life update. grad school news. summer plans.

I forgot to mention something very important in my last blog. Well, yes to summarize the blog I posted yesterday - I had the week off for Semana Santa, ali and I went on lots of afternoon adventures, and Jas/miya were here. On Sunday, Amir and I also ate hard boiled eggs to celebrate Easter. Then we had a study party to catch up on hw from the vacation. BUT that’s not the important part --- my big news is that I decided to go to TCU for graduate school for the next two years. I am really excited about my decision and I think it’s the right thing for me and plus that means I get two more years in Texas with Sharlarose, Christine, Elise, Shane, and Emily. But that also means I have to move everything back, ah!! that’s okay, because most of my stuff is in the girl’s outside closet anyways. But everything seems to be working out PERFECTLY for summer plans. I am going back to Texas on May 30th for summer clinic/sharing sharla’s room with her for the month of june. Then, I will be heading back to California, July 4th weekend to start working at John Tracy Clinic for their Spanish Summer Session. And that means I get to work with Spanish deaf babies!! = my dream come true. Also, on Monday I heard from the AGBell Association about the Listening and Spoken Language Symposium Scholarship that I applied for in March. And they gave it to me, so it looks like I am heading to St. Louis this summer too!! Elizabeth also received the same scholarship and so I will be going to visit her at Fontbonne when we are there for the symposium. I am so excited! I emailed Dr. Morrison to let her know and she was so excited for both of us too.
She sent me an article she wrote about us for the Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences Newsletter:

"Valerie Lew and Elizabeth Boschini, undergraduate COSD students in speech-language pathology, have each been awarded scholarships from the AG Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing to attend the AG Bell Listening and Spoken Language Symposium July 23-25, 2009. Valerie and Elizabeth's essays were placed in competition with students from across the US, including students at the graduate level. The AGBell symposium is a bi-annual meeting that presents current research topics pertinent to intervention with children with hearing loss. This year's topic is the impact of executive function on education and developmental outcomes.

Valerie Lew will be joining the TCU graduate program in speech-language pathology in Fall, 2009.

Dr. Helen Morrison will be presenting one of 2 invited short courses at the symposium with Dr. Jane Madell Co-Director of the Cochlear Implant Center at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, titled Renewed Perspectives in Listening and Spoken Language."

Anyways, so there has been good news all around and I couldn’t be happier! I will post my blog about lagos tomorrow.

florence. florencia. firenze.

This is my much needed update from the past two weekends bc I’ve been traveling so much I really haven’t had all that much time to blog. So here goes… Florence was so much fun. I got to Livorno and met up with Dustin on Thursday, we rented a car, and went along the north eastern coast of Italy. It was gorgeous, a little cold but still a much needed beach trip. We got some sun and spent a good portion of Friday at the beach. The whole rent a car thing was interesting trying to maneuver ourselves in a vehicle in a different country, but Dustin knows how to drive stick shift so we got by just fine. Friday, after we got back from the beach and returned the car, we hoped on a train to Pisa (home of the leaning tower). Friday evening/Saturday morning we saw Pisa – climbed up the leaning tower, went into the Cathedral, and went into the baptistery. Saturday afternoon, we left for Florence. It was a really busy four days. We tried to do as much as we could outside, on Saturday in Florence because we knew it was going to rain on Sunday. So we went to Piazzale Michelangelo, Neptune’s fountain, Ponte Vecchio (the first bridge in Florence across the Arno river), Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio, and Pitti Palace. Then we had dinner with Allison on Saturday night and I got to catch up on life abroad with her. It was so good to see her!! We talked a lot about grad school/florence/sevilla/school/and traveling.

Then on Sunday, we did the Duomo and the Galleria dell’ Academia, which has Micheangelo’s David in it. We tried to meet up with Jason/Miya who happened to be in Florence that weekend too, but the line was really really long for the Galleria dell’ Academia and they had to catch a train back to Rome, so it didn’t end up working out. But that’s okay because Jas/Miya are in Sevilla this weekend to see Semana Santa processions! Florence was amazing. I'm so glad i got to go, it's a lot like sevilla and a lot like rome at the same time... which are both very different cities, but two of my favorite cities in the world. It has the best of both worlds, it has a river like sevilla, and its slower paced but still really busy like an italian city. and of course it has italian food/roman history, which i love too.

Sunday night, I traveled home and got back Monday morning… funny story… I took a train to Milan from Florence to fly out of Milan on ryanair bc it was cheaper. So I got on my 8:15pm train and went to go sit in my seat and then the guy want like you made this reservation for 8:15am, not 20:15pm ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I wanted to cry, seriously it was a val-freezeface moment (bridge-ies will know what that means). But I didn’t cry, I just turned bright red and I was all upset because it was like 8:10 by then and I was like well this is probably the last train to Milan for tonight, and if I miss this train then I will miss my plane home to Sevilla. it would just be a really BAD chain reaction. So I stayed on the train and I was like I don’t care, I have a ticket. And I just sat in another seat. The entire time though I was like freaking out that the conductor would come over and kick me off the train or something, or fine me like 1000euro. But he never came to check my ticket, which turned out to be sooo lucky. Anyways, all was well and I made my plane.

Merillat and Jacob were on my same flight home that got into Sevilla on Monday morning at like 9am. And so we rode the airport bus back to Prado together. Merillat and I decided to sleep the rest of the morning and go straight home instead of trying to catch another bus to UPO with all our belongings, just to make it to Ana Claudio’s class. And Manoli missed us so much, she gave us breakfast even though it was like 11am with chocolate éclairs too!! And she gave us even had a surprise for us at lunch, chocolate/strawberry icecream Sundays!! It was such a wonderful welcome home.

The week went by like a whirlwind. I got into ASU, then heard just the same from TCU the next day. I was suffering from another bout of the cold before Morocco and trying to sleep it off to get better. I had SD card problems with my florence picts bc I dropped my canon camera on the leaning tower of pisa, so Brian (who is my hero now) saved them ALL, somehow. The metro opened on Thursday so Brian, Ali, and I had a great day adventuring and making history as we took the metro for the first time and wandered around Sevilla more. Then we left for Morocco early in the AM on Friday morning. I’ll write more about my Moroccan/African/sahara desert adventure later this week! Hasta luego!!

grad school update.

Currently, all my dreams are coming true. I got into amazing amazing amazing grad schools. And I’m getting to chase the sun around the world and have wonderful adventures. Life really couldn’t be better than this!!

Florence was so so so much fun this past weekend. It was amazing, I love italy. I have to write a long blog entry about it later, but for now no tengo mucho tiempo ( I don’t have a lot of time.)

I got into Arizona State University this weekend (they rank 18th!!) and I couldn’t be happier. So I thought I was going to go there until last night. BUT Dr. Watts, chair of TCU’s department of communication disorders, emailed me and offered me acceptance to TCU’s program as well, which includes full tuition (yes that is $80,000 gratis = free). Ah!! I still can’t believe it!! I still have the option of choosing CSUN (Cal State Northridge) also, to be close to home, to live in Southern California, and maybe work at John Tracy? I am so so so stressed out now though because I have no idea what to do. The official deadline I need to decide by is April 15th but my schools want me to decide earlier because I am holding someone else’s spot if I’m not going to go. I don’t like being rushed. SO STRESSFUL. It’s such a good problem though because I have amazing options and I couldn’t ask for anything better.

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.

quick life update.

quick life update: tori is in sevilla this week and we are having a grand adventure/celebration of our ten year friendship. we met in madrid on saturday, she flew from LAX and I took a bus from Sevilla. It was wonderful. We went crazy and did Madrid in 24 hours on no sleep. Then we took a bus back to Sevilla and she is spending the week here, sleeping in my very small not extra long twin size bed.

In other news, I got into Cal State Northridge as my first graduate school acceptance!! SO EXCITING! It takes some pressure off, but not really because that just means that I have to really start thinking about where I want to go and make a choice in the coming weeks.

Also, to add to my joys today I got a 91 on my Lectura y Redaccion (Reading & Comprehension) midterm with Ana Claudio. She's my favorite professora ever.

Well, since I need sleep and I didn't take a siesta today bc Tori and I were adventuring I really should go to bed. I will update with more later.

Hasta Luego!