Lots of Random things

So by this time next week I will be devouring (sp?) Frontera and probably getting sick since I have not eaten any food like that in 4 months. As I write this I am so sad. I spent about an hour today looking up things to get involved with when I get back home to keep me busy. For some reason sitting in a park reading a book is only something I can do here...at home I feel like I need to keep myself busy. A long time ago I wrote a post talking about my friend Kara and how she told me to make a list of what I will miss. I think these next couple of days that list is going to get FULL!! I am going to miss sitting in my bed and leaning over into my drawer for my chapstick that is perfectly placed right where I need it to be (i am very organized here). I am going to miss my early walks in the morning when all I could smell was the fresh bread being baked in the Panaderias (best smell ever). I am going to miss the Plaza and so much more. I truly am sad and can't believe it is REALLY coming to an end. Today I was sitting in the park with Macon and we were discussing how we are going back to reality. We have both been hearing about people losing jobs and how things are changing but we have not been witnesses to it yet and we are not quite sure what to expect. Spain is a whole other world and I have experienced so much here that I do not know what home is going to be like. I am so ready to see my family its unreal but I am not sure how life will go from here. What do I do with all I have learned and experienced here?!

On a completely different note...I saw the King, Queen, and President of Spain today...I already explained below why they were in Alcala. It was really cool but there were not a lot of people at all not like there would be if Obama came to the little town of Snellville (Alcala is bigger and there were less people then I think would show up if the president came to town).

Final days

Yesterday we had a graduation for all the students at my school. I think there are 96 of us so it was very nice. All of our teachers gave little speeches and it was kind of sad. They gave us little diplomas and afterwards we had a little luncheon for us. It was all very nice. Afterwards a bunch of us just hung out in the plaza because it was such a beautiful day and we wanted to soak it all in. PLUS we had to wait around for the talent show. There is a theatre class at school that put on their production at the talent show. It was all about women abuse but it was a comedy (its a very common theme in Spanish literature) also someone sang, there was a photogrophay contest, two boys sang and play the hukele (sp? Hawaiin instrument) the students in the magazine class presented the magazine and Carlos, m teacher, presented the yearbook. All are online at the school website if you want to see them.

I got Twitter. I don´t really know why because i think it is for people with internet on their phones who have friends with internet on their phones but its kind of cool. You can check mine out at twitter.com/byrnekm.

Today the king and queen are coming to Alcala. It is the feast day of Miguel Cervantes the author of Don quixote who was born here in Alcala. The King and Queen come to honor another modern writer and present him or her with an award. Also there are HUGE book sales going on all over the plaza (and yes they shut down for siesta too) People have come and set up tents and are selling books all week. Its a pretty cool thing to expierence. Spain has so much culture and finds a reason to celebrate everything. We probably would have had the day off of school but we had finals hahaha.

I just finished my first final and my hardest. Spanish grammar has always been hard to me...so many rules and irregular verbs! I have one more today and then afterwards its off to DONER KEBAB for lunch! Doner Kebab is an Indian fast food kind of restaraunt and its AWESOME! Devin and I have decided to go there for lunch today.

Still have no big plans for the weekend but to hang out around Alcala...maybe go into Madrid and be with all the people I have met here. Abuela asked what we wanted for out last meal yesterday...crazy!

8 days?!

Alright mixed emotions are running through me like crazy!!! Today was my last full day of class WOO HOO...trust me I was ready for those classes to be over. Now on to exams. I have one class tomorrow but we are just reviewing so I do not think that counts. Also tomorrow we have our 'graduation' type thing. We receive diplomas (Does this mean I pass all my classes before I even take the exams?) and then we have a picnic afterwards which should be fun. Tomorrow night is also the talent show. I am unfortunately not participating in any of it (yeah right). Thursday I start finals. I have one in my advanced grammar and one for my Globalization class which I also have a ten page paper due in on how globalization plays a roll in the job market. O SO THRILLING! For the weekend I do not have a lot of plans except to go to my last mass at my church here with Abuela and study. I also just found out that you can rent bikes for free in town so I might do that. Monday I have two finals, civilization and my comparison between the United States and Spain which I also have a 3 page paper due in. Tuesday I will be packing (if I don't get it all done this weekend) and Wednesday I have my independent study final and then I think a bunch of people from school are just getting together and hanging out since we will all be going back to our own states Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Colorado, Alabama, etc. THURSDAY MORNING AT 4 am I get on a bus to the airport and fly to Paris at 7. I will be in Atlanta at 2:15 on Thursday! I am so excited but at the same time I know I am going to miss Spain like crazy! Whenever I traveled, I couldn't wait to get back to being around the spanish language so I really think just being surrounded by it 24/7 is what I will miss the most.

*Side note* I found out today that Mrs. Gilbert died. For those of you who do not know who she is, she is the wife of Coach Gilbert from St. Pius X and my P.E. and Health teacher for 2 years. Margaret was the swim coach at Pius, too and coached Rebecca. She was diagnosed with cancer I believe my senior year or freshman year of college. It was terminal from the start and spread quickly. She was taken to the hospital last night and died this morning. She leaves behind Bob and their 4 young daughters. Please keep them in your prayers. Although it was expected it is still more difficult then I can imagine.

**On a happier note** I was able to name 39 of the 44 presidents today!!! I was amazed! but unfortunately when I was trying to list the capitals of the states I couldn't quite think of as many hahahah

SEND PRAYERS MY WAY AND TO FOR THE GILBERT FAMILY!

La Papa

Alright I thought I would atleast post about seeing Pope Benedict! Friday while I was in Rome I was able to go to Stations of the Cross which was held right outside the Colliseum! What an amazing experience to be with maybe 5,000 other people and listening to the Stations in Italian (probably the most beautiful language and whoever said its just like Spanish is mistaken). There were so many people there from all over the world. I was standing next to people from Argentina, Canada, CAlifornia, and a whole lot of nuns. I have never seen sooooo many different orders of nuns in my life. Plus it was beautiful to have the glowing colliseum right behind me. I was about five rows away from the front and the pope was up on a hill. Pope Benedict XVI

Right behind me!

Vatican!

Last two weeks

I have exactly two weeks from today. Sorry I have not posted about Rome yet...its just going to take awhile to write about it and I really have not had the time. This week has gone by super fast and I had about ten pages of papers to write and research to do. I have a ten page paper due next thursday on globalization..ugh...why did I have to take a business class. Anyway, I missed my Spain family a lot while I was gone in Italy. Monday was a holiday so Devin and I did not have school and neither did Alexis so we stayed home and vegged and watched Toy Story and we taught Alexis how to dance, Macarena, Cupid Shuffle, Soulja Boy...I have really just been trying to soak up all the time I can with my family and practice as much spanish as possible. I am very ready for classes to be done but I am terrified about exams. They are over ALL the course work from the whole semester and they start next Thursday. Tomorrow I go on a class field trip to Segovia, a town outside of Madrid, and then the rest of the weekend I will be working on my ten page paper for next week. On Sunday´s all the museums in Madrid are free so I might go check them all out too but we will see how the paper comes along. Just wanted to give a little update!

Fun in Florence

Beautiful view of Florence from the gardens

The palace and the gardens

Pisa...solo shots are really awkward...I never know what to do with my hands and I didn't want to pretend I was holding up the tower like the other people around me

The Duomo

Ponte Veccio...those are all gold shops...really pretty jewlery

We left around 10am from Venice and the train took about 3 hours again to Florence. I have a friend, Felicity, studying in Florence so she met me and Macon at the train station and she let us stay at her apartment which was so fun. She rooms with 5 other girls and their apartment is so big. We cooked dinner and drank wine and it was very relaxing and nice not to have to spend money. She introduced me and macon to an amazing pizza restaraunt called Rossapamadora...it wasnt as good as Venice but still awesome. I forgot to say that while I was in Venice I ran into one of my other really good friends Sarah Beth in Venice and a guy who we had met in Dublin who goes to school in New York(The world is SOOO SMALL)...Anyway, back to Florence. The first day we went to the Duomo which is a huge church right in the center of Florence (which by the way has a horrible street plan...nothing makes since...thank goodness for maps) The Duomo has the best view of the city if you climb the 463 stairs to the top which we did. It was beautiful...unfortunately I forgot my camera so only Macon has pictures of it. That night Felicity made us spaghetti and we went out to a discotecha called YAB...which stands for Young and Beautiful...it was a lot of fun. The next day Felicity took me and Macon on her personal tour of Florence to the leather market, gold streets, ponte Veccio(sp?,...its a cool bridge)...and taught us a bunch of history about the Medici family (I realized I really know nothing about Italy's history)...then Macon and I decided to go to Pisa because its only an hour away from Florence by train. The Tower was leaning obviously and its very tall!!! The town of Pisa was tiny but fun to walk around because its very medieval. When we got back into Florence we walked around and got gelato with Felicity and all her roommates. The next and final day we had in Florence Macon and I walked to the palace and the gardens and just spent the day there which was nice and beautiful. We had such nice weather. We also walked around the open air markets. We had a really early train at 6am to Rome so we didn't want to go out or anything. We went to this awesome place for dinner though called Il Pirata...basically there are a lot of little places around Florence where you can go during the day and get fresh pastas, veggies, meats, basically anything To Go but at night they cant save all the leftover food so they put everything left over out for a buffet. You pay 7euros and can eat all you want. There were probably five different dishes of pasta, veggies, and meats and we helped ourselves. It was awesome! Then we left early the next morning for Rome.

Off to Venice!

The train to Venice was about 3 hours. I loved the train rides because you got to see all the beautiful scenery in Italy. Once you arrive at the train station in Venice you immediately walk out onto the water which is beautiful but I would not suggest ever going in it. Venice has no cars or mo peds, you can only walk everywhere which was so nice. Our hostel was off the main "street" that pretty much wraps around the whole island and it was very nice. I loved Venice because even when you felt like you were getting lost down the little side streets, you would pop up on a main street. The first day we kind of walked around and saw St. Mark's square and a lot of churches which are all so unique. We went into Santa Lucia and saw St. Lucy's corpse which was actually neat since Rebecca's confirmation saint is St. Lucy. Murano (an island off Venice) is famous for their blown glass and there are stores everywhere selling it so we looked at a lot of those too. And we found THE BEST pizza place ever. It was really out of the way of everything but we stumbled across it and continued to go back each day. We walked along the Rialto bridge and through all the markets. The gondolas cost way too much for two people to split so I did not get to ride in one but I saw them so thats good enough.

Rialto bridge

Gandolas

St. Mark's

First stop Milan

I slept in the airport thursday in order to catch my 6am flight to Milan from Madrid Friday morning. It was not too bad seeing how it was the beginning of Spring Break for everyone so there were a lot of people there. I arrived outside of Milan around 8am and had to take an hour bus ride into the heart of Milan to find my hostel. Eventually I find my hostel (lets just say I was in a ghetto) but we werent aloud to check in for another 2 hours. Macon and I had plans to go into Switzerland for the day but now we had all our luggage for two more hours. So we went into Milan to get lunch and lets just say Milan has one square with a church in it and thats about it...O Unless you have millions of dollars to go shopping (I just had to think about how to spell dollar by the way...o spanish). I was so excited about getting to eat pesto (my fav) so we found a restaurant and unfortunately they like noodles hard so my pesto was good but the pasta that came with it was not. BUT NO WORRIES...Gelato came next...not a dissapointment at all..although I am not a very big ice cream person so this was only one of the two times I ate it on the trip...After that we went back to our hostel. By this point it was 4 in the afternoon, we had been up for over 24 hours, we had seen all Milan had to offer, we had an early train to Venice, so we crashed and didn't wake up until it was time for the train. Getting off the plane in Italy

Milan train station

Milan mall...

The Duomo...aka beautiful but the only thing to see in Milan

HAPPY EASTER!!!

HAPPY EASTER!!! It is so weird not to be home for today seeing as it has always been a very special day to my family. I didn't get woken up to my dad singing "HE IS RISEN HE IS RISEN COME ON AND CELEBRATE!!" which was sad, I don't see pretty spring color dresses and boys in their nice slacks (its freezing here), I dont get to attend mass with my family and celebrate Jesus being ALIVE! and of course wont have brunch at the club...its hard to be away for this holiday but thank goodness I live with a Catholic family here who will go with me to mass and celebrate! O and did I mention that I got to see THE POPE!!!!!!!!!!! AMAZING!!!! I unfortunately did not get to stay in Rome for Easter Mass which would have been amazing but I am very happy to be back in Alcala and not living out of a suitcase. Madrid feels more and more like home everytime I come back from traveling. I will be updating my blog all day today but its going to take me a while seeing how I was gone for 10days in ITALY!!!! Have a Happy Easter and know that I am thinking of you!

A stomach can change in 3 months

Devin and I have a friend in Madrid who went to Auburn but has been teaching in Madrid for 2 years and he also plays on the waterpolo team in Madrid. We have attended a couple of their games throughout the semester and last night we went to another one which was a nailbighter and then they tied....but afterwards Matt wanted to make us a good southern dinner. We were so excited to see how American food would turn out in Spain. Spain does not have a lot of the same ingredients or spices needed to make a lot of food thats why we were excited to see how Matt would do it. Anyway the menu was as followed; Fried Green Tomatoes and Mozarella cheese sticks for appetizers, homemade mac and cheese(amazing), biscuits, potato salad, wings (with 3 different kinds of sauce), fried shrimp, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a homemade ranch sauce. Ranch does not exist in Spain so he made his own (i do not like ranch so I didnt eat it but everyone else said it was really good) and chocolate chips don't exist and neither does brown sugar so he had to cut up his own chocolate chips and he spent a week hunting down molasses to make them...I was too full to try one but Devin, Lauren, and Sarah loved them!....His roommate Carlos is from the Northern region of Spain called Asturias and his family homegrows everything they eat even the honey...so we ate some of the honey straight from the bee WOW...I will never eat honey normal again. Also when I say Matt made homemade southern biscuits, I mean HOMEMADE AND SOUTHERN. He used LARD to make it and he told us after I took one bite out of one (I stopped eating it immediately)...BUT the problem now is that I feel soooooooooo sick. I think my stomach has stopped being able to eat this kind of food (WOO HOO) I am not complaining! But it was an amazing dinner and the mac and cheese made me feel at home...Thanks Matt! He took pictures of it all so I will try to get some from him to put up.

By the way we are now 6 and 7 hours apart again. We time changed last night.

Don Quijote

There is a class at my school called 'Cervantes and hiw works' for those of you who have never learned anything about Spain, Miguel Cervantes is a very famous writer who wrote "Don Quijote." I live in the town where Cervantes grew up. Anyway, yesterday the class went on a field trip to all the destinations where Don Quijote goes in the book and had to act out the scene at each destination. I decided to go on the field trip, too. Basically the story of Don Quijote is that he is a crazy guy who believes himself to be a knight and goes around fighting trees and windmills and empty armor thinking they are real people or giants. This is the second most read book in the world (only second to The Bible). The skits the class put on were pretty funny. Don Quijote is kind of seen as the hero of Spain...his statues like the one below are EVERYWHERE!!! Literally every town probably you can find something of Don Quijote
Don Quijote at the well he was "knighted" at en La Mancha

A tile depicting him "fighting" a solider (really just his empty armor)

La Mancha

The windmills he fought thinking they were giants

We got to go up inside one of the windmills and were explained how they worked...and Yes Dad it was all done in Spanish

Tenerife

This weekend was las Fayas in Spain (a big festival that I get off school for) and also spring break for Auburn so I feel like I got two spring breaks, one for Auburn in two weeks one for school in Spain. Anyway, me and macon escaped to Tenerife, an island off the coast of Africa but it is a Spainish territory. It is kind of how I picture Hawaii to be but with a lot of Spanish. What we did not know was that Tenerife is paradise for those over the age of 60...I don't think we saw someone our age the whole five days we were there. O and did I mention that most of Spain's beaches are nudest? 60 years and nude....sorry I didn't take pictures. But the weather was AMAZING and the sights were so beautiful and our hostel was pretty good for how little we paid for it. There were a lot of little restaurants and bars around. We kept hearing music from our window thinking it was a karaoke bar so we went out looking for it our first night and discovered that it was actually a band that was PAID to sing at this bar. The over 60s loved it of course but we could not stop laughing because we thought it was karaoke. We also so a Meatloaf cover band...interesting...again we thought it was karaoke but he was being paid too. We basically just laid on the black sand beaches (trying not to look around at the NUDES) or at the pool. Friday we took a boat tour on a pirate ship, saw dolphins, jumped off the boat into the water, and had paella. It was a very enjoyable and relaxing trip. The island

Tenerife has a volcano right in the middle of the island so everything is built of volcanic rocks...our hotel was off the side of a cliff.

Volcanic rock cliffs...again my camera does not quite capture how beautiful this really is!

So I realized I only have about 6 weeks left. CRAZY! I feel like I have been waiting for this trip for forever and now its over half way complete?! How is that possible...I had so many things I wanted to do and plans to travel and now all those plans from so long ago lead up to my last trip to Italy...can it really already be almost time for me to go to Italy?! In December when I booked my trip to Italy I felt it would take forever for Spring Break to get here but now its only two weeks away. There are things I am missing about the USA but its basically Im just tired of talking through a computer to everyone...otherwise I dont want these six weeks to fly by like the last 2 1/2 months have...where did January and February and now almost March go?! I definitely feel that my spanish has improved a ton...trust me I am still learning so much and I am going to have to keep working hard when I get back but I'm soaking in all I can while I am here! Hope everyone's weekend went well and that the weather is as glorious there as it is here!!! (although it has gotten a little chilly again)...be praying for me! I have a lot of papers due before spring break and of course I feel like there is never time to finish it all...I'm just laying it all down!

Ireland pictures!

So I took 140 pictures...if you want to see more they will be on facebook...here are a variety from what I saw! Glendalough

Okay this is the first building I saw with our name on it...it was a fruit store!

Avoca cafe...the most cafe I have ever been to

The Coast

View of Dublin from the top of the Guinness factory

My first pint of Guinness

Grafton Street

St. Steven's Park

Trinity College

O'Connell Street

O'Connell Street

I am in Love...WITH IRELAND!!!

Alright I was going to upload pictures first but the blog is being weird and not letting me! So I will tell you all about my weekend and pictures will hopefully come later tonight! WE arrived on Thursday night and as I was going through customs the guy had not even looked at my passport and said "Are you visiting family?" and I said no and he said "Well I can tell your Irish (opens my passport) Yep you have one of the five Irish lastnames (haha)" and he asked where my family was from, I told him and he asked if I was going to get to go to Cork and I told him no because I was only here until Sunday and then he stamped on my passport that I had until April 1 incase I changed my mind and wanted to stay in Ireland...and let me tell you that if I did not have school I would have stayed in Ireland until I was kicked out.
Friday we stayed around in Dublin. We were so lucky not to have any rain which is very unusual for Ireland. We bought passes for the bus tour which was hop on hop off so we were able to see almost all the major landmarks of the city. I will recommend doing this if you go because the city is very big. We walked through Trinity College, Grafton street (major shopping), Temple Bar district (Bourbon street of Dublin), I saw Oscar Wildes house, St. Steven's Park, St. Patricks Cathedral, Molly Malone (a famous women they sing songs about), O'Connell Street, we went to the Guinness Factory and I had a pint of Guinness, and I am not going to lie I saw a Subway restaurant and freaked out! I had to have a sandwich and I did...amazing!!! I was kind of bummed because I never saw our last name anywhere in Dublin but thats okay. That night Macon and I went and saw some Irish dancing and traditional Irish band at a bar called Legends. It was so much fun and so enjoyable. I loved all the people there!
Saturday was probably the best though. We decided to take a guided tour of Wicklow and Glendalough...two littlier towns near Dublin. We were able to see the coast which was amazing and green! I have not seen very much grass since I have been in Europe so it was so nice to see it. There were all these crazy locals going swimming in their bikinis (pretty much all old ladies...does cold water keep the blood flowing better or something?) Our tour guide was hilarious and took us through all the little roads so we could see all the houses and coast of Ireland including Bono's house and Enya's. Our first stop on the tour was at this AMAZING cafe called Avoca! I had the most amazing brownie and scone I have ever had in my life and the other food looked amazing too. I did not want to leave there but then we went for a drive through all the hills and saw all the sheep and green and I loved it. We saw where Braveheart was filmed and scenes from P.S. I love you. OUr tour guide said that after the release of that movie they had to add more buses to the tour in order to accomadate all the young girls who fled to Ireland to find a man like the one from P.S. I love you...he then told us that they are a dying breed and do not really exist. We drove a little bit further till we stopped for lunch at an authentic restaurant for beef stew and Guinness. Unfortunately food is VERY expensive in Ireland so I do not suggest eating out although shepards pie is amazing! We traveled a little bit further after lunch to Glendalough and the two lakes (one which P.s. I Love you was filmed on) IT WAS BEAUTIFUL!!! Everything was so green and the water was so blue (my pictures unfortunately do no justice to any part of Ireland...if you visit bring a nice Canon or Nixon in order to really capture the beauty)...There was a graveyard full of Byrne's most of who lived to be about 70-80 so I think I have some good genes going for me! When I went to the name crest place that tells you the history of your surname, the man said we originated in Wicklow but all I knew was that my great great grandfather moved from Cork but when I went there and saw all the names on the gravestones and the shops it was so cool!
So I think everyone needs to drop everything they are doing and take a trip to Ireland. I think its impossible to ever regret it!!! So I will try to get pictures up soon but on Tuesday I am off to the beach for a school holiday...life is good!!!

Today is the 5th anniversary of the train bombings in Madrid. The four trains that were bombed all left from the Alcala de Henares train station a place a frequent almost everyweek and pass on my way to school everyday. There is a big candle light ceremony in the plaza tonight in remembrance of the 200 who died. It is kind of weird to imagine walking through the same ticket booths as those four men did that die and boarding a train on the same tracks as they did.

Women's Day

Today was Women's Day in Spain. Spain does not celebrate a Mothers Day and instead have a whole day devoted towards all women. It was down in the plaza and began with a 1 mile run. A bunch of girls I go to school with and I ran the race. It was free and you got a free tshirt in Spanish (it is very rare to find any shirts with Spanish on it) After the race there were dance classes in the plaza and a bunch of different sports to be played. It was a gorgeous day so it was fun to just hangout. There was a also a little market set up so I did some shopping for little things. Tomorrow I go to see Congress. Should be interesting.

Alright I figured out the reason why abuela was talking about her underarm fat now. Her granddaughter, Jolie, was having surgery to remove the fat under her arms because they found some kind of balls that did not look normal. She was in surgery all day yesterday but is now doing just fine. Glad I got that cleared up!

Change in the Weather

The past two weeks I have been in summer. The weather here was absolutely beautiful and reaching 80 degrees everyday...I spent much of my time in the park or running. The only bad thing is that when it gets warm here it starts smelling really bad. The sewers seem to be overflowing with the stinch of what is down under the streets BUT no matter, I would still take the heat! Unfortunately it has become VERY cold again. The wind is insane and I unfortunately have gotten sick. Whenever there is a drastic change in weather, I usually end up feeling pretty yucky so today I am just resting in my room, curtains drawn, listening to the wind howl outside and playing on Itunes...(I dont plan on leaving my bed only for the bathroom) I am glad I had not made plans to go anywhere this weekend since I am not feeling well. Perfect time to work on my ten page, single spaced papers one on Economics and one on the Spanish war of independence.

Yesterday I had a class fieldtrip to the Museum of Money...yep it was about as exciting as it sounds...it was basically just a bunch of old coins from the beginning of Spains history. Spain has been ruled by a lot of different people so their money was always changing and they have only used the euro for about 8 years. I thought we were going to get to see where the money was made but that did not happen.

(all the clothes just blew off the lines outside my window...thats how windy it is)

I had a very disturbing experience yesterday. I was downstairs watching my usual programs on spanish television "El Diario" (a really dramatic talkshow) y "Ven a cena conmigo"(cooking show where five people switch off each night cooking for each other and then they vote on whose was the best dinner and someone wins money)...Anyway, Abuela and I usually watch these two together and sit and chat about the crazy people on the shows and how we think they should solve their problems...Last night same old routine but we were silent for quite sometime and then abuela starts talking about something that I could not understand one bit of and ALL OF A SUDDEN she lifts up her shirt to show me the fat under her arms!!!!! (obvisouly I did not know the words for underarm fat so of course I had no idea what she was saying) I WAS HORRIFIED...and she thought it was completely normal...O ABUELA!

I was also able to talk to my whole family (minus the husbands) on Skype conference call last night! It was so fun even though we were all talking over each other and the nieces were a little tired. Chrysti said she had to take my number out of the speed dial so the girls would not try to keep calling me and wonder why I was not answering. While on Skype, Ally kept wondering why she couldnt see anybody and kept telling me all the yummy snacks she was going to make me when I got back (cupcakes, brownies, maple syrup something) Chrysti I am so glad you broke down and got internet at your new house. Just like Becca said on her blog, If you dont have SKYPE get it! Its free and you can talk to me for the next 56 days im here (as Dad informed me yesterday that thats how long I have...I think he misses me!)

Well next Thursday I leave to go to IRELAND!!! I could not be more excited. I will be in Dublin on Thursday and Friday and then Saturday I am hopefully going down to Cork to see the town where my family is from. I have a friend, Megan, from high school who is studying abroad there so she said she would show me around. Its actually funny because Megans roommate at Boston College is actually here in Alcala with me (small world). After I get back from Ireland on sunday I have two days of class and then its off to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for Las Fayas! Las Fayas is a BIG festival that I get school off for even though I wont be celebrating it...I will be at the beach RELAXING!!! I talked to the guy at the hotel and he says the weather is wonderful!!! If you have a chance you should go online to look at pictures of this island. Its off the cost of Africa but it is owned by Spain...the hotel I am staying in is called Hi!Tamaimo...I need the beach...I am more white then I think I have ever been in my life. My teacher actually asked me if I was sick the other day because of how pale I looked. I did not bring a bathing suit here with me but tank tops can work...Who cares about tanlines when your on an island off the coast of Africa!!! Its going to take us three different buses to get to our hotel (exclusive much!)

Hope all is well State side...although everyone here from Auburn seems to be very into politics so I have been kept informed of the good and bad... We shall just wait and see!

I forgot to tell you all that I ate something else weird...Aloe Vera leaves...actually good. Abuela grows them on the porch. We ate them kind of like stuffed peppers with meet and cheese on the inside!

Field Trip to Cuenca

Today I went to Cuenca on a school field trip. Cuenca is about 2 1/2 hours from Alcala and the roads were horrible the whole way but I saw the most green I have ever seen in Spain. The town is built on rocks and all the buildings are going off the side of it. It is a pretty cool thing to see. We went to the Museum of Modern Art which is a big deal to the town because it only has art produced after Franco's rule and a lot of the pieces show the emotion of Spainards during the time of his rule. We also went to a Cathedral which was freezing! The Cathedral does not seem to have a lot of money for restoration so all the paint was chipping and you couldn't even walk in some parts but I kind of like that better. You could see the age of the building which was really cool. Unfortunately we could not take pictures on the inside. A lot of people are buried there too but mainly old Bishops.

Main Plaza

I'm standing on a bridge in the middle of this huge canyon.

The Museum of Modern Art...hanging over the side of the rock

At the bottom of the rock

Pilgrimage

Tombs of Jacinta and Lucia

The Cathedral

Stations of the cross

"those who are pure of heart will see God"...in Portugese! Theme for 2009

FATIMA!

Fatima

Resting

Father Felix!

Fanny and Blanca...we took a break from Karaoke for a picture...did you know that the song "La Bamba" actually has words..

Abram and Fernando...bus buddies!

MY BUS!!!

People from Alcala...Javier, Inma, Me, Craig, Abram