Germany!

Por Fin! (Finally!) My trip to Germany had arrived.  After what could only be described as the worst week of my semester (awful stomach illness combined with outrageously rainy weather), I had come to the trip I was most excited for.  Almost exactly two months before, I had bought my tickets to go visit my buddy Mark D. in Stuttgart, Germany, and the time had finally come.  This isn't to say It went completely smoothly... I almost didn't make it there.  I honestly felt so sick that I was considering not going, but I was able to suck it up and deal.  Waking up on Thursday morning before my flight, I realized I never printed my itinerary which I would need to get my boarding passes.  The school was closed, as was Discover Sevilla, so I was pretty much out of options.  I walked by a travel agency called ArenaTravel, and desperately ran inside.  After much discussion, the man inside agreed to print my itinerary for me for the unreasonable sum of 20 euro.  After that I rushed home to grab my bags and head to the airport... which also presented its own issues.  It started pouring rain while I was waiting for a taxi, which I later learned (an hour later) were only running in a close loop because of Feria.  I started asking about the bus to the Airport, which lead me on a bit of a wild goose chase through the rain. (I ended up calling Mom just for someone to talk to... I was going crazy).  Anyways, I was able to catch the bus, and make it to the airport on time to get my flight to Palma de Mallorca.  From there I had to catch my connector to Stuttgart, but there was a 2 hour delay, which meant that I was getting on the plane right when I was supposed to land in Germany.  Luckily Mark was still there when I arrived, and we caught a taxi back to his apartment.  His place was incredible... everything was brand new and clean with plenty of space.  We stayed up till 4:30 am showing each other pictures and catching up on life... it was really great.  The next morning we got up to make breakfast, and I was sick again... puking my guts out.  I was really scared that I was going to be sick the whole weekend, but I felt better almost instantly, and fortunately that was the only time I got sick for the rest of my duration in Germany.  We decided to head into the center of town, which was really easy because there is a tram stop in Mark's back yard.  We made our way to the Mercedes- Benz museum, which neither of us had been to yet.

The museum was really something else.  We were able to score a student discount thanks to my CC-CS ID (the receptionist laughed at my hair in my photo... it was an old one), and we also got free audio guides.  

We spent the whole afternoon there, being as it was 6 or 7 floors full of history and incredible cars.  The bullet-proof popemobile was there on display, as well as Austrian mail trucks and busses and cars from all over the world.  We also tried out a driving simulator and got to keep the lanyards from our audio guides for free.  All-in-all, a pretty awesome way to spend the day in Stuttgart.  

The next morning Mark, his roomate Fil, and Myself got up and went to catch our train to make our way to Munich.  We were meeting up with a bunch of Mark's friends from URI that were also in Germany for the same thing he was, and we met up with Steph, Matt, and Adam at the train station in Ulm.  Further along the way we met up with Eric and Drew, who filled out the crew of us staying in the Hostel.

Before we knew it we were in Munich.  We met up with two other kids from the URI program, Joe and Ray, who were living in and around the city.  They served as our tour guides, kinda, as we roamed the city.  The architecture is so different from that in Spain, so regular buildings looked quite spectacular to me.  

Granted, this is no regular building.  Admittedly I have no idea what it is, but it certainly looks great in the picture.  We checked out the main street and the English Gardens, where we found people surfing in the river.  It was really cool to see a surf culture in the middle of such a big city, and while it doesn't quite touch on being coastal it was definitely really awesome.  From there we went to a restaurant to check out some food and drink, and I had my first German draught.  It was delicious, and we were quickly back out onto the road in search of more stuff to do.  We explored the city a little more and headed of to Haufbrauhouse, one of the most famous German brew houses.  Its said that Hitler started the Nazi party at an HB... kindof crazy to think about.  We all hoisted our Mass' (not stein... coincidentally stein means stone in German) high and toasted "Prost" (the German form of Cheers).  The night was really indescribable, with much singing and story telling.  It was a fantastic celebration of the lives we are so lucky to live.

The next day brought us back to the train, which brought us back to Stuttgart.  It was a bummer thinking that I'd have to leave the next day because I was having such a blast.  Its funny how you don't always realize how bad you miss someone until you see them again... especially with Mark.  He'd been gone so long that I had nearly forgotten how great it was to have him around.  We traded music that night, swapped a few more stories, and rose early on Monday morning to get me to the airport.  My flights home came with minimal delays and I was back in Sevilla by 5:30pm.  It was a truly fantastic weekend, one that I will be sure to remember forever.  

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!

Monday, February 25th, 12:14pm (Spain), CC-CS, Seville, Spain

Hola, todos!

What an awesome weekend.  The final went pretty well on Friday, I feel very confident that I did well, and I also received a 99.5 on my final paragraph.  Friday night a bunch of us went to Buddah, a 3 story dance club.  It was a total blast, and we were there until 3 or 4am.  Saturday was pretty laid back... it was pouring rain all day.  Luckily, Maria leant me an umbrella (paragua) so that I could go to the gym.  Saturday night wasn't going to be very eventful; me and some of the guys just wanted to check out a local bar with beers from all over the world, something new.  However, when we got there, it was closed.  We ended up walking around and finding this bar called Long Island, which is supposed to be a popular American hangout spot.  We tend to stay away from those, because we want to meet Spanish people and talk Spanish and all that, but we went in anyway.  We ended up meeting mostly Spaniards, and talking to the bartenders all night... they were really cool guys.  From there we went to a Hookah bar and got tea, then adventured off into the night.  It was getting late, or early, so there wasn't really anywhere to go.  At 4:30 we happened across a Tex Mex place that was open, and I got a DELICIOUS hamburger.  I got home around 5:30, and it was awesome.  Sunday was very relaxed, I went out for coffee with my friend Emily, then she and I met up with my buddy Sam for some more tea.  The hookah bar has Mate, which is a tea specific to Argentina that you drink out of special cups... its delicious.  I'm trying to find the cup and tea to bring home with me... I love it.  

Today we started our new classes, and I have to adjust my schedule.  I have two classes scheduled for the same time on Wednesday evenings, and I'd also like to move up to a more advanced level grammar class.  I'll most likely get into Advanced Present Day Usage.  My schedule looks pretty simple, and it won't be very stressful at all. 

Since many people are going away for the long weekend, Rod, Kent, and Myself have planned an adventure to Madrid.  My friend Megan whom I met at the Consulate in Boston is going to be around, and she said she'd show us some cool places to go.  We're gonna buy bus tickets and head out at Midnight on Wednesday, ride through the early morning and sleep on the bus.  If the three of us split a hostel, it won't be very expensive at all.  

I remembered my camera cable today, but of course the internet is all sorts of messed up so I can't load anything.  I'll try again later.  

Hasta Pronto!

Wednesday, February 20th, 4:45pm (Spain), CC-CS, Seville, Spain

Buenas Tardes!

Hope everyone is doing well, and that you all are getting some better weather than we are... The other night we got a thunderstorm that actually woke me up from my sleep... and today it is very cloudy and drizzley... not so much fun to walk through.  Anyways, things are going well here... not a whole lot new... got my second test grade, and I got a 90.  That brings my grades to:

Tests: 91.5, 90

Participation: 98, 98

Paragraphs: 90, 98

I'm pretty happy with that.  I went to the movies this past weekend and saw the movie "Jumper" dubbed in Spanish, no subtitles... and it was awesome.  I was able to understand everything, I felt like I was on top of the world.  I also met some very cool dudes from Australia who made me promise I would visit the country before I died, which I am gonna hold myself to.  I also met with my Intercambio yesterday; the school appoints all those who want one a local person to meet with weekly.  My Intercambio is Jhon.  He's Columbian, but he's lived here in Seville for a long time.  He also speaks pretty good English, and he studied for 6 months in Ireland.  He's a really cool guy, I'm glad I got to meet him.  I find myself looking forward to my adventure to Morocco more and more every day, although I met a Moroccan in a bar who very blatantly hit on me (he tried to hold my hand while I was talking to him).  I took some glamour shots of Sophia today, but realized I didn't have a USB cable on me to upload them once I got here to the school.  They will be up soon.  I've got a final for this intensive grammar class on Friday, and then we start regular classes next week for a couple days.  We get Thursday off for Dia de Andalucia, then Friday just because thats how the classes go, so I've got a nice 4 day weekend coming up.  Life is good!

Hasta Pronto!

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 5:24pm (Spain) CC-CS, Seville, Spain

Good day to all!

Dad, I hear your comments for a picture with Sophia, and I'll put it up soon... don't worry.  Today I bought my tickets to go to Germany, and I'm stoked.  Its really just occurring to me now how I've got a lot going on while I'm here and I'll be home before I know it, which is kind of a bummer.  I'm having a real blast here!  Today, I ate lunch at a floating cafe that was docked on the side of the river.  SO COOL!!  Here's a little list of what's going on for me:

February 28th and 29th: No Class

March 14th- 18th:  Morocco and Sahara

March 16th - 22nd: Semana Santa (they overlap just a bit)

April 4th and 5th:  Grenada

April 10th - 14th: Germany to see Mark D. (bought the tickets today!)

April 26th: Gibraltar

May 3rd - 8th: FINA Open Water World Swimming Championships (right here in Seville!!)

May 19th: Back to the USA

Not to mention that during the weeks in between these adventures, I have school.  And the gym.  Totally crazy.  

Oh, the life I live!

Pictures from Carnaval

Can't even escape fast food in Spain.  Oh my God.

I met Julius Caeser!  He was quite majestic.  I was humbled.

Here we have Roderick and Myself, stunning young lads.