language learning.

so one of my main goals coming to Sevilla included becoming fluent in Spanish, other goals included traveling parts of Europe I haven’t seen before, meeting other study abroad students from all over the US, and learning about and embracing Spanish culture. I feel like I’m doing really really well in all areas. BUT the fluency in Spanish is coming along a lot slower than I thought it would. I’m learning so so so so much from my classes with Ana Claudio and Penelope and it’s definitely being reinforced and ingrained into my mind because I get to use the language everyday. I try to learn something new everyday. And grammar points/new words that I learn I try to use them right away whether its en los calles o cuando estoy hablando con Manoli (in the streets or when I am talking with Manoli). But the problem is that it is such a slow process. I thought I would be fluent faster I guess. And it’s hard not to compare myself to other people whose Spanish is much better than mine. It definitely gives me new insight as an SLP on learning language and how frustrating it can be to not be able to communicate everything that you want to say. Also, it has taught me a thing or two about learning language and being on the other side of the therapy table, I guess. But more and more it is becoming more difficult to have the motivation to really struggle through with Spanish and keep going with it, just because it is hard when I have English to fall back on and it makes my life a lot easier to just speak in English (now, don’t I feel like a deaf child that knows sign and is trying to learn to listen and acquire spoken language – Elizabeth will totally get this). Also, the fact that there are so many American study abroad students in Sevilla doesn’t help when my language goal gets rough. It is also really hard for me because I’ve always done well in school because I work hard, I just want this to come easy with hard work too. But really it’s more than that, it’s not just memorizing and knowing information but it’s about incorporating it into my life and using it. I was talking to Amir about it yesterday and I think it’s really about having the motivation and proactive-ness to keep going with it. Amir has like 4 intercambios. I have one, I need to step up my game on this Spanish language learning business. In a few weeks, we decided that between our friends that we are all going to speak only in Spanish all the time. We’ll see about that, I don’t know. Anyways, I had coffee with Clara (my intercambio) today, which was really good. We talked for a while and the time went by really fast and I had to run home for dinner. I see myself slowly progressing and learning, we help each other a lot so it’s really really good to meet with Clara. But sometimes I wish it was just a faster process and that it would come a lot easier.

tori’s visit.

Last weekend, tori and I were in Madrid. We went all over Madrid on a free walking tour with Sandeman’s New Madrid (http://www.newmadrid-tours.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=26) that turned out to be really good. Then, we went to Museo Reina Sofia, which has Picasso’s Guernica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting)) in it. Afterwards, tor and I saw this pasta/pizza place outside of the museum and decided to eat there. Sunday before we left, we went inside Palacio Real and inside the cathedral. We had seen them on Saturday during the tour but we really wanted to go inside so it was well worth waking up early to do so.

Sunday afternoon, we took a 6 hour bus back to Sevilla. Ah, so long. But we came home and Tori got to meet Manoli, Antonio, and all my other roommates. I took her sight seeing this week and we went to Catedral, Real Alcazar, Museo de Bellas Artes, Museo Archleogico, Parque Maria Luisa, Plaza de Espana, the Mercadillo, La Carboneria for a flamenco show, y Museo de Artes. We ate tortilla de patata at Casa Monolo and it was so good. I also took tor to mama terra for kebabs – bc the falafel is so good there. And we even ran into the hamburger truck man on C/ Betis on Friday night – wonderful eggs in a hotdog sandwich! We also cooked pasta with butter and parmesean at Amir’s one night, which was lots of fun too. Also, to celebrate her last night here we went to Rio Grande (a restaurant on the river) for paella and the churro stand for desert. We did lots of laying by the river this week and just walking around el centro because the weather was wonderful. She left for the airport this morning at 4:30 for her 7am flight. It was a good week and midterms are finally over. I only had one midterm for Spanish Conversation with Corey and a quiz for Spanish Civ/Culture this week while most people had more this week than last. Lots of visitors are flooding in to our lives lately too, tori came to visit me, brian’s whole family was here last week and this week, and Merillat’s best friend from tcu is visiting this coming week too. March/April are going to be crazy busy with visits from friends/family and traveling all over too. Jas&miya are coming for semana santa, dustin comes the week after, and then a few weeks after that my mom comes too.

It was a relatively slow weekend in Sevilla because it was a stressful week with midterms at UPO and all. On Saturday, Lola, Jacob, Amir, Tori, and I went to the gypsy market which was really neat but it was a lot like the mercadillo near Avd. De La Paz. Amir and I bought strawberries at the gypsy market and they were really good.

Also this weekend, Dustin and I finally figured out plans for tuscany and we are going to hit Livorno, Pisa, and Florence while I am there. I’m really excited for this weekend because I’ve never been to Florence before and I can’t wait for the beach/to get tan.

This morning I woke up and Amir and I decided to go to the mercadillo because he wanted to get more mandarinos. But he ended up buying the world aka lots of things besides mandarinos. On the way there we ended up running into some kind of march/protest of some kind. Obviously, Sunday is a day for marches/protesters to be out. It happens frequently and it’s kind of strange. The mercadillo was good, we spent a few hours there and I ended up running home for lunch because we always leave too late. I didn’t think I wanted to get anything but I actually got acietunas (olives) at the mercadillo. They were really good. Sevilla is famous for olives so I had to give in and get some.

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!

daily life and my favorite things.

The rain is back. So sad. Hopefully, it doesn’t last long and it goes away when Tori comes. This week I had the first of my midterms, two on the same day actually. Intermedio Espanol and Lectura y Reddacion on the in the same morning, it was rough but at least now it’s over. I’m so so so excited for this week because Tori arrives in Madrid on Saturday!! It will be amazing. We will spend Saturday and Sunday in Madrid and then come back Sunday afternoon to Sevilla. She will stay all week and then leave next Sunday morning. It was funny when I asked Manoli if she could stay at our house, she was like… “Where is she going to sleep?” And I was like, “Oh, ya know, in my bed.” Manoli was like really confused at first. She really didn’t understand. Ya, it was an interesting conversation, but it’s fine and Tori gets to stay with me, so that is wonderful.

The other day I was talking to Katy on Facebook chat and she told me to tell her everything and what I do everyday because she wanted to know what’s going on in my life here. So I thought I would share with you too…

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I wake up at 7am to Manoli knocking on the door saying “Desayuno!!” It’s great she’s my personal alarm clock. Then I eat breakfast with Merillat, Lola, and Liz. I get ready and leave the house by 7:30 then I meet Ali on Ave. Argentina and we bond/chat/talk/vent about life and walk to school together. Then we walk to San Prado - it’s a bus station – like the main one, since they are STILL building the underground metro in Sevilla, oh what I would give for it to be opened already. Anyways, then we catch bus 36 to UPO (la Universidad de Pablo Olavide). On M/W mornings, I have Intermediate Spanish with Penelope Recio and Reading and Comprehension (Lectura y Redaccion) with Ana Claudio, I love both my professoras. Intermedio is always fun and really not that bad because we are always joking around with the boys in the class or making fun of Amer for being late/missing the bus. Lectura is always good but sometimes hard with Ana but she’s so funny because she pretends to not know any English because she doesn’t want us to speak in English but I really think she is putting on an act, and she’s secretly fluent. I have both my lunes/miercoles classes with both Merillat and Christine, so we always walk together and sit together too. In between classes Merillat and I always snack on galletas we take from breakfast. After classes, Ali and I take the bus and walk home together. Sometimes we go on an afternoon adventure; we need to start getting better about this and really doing something every lunes/miercoles. After an adventure, I will go home for lunch at 2:30 with Merillat and this is great because Merillat and I are Manoli’s absolute favorites. Really, she never ever ever complains about us and she makes us the best food always, it’s muy bien. We love it and we always laugh about it because everyone else is jealous. In the afternoon & early evening, I will hangout/do homework/lay by the river with Ali and/or take a siesta. Right before or right after dinner, I will chat with Kaysabeth or a variety of others on skype or fb chat, which is nice to get love from home. M/W nights all the kids who don’t have class on Tuesday/Thursday tempt me to go out (Daniela, Brian, Lola, and Amir), and sometimes I do. Since I’ve been sick I haven’t been going out on weeknights but we’ll see how long that lasts.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are not much different. I get up early at 7am still but I don’t have class until 10:30. I wake up so early bc I want to talk to Mom/Dad/Kaysabeth on skype and Liz gets up for class anyways and I’m a light sleeper so I might as well get up anyways. Classes on martes/jueves include Spanish Civ&Culture in English with Enrique Moreno and Conversation with Ana Claudio. I have Spanish Civ&Culture with Merillat again, I like the class and I’m taking it pass/fail which is great. Conversation with Ana Claudio is lots of fun, I sit next to Corey in it and we just chat in Spanish and Ana laughs at my pocket dictionary. I ride the bus home at 1:20 with Mal and I chat with her about life and what we are going to do later that afternoon. Then I go home for lunch with Traci and Liz. Usually, I don’t take siesta on martes/jueves bc I adventure in the afternoons with Daniela, Mal, Brian, and Amir. Sometimes not, sometimes I sleep. And then we’ll do something in the evenings before dinner. Then dinner is at 9:30, and Thursday nights we will go out and stay out late because no one has class on Friday. We usually go to Amir’s to hangout before hand and decide what we are going to do. Amir is the only one who isn’t in a home stay, he is in an apartment of his own. The Adelante program gives them a choice whether they want to be in an apartment or in a homestay, anyways its nice for us to be able to hangout at his place because in homestays no one really gets to come over to your house, you just hangout out with people in public places. Fridays, usually start after lunch because we are sleeping in and enjoying the day of no school. Except odd Fridays TCU kids get to go on an odd Friday outing with Mary Alice where she will take us out for breakfast or coffee, or some cultural excursion to just chat and spend time with her to give us bus passes and make sure that we are doing well. Fridays have consisted of roaming around Sevilla, sight seeing, taking pictures, and going on different cultural excursions. Saturdays here are pretty much the same too, including attempting homework somewhere in there during the weekend but it usually gets put off until Sunday morning or the day of class – on the bus. 

Anyways, that is what a usual week looks like. It’s pretty good and I love it. I still wake up every morning and pinch myself to make sure this is really my life. I was fb chatting with Allison (who is in Florence) and she asked me what my favorite part of Sevilla was. No one has asked me that yet. I really had to think about it for a minute though because I have so many favorite things. My favorite things might just be the walking and the river and the Triana Bridge. I love love love the Guadalquivir River. It makes the city sooooo beautiful and I walk across the Plaza de Cuba and/or Triana Bridges everyday to go to school and the centro. I love walking home from going out at night, and walking home across the Triana Bridge. It just makes the city look so gorgeous. And plus there is a churro stand right near the start on the centro side, so it’s always fun to get a late night snack too. Fun fact: the Triana Bridge was the first bridge built in Sevilla and it was the only bridge in Sevilla for a really long time. I love living in Triana too. Traci and I were talking about it and how Triana is the heart of Sevilla and Sevilla is the heart of Andalucía and Andalucía is the heart of Spain, so basically we are in the best, most Spanish town in all of Spain. Life couldn’t be better than that, right? Also, I love love love walking everywhere. Part of me doesn’t want the underground metro to open because walking makes me feel healthy and it clears my head. I think that’s why I love European cities so much too, because everyone walks everywhere and that’s why they are not fat.

pictures: 1- a picture of the triana bridge from the centro side, probably one of my favorite pictures i've taken thus far, 2- churro stand! 3- triana bridge by night

feliz cumpleaños a lola y brian.

What a week. I am finally finally finally feeling so much better because I’ve been on antibiotics and on Tuesday I decided that I need to rest or else I would land myself in the hospital soon. I took siesta almost everyday this week which was good for my soul and good for my health. The weather has been amazing too. It has been around 70s-80s during the day but during in the early morning and at night it gets a little colder. It was so nice out actually that Ali and decided to take advantage of it and lay out by the river this week to siesta. It was fabulous. We also laid out by the river to catch up on homework and read a little too.

La senora con la que vivo, Manoli (the senora that I live with), has been sick but she went to the doctor twice this week and he finally gave her antibiotics. This is pertinent to my health also because she cooks all my food. Anyways, so Manoli is better now too, so all is good in the world.

Monday, I met with Clara, my intercambio, which was very exciting. University de Pablo Olavide has this program with intercambio (literally meaning like exchanges) where you are paired up with a Spanish student who wants to practice English and you want to practice your Spanish so you converse with each other to help each other learn language. It was lots of fun, I wasn’t feeling that well but I had a good time talking to Clara we met at Starbucks and I got tea which helped my throat too. We are going to meet every week and chat, some of the time in Spanish, some in English, and some Spanglish too.

Wednesday, Ali and I began our lunes y miercoles afternoon adventure club and went into Catedral to take pictures and explore Europe’s 3rd largest cathedral. It was lots of fun. We are going to be going on afternoon adventures on Mondays and/or Wednesdays every week because we get out of school at the same time together.

Thursday night was interesting too. Mallory met these Spaniards at an intercambio tapas event at UPO on Wednesday and we went out with them on Thursday night. We walked around town a bit, then went and hung out by the river before going to a discoteca later that night. We actually sat in a circle by the river and played ‘never never have I ever’ while they spoke in English and we spoke in Spanish. It was really funny and it helped us practice Spanish too! I was really not feeling well later that night so I went home early with Daniella and didn’t end up going to the discoteca but later Brian and Amir had a run in with some punks who wanted money from them. At first they asked for gas money because they said their moped ran out of gas and so Brian gave them a euro. But then the guys started asking for their credit cards and wouldn’t leave them alone. Amir started yelling at them and shouting once one of the guys pushed him and then so the Spaniards who were getting churros with Mal called the cops and the guys left. It was a crazy story. I’m glad they’re safe and nothing bad happened, it’s good that Daniela and I went home too so that we weren’t there either.

This weekend we celebrated both Lola’s (Danielle’s) 20th birthday on Friday and Brian’s 21st on Saturday. It was so much fun. Friday, we went to the Banos de Arabes (Arabic baths), which was so so so relaxing. It was 2hour spa-bath treatment where we got to go in a cold, mild, and hot bath, salt water pools, jacuzzi, and a sauna room. Also, we got a 15 minute massage and had tea afterwards too. It was great to have a spa-type day and we even convinced the boys to do it with us too.

Friday night, we hung out at Amir’s apartment for a while had cake for Lola and Brian and sang happy birthday to both of them. Then we went out to Calle Betis and Buddha later on which ended up being really fun. Amir always gets stopped at the door at Buddha because he never has nice shoes. Hahaha, then he always tells him he didn’t know and that next time he’ll wear them. It’s great. But anyways, it was a great way to celebrate both their birthdays.

Saturday, we all slept in because we stayed out pretty late. We ended up studying in the basement of Mama Terra (a restaurant with wireless internet) because mid terms are this week. Also, we spent a good portion of the afternoon trying to figure out whether The Reader was playing at the movie theater in English or Spanish… it was only in Spanish so we opted not to see it because we were tired.

Sunday afternoon, Amir, Brian, and I went to the mercadillo (kind of like a farmer’s market) on Avenida de la Paz. Melissa lives over near there so we met her there. I brought the dslr to take lots of pictures of it but Amir was a hater most of the day and told me someone was going to rob me so I should put the camera away. I put the camera away not because I thought he was right, but because I wanted him to stop being a hater about it so I only got a few pictures. It was fun, I love outside markets but I’m a bad barginer so I have to work on that. I bought cute earrings for a euro (they are super cheaply made too so I’m going to put nail polish remover on the backs). Brian finally bought sunglasses, Melissa bought shoes, and Amir bought like 4 kilos of fruit. It was a very successful day.

Things to look forward to in the next month: Tori is coming to Spain for her spring break to visit me! I'm meeting her in Madrid on Saturday and then she will come back with me and spend the week in Sevilla. Christine and Elise are traveling on a European excursion for their spring break too and so I am meeting them in London, also, while Marie bbbbBbbbbbBbb will be there too. At the end of the month, I'm meeting Dustin in Florence and we'll travel in the Tuscany region and hopefully meet up with Bailey too. So many loves from home and so many adventures in the next month. I can't wait! :)

Pictures: 1- Amir buying oranges at the mercadillo, 2 - shoes being sold at the mercadillo, 3 - Brian, Lola, Mal, Amir, and I right before entering the Arab baths, 4 - Ali and I laying out at the river

carnaval in cadiz.

So on Thursday I was still suffering with some kind of weird cough/chest cold/bronchitis deal. I actually went to the pharmacy and explained to the lady in my spanglish how I was sick, how I’m asthmatic, and how my doctor in the US wants me to be on antibiotics but I didn’t have a prescription. The pharmacist lady actually gave them to me with no problems. Thank you socialist healthcare.

Anyways, this weekend was a lot of fun. Fridays are always good bc there is no school. We slept in and then went adventuring in the afternoon we were actually trying to find the Jardins de Murillo on the edge of the city center, but didn’t end up finding it so we just wandered. We stumbled on this FCSevilla store and so we bought some futbol gear in hopes of wearing our new soccer paraphernalia to a futbol partido mas pronto.

Saturday night was Carnaval in Cadiz. In the morning, Amir and I just went walking around the city getting lost again, which is always an adventure. In the afternoon, the girls and I went to Aldi’s which is like a really cheap German market (or grocery store – as Sharlarose would say); apparently they have Aldi’s in the US too. Aldi’s makes their food/items so cheap bc only have like 3 people working in the store at a time, they don’t spend money on unnecessarily advertising in their store, or doing like food item displays, oh and they also charge for bolsittas (plastic bags – they want you to bring your own to save the earth!). And they’ve all been telling me about Aldi’s in Los Remedios so we went and got food, necessary items, and such to get ready for Carnaval. We went over to Amir’s apartment to get ready for the festivities and then we had to meet the DiscoverSevilla buses @ Plaza de Espana at 8pm, so the day ended up going by really fast.

Carnaval was SO CRAZY. So much fun though. It was just like a huge botellón– where people just party and drink in the streets. Oh and it was like a huge costume festival, some people were dressed up as weird things, it was just wild, with tons of people. I didn’t really have a costume bc I didn’t feel like buying something new and adding to my Halloween collection. I couldn’t bring anything over here bc my bags were too heave but Mallory, Daniella, and I had like mardi gras masks that ended up lost/broken by the end of the night. And I also wore like a cute purple serapi thing. Carnaval was tons of fun, we left Cadiz at 4AMish and got home around 6 in the morning then slept until lunch on Sunday. I’m glad I took my camera so I had pictures of all the craziness. They told us not to bring purses bc there are so many people there and you’d probably lose it or get robbed. So we brought drinks in plastic bags, yes, a plastic bag was my purse for the night. I was really worried about taking my camera too, but I put my camera, keys, my cell, and money in my boots, so it ended up being just fine.

Sunday, Ally and I went to climb up the Giralda Tower in the Cathedral but it happened to be closed yesterday. So instead we just sat outside, had a nice chat, and enjoyed the sun. It was such a nice afternoon. Then I had a skype date with Gma Elsa, Christine, & Sharlarose. It was so good to hear their voices, it made me happy.

I think this weekend exacerbated my cold/cough/bronchitis deal thing. Today (Monday) it was actually so bad that I felt like I was dying at school and I haven’t been sleeping that much because I will wake up and cough for like 30 minutes and then sleep for an hour. It’s awful. Part of the reason I’m so sick is because I refuse to sleep too, I don’t want to be stuck inside bc the weather is so good and bc I’m in Spain of course. But my cough/symptoms have gotten worse over the weekend partly bc carnaval too. Anyways, so I finally went to some crazy Spanish doctor today (which I was really apprehensive about to begin with but my senora has just been pestering me so I went so that so she would stop talking about it). The doctor actually wasn’t crazy and I talked to him in Spanish about my sickness and he thinks I have pre-stages of pneumonia aka I have walking pneumonia while in a foreign country. Wonderful, right. But I’m really proud of myself bc I didn’t need Mary Alice to get on the phone and translate, and I had a fluent conversation with him in Spanish all by myself even when I was feeling like crap. Yay. Anyways, he gave me three different medicines including more antibiotics so hopefully they work and I will be able to stop hacking during the night/through my classes. We’ll see.

Pictures won't upload.. bc my connection is slow right now, I will upload them later.

si mueres sin ver la alhambra, no has vivido.

This past weekend I went to Granada with Mallory, Daniella, Brian, and Amir. I loved Granada. It was a lot smaller of a city than Sevilla is (which made it feel a lot less city-ish) but it still has a lot of Moorish influence and a very Spanish feel to it. Granada was very hippie-ish and bohemian so maybe that was why I was drawn to it as well. We left Friday morning like early in the AM. We were all up at 5am actually, it was so early. Daniella and I met Mallory at Prado (which is our bus stop to go to school) because it’s closer to Santa Justa (the train station). We walk to Prado everyday so we didn’t think it would be that big of a deal. But what I think we didn’t realize was that it’s like a 30minute walk to Prado but it takes longer when you have luggage aka I had my rolling bag/airline carryon on the cobble stone streets = that sucks. Then we thought the walk from Prado to Santa Justa would take ten minutes, ya, it definitely took another 30. Whatever, walking is good for you. The boys just took at taxi from Los Remedios, and for the entire walk there I was wishing I went with them. Anyways, it was an adventure in the early AM of Friday morning. But we got there on time for our 7am train and I slept most of the way there which was good.

We arrived in Granada around 10am and walked to our hostel by 11ish. It was crazy finding our hostel too because we didn’t have a map of Granada and we were just asking people where to go then eventually we were like we should get a map. Then we diverted our location to the tourist office (which was equally hard to find). It was lots and lots of walking. But we finally walked up to Albaicin and we found our hostel. It was super cute and very like unhostel like, it was like this lady’s downstairs of her house and she didn’t even know we were coming because she didn’t have internet. CRAZY. It looked more like a house than a hostel, which was cool. Oh, and this whole time Amir was like deathly ill and needed to go to the doctor. So he went to the doctor to get medicine and what not but Brian, Mallory, Daniella, and I went to go see the Alhambra.

The Alhambra is a military based planted in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Influenced by Spain’s Moorish architecture it really reminded me of the Real Alcazar in Sevilla. It was so gorgeous. There were gardens, water pools, courtyards, castle walls, and we had amazing views of the city from the windows in the Alhambra. It was huge we walked around for four hours! There is this Spanish saying, “Si mueres sin ver la Alhambra, no has vivido,” meaning If you die without seeing the Alhambra, you have not lived. So obviously I’ve lived since I’ve seen the Alhambra and all its beauty.

I took lots of pictures too and my CF card didn’t crash either so that’s good. I was really really worried about it the whole time. But when I got home, the first thing I did was load my pictures.

Two more things that Granada is famous for: free tapas & schwarmas. We embraced while in Granada. Well, tapas are only ‘gratis’ (free) when you buy drinks aka wine, beer, café, tea something of the sort, all the restaurants bring you ‘un regalo’ – a gift (as Manoli explained to me before I left) of free tapas. Tapas are savory-like appetizers, southern Spain and Andalucia, which is the region I live in is famous for wonderful tapas. Another thing that we loved was the schwarmas (you can also call them kebabs). Brian loved the schwarmas. They are like pita sandwiches with meat from this rotisserie thing – I don’t really understand it, but you put lettuce and such, with falafel, and then salsa stuff in it. It’s good with just vegetables and falafel, that’s what I ate. It is supposed to be a Mediterranean food thing.

Saturday, we went up to the Sierra Nevadas. We took a bus for 10 euro. Ahaha it was great, getting there we almost missed the bus. The last bus to go up to the mountains for the day left from the station at 10am but we didn’t leave our hostel until 9:15 (because Mallory and I wanted breakfast from this Panaderia and it took long). So we were like running into Plaza Nueva to catch a bus to the bus station. Anyways, the entire time Amir and Brian were like we’re not going to make it, we’re not getting on this bus. And I was just you wait and see, we’ll make it. So we run into the bus station and there’s like this HUGE line to buy bus tickets, even at the automatic ticket machine too. It sucked. So we look at the screen and it says the bus going up to the mountains is bus 10, so we run down to the bus port to see if we can get on without tickets and just pay the bus driver or something, right? He was not friendly. We had to wait and see if everyone who bought a regular ticket got on the bus before he could give us our seats/tickets that were overpriced bc we didn’t buy them upstairs at the counter (they were like two euros over.. but still, he jipped us.) He let like 10 more people on and Brian, Amir, Mallory, and I were among those 10 which was exiting. Daniella stayed in the city for the day because she was feeling sick and didn’t want to go up to the mountains. But I was like ha. we made it on the bus.

Going up to the Sierra Nevadas was fun. It was neat to see a Spanish mountain town. We were planning on sledding but when we got up there we didn’t really feel like it so we had lunch in a café then we played in the snow for a few hours and took the bus home at 4.

Daniella, Mallory, and Brian went out to a few tapas bars later but Amir and I just stayed in because I was starting to get sick and he was already dying. We left on Sunday afternoon and Mallory and I laughed the whole way home on the train at this 20ish yr old guy with a Twighlight book (his was in English) and Mallory had hers in Spanish. We didn’t even say anything to each other and we tried to explain to Amir without saying anything because obviously this guy spoke Spanish and English. But Amir didn’t get it. Mallory and I just thought t was really funny and we were sitting across the aisle from each other, so we just laughed. We got back to Sevilla around 7ish. All in all it was a really good weekend. It was a lot of fun.

I’m still sick, it’s actually gotten worse. I ran out of Tylenol cold and so I’m taking some foreign medicine that’s pretty sketch and my mom is worried about, but what can you do right? I might go to the doctor if it doesn’t get better by Friday because I am going to Cadiz for Carnavale celebrations this weekend. And it’s going to be colder there than it is here, so it will probably exacerbate whatever cold/flu/virus thing that I have. Sad story, but it will be fine. It will get better soon… hopefully. It’s been a really quick week because I’ve been trying to catch up on things in Sevilla this week, we’ve been trying to get wireless internet but it’s still not working, and oh, I wrote my first paper for my civ&culture class too. I’m really excited for Saturday in Cadiz and it will be tons of fun so I need to be better already!

Pictures: 1 & 2 - In the Sierra Nevadas, 3 - getting free tapas in Granada on Friday night, 4 & 5 - views from the Alhambra