PARIS

Ok, before I start about Paris, I went to Malaga, Spain last weekend. It's just a little beach town on the coast of Spain. It was so nice to be able to relax for the weekend and spend time soaking up the sun!While there I went to the Pablo Picasso Museam, he is from Malaga. I'm not a huge fan of Picasso but it was neat to see his gallerary. The hostel I stayed it was very nice. It was a great first hostel experience!

Now on to Paris!! Paris was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!! I was able to stay with a friend of my boyfriends who is currently studying abroad there so that saved a lot of money and he took us around everywhere which was soo nice! The first day we saw the Arc de Triomphe, which is an Arc that celebrates battle victories. It was very beautiful. Then we went to a famous cementary and saw where Jim Morrison is buried. I love him so that was cool for me. Then we made our way to the Sacre-Coeur. It is a hike to see this white-domed basilica but so worth it. We came to a terrace which was such a great view of Paris. When we got there a break dancing group was just getting ready to perform. So we sat down and watch them, they were soo great!! And the view behind them was so spectacular. The Sacre-Coeur was pretty amazing! We had Vietnamese food for dinner which was SO good. We went out that night to a bar which was a bar you'd see right out of a movie sat in France, it was exactly how I'd imagined it would be. I also had a pastery that day which was the best pastery I think I've ever eaten. It was AMAZING. The next day we woke up a little later and went to get lunch at a French restaurant. I had the Croque Madame, which is a traditional French ham and cheese sandwhich with Bechemal sauce poured over it then baked in the oven and a fried egg on top. It was delicious. We then went to the Louvre where I was able to see the Mona Lisa. But with all the other detailed art all around it really made me wonder why that particular painting is so popular when there are paintings in there that were so much more detailed and probably took a lot longer to paint. That night for dinner we had Kabobs, then went out with a French friend the guy I was staying with knows. He knew of a spot where a bunch of the students from different Universitys from Paris where all celebrating for their "competitions week." This is where, I guess, all the the University's compete in various things all week. It was like a huge pep raley when we got there. It was right outside the Centre Georges Pompidou, the modern art museam, and was so neat to watch for a few minutes. We then went to a bar then got some of Frances famous Crepes. They were the best things!! Sunday we went to the Palace of Versailles. It was amazing! I could have spend the whole day just in the gardens on the outside of it. The inside was breath taking. It's amazing that people actually lived there. Each room was so detailed and the Palace had so much gold I was blown away. I easily could have spent the whole day at this place. We then went to Notre-Dame. WOW. We went in while a service was going on. We walked in while the choir was singing and it was just like walking into heaven I imagen would sound like. What an awesome time to walk in. Notre-Dame was so amazing and so unlike any Cathedral I've ever seen. It was probably my favorite attraction of the whole trip. Gosh I LOVED it!! We went to dinner after that in the Jewish corridor of Paris and ate at a famous falafel restaurant. I can understand why it was so crowded, it was absolutely amazing!! Such good good food!! After dinner it was nice and dark so we went to see the Eiffel Tower. It was so gorgeous lit up and while we were there they did a light show on it so that was pretty crazy to see. Again, we went at the perfect time!!
         Paris was an AMAZING (I know I've used that word a lot in this post, but I don't know how else to describe it) city. I loved everything there!! I'm glad I'm not studying abroad there though because I would probably gain a bunch of weight, all the food was sooooo good. Paris is definitely now in the top 5 cities I've ever visited. I would so love to go back one day! Preferably with someone I love! :)

My week with Michael

Michael arrived last Sunday at around 10 a.m. I had of course been up since about 6:30 because I couldn't sleep anymore I was so excited. I also had to do my hair (something I rarely do now days) and try to get everything ready for seeing him. I made us bocadillos (sandwiches) for our lunch and had packed him a little welcome to Spain bag with candy that you don't find in the states. We took a taxi from the airport which took us straight to our hotel. It was such a cute little (quite literally little) hotel. We were on the 3rd floor and had to walk up stairs at about a 45 degree angle. There was a community bathroom on each floor which really wasn't so bad because there were people cleaning it all the time. The room we were in was teeeenny tiny with only about a foot between the bed and the wall just on one side. But it was very cheap and clean, I was impressed. It had a very "Spanish" feel to it. We went out for a couple hours when we first arrived because our room was still being cleaned. We got some gelato and just walked around and saw a bit of Sevilla. The next day was beautiful weather and we went to the Plaza de Espana. He loved it! We rented a row boat and rowed around the Plaza, it was perfect :) We had a nice lunch outside after that at a fish fry place. We just ordered the various fish basket and come to find out one of the things we ate was the egg sack of the fish. It wasn't too good and once we found out what it was it really wasn't good haha. Lets see after that we had chocolate churros and then I think we just walked around some more. We ate at an Italian restaurant that night which was the best Italian ever! Tuesday I had an exam at school so he came with me to school then after we walked to my host families house where my host mom had prepared lunch for us. She made Paella which was absolutely fabulous. We had mussels and a salad to start off with, and Champaign, and then strawberries and ice cream for dessert :) She was so sweet and keeps commenting to me about how handsome he was and how much she liked him. On Wednesday I had an exam again but got done pretty early. We decided we would go what we called "Tappa Hoppin." We went to several different tapa restaurants and would each get a glass of wine and a couple tapas. It ended up being so much fun and we got so much good food and were about to try a lot of unique spanish food. One exotic thing we tried was Ox tail, which ended up being pretty delicious. On Thursday we rented bicycles and went riding about Sevilla. We went down to the river and over to Triana and to the statue of Hercules (which was not as neat as we thought it would be) and through just a bunch of side roads in Spain. It was a lot of fun :) Friday, his last day :(, we went to the Cathedral and went inside and went up into the tower. The Cathedral is beautiful and going up in the tower was awesome. Once we were at the top we could see all of Sevilla, we could even see into the bull ring. It was pouring down rain, which is did all week except for Monday, so it was good we were inside. But then we went to the Real Alcazar gardens, which are pretty famous, and I prayed so hard that it would stop raining for that, and as soon as we paid and walked in it stopped raining. 10 minutes later the sun was out. It was amazing. The gardens were so beautiful and I'm so happy to have finally seen them, especially with him. That night we went to a very expensive restaurant, because we figured we would splurge on his last night. Long story short in his last bite of Paella he found a hair. We showed the waiter and he apologized a lot. He came back with two shots of some kind of liquor and ice cream and the bill for 3 euro!!!!! Basically our bill that would have been $67 ended up costing us $5! It was probably our cheapest meal of the week! Saturday was sad :( Of course I ended up crying at the airpot. I was really sad to see him leave. I had the best week and was so happy to have been able to share everything I'm experiencing here, with him. We ate awesome food through out the week and got to experience a whole different culture together. The trip really made me realize how blessed I am to have such a wonderful man in my life. I loved our week together and love him with all my heart :)

Gibraltar and Morocco

This past weekend I went on a trip to Gibraltar and northern Morocco with a tour group called "We Love Spain." There were about 120 people that went and we had the best time. We took a bus 2 and a half hours to Gibraltar. There we got to see really neat caves and the famous monekys of Gibraltar. One jumped on my shoulders and I was able to get a pic, it was a great moment haha! After leaving Gibraltar, where you can see the coast of Africa and the coast of Spain while technically being in Great Britian, we caught a ferry to Morocco. In Morocco we went to 4 different cities, Ceuta, Tetuan, Tangier, Chefchaouen. Chefchaouen was my favorite. The whole city is painted blue!! All different shades of blue. Ok, let me get back to the order of things. So we got to Morocco at night and arrived at our hotel, which was gorgeous. There they served us a traditional Moroccan soup and chicken and flan. All was very good. The next day we went to Chefchaouen, where I was able to test out my bargaining skills. Everything I bought I got for what I thought was a good price. We went to a yarn factory which was very neat and they actually still use the looms. For lunch we went to a restaurant that was very Moroccan looking, just very arabic and neat. We had a wide spread of vegitables on each table and they served us a lemon curry chicken dish that was just absolutely delicious. There was a band that played in the backgroud while we ate. We were served a traditional cookie and green tea for dessert, all the food was great. There was also a lady giving henna tatooes at the restaurant and me as well as most of all the other girls got one. After lunch we walked around for a while. It is soooo different in Morocco. Nothing is commercialized. All the food is out on the streets, there are places to get live chickens killed right there to take home to eat. There are clothes and nic nac markets that look like 90% of the stuff could have been stolen or used. It was just incredible. We then drove to the next town (the only town I remember by name was Chefchaouen) and got settled in the next hotel, which was nice but I liked the first one better. That night we had a dinner and a show. At first we watched 4 men do a traditional thing with horses. They rode across a field a few times, with fire or swords. It was interesting. Then we had dinner which was a fabulous soup, a differnt dish consisting of meat, tomato sauce, and eggs... and kuz kuz with a spicy sauce to go over it which I liked a lot. For dessert we had a different kind of traditional cookie and green tea. The show consisted of a magic man, kid gymnists, a band, a man who did an act with a tray of candels on his head, and a belly dancer. It was very enternaining!! That night we went to a club that was a part of our hotel. It was fun, it was only just the group there basically. One of the best songs was Shakira's "Africa," everybody went crazy when that came on since we were in Africa. The last day we went to a cave that looked out on the Ocean, very cool. We went to the point where the Atlantic and Meditteranian meet, and we got to ride camels. It was a fantastic trip!!!! Definitely the most culturally different place I've ever been. 


On a sad note, my computer crashed. I've been trying for a week to get it fixed. My housemate is nice enough to let me borrow hers for the time being. 


On a happy note, Michael comes tomorrow!!!! I can not wait! :)