CIAO ITALIA

SOOOO i havent forgotten about my blog.... my internet access has been suuuper contstricted.... right now i have like, 26 min left on this computer while i wait for my laundry to be finished lol. im in roma, and its fantastic!! i love this city, something about italians, theyre all so nice! weve been here for 3 days and this night is my last night here before i leave for pompeii tomorrow, early morning wake up! yesterday we went to assisi for a day trip and got to see the church where saint francis is buried, it was really cool, and it was such a cute small city.

we started off in barcelona, where we stayed at a fantastic hostel and met a few people there, including a couple (names? i forget. bob and gretta lets say) SOOO we saw lots of really cool gaudi stuff, including the segrada familia, i was really impressed wtih the city and it didnt really feel like spain there. we went to the beach too and walked along the mediteranean! we were there for a few, then got on a flight with easyjet.... which for a discount airline really was good! we arrived in milan a few short hours later and checked out the major duomo aka church there, which was really big, i mean, ive seen SO MANY CHURCHES in europe. thennnnnn we started our tran traveling tour of this country. we went to venice and it was just like the movies. imagine a city with rivers for roads, and thats what you get. there are about ten million little alley ways and only one major center of the city, which isnt much of a center. it makes it really cute and easy to find a little dock thats not full of people. it was fun to explore there and get lost. we didnt go for a gondela ride, it was a little expensive, but we did use their ferry service to get along faster to saint marks. ugh i just LOVED all the water and quaint-ness (is that a real word?) of the city. next was florence, where we stayed over night and made some great friends in our hostel. there were 2 canadians, an argentine, someone from brussels and others. it was a fun night talking and using a mix of spanish french but mostly english. it was an ok city, i like the things that florence has, its definately famous for its art, aka the DAVID who was SO TALL i didnt realize, and then a bunch of artwork that was comissioned by the medici family (google them, they are really cool people) so we are talking about the "birth of venus" among others. it was really touristy there and we had to wait in a lot of lines but it was worth it.

nooooow we are more up to date. we arrived in rome a few days ago and its, like i said, a really amazing city. its home to a million different ruins like the colesseum, roman forum, the VATICAN (go on google and look up the swiss guard, im obsessed.) today we walked up 501 steps to get to the top of the duomo so we could see allll of st peters square from the sky! i got good picture footage, ive gone through about 600 or more pictures so far i think. we ran into people that we know from our university in madrid in the train station, what are the chances! then again we saw them in the vatican museum. this is a huge city, how the heck did that happen? and then we found bob and gretta, who are actually staying at our hostel. its SO BIZARRE.

like i said, the italians are nice!! its hilarious cause i find that they will talk to you even if you dont know italian. they are very good at one sided conversations. on our way to assisi our transfer train was held up for an hor and 20 min and this ooooold italian lady with 2 teeth was talking to us for a while and she was the cutest thing. we got to talk about the weather and such. jeannie and i understand a LOT of italian, its so similar to spanish! i took 2 classes too so it helps me even more with some of the different verbs, but my issue is speaking. im so out of italian speaking practice that when i go to talk it sorta just turns into spanish, whoops! every morning i always need a cappuccino- longgg walking days so i just need that to help me out. my favorite was when i went into this cafe and went to get a coffee and the old man behind the counter took my 1.5 liter water bottle and filled it up for me at the faucet behind the counter. so nice! of course, jeannie and i are so gorgeous so we get a lot of people calling us bella all the time, funny.

ill see if i get an opportunity to update again soon but i dont know when that will be. im excited to have a last 3 days to spend in madrid before i go back home, jeannie is leaving the 8th and im leaving the 9th so i have a little time to say bye to the city. our director patricia is letting me sleep at her house that night and shes driving me to the airport. EEK!


xoxoxoxooxoxoxoo

ps. the end of the semester went well.... i overall think my professors liked me, one of them i have 2 classes with, monica, sent a really nice email telling me that i was a pleasure to have in class, and ill see how the grades transfer over.

the heat

my poor computer is seeing the end of its days..... its been overheating because the vent/fan is broke so i dont know what im going to be doing about that! i can use it for 20 min or so before it reaches 100 degrees (i downloaded this program to tell me) and it shuts off, its so sad, i cant do too much on it like research because it overworks itself. :(

soooo thats why im at school today, a friday, so that i can use the stupid computers here in the library. before i sat down i went to the famous sandwich shop a little off campus ("eat well for cheap!"). ive got 2 favorite sammies, ill share:
chapata bread with barbecue sauce, chicken, lettuce, and onion and mozzarela, and the other, which i just created, is hard boiled egg, avocado, corn, marinated red peppers, salt and pepper. delish! and its cheap. 3 €!

i need to write another 7 pager (just finished one for history on the catholic monarchs, ferdinand and isabella) and now ive gotta write up an analasis of some random short story by this author. luckily jeannie sent me the link so i dont have to buy the book... its all online! fantastico. it stinks to sit down for too long... i dont konw if ive got allergies or what, but my nose is DYINGG i can barely breathe.

im dooone with classes, and minus the whole "exam " part, im really happy. the weather the past two dys has been GORGEOUS, like, 85 degrees and sunny. weeeeird i only have 7 more days left living with concha :( i am going to miss them so much...... that means i have to pack up everythinggggggg for next saturday cause AYA is meeting at patricias for a farewell paella and jeannie and i are leaving our big suitcases with her, and then after that we are going directly to the train to go to barcelona!! wow, im so excited, but freaked out that ive got not time left in madrid. not faiiiiiirrrrrr

ill give you a run through of where ill be from may 16- june 8th

may 16- embark for barcelona in a train

may 18th- flight to milan from barcelona

until the end of may, we are hopping around italy: florence, venice, milan, pompeii, naples, rome, and finally our port city, bari.

last day of may we are going to be crazy people and take a 15 hour ferry from bari to this port city in greece- wow! then from there we bus it to athens

we´re parking it in athens for a few days in a hostel right next to some famous ruins, then we are taking anotttther ferry to santorini!! be jealous, yes, fantastico.

i think weve got 4 full days there on the beach to relax then we are going back to athens airport to get our flight to madrid, and we are spending 2 night in the middle of the city, at sol.

june 8th, in the evening, i will be arriving gloriously jetlagged in the united states of america. let the games begin!

one month in 15 minutes

its been forever and there is way too much to catch up on. in the past few weeks ive been to london and sevilla two times! im currently taking a study break... recently ive been quite the procrastinator and i have papers that neeeeed to be done, this is my last week of classes and next week ive got exams. so, briefly

london= fantastico, we got to stay at our friends place, and we all had a glorious time speaking english and drinking tea. i recently saw a harry potter trailer for the new movie and it had a clip with the millenium bridge in it and i was very excited to have walked that same bridge! i was also secretly hoping to run into robert pattinson, the protagonist of the book-now-movie twilight- my perhaps unhealthy addiction. (i bought the book in spanish to practice reading hehe)Unfortunately hes in Canada filming part two.

sevilla part one was right after that- we went for the famous "semana santa" aka holy week during easter. it was amazing--- tons of procession type things featuring people in tall pointy hats that have a resemblance to the KKK - ill have to explain this to you in person if your interested- no fear, theyre holy people. i got food poisning in the middle of the trip- well, i self diagnosed, it was a 12 hour stint and i was vomiting all day long, a horrific situation especially when your in a 8 bed room in a smelly hostel. i survived.

sevilla part 2 was a trip covered by our AYA program and we all (14 or so of us) went with our director, who actually studied there when she was a student. absolutely a gorgeous place, im trying to make laura consider studying there. uhh - may- zing. and the food is good too of course. on the way back in the metro on sunday at 10 PM someone stole my wallet. i was being careful!!! they were professionals, and got me flustered as i was trying to leave the metro... i was walking out and realized as the doors were closing that they got me. i was really upset at first but i calmed down and now im just a super psycho everytime i travel/ am in a crowd.

oh! and i went to see a soccer game too. that was sooo fun and it was a Real Madrid game (the name of the madrid team, obviously) against Getafe (where my school is, funny) and Madrid won.

its 11 , ive got class in an hour and i MUST get this done! xoxoxoxo, im done on the 16th, and that day im also catching an overnight bust to barcelona, 18th to Milan, around the wonderful country of italy till the end of the month, then a week in greece and the grecian island santorini. 20 days living out of a backpack!!!! you all can be jealous of my tan :)