londres with daniela.

Life is offering me absolutely wonderful experiences and adventures that I am just taking in and loving every minute of it. Sevilla is continuing to be wonderful. School is good and the weather in Sevilla couldn’t be better right now. It’s sundress and flip-flops weather, which is absolutely amazing for my California soul.

Last week, Merillat and Traci had a friend in town, and Liz’s mom is in town still and so they didn’t eat with Lola and me all week. Also, Lola has school all day on lunes/martes (mon.wed) and so I was the only one eating at home for some meals. BUT this was excellent because it served at great bonding time with Manoli aka proceeding to be her favorite even more & more practice with my Spanish.

The whole graduate school thing is continuing to be stressful as decision deadlines are coming up and I’m getting more impatient waiting to hear from more schools. The past weeks have been filled with skype calls from mom&dad about news, chats with kaysabeth, and emails with elizabeth on what to do. I just don’t know where I’m going to go yet. We’ll see.

But about londres… Daniela and I went to London this weekend and we stayed with her friend Mawuena who is studying abroad there. I’ve been to London before with Jenna and so it made me miss eurotrip round1 a lot. But there were things that Jenna and I didn’t do while we were there, so Daniela and I finished the London adventure for now. It was a great weekend and we did so many things. Also, it was cold but it wasn’t as freezing as I thought it would be. Thursday, Daniela and I went to the Tate Modern, which is one of the best modern art museums ever. It has Monet’s Water Lilies and Jackson Pollock’s Summertime in it, which are some of my favorite paintings so I was just happy sitting and staring for a while. Then, we went to changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London Bridge, and the Tower Bridge. We also climbed up the Monument, which is this huge pillar/monument in London that was built in memory of the people who died/places that were burned in the great fire of London. It has 311 very small, narrow steps up to the top but it was really fun because Daniela and I were laughing at each other the whole way up. It had a great view from the top, even though Daniela was scared of getting too close to the edge (even though it had a gate..hahaha). On Thursday, we also tried to get into the Tower of London but we got there too late so we went back and took a tour/went inside to the Tower of London on Friday. Thursday, before heading back to Mawuena’s apt. we went to Harrod’s for sweets. I had a cupcake it was sooo good and it made me miss Sprinkles.

On Friday, we went and took our London Eye flight, which was lots of fun. Before getting on the guy was like no sharp objects or mase in there right?? He was joking but of course with Jenna & my history with London/heathrow/mase I was not amused. Ahahaha, that’s a story for another day… Friday, we also went by Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey before heading to Abbey Road. Literally, Daniela and I were at Abbey Road trying to get the perfect picture like the Beatles cover, for over an hour. It is still a legit street that people drive on and we went around 4/5pm ish and so there were tons of cars and other people trying to get pictures too. We actually ran into Maria and Iman while we were there. They are friends of Mawuena’s and they were staying at his dorm with us too. What a coincidence, right? They jumped in our picture and we got a semi-ok picture but settled for that because it started to get cold, and we were tired so we left. Saturday, we adventured around and went to TopShop (a store based out of UK) kind of a mix between H&M and Forever. But it’s super cute and I was like way excited to go. I got a new green dress and a new bathing suit to wear in Italy next weekend.

Another highlight of London was seeing Marie B!! Marie is visiting Kelsey Tudor (not to confuse Kelsey with my sister) this week because Kelsey is studying abroad in London this semester. She got in on Friday afternoon but I left on Saturday so it wasn’t for sure if we were going to see each other. But we were chatting/planning to meet sometime and it turned out that Mawuena’s apartment was literally like 3 minutes walking from Kelsey’s dorm. So we met in the middle at a pub called Gloucester Arms. It was soo sooo soo good to see B. I was so happy!! It literally made my week, I was so excited to see her. Marie and I caught up and got to chat about life over Strongbow, which is like cider from London that is really good. We also talked about being in Europe together again. Last time we were in Paris together on Marie’s first night in Europe too! ca(b.o) in Europe, again! And how next year, we are going to go to Mardi Gras & Cabo together, so exciting!

Daniela and I flew home Saturday evening and got back to Sevilla, around 10:30ish. Showered, got ready, and then had a wonderful welcome home to everyone – Mal, Amir, Brian, Daniela, and I; hanging out at Amir’s. It was a good way to come back and it has been a while since we’ve all been together because of traveling, visitors, and midterms. We ended up going to Plaza Alfalfa to a bar called Robotica which has bomb mojitos and then on the way home Brian & Peter got hotdogs from the burger/hotdog truck. So it was a night out, well spent.

London was just wonderful. It was a really different city because, well, for one, people speak English, and second of all, it has a lot of American people/products/culture but it also has a lot of European culture. They have a Whole Foods in London (how amazing) and they had ziplock bags at Sainsbury’s!! Ziplock bags are like gold. Literally. I can’t find them anywhere in Spain and Tori even brought me some, but my worst fear is running out of them. Also, London another big city too, I feel like a lot of the places that I’ve been traveling like Madrid & London are so much bigger than Sevilla. Plus they have metro systems instead of walking/busing to get around, which totally makes me appreciate the fact that Sevilla is so much smaller. People say Sevilla is a big city, but it really doesn’t feel like that a lot of the time. It just has a different pace of life and maybe that’s the Spanish culture coming play and maybe that’s just how Sevilla is but I just love being around it. Ana Claudio says that it’s el ambiente (like the ambience- the people/the feel/the environment of Sevilla) that people love. I really think she’s right, it’s what I love about it. It’s just so different from everything else. Being here just fits me really well. And to be honest, I really lucked out because before coming I had never been to Spain. I love love love traveling to other cities and chasing the sun around the world but it’s just very comforting and fitting to come back here. And it makes me so happy to come back to Sevilla and feel grounded.