Thursday, November 4th

out to lunch

The stress thickens. 

Today we had an extra class of pronunciation added. At first I thought this was totally stupid, but I didn't realize how cruddy I am at speaking in Spanish. We were talking with pens in our mouths and trying all sorts of other tricks to speak more correctly.

girls from school

Between our classes we decided that a simple bag lunch would not do. I'l already ate some of my sardines sandwich (LOVE THEM!), but I really wanted a juicy, real cheeseburger. So we went to VIPS to relax between our classes and eat a real american-ish meal! It was just what I needed! :)

Highlight of the day: my art professor telling me that going to karaoke with her and the class was much more important than finishing the paper I had due for her! So I decided to go to karaoke! :) 

singing Poker Face :)

Katy and I sang Summer Nights from Greece - I was the man which was not a good life choice. I sounded like a totally goof, but it was a lot of fun! :) We also all sang "Genio Atrapado" (Genie in a Bottle - Christina Agulera) in Spanish as well as Besos by El Canto de Loco. In English we also sang Poker Face - Lady Gaga. It was all in all a really fun night, and a much needed break from the stress of classes! 

Dancing to Bad Romance :)

I'm going to work on managing my time betters so that I can do fun things like karaoke because I'm realizing how important it is to have destressing activities as well! :)

Wednesday, November 3rd

What a day. I realized just how many things I have to accomplish and had a mini mental breakdown. I have about 17 papers, 2 books to read, and a project to do in the next 4 weeks. That is A LOT! Apart from the papers, I have to visit a couple exhibits in order to write the papers. In short, I have SO much to do and SO little time.. And it's hard for me to justify since my overall goal for Europe is to learn Spanish, become more independent, and become and all around better person. - I'm having trouble seeing where 2142354123534234 hours worth of isolated homework is going to do that for me! :( Oh and on top of my stress out moment, we had a pop quiz in my art class, which I knew approximately 2 answers on! Our teacher was pretty upset that we didn't remember anything, but seriously -- the first day back from vacations?! How cruel!!!

Tuesday, November 2nd

Back to the daily grind today. :-\ I found it surprisingly easy to wake up for classes though! AND somehow I made it to classes on time today! Idk how the stars aligned like that, but it happened! Can I get a hallelujah?

Since so many people left our grammar class last week, that level was dissolved. I think we moved up a level. No one told us that, but the topics today in class were a lot harder and the people in our class talked a lot better.

Between grammar and my literature class, I ran home to eat lunch. I had this really great chicken and some other potato and vegetable dish with lots of cheese. I know, I know, Mom wishes I took a picture! Since our cleaning lady was here, I ate lunch in my room and talked to dad at the same time. It was nice to get a chance to catch up with him since Betsy was a Skype hog the night before! :-P

Literature was alright. It was a lot of lecture, but I managed to stay wide awake. Kind of hard to fall asleep with 3 people in the class.

After classes, I rushed home to get to work. It hit me today that I’m only here about a month longer and during that time I have LOTS of homework to do. Not only do I have the regular every day homework, plus 6 cultural reflection papers, but I also have 15 hours of literature and 15 hours art to make up for my credits. Talk about a wall of stress! So instead of having a mental breakdown, I took the productive route. I am proud to report that tonight I wrote a reflection on La Guernica painted by Picasso, wrote 3 cultural reflection papers, did my regular homework, came up with a thesis for my final paper for education, read a chapter in my novel for literature, Facebook creeped, and updated my blog!! Let’s just hope and pray that this productiveness stays up!

Now I’m waiting for my senora to finish fixing dinner. Something broke on the stove though so apparently the house might or might not burn down.. I opened my window just in case I have to jump out.. Hopefully this will not be the last post :-P 

Monday, November 1st

All good things must come to an end, including vacations. L Today was my travel back to Madrid day. Since Nathan had to work, Steffi picked me up at 8 am and drove me to the airport. I had a blast talking to her during the hour drive. It was so nice of her to get up early and take me! What great friends Nathan has!! J Even though I really only hung out with her a bit, I’m going to super miss her!!

Nathan heading to work

I had to chuckle waiting in line at the airport. I’d been warned during orientation not to mess with Spanish people and their lines, but I didn’t understand the extremity of it. Some people were just butting left and right and the Spaniards around me were really getting their panties in a bunch over it! They were like huffing and puffing and grumbling to each other. I was slightly surprised a riot didn’t start. I also had to laugh because people would just leave their suitcases in line and walk around and buy food and go to the bathroom and stuff! It reminded me of the Dane Cook “At The Wall” segment, which I naturally listened to on repeat and giggled at the similarities of the people.. “Here's my belief. If you're three feet away from the person in front of you, you're in line. If you're in the Pantene Pro-V section, laying down, reading US Weekly, you're not in line anymore. You can't just leave your shoe and walk around for 19 more minutes. I kick your shoe away.” Just insert luggage for shoe and it’s perfect ;)

Anyways, back in Madrid we had to wait like 45 minutes for the luggage to come out. I think they had to fly back to Germany to get all of our stuff. While waiting some rando guy started talking to me in Spanish. I thought it was cool and all until he offered to give me a ride home so I didn’t have to take the metro. Maybe he was just trying to be nice, but Luke and I had watched Dexter early that morning, and a little voice in my head was screaming SERIAL KILLER!! He disappeared shortly after I insisted I didn’t live that far away, that I’d be just fine taking the metro.

It was so nice to finally get “home”. My Spanish family was waiting for me. My senora called me when I first got out of the metro. She offered to pick me up at the airport, but I was already home. Guess we had the timing off. They’re just so sweet to me!

We all had lunch together. We had this pasta dish (penne noodles with spaghetti sauce and chorizo) and then we ate ribs. For dessert we had buñelos de viento because it’s All Saints Day in Spain (hence why I don’t have school/Conchita doesn’t have to work).

After lunch, I started working on my blog and homework.. and eventually this productiveness wore off and I crashed!

My sister woke me up for dinner around 8 pm. Her dad and half sister came over and we all ate together. I thought it was interesting because normally we eat around the dining room table when we have guests, but instead we ate on the couches by the tv like we normally do just the four of us. We had really good finger food: sandwiches, chorizo, bread, spread, salad, etc. DELICIOUS!

After dinner I Skyped with the fam for quite a long time. It was great to catch up with all of them, especially Betsy. Since Europe did the whole fall back thing last week and the states doesn’t until next week, we were finally both home and awake at the same time! J After talking to them, I gave a few minutes of my time to Steve and then passssed out! J

Sunday, October 31st

breakfast!!

Sunday we all got up significantly earlier. Funny how going to bed completely sober at a reasonable time will allow you to be productive the following day! J

While Luke and I showered up, Nathan headed on base and bought breakfast. I couldn’t have been any happier. A REAL AMERICAN STYLE BREAKFAST!!!!! I had bacon and eggs and chocolate chip pancakes and a hash brown! IT WAS SO DELICIOUS! I’d seriously been craving a real breakfast. Sure the Spanish cookies and coffee are good, but I needed some real food!!

The Porta Nigra - Roman
gateway to the city

After pigging out on breakfast, and simultaneously watching South Park, we hoped in the car and headed for Trier. Being the oldest city in Germany, there were tons of historical monuments and stories behind the city. Trier was originally part of the Roman empire so a lot of the old architecture resembles Italy more than the rest of Germany.

Palace of Trier

Over all I thought the city was really pretty. I had fun walking around the shopping center and seeing the old roman bath and Constantine’s basilica.

Nathan and I <3 

After Trier, we hopped back in the car and drove through some other small towns. Germany is so not my language, so I can’t quite remember where we were going. We stopped and took pictures of swans that tried to attack our car as well as beautiful views. I never realized how beautiful Germany is, especially with all the changing leaves. I love it! J

White Wine and the German Flag :)

We also stopped for some white wine that was absolutely delicious. It was so weird to me that we could just crack open the bottle and drink it in the car. Obviously Nathan, who was driving, couldn’t drink any, but Luke and I were totally legally to sip away! Enough on the wine.. J

We ended up in some town with a sweet castle! I really wanted to go inside it, but it was already closed. Luke and I walked around and took pictures anyways. J

castle

By this point we were about an hour from Nathan’s house. Even though we spent a lot of time in the car, I really enjoyed just talking and joking with Nathan and Luke. It was great to catch up, especially with Nathan since I hadn’t talked to him much since Barcelona!!

loving on the cannon

For dinner, we picked up Steffi, one of Nathan’s best girl friends, G and Walter and went to Nathan’s favorite German restaurant. The food was pretty amazing! I’m not exactly sure what I ate, but it was good. It was some hunk of meat breaded and baked with cheese sauce all over it and raspberry sauce drizzled on top. YUM! I was not happy that I ended up with a Pepsi to drink though!!

dinner :)

After dinner we dropped G and Steffi off, and headed back to the house. We all sat around talking and playing Worms some more. I had to get up in the morning for my flight and Nathan and Walter were both on day shift so we all didn’t stay up too late. Another really fun nights!!! J

Saturday, October 30th

TACO BELL

After staying up all night, we all slept in pretty late. By 2 pm or so, we finally were all up and showered and starving. I had been craving Taco Bell for over a month, but couldn’t find any locations in Spain. Nathan caught wind of this and took me, Luke, and Walter to the military base so we could get some T Bell!! I could not have been any happier!!

After I had my staple beef gordita supreme, nachos, cinnamon twists, and large coke (yes AMERICAN sized large Coke – and yes I went to a separate restaurant since Taco Bell serves Pepsi), I was on cloud 9. While I didn’t think the day could get any better, it did.

playing some video games

Next we went to the American super market on the air force base. They had all the American junk food I’d been craving. I bought my favorite gum, Ritz cheese and crackers, goldfish, and my favorite shampoo and conditioner. Nathan, the little stink, somehow ended up paying for all my stuff and wouldn’t let me back him back!! Boo!!

The plan was to go to Trier, the oldest town in Germany, for the day. It was super rainy and gloomy and we were all just too lazy to muster the up the energy to go. Instead we went back to Nathan’s crib and played video games all evening. We played this 4 person cartoon killing game called Worms. It was so goofy, but we were all getting SO into it.

Uno -- I WIN! :-P

Later in the evening, we ordered pizza and sat around playing Uno and dominos. We also downloaded the Xbox upgrade for Worms and played that for a few hours. All in all it was a super successful, lazy Saturday. Perfect! J

Friday, October 29th

Leaning Tower of Pisa :)

Friday morning Lucas and I woke up early because we had to be checked out of the hostel before our 9 am walking tour. There were about a dozen people from our hostel that walked around Pisa with the guide.

Luke and I at the tower

We learned all sorts of historical things about different monuments, but the highlight was definitely seeing The Leaning Tower! Luke and I had visited the plaza a few nights before, but since it was dark, we didn’t get to really appreciate the tower. We wanted to climb in it, but you had to have a reservation and it cost 15 euros.

i love to swing :)

The tour lasted about 3 and a half hours, so by the time it finished, we were starving. Luke ate some bread and chorizo my senora had packed, while I took advantage of my last opportunity to eat real Italian pizza. I accidently stole this guy’s seat in the restaurant though and I’m pretty sure he was using some choice words at me. I had no idea what was going on until about 5 minutes later, but by then it was too late. Oh well.

trampoline :)

After lunch, Luke and I decided to wander around the city some more before we caught the train to the airport for our flight to Germany. We went on a mission to find the garden inside the fortress our tour guide had told us about.

I *MUST* have one of
these for my dream house!!

The garden was really pretty. Not as amazing as the palace garden in Cordoba, but for a free garden, I liked it! The BEST part was, as we were leaving, I spotted a playground. Now this wasn’t just any play ground. Not only did it have your standard swings and monkey bars, but it also had an in ground trampoline, a sweet alien climbing thingy, a carousel/marry-go-round, and the coolest spiny ride every!!! I’m going to need a copy of this play ground in my future backyard. Not a joke. J

idk how he could get sick of me!!

When I could no longer see straight from spinning around so much, Luke drug me away from the playground. I didn’t want to leave until he suggested getting ice cream. I’m such a child, haha! We had the most amazing gelato! I had a scoop of wild berry and a scope of chocolate. SO good! We both wanted more, but we also didn’t want to puke on the airplane….

headed to dinner :)

At this point we had to head back to the hostel to get our bags. Naturally things weren’t so easy. The power was off in the block of our hostel, so I had to use the bathroom in the pitch black. Quite the adventure. The receptionist also wouldn’t let us leave because he thought there was a strike going on for some reason. When we finally made our way out of the hostel we had to basically sprint to the train station (we were taking a 5 minute train ride to the airport).

dinner :)

Since the power was out in the neighborhood, about half of the ticket booths weren’t working. Luke and I were getting a little nervous. There was no way we were going to miss the plane to Germany, we still had about 2 hours until take-off, and trains run every 15-20 minutes. The problem was, I had a bag to check and the counter closes 45 minutes before the planes scheduled departure time. While this should have been no problem, there were about 7 million people in line in front of us at the check-in counter. Long story short, I made friends with a little German girl and was able to check my bags, no problem.

Cousins :)

The flight was only about an hour and 15 minutes to Frankfurt. I sat between Luke and this Italian girl. She was super nice (I ran into her leaving the Frankfurt airport when I was going back to Madrid and she was going back to Pisa – SMALL WORLD!)

OP with Nathan's buddies

Nathan was waiting for us at the airport to take us back to his house. His place is HUGE! Seriously! I was super impressed, not only with how big his place was, but how well he had decorated it AND how clean it was. Guess I had low expectations :-P Nathan has the top floor with a living room, kitchen, dining, master bedroom, guest loft, office, spare bedroom (which he uses as a closet), and 2 and a half baths. Walter, one of Nathan’s bffs lives on the middle floor, and G (Matt?) is moving into the basement sometime soon. I slept on the couch in Nathan’s living room which was ginormous and perfect for me J

living the dream :)

After we all cleaned up and took turns checking in on Facebook, we met up in a neighboring town with some of Nathan’s friends from work for dinner. We had some traditional German food: a slab of meat and potatoes. It was delicious. I ordered a pork steak and a salad. So yummy! Nathan also made us all order this special house beer. It was really good too! J

my cousins better than yours!

After dinner we went to another nearby town to The OP, which is a small town bar. It was so much fun because most of the people in the bar worked with Nathan. It was awesome to meet all of his buddies.

After The OP, we went to another club which they call Wick Wacks or something like that. It was more of a dance club than a sit down bar. I had a blast dancing with my cousins and just hanging out.

dominos

Around 3:30 we left the club and headed back to Nathan’s place. We warmed up some leftovers and sat around talking and playing dominos for at least an hour. Nathan, Walter, and G were telling Luke and I stories about work and bragging about each others achievements. All in all – BEST NIGHT EVER!!!! J