Hello from Athens or as the Greeks like to say, Giasas! I arrived here a couple days ago and met up with one of my good friends, Thea, from Barca. We hit up one of the nearby islands for a day and then did a 7 hour walking tour of Athens today. We were exxxhausted, but it was so great to see the acropolis and other greek and roman ruins. Tomorrow morning I leave for a week on the island of Santorini, where they are known for their black sand beaches. I'm excited to just be in one place for a [View Full Entry]

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I survived! I got back from the camino last night- and wow, what an experience. Hundreds upon hundreds of people from all over the world! Literally- Korea, Russia, Canada, Germany, you name it, they were there. It was a brutal few days and I give so much credit to those people that choose to walk the full 31 days. Each morning we would get up at 5 am... start walking by 6 am... and finish depending on the destination. It was usually about 12 miles a day (25 km)... some days it would take 12 hours, others only 7.... it differed [View Full Entry]

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¡Hola a todos! The time has come... two days left before I leave for backpacking. :/ I don't know if I'm going to have time to post while I'm traveling, so I thought I'd do one last hoorah. There's so much that I want to do before I leave on Wednesday, but not enough time. My friends and I spent Friday and Saturday painting the town red for one last time. I think it was my favorite memory so far. :) I am going to miss this crazy mixture of people that I now consider to be my some of my [View Full Entry]

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¡Hola! The weather here is really perking up and it makes it difficult to do any work, so here I am, procrastinating once again. Classes at my university are over in two weeks, which means they are piling on the work.... but we all continue to travel and NOT do our work. Ooppps? :/ Oh well, the professors should know that doing homework in Europe is a big no no. This past weekend, ten of my friends and I visited a small city in southern Spain, called Granada. Such a gorgeous place! The city is surrounded by mountain ranges, one being [View Full Entry]

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Wow! It's been quite a long time since I posted on here. HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE! Let's see... what else is new? The weekend following Madrid, I bunch of friends came to visit from St. Bens. It was soooo much fun, seeing the sights and what not...... until one of the girls got pick pocketed. Long story short, we spent the entire night in an ambulance and police station. Soooo frustrating because the police here are very different from police in the US. Everything ended up fine, just a bummer for their first visit to Spain. BUT, we did end the weekend [View Full Entry]

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So, to recap the last few weeks: -Sitges: UNREAL! I thought Madison Halloween was crazy, nope... not compared to Carnaval in Sitges. Sitges is a small coastal town about a half hour from here and it is the main place to celebrate Carnaval in Catalonia. Trains were free all throughout the night, and man did people take advantage of that! There was no place to move in this town! Literally, you got off the train and were herded like cattle. It was fun to see everyone's costumes though and meet people from all over the europe. It's known as a town [View Full Entry]

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So, I survived my first weekend trip! We left for Portugal Thursday night and arrived safely (which I was a bit worried about with our cheap flight.... the landing was a bit rocky. haha) After getting there we attempted to find our hostel, which had a whole in the door and looked shady as hell, but in retrospect was extremely nice on the inside. Breakfast was included and we had hot water, so I couldn't complain. The location was perfect! Right near the crazy nightlife of Portugal and all the cute boutiques. We started the night off by eating an ammmmazing [View Full Entry]

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Here are some GORGEOUS pictures from Montserrat. They don't even do it justice, but look anyway. Side note: I started classes this week and my head is pounding. Taking grammar classes in spanish is MUCH, and I mean, MUCCHHHHH different than taking regular classes in spanish. For six hours straight I am translating as fast as my brain allows, which is not very fast..... at this rate, I'm hoping for Cs in each course. (which by the way of average... having an A or 10 is considered publishable work. unreal, right?, a 9 is way up there as well, and 8 [View Full Entry]

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Hi! I don´t exactly remember what I wrote about last, but hopefully I don´t repeat myself too much. All of my classes start tomorrow and I´m a bit nervous just because I´ve never taken an actual class in spanish except for language and grammer courses, so we´ll see how it goes. I start at 9:30 in the morning and go until 7 o´clock at night, which is also kinda a drag, but on Tues and Thurs I only have class for an hour and a half, so it´s worth it to struggle through mon and wed. Hopefully with the breaks inbetween [View Full Entry]

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I promise I'll make this one short--- I've just been thinking of other differences that are interesting and I thought I'd add them to the list before I forget. ---the lights in our residencia/hotel rooms are controlled by a room card.... you slip the card into this slot and then all of you electricity is able to turn on... so that way when you leave the rooms, you take your card out and it saves on electricity. interesting, huh? of course, i don't want my computer and everything turning off every time i leave the room, so i stuck a different [View Full Entry]

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