Another one of our friends went home after that.  We went to café futbol, because they open at 6 am.  We had to wait outside for about 5 minutes for them to open.  While we were waiting, Adrienne came walking back up!  It was perfect timing.  We went inside and got some churros con chocolate.  After that, we walked home and went to bed a little after 7 am.

I slept from about 7:30 am until 3 pm.  Definitely not how I usually spend my Thanksgiving, but I had a really fun night spent with friends.  I’m grateful that it turned out well, since Adrienne and I were worried that it was going to be super depressing.

The next day, I worked on homework for a few hours, then went and got pizza and spaghetti for dinner with Adrienne and her friend.  I went back home, worked on more homework, and then we went out to tapas on the other side of town.  We found a place with really big tapas, so that was good.  We each got a sandwich free with our drink.  A couple of us tried Desperados, which is European beer with a little tequila flavoring.  We all liked it.

On the 26th, I got up, did homework, and made a run to the post office.  In the afternoon, I watched the movie ‘Bad Teacher’ on my computer.  That night, I went to Paddy’s Pub to watch another football game with friends.

On the 27th, I worked on homework some more, and then Adrienne and I watched Biggest Loser.  We are being excellent fans and keeping up with this season even though it is annoying to find sites online and they can take forever to load.  I realized that I had been gone from America for exactly 3 months.  I left on August 27th, so it was weird that it was November 27th.  In some ways the time has flown by, and in some ways it has seemed like forever.

On the 28th, I went to class and then went to the library.  I checked out a book of essays my Salman Rushdie.  I haven’t gotten to read very many, so I am not sure what I think of the book yet.  I went to the post office to send a few more postcards.  I talked to my mom on skype for a while.

On the 29th, I went to class, Pilates, and then culture class.  At the end of our culture class, we all had a couple glasses of champagne and Spanish chocolate and other treats to celebrate.  Tuesday was our last culture class.  Everyone in our program has been in that class since August, so it is strange that it is done.  We just had the test after that, and now it is done!  After class, we went out for tapas at 2 different bars.

On the 30th, Ana made us ‘chocolate’ after lunch that was actually good, it is kind of like chocolate pudding.  She microwaved some of it, and it bubbled up over the side of the glass.  She didn’t know that things could do that in the microwave, so that was a learning experience for her.  I talked on skype for a while and finished my study guide for our last culture test, which was December 1.  For dinner, we had revolting pizza.  Ana buys these frozen pizzas and then cooks them in the microwave so they are soggy and gross.  They also have hardly any sauce or cheese, and then LOADS of recycled ham on top.  They smell so strongly that I couldn’t eat it.  I tried, but it was so gross.  When I walked into the kitchen, the smell was so strong that it reminded me of visiting the WSU veterinary lab where they have all the dead animals hanging up, waiting to be made into specimens.  Adrienne and I both ate apples for dinner that night.

On another side note: Yes, the leg of ham is STILL sitting on our table.  We also still have the same cheese sitting uncovered in the fridge.  So I don’t know how old those things are, but they have been here since before we got here, and will probably remain here after we leave.  It is now December though, and I will be leaving Spain on the morning of December 21, traveling around some other parts of Europe for a while, and then arriving home in America on January 11!

Adrienne also had gotten bug bites exactly the same as mine were the past 2 nights.  However, I haven’t gotten any new bites for over a week.  So now she has the same bites in the same places on her body.  We talked to our program director again, but we still aren’t sure what the deal is with getting bitten.  Ana told us it was from us eating chocolate, which is bullshit.  Neither of us is allergic to chocolate, and we both have had specific bites, not a rash.  So that mystery continues unsolved.  We changed the sheets again last night.  Adrienne is gone right now on a trip to Barcelona, so we shall see if I get bitten while she is gone.

Ok, I have been doing homework and I am taking a break by writing a post.  I left off on November 18th.

November 18th was a Friday.  We had our big DELE test, that says if you pass then you are officially “bilingual” to a certain level.  I took the lowest level of the test, along with the majority of people in our program. 20 of the 50 took level B-1, and then another bunch took B-2, then the most advanced people or native speakers took C-1 or C-2, which are really hard tests even for native speakers.  We got up at 7:15 am and then walked to the CLM to take the test.  We had the reading section, then a break, then the auditory section, then the grammar section.  It wasn’t too bad overall.  We find out if we passed or not in February.

We went and got some pastries from flamboyant afterwards to celebrate being done with the DELE.  Now we don’t have to worry about it, and we also have less homework each week since we had practice tests leading up to it.  Adrienne and I went home for a while and had lunch.  Ana had bought some chestnuts, and so we tried those.  They have street vendors all over right now selling chestnuts, and they LITERALLY ROAST THEM OVER AN OPEN FIRE!  I could not believe it, it is just like the Christmas song.  It is a “fruit of autumn” here, and I have asked people if they knew about the song and they had never heard of it.  So Ana was very nice and made them for us by cooking them in this specialized pan with holes in it and holding it over the gas flame on the stove.  They were pretty good.

That night, we decided to go and see Amanecer (Breaking Dawn) of the ridiculous twilight series.  It was ridiculous to watch in spanish.  We went with a big group and we snuck in candy and drinks and we drank every time there was a really corny line, which was often.  After that, we went to 2 different tapas bars and then headed home.

November 19th: We had to get up early again to walk and get on our bus for our group trip to Sevilla.  It was a little bit sad, because that was our last group trip/excursion somewhere.  We had a 2 and a half hour bus ride to Sevilla, and then we toured the Reales Alcazares once we got there.  It was pouring rain, and continued to rain almost the entire time we were there.  It was pretty, kind of like the Alhambra in Granada but less impressive.  We were all just kind of sick of touring another building and our tour guide, America, really liked the sound of her own voice.  She was also wearing bermuda shorts with rain boots, and had a lovely mullet to top off her look.  We finally got done and walked to the restaurant where we all had lunch together.  Everyone was starving, since by this time it was 2:30 and we had eaten breakfast at 7:30.

Our lunch was really nice, we had a private room for all of us in the upstairs of the restaurant.  We had tapas and bread with water to drink.  After that, they brought us all salads, and then came and brought the main course.  We had a huge piece of tuna with this creamy cheese sauce on top.  I had never tried tuna like that before, and I really liked it.  Most people were not big fans of it.  There were also potatoes on the plate.  For dessert, they brought out flan, and then since we were all so wet from being in the rain, they let us choose if you wanted to have coffee or tea to finish the meal.

We walked to our hotel, which thankfully was close by.  I was still really cold from walking around in the rain, so I decided to stay at the hotel and take a hot shower (standing up! like normal!) while some of the other girls went and toured a park.  They got back, and then we met up with some friends of friends who were studying in Sevilla to go to dinner.  They led us to a tex-mex restaurant.  There were about 14 people at our table, about 6 from Sevilla and 8 from our program.  My friend and I split a mushroom burger and a mexican combination plate that had an enchilada and beans and rice.  It was good to have some mexican food, since it isn’t common in Granada.  We got back to the hotel, and then all hung out in one room and gossiped and painted our nails since some of the girls had brought their nail polish.

We got up the next morning, (Nov 20th) and had breakfast at the hotel.  We got on our bus and went for a while until we got dropped of at these roman ruins.  They are some of the oldest roman ruins that are not in Rome, since the Romans used to be in control of the peninsula of Spain.  They were cool to see, but it kind of sucked because our tour guide was nice but it was just so long and it was raining again and the ground was all muddy and so we got mud all over our shoes and the bottoms of our pants.  We got back on the bus for a short time, and went to this plaza in the middle of Sevilla.  We walked around with our tour guide, Mercedes. (I don’t know what is with their names, America and Mercedes?) We stopped and got a pastry from this supposedly famous place, but they were a bit of a letdown.  

We had lunch at the same restaurant as the day before, and I sat at the same table as Maria, one of the program directors.  We got to hear the story of how her and Mark got together.  He is from England, and she is from Granada.  They have been running the ILACA program as a married couple for the past 15 years, and they have been married for 24 years.  When Mark came to Spain to study, he knew hardly any Spanish, and now he is married to Maria and she doesn’t know English!  It was a cute story, and she has a very strong personality and she is lots of fun to talk to.

We had seafood tapas of baby squid, fried rings of calamari, and pieces of fish that were breaded and fried.  I tried all of them, and they were pretty good.  We had another salad with a side of Spanish tortilla, which is like a thick omelette with potatoes in it.  Our main course was pork with mushrooms on top.  We had cheesecake for dessert.

After that, we had free time.  We decided to visit the cathedral in Sevilla, because it is one of the largest Gothic buildings in Spain.  It was indeed gigantic.  We also climbed up the Giralda.  The Giralda is a giant tower that at the top had bells.  It is used in Islam for “the call.”  A person would go up 5 times a day when it was time for prayer and ring the bells so that everyone would know it was time to go and pray.  The top part of the tower was finished by Christians when they took over the city.  Inside there are not stairs, instead there are 34 pretty steep ramps going up.  They have ramps so that people could ride up a donkey or a horse instead of walking up.  It was one of my favorite things in Sevilla, especially since we had studied it a lot in my history of art class.

We decided to be Americans, so a big group of us went to the Starbucks across the street from the cathedral.  They have Christmas drinks now!  I had a mocha praline and it was lovely and was just like in America.  Your receipt for your drink had a code that you used to get into the bathroom.  I thought that was a smart system, since places like that always have problems with people using their bathrooms without buying anything.  I saw this article about the occupy wall street movement, about how all the surrounding businesses are upset since people are trying to shower in their bathroom sinks without buying anything.  I thought maybe we should use that system in some places like that.  But I digress.  We walked around a little more, and then met up to get back on the bus back to Granada.  We got home around 9 pm that night, and had meatballs for dinner :(  Gross.

November 21st: Only one month left in Spain!  Took a nap and went to classes.  We got back our grammar midterms, and everyone did pretty poorly.  Our teacher called it “a catastrophe.”

November 22nd: Went to classes and to Pilates.  Did my homework about immigrants in Spain.  Went to a cafe with friends that night, and our waiter talked to us a lot.  He was an immigrant from Venezuela.  We were the only people there, so we heard his life story.  It was weird that we just had that homework talking about immigrants from Central/South America.

November 23rd: Got up and went to culture class early in the morning, since I didn’t want to have to go on Thanksgiving.  It was the birthday of one of our friends here, so we went in a group to 2 tapas bars on the other side of Granada.

November 24th was Thanksgiving, but I am going to write about that in another post because there is a lot to write to explain that whole day.

November 12: Ana came in and was upset with me for having the light on and reading.  What a waste of electricity.  Whatever.  She was also really pissy with us that morning during breakfast.  We went with some of our friends to Parque de las Ciencias (Park of the sciences) which I really enjoyed.  They had exhibits on human anatomy, dinosaurs, arabic culture, and a lot of other cool things and all of the displays were very interactive.  We stayed there for about 3 hours, and then we went and got some tapas.  I had a sangria that was really strong and expensive.  I guess it was worth it.  Later that night we went to a hookah bar with a bunch of girls.  I had an almond milkshake, which I actually liked but other people didn’t love it so much.  After the bar, we walked up to a spot in the nearby neighborhood where you can look over all of Granada while it is lit up at night.  One of my friends and I split a burger on the way home, since we hadn’t eaten much for dinner.  It was really good and normal tasting.  When we got home that night, Ana freaked out on us and was whisper-yelling about us getting home late and why did we have the light on and why would you need to be running water at this hour?  She also stood outside the glass panel wall of our room and just stood there in her nightgown and stared at us, which was incredibly creepy since she wasn’t making any noise and we looked up and saw her and didn’t know what to do.  It seriously looked like a scene from the ad for a horror movie.  I don’t know why she was so mad at us, since we were very quiet and only had “turned the water on” in the sink to deal with our contacts and brush our teeth.  

November 13th:  That morning, Ana didn’t say anything about her freakout the previous night.  She likes to pretend like nothing happened.  Great communication skills.  We went to cafe flamboyant and met up with about 10 other girls from our program.  We all had coffee and delicious pastries.  Flamboyant is a dangerous discovery, many of their treats are incredibly good.  I tried to skype my friend that day, and our internet didn’t work for shit and didn’t let me get on all the rest of the night.  We had a new cream soup that day of cauliflour and swiss chard.  It was alright, but not great.  We had tuna bocadillos for dinner.  Adrienne and I went to Paddy’s Pub that night to watch the Broncos football game.  The owner is a really nice Irish guy, and we are planning on going there for Thanksgiving as well.  When we walked in, the other Irish patrons in the bar were complaining about having american football up on the tv screens.  Paddy said sternly “Oh, here’s the American girls, they are here for football.  It’s NFL Sunday.” and the people quieted down and muttered under their breath “fucking Americans” which came out with a heavy Irish accent.  Adrienne and I tried a new cocktail, called a White Russian.  One of my new favorite things.  I could have drank about 5 of those (I only had one, fear not my readers.)

November 14: Adrienne and I started watching Biggest Loser, since we are both faithful fans.  We have been catching up on the episodes from this season.  We went to class and to the mercadona as well.

November 15:  Went to Flamboyant again, but also went to Pilates class, so I figure that is about breaking even for the day.

November 16: Had my oral DELE exam that day.  The DELE stands for Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera (diploma of spanish as a foreign language) and if you pass, it means that you are internationally certified as ‘bilingual.’  For the oral part, I had to talk with a professor in a made-up scenario, describe a cartoon, and talk about your life and your preferences.  It was pretty easy overall, and it took only about 15 minutes.  Adrienne and I met up with 2 other friends and went out to Indian food that night.  The Indian restaurant is pretty close to our house, and you get quite a bit of food for a reasonable price.  One of my friends and I split some basmati rice and curry chicken and naan bread.  It was a very good meal, which is sadly not something we get every day.

I also had about 40 bug bites on my body by this point, I had been getting them every night for about a week.  Lovely.  So I wasn’t sure if I had bedbugs or what.  I am still not sure.  So that was annoying.

That night, the teacher who Adrienne has for her POE class and who I had for my intensivo also shared a lovely piece of info with us.  The disgusting horribly meatballs of cow/pig/chicken (with lovely bits of intestines sometimes!) that cost 90 cents of a euro per can, are called “dog food” by other Spaniards.  Not because it is actual dog food, but because they themselves would never eat it and it is disgusting.  So that was disheartening and another reason we wanted to go out to dinner that night.

November 17:  Had 2 new bug bites when I woke up.  Grand.  Went to classes, and then talked with my program director and told him I was getting bitten.  He said to try changing the sheets and see how that went.  That night I asked Ana if I could change my sheets and she said yes.  So far it seems to have helped, although I have still gotten a few more new bites, but it has been drastically reduced.  I have no idea what is going on with the bites.

I’ll have to finish writing about the rest of the DELE test and our weekend Sevilla trip at another time.  We have to leave to go out to tapas now.

November 2nd: Went out for tapas on another side of town with some friends.  We got some bomb tortellini for our tapas with our drinks.  We had a good time talking and hanging out somewhere new.

November 3rd:  It was pouring down rain….we had classes.  I didn’t do anything very noteworthy.

November 4th: We got some cereal and candy from the grocery store that we have steadily been snacking on.  Still pouring down rain.  Went out for tapas at a different place with more friends.  I tried anchovies for the first time, I actually thought they were pretty good, which was surprising.  We made a stop by the Burger King to grab some dessert.  My friend and I split a chicken sandwich as well, because dinner earlier had sucked.

November 5th: Made oatmeal for the first time for breakfast because Ana was gone that morning.  It was an ok change from plain toast.  For dinner that night, Ana made us Ravioli out of cans.  I went into the kitchen while she was cooking and I literally almost shit myself.  She was heating up the cans of Ravioli for dinner.  She had put the 2 cans, with the wrapper and everything, into a pot of boiling water.  She hadn’t opened the cans or anything, she was literally boiling cans.  Later we ate it and it tasted mediocre as per usual, but I will never understand why anyone would cook that way.  Adrienne and I think that maybe she didn’t want to get the pot dirty to wash it or something.

November 6th: I slept in a little bit, then walked and met my friends at the end of their half-marathon to take pictures and see how it went.  Adrienne and several other people from our program had signed up to run a half-marathon through Granada.  They did so well!  We went and got tapas afterwards, and then had a study session at a cafe that afternoon for our upcoming history of art midterm.  We had to stop by a friend’s host family’s house to pick up Adrienne’s cell phone, and we actually got to see inside their house!  It was cool but also so depressing at the same time.  Their house actually had all their electricity on, and they have their own rooms all cutely decorated, and their family was so nice, and it smelled like good food for lunch.  We are friends with both of the girls who live there.  One of them had told their host mom some of the crazy stories from staying with Ana.  Their host mom was talking with us, and she was like oh, you are the ones with the “foolish mom.”  Our friend asked if we could come over for coffee on Thanksgiving.  Going over to someone’s house in Spain is a big deal, they hardly ever have people over to their house and it is considered really private and for family.  Also, Thanksgiving is obviously not a holiday that they celebrate here.  Their mom was so nice, she was like “coffee?  why don’t they just come over for dinner?”  So we got invited to a normal house for Thanksgiving dinner!  She is going to try to make mashed potatoes and turkey and everything, so we are both SO excited to have a normal meal for Thanksgiving.  We lied and told Ana that we will be eating out at a restaurant that day for the holiday.

November 7th: Studied for my history of art midterm.  Skyped people.  Got a package from my mom with Cosmo magazine in it!  Proceeded to abandon studying and read the magazine.

November 8th: Went to visit the Capilla Real (royal chapel) with my history of art class.  It was pretty boring because that is the second time I have toured it with a professor talking about history.  Also, I had gotten some bug bites the night before, so they were bothering me.  (More on that later…)  Went to a cafe with some people after class.  Went to culture class, and we got our exams back.  I was happy with my grade on it, and my director wrote a note that my writing has improved a lot this semester, so that was encouraging.  A group of friends and I went out for churros con chocolate at a new cafe and sat around and had a good conversation.  I got both a letter and a postcard in the mail from America that day!

November 9th: Went to the post office and sent some postcards.  They have a system at the post office like at the DMV, where you get a slip with a number and then wait to be called up.  When I got the the post office, the number on the board was 285.  I got my paper from the machine, and my number was 417.  Fucking ridiculous.  It was so packed inside.  I stood and waited for a while, and then got kind of tired of it and I was worried that I might not get to class on time.  There was a guard standing by the machine so that people didn’t take more than one slip of paper.  I saw that someone had left and put their paper on the machine.  I went over and looked, and I very subtly switched my paper for the one on the machine and then slipped back into line.  The guard started accusing the middle aged woman by the machine of switching her paper, and she was like “what are you talking about?” so he let it drop.  I got the paper with the number 359 on it!  So I moved up 58 spots in line!  Totally worth it.

Our house had been FREEZING up until that day, we got our heat fixed.  So then we had heat and hot water again.  Ana was upset with me for having the light on “too early” in the night.  It was 6:30 pm and dark…whatever.  I had my grammar midterm that day, and I still haven’t gotten it back.  I don’t think I did very well on it.  We are supposed to get them back this coming Monday.

November 10th:  Had my history of art in Spain midterm.  I got my grade back today, and I am happy with it.  Stopped at a cafe with friends after class to celebrate being done with midterms.  Adrienne and I both fell asleep early that night.

November 11th: Went on a tour of the Cathedral with my history of art professor.  Again, kind of boring because we had already gone…with our other professor from our program.  We went out and had beer with some really delicious tapas at a bar we had read about online.  Later that night, we went and bought some dessert wine and chocolate from the supermercado.  Adrienne and I met up with several other girls up at this mirador “looking sight” that is high up in one of the historical neighborhoods.  We watched the sun set and had our chocolate and wine :)  

I still had more bug bites ? on my body.  After the sun went down, which was pretty early, we walked down and got some super good gelato.  I got dark chocolate and pistachio.  I loved them both.  That night I spent forever ‘chatting online’ with a Bank of America person to renew my travel thing for my debit card so that I can still withdraw money while abroad.

Alright, so I need to post again before I get too behind!  I probably won’t be quite as ridiculously detail-oriented as usual to save some time.

Ok, so I left off at Halloween in Madrid.  We woke up at 8:30 and had to go on a 2 hour walking tour of Madrid.  It was ok, but kind of boring because we had already gone walking around by ourselves.

We had lunch all together with our program at the same restaurant as before.  We had seafood paella for lunch, which is probably the most traditional Spanish dish there is.  Our plate was seasoned rice, with oysters, clams, miniature lobsters, miniature crabs, and crawfish all in their entirety with the shells and eyes still intact.  I didn’t mind it too much, and ended up eating most of the seafood.  Some people were more unsettled by the display of whole animals.  We also got a salad and a nice ice cream dessert.

We got on the bus, and drove to the Museo de Reina Sofia in Madrid.  I spent the afternoon from 4-7 at the museum.  Reina Sofia means Queen Sofia, who is the current queen of Spain.  There were a lot more modern works at this museum, and I actually didn’t like it nearly as much as the other museum we had visited.  I was pretty excited about seeing original works by Salvador Dalí, since I have been a fan of his for a long time.  This is the museum that has the original Guernica, one of the most famous works by Picasso.  It was pretty amazing to see this, since I have been learning about it in school since I was 14.  There were a lot of other works by Picasso as well.  I actually touched the corner of one of his less famous canvas paintings that wasn’t protected by glass when the museum guards weren’t looking…….so I can now say that I have literally touched a work by Picasso.  I know that you aren’t supposed to do that, but all of you readers know me and I just couldn’t resist.  I’m happy that I did it.

Some of my friends went to Thai food for dinner that night, but I went to a much classier place…McDonald’s.  I ordered 3 cheeseburgers and 2 chicken sandwiches off of the Euro menu.  Don’t judge me too much. Yes, I ate all of them for my dinner in our hotel room while drinking sangria and watching Spanish TV.  It was glorious.

A couple of our friends came down to our hotel room, and we all got dressed up and ready in our Halloween costumes.  I put on my pink wig and my green tutu and some leggings and a shirt.  My friend and I also put on a shitload of glitter all over our faces and our arms and generally everywhere we could.  We were supposed to be fairies.  We went up to some other people’s room on the top floor, since they had a terrace overlooking the street.  A lot of people from our program met up in the lobby, and we all ended up splitting up and taking taxis to Kapital, the famous 7 story nightclub discoteca in Madrid.  We had to wait in line forever, and we finally got inside around 1:30 am.  We had to pay a cover to get in, which kind of sucked.  You got one “free” drink ticket with your entrance.  We spent time on all of the levels, and it was pretty amazing.  It was packed and everyone was dressed up crazy for Halloween.  In Spain, they all dress up like something scary.  For girls, dressing up like anything provocative hasn’t really come here yet as a trend.  We stayed until 5 am, and then took a taxi back to the hotel and went to bed.

November 1st! Got up, ate breakfast, and packed all our stuff to leave Madrid.  I didn’t get up with time to shower, so I went to breakfast and did everything the next day…still with all of the ridiculous glitter all over me.  I looked like Ke$ha.  I washed my face twice and they still didn’t come off.

We stopped in Toledo for a few hours that day on our way back to Granada.  We got coffee and had lunch there.  A few of us also went to the synagogue there and looked around.  Everyone in our program was pretty tired and/or hungover from the night before.  We got back on the bus, and had about another 3 hours back to Granada.  By the end of the ride, everyone was really ready to be done with buses and traveling.  We got home around 8:30 pm.  I showered that night, and managed to get MOST of the glitter off, but not all of it.  I loved the trip to Madrid, and I wasn’t ready to come back to school in Granada.

On the morning of October 30th, we got up around 8:30 am and then had breakfast at the hotel.  We got on the bus to Segovia, which was pretty close to Madrid, about an hour with traffic.  In Segovia, we got to see the 2,000 year old aqueduct.  No, I didn’t accidentally get an extra 0 in there, I did mean 2,000 not 200.  It was SO OLD and it was still standing, just like the Romans had built it forever ago.  It is an incredible giant work of architecture, especially considering that all of the blocks in it fit perfectly together without any mortar to hold them in place.  It was definitely one of my favorite things to see.

We had some free time, so I went and looked inside the famous cathedral in Segovia.  Pretty much every city worth its salt in Spain has a grand ostentatious cathedral.  They are all beautiful, although seeing so many churches can get a little old after a while.  Segovia is also home to a famous castle/tower that inspired Walt Disney on one of his trips, although there was some debate about what exactly it inspired.  Some things claim the castle of Cinderella, some claim Snow White, and some claim Sleeping Beauty.  Either way, it was really cool to see.  We climbed all the way up the tower, which had 150 steps up an incredibly narrow, winding staircase.  The view was worth the ridiculous climb.

Here is a picture of the castle:

And a view of the other side:

We had a 2 hour guided walking tour (in Spanish) that was ok, but kind of hard to pay attention to because Segovia is a pretty small town, and I had already seen the 3 most important things that he was talking about.  I got lunch with one of my friends at a local small cafe/bar.  I had a delicious risotto with mushrooms and truffles, and she had a salad with goat cheese.  We each had a glass of red wine that was from one of the local wineries.  It was a very pleasant meal :)  We had gotten 24 euros that day from our program director to pay for lunch and dinner on our own.

Later that night, we were back in Madrid and wandering around the center, which is giant.  It is hard to tell exactly how many people live in Madrid, but it was packed.  When I looked it up, I found estimates to be between 3 and 5 million people.  Madrid is the 3rd most populated city in Europe, after London and Berlin.  Definitely the biggest city I have ever visited.  We encountered a Halloween store, and decided to buy costumes for the next day to go out.  My friend and I saw these wigs that we thought would be really fun, so she got a bright blue one and I had a hot pink one.  We both also had tutus and sparkles for all over our faces and shoulders.  We were supposed to be fairies, but overall it was just fun to have a costume.  Later, a group of us went out to dinner at an asian restaurant.  It was just average food.  We watched a movie on their laptop in the hotel room.  That night, I showered again, and then took a bath just for the hell of it because I could and because we had plenty of hot water.  It was so nice and relaxing!