Pictures of Sevilla

My roomie and I at the beautiful Plaza de Espana.

On the bus.

Eating at the restaurant.

Steph and I at Alcazar.

Alcazar Palace

Garden at Alcazar

More Alcazar

The girls in our tiny hostal room.

The cafe where we ate lunch. We ate outside, it was so nice.

We climbed the tower of the Cathedral and could walk around the bell tower. Great view.

Christopher Columbus' burial site.

The Cathedral from the outside. It took up a whole block.

The group at the Plaza de Espana.

More Plaza de Espana.

Steph, Becky, and I

Parque Maria Luisa

Streets of Sevilla

The girls of the trip. :)

Sevilla

This weekend I went on a trip to Sevilla, which is a bigger city in southern Spain. I went with 6 other ISU students. We left Friday morning and took a 4 hour bus ride there. When we got to Sevilla, we all fell in love with it right away. The weather was gorgeous, it was around 65-70 degrees the whole time. The city has a lot of palm trees and orange trees, and there is a big river that runs right through it.

We walked to our hostal. We had some problems, because apparently we needed our passports to check in, and none of us had ours. After some awesome Spanglish sweet talking, we finally convinced the owners to let us stay there illegally on the promise that we wouldn't get arrested and get their hostal in trouble.

Our room was small. The 6 of us girls had a room all to ourselves and the one guy who came with us had to stay in another room. We had 3 sets of bunk beds and a bathroom. It was actually pretty nice for how cheap it was.

That afternoon and night we just walked around the city. We went to the Plaza de Espana, which was absolutely amazing. It was sooo beautiful. We also went to the Parque Maria Luisa, which was really pretty too.

The next morning we had free breakfast at the hostal. It was fun to be in the commons room there, because there were people from different countries staying there. We got to meet other students from Brazil, Germany, Sweden. The breakfast was really good too, plus we went to Starbucks after that. Sevilla is big, so they have Starbucks, McDonald's, Burger King, Baskin Robbins, Domino's Pizza. And they have Pepsi machines everywhere, which is weird to see in another country.

All day Saturday we walked around. We saw the main Cathedral, which was HUGE. It's actally the largest Gothic cathedral and 3rd largest church in the world. Inside is the tomb of Chistopher Columbus, which was cool to see, but someone said it's a myth and he's actually buried somewhere else. But I like to believe I saw the real one, it makes for a better story.

We went to Alcazar after that. Its a royal palace, and one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I was totally blown away by how big it was. There were so many rooms, and levels, and everywhere there were fountains and exotic plants and gardens. Every wall and pillar had amazing paintings on them. The palace was origionally built in the 14th century, and they have kept adding onto it since then. The best part of it was outside there was a maze. Like a real hedge maze that you can get lost in. It was so much fun.

We ate lunch at a restaurant and later took a break for churros and chocolate. It's a really common Spanish treat, and it was delicious. After walking all day, we were so tired and our feet were in a lot of pain. So we went back to the hostal for a nice little siesta.

That night we went to dinner at a sandwich place that was kind of the Spanish version of Jimmy John's. Then we went to a discoteca. I was sooo excited! I hadn't been to a discoteca like this since Ecuador. The place was huge, and packed. There were 3 different levels of dance floors. We danced all night, and didn't get back to the hostal until 4am. It was so much fun.

Sunday morning we had breakfast again, checked out of the hostal, and made one last Starbucks run. We found an outdoor cafe/restaurant by the river and sat there all afternoon. We were so tired from walking the day before, plus we had already checked out and didn't want to drag our bags and everything all over the city. So we relaxed there, and it was so nice because it was like 70 degrees.

We went to the bus station at 4 and got back to Caceres around 8. Steph and I were so exhausted. We ate dinner then rested before the Super Bowl came on. The game started at 12:30am for us, and ended around 4am. We watched it on Steph's computer, who was skyping her boyfriend, who set his computer up to his tv. It was the only way we could see the game, but it worked out well. It made us really homesick though, because all of our friends back home were having parties and watching it together, plus I just miss American football so much. We had our own little Super Bowl party with bread sticks and nutella, and Spanish cake. :)

Steph and I were both really tired today. After the long weekend of traveling, walking around sight seeing, then the 4 hour bus ride back, plus staying up til 4am watching football. We made it through class today, then had a tour and lunch with other students who arrived in Caceres from Germany, Austria, Italy, and the U.S. That was fun, I love meeting people from other countries.

When we got home from that, Steph and I both crashed and took a 5 hour siesta. It was nice to finally be rested from the trip. It was a great weekend though, and hopefully we can travel much more while we're here.

A few pictures of Caceres

First days of school

So I have officially survived my first week of school. I'm still not used to going to class, doing homework. It's been soo long since first semester at ISU.

I go to the university here, but the actual campus is outside the city. I take the bus to class, and either take the bus back or walk. It's a pretty long walk, but I am going to try to walk home at least a couple times a week if it's not raining.

We have all our classes in 2 classrooms in a main building. There are a lot of other Spanish students there too, but I only have class with the other ISU students in my group. Our professors are from the university, and our classes are taught only in Spanish (most of the teachers don't even know English). I am taking classes for literature, conversation, Spain today, Spanish art, and Spain history.

Since our group is only 20ish people, my classes are small. Some classes have almost all the students in it, but one of my classes has only 7 people. So that's hard to get used to, after taking huge lecture classes at Iowa State with 400 students. But it's nice, and it makes me pay attention, which is hard to do. My mind wanders so much during class because it's in a different language, so it makes me tired to have to focus for that long.

Our homework hasn't been that difficult so far. For the conversation class, we have to do a presentation in front of everyone every Monday. My first one was this week. If you know me, you know that I have absolutely no problem standing in front of any crowd talking in any language. I could give a presentation about the chalkboard for 4 minutes if I had to. This one was easy, we had to explain where we are from, where we live, where we have traveled to. I did mine, no problem, and at the end my teacher didn't say much about my speech, but he told me I talked too fast. Um, what? I wanted to tell him, "Ohh you should hear me talk in English, sir." So I guess I have to slow down in my presentations... :-/

Steph and I eat lunch together after class. Our meals have still been really good, and still wayyy too much food. Yesterday one of our moms was home to eat lunch with us. We had a very delicious meal of rice and ketchup, hotdogs, and eggs (it sounds weird all mixed together, but I promise it was awesome). Our mom brought out another plate with veggies and some kind of meat, which she told us was pig. Steph and I both tried it, I actually took a really big piece. It tasted very different, very chewy. We finally asked what it was, and our mom just pointed to her ear. PIG EAR. Super. I'm not going to tell you what I thought about that, but I can say that we weren't so hungry after that...

I've had a really bad cold all week. It's soo annoying. I hope it goes away soon. Steph and I went to Carrefour, which we actually call Wal-Mart, because that's what it is. It has basically everything. So I bought Halls there, and have already gone through most of them. I can't stop coughing. I feel bad during class, I'm practically wheezing. Hopefully it will get better soon. My moms are so worried, I'm not used to being babied when I'm sick.

Tomorrow morning I am going to Sevilla. It's a city in southern Spain. I'm going with 6 other students, we are all really excited. A 3 hour bus ride, staying 2 nights in a hostel. I'll post my stories from that next week. :) Hasta luego!

Pictures of Italy

Simone!

I look happy, either to see Simone, or just to have made it alive from Switzerland to there.

Simone's girlfriend Elizabeth and I on the train.

Simone's city, Asti.

Turin, Italy

The view of Turin from the top of the Mole.

Simone and I at the top of the Mole.

The Po River

The Gran Madre.

Me with all of Simone's friends at the awesome seafood restaurant.

Pictures of Switzerland

The train station in Switzerland, with the beautiful Alps behind.

My friend Carlos and I, before I left him to go to Italy.