The Past Couple Weeks

Hello, hello, hello!  Its been quite a while since I've written... things have been hectic, I've been lazy... you know how it is.  Anyways, these past two weeks have been absolutely insane... probably the best two weeks of my whole semester here.  I just got back from a glorious beach weekend in Malaga, a Mediterranean beach city...

But thats for later.  I gotta take it back to the beginning of Semana Santa, our spring break, back to Morocco.  We took the ferry across the straight of Gibraltar, and arrived in the city of Ceuta.  We were on the continent of Africa, but still in a city owned by Spain.  We had to drive across the border, which presented us with our first set of problems... Godilievre, a girl in our program, has a Congolese passport (from the Replublic of the Congo, fyi), and apparently she needs a VISA to get into Morocco (due to excessive sub-saharan immigration).  After a couple hours wait, she got her VISA, and we got into the country.  We drove to the city of Chef Chouen, which was painted completely blue.  It was gorgeous.  From there we headed to Fez, and saw what the big city had to offer.  The food in Morocco was incredible, as was the tea.  They don't drink much alcohol, being an Islamic country, so they call their tea "Moroccan Whisky".   It's absolutely delicious.  

Here's a view of Fez:

On our way to Erfoud, our bus broke down and we were stuck on the side of the road for 5 hours.  It was an interesting time... we played a lot of camp games and killed our time as creatively as possible.  Eventually another bus came to rescue us, and took us to our restaurant for dinner.  To keep us quiet, they fed us some free drinks while we waited to figure out what we were gonna do as far as getting to Erfoud.  We were able to score mini-buses to get us there, and we got there at 4:30am .  The hotel was cool, and we scored some more food before hitting the sack.  We rose early the next day to get in our SUVs to traverse the desert flatlands.  It was insane... flying through the desert, blasting Tina Turner, cruising over dunes and stuff.  We hit our camels and rode them across the real loose sand to our campsite.  On the way, we stopped off to climb a huge dune and catch the sunset.  It was incredible.

After that, we headed to our campsite for some food, campfire, and drum circle dancing and singing.  It was truly magical, something out of a movie... all of us dancing in this oasis of tents in the middle of the Sahara.  We rose early the next morning to catch the sunrise, and just after it came up my camera died.  Unfortunately, there was no saving it, and I was without a camera for the rest of Semana Santa.  The last day in Morocco was pretty awesome- they put on a great show with dancing and drums at our final restaurant, and the food was delicious.  We hopped the ferry back to Spain returned to our respective houses to crash and burn after the most phenomenal trip ever.  

The actual celebration of Semana Santa was something magical in itself... enormous processions of people in these very interesting costumes walking all over the city, followed by enormous religious floats that were also carried by men... these "pasos" were to represent the pilgrimage for repentance, and many of the people marching didn't wear shoes.  There feet would bleed and bleed, but they kept marching.  It was quite beautiful, all in all.  

After that, it was back to school.  I thought it would be really hard to get back into the swing of things, but it wasn't too bad.  The week was busy, with many papers and whatnot, but I got them all done while looking forward to the weekend.  The weather was supposed to be really nice, so me and my buddy Sam started planning a beach getaway. We settle on Malaga, a coastal city East of Sevilla, right on the Mediterranean.
We were only going for the day, with our friends Omar and Rod, but when we got there we realized it was an awesome city with a lot to see so we decided to stay over night.  As you can see from the picture at the top, the mountains just rise straight out of the beach, right out of the sea.  We checked out two of the beaches there, and then went out again to see what the night had to offer.  We ran into a bunch of American students from Rome who were doing the same thing we were, except it was their spring break.  We hung out with them and had a few drinks, then retired to the hotel.  Yesterday morning, we got up and headed out to find the Castle.  Its on top of a mountain really close to the ocean, and we found our way to the top.  You could see the entire city from the top of that castle, it was breathtaking.  

As a pirate myself, I was drawn to the charm of the port.  We found this cool boat (I maintain its a pirate ship, all my friends said I was crazy) that was a restaurant/disco/bar.  This is the best picture I got of it.
All in all, it was a fantastic weekend to end a fantastic two weeks.  Next weekend I'm off on a trip to Grenada, and the week after that I'm going to Germany to visit Mark D.  I'm so excited!  But, there's only 7 weeks left here... a scary thought.  I was speaking to my friend Maggie, who's abroad in Australia, and she's only got 3 weeks before she goes home (2 in Bond, and one week in Fiji... lucky.), which is really wild.  We both talked about how lucky we are to be doing what we are... what a great opportunity it is.  Its gonna be weird, going home, but it will be nice to see all you fine folks again.  Much love, and stay tuned!  

¡Hola, todos!
I figured I’d fill you in on this past weekend, my adventure to Madrid(among other places). I went with my two friends, Rod and Kent. At first weweren’t sure how the weekend was gonna go down… we didn’t really have ahostel, but we had bus tickets that would get us to Madrid, which is all wereally needed. While we were talking about our adventure in the lobby, thesetwo girls (Jacklyn and Leah) piped in and told us that they were taking thesame bus to Madrid. We then found out they had a bunch of stuff planned, andthat they also had a hotel for the three nights. Wanting some sort ofsubstance to our trip, we asked if we could tag along with them, and possiblycrash in their hotel (we would pay, of course). They excitedly said yes, andwere very glad that we were gonna be on the same bus. When we got to the busstation, we found out that Jacklyn was actually on a different bus, but shewould meet back up with us in Madrid. We got to the city but couldn’t checkinto the hotel until later, so we had to lug our bags around the city with uswhile we did stuff. We went to the Prado art museum, got some food, thenchecked out a botanical garden. The girls had broken away at this point, andwe received a call saying that their friend who was paying for the hoteldidn’t feel comfortable with us squatting, and that we needed to find our ownplace to stay. That was a bit of a low blow, but we just dove into the cityand looked for a hostel. Every one we came across was full, one after anotheroffered the same answer. At the end of our wits, we came across HostalCasanova, who had an open room. We readily took it, and were pleasantlysurprised with three beds and cable TV. We quickly ran downstairs to askabout the next two nights, and paid even quicker when we found out we couldget them. While we were paying, a man asked about getting a room and was toldthat the hostel was full… we had gotten the very last room. SO lucky. That night was pretty interesting… me and Rod were supposed to meet up with afriend of mine in the city, but that never happened. We waited in line atthis one club for here to come, but she was 20 minutes late and we decided topeace out. We bar hopped our way home, and came across an Irish Pub thatblasted disco music, a poorly decorated club called KissSex which containedlots of unfortunate looking people and a 6’4’’ drag queen, another club calledBlack Jack that seemed to only serve whisky, a bar called La Boca del Lobo(the mouth of the wolf) that played techno remixes of classic rock tunes, anda salsa bar called Sol y Sombra. We got to sleep around 3am, and had to wakeup at 7 to catch a bus for our day trip to Toledo. Waking up wasn’t too bad… ok, that’s a lie. It sucked. I was exhausted allday. It didn’t interfere with the trip though. The ride to Toledo was only50 minutes and 7 euro, so it was a no brainer to do. The city was beautiful. Its one of those old-world cities that seems to have avoided modernization,which makes it truly magical. Everywhere you look is a gorgeous vista of theriver and the rocky surrounding hillsides. We checked out the cathedral, thecastle, a mosque, and a few museums, and then headed across a bridge to climbone of the surrounding hills/mountains to get a great view of the city. Itwas incredibly, sitting at the top of this hill, overlooking the entire citythat we had trekked across all day. We caught a bus home and crashed early,getting a fantastic night’s sleep before our next day trip, to the north thistime, to the medieval city of Segovia. Segovia was pretty damn gorgeous as well. Almost as soon as you step off thebus, you can see the GIANT roman aqueduct. It runs a long way through thecity, and is just enormous. Its really quite beautiful, huge stonework justrising out of the middle of a city. From there we headed across the city tosee Alcazar, the castle of Segovia. This castle was the inspiration for thecastle in Disneyworld, so it had a very magical quality to it. Actually, assoon as we saw it, my friend Kent started singing “When you wish upon astar…”. We climbed all the way to the top of the tower, and the view wasbreathtaking. You could see well out of Segovia into the surrounding towns,and you could see these awesome mountains that sprung out of rolling greenhills all around the city. I took a great picture of the cathedral, backsetby some rolling green and a snow topped mountain – something I never thoughtI’d see in Spain. We checked out a modern art museum and the cathedral andthen caught the bus home to Madrid, feeling all the days travels starting tocatch up with us. We ate dinner at a real classic Spanish restaurant that was actually amicro-brewery, and I scored some home-brewed double bock beer that wasabsolutely delicious. To celebrate the end of our trip, we bought a bottle ofwine to enjoy at the hostel, but realized that we had no cork screw. Rod wasdestined to get that bottle open, and he attempted (after Kent and I had donethe same) to open the bottle with our room key. Unfortunately, he broke thekey off in the cork, and our door was locked open… there was no way for us toshut it. Luckily we were able to get a replacement key for just a euro, butstill… crazyness. We slept late the next morning and watched some Spanishcartoons before catching our bus back to Seville. What a weekend! I gotta say, I’m really proud to call Seville home. Its warm, sunny, andgorgeous most of the time. The people seem to be more friendly and althoughit’s a big city, its much more personal than Madrid (or Barcelona, from what Iremember from high school). If you ever get the chance to check it out, I strongly suggest doing so.

So its only a week and a half until I head to Morocco, then semana santa after that. That will bring me to the official half way point... OH MY GOD. After that, things just pick up speed. April is going to fly by, having an adventure every week... Grenada, then Stuttgart, Germany, then Lagos, Portugal, then Gibraltar. Absolute madness. This semester is incredible... just incredible.

I´ll catch you all on the flip side!