Massive Update!

So this is officially the longest I've gone between posts. Ooops! Let me try and play catch up for a bit...Where did I leave off?

Things have been great. Incredibly busy, as the semester is starting to wind down which is nuts. Two weekends ago I went to Barcelona again with a few girls from the program and to see Jessica. I love that city (it actually reminds me a lot of San Francisco) so that was a lot of fun! We ventured by train to Figueres which is where the Dali Museum is and that was fantastic. We spent most of the day there just wandering around the exhibits and slightly exploring the tiny but charming town. The weather is Barcelona was wonderful, heaven compared to freezing Madrid. We also celebrated St. Patty's day there which was really fun (I got an awesome green guinness top hat from one of the bars)!

Once back, we had a quick half week of classes because early Thursday morning we left for our group trip to the north of Spain! It was a fantastic trip! We went by bus and our first stop was Bilbao to see the Guggenheim museum. Sadly, we had a bad guided tour which kind of ruined the museum for me, but it was still a very cool building. Then we continued on to San Sebastian which was by far my favorite stop on the trip. It was absolutely beautiful! And it was really rainy and gross out so I can't imagine how amazing it would be in the sunny, warm weather. Ha! We had the afternoon/night there so we explored the city and its nightlife and then the next day had a guided walking tour all around the city, from one end of the beach to the other and into the center, etc. It was a lot of walking but such a pretty city! We had lunch at a great restaurant at the top of a hill overlooking San Sebastian's bay. Amazing view!

From San Sebastian we took our bus to a tiny little town in the La Rioja region of Spain. The town was called Haro and was really small and quaint, with not a lot going on but it was a cute place. We stayed there overnight because it was close to the winery/wine museum we were visiting the next day. We went to a wine museum which was cool, but kind of a tease because I think most of us wanted to see the vineyards, wine cellars and taste the wine. Apparently we were supposed to have a wine tasting at the same place but something got messed up and we didn't end up getting to do that (which was VERY disappointing). So from there we drove to another small town for lunch at supposedly one of the best restaurants in Spain. It was in a really cool building, like someone's old house and the food was good and we more than made up for the lack of wine tasting because they just kept bringing us jugs and jugs of wine at the table. :-)

From there we went to our last overnight stop on the trip, Burgos. We stayed in a really nice hotel (as SC always puts us up in reallly nice hotels) and just relaxed there for a bit before venturing out into the cold (and snow!) at night. The town is really pretty, right on the river and really beautiful. But I think we were all ready to head back to Madrid after our whirlwind tour of the North!

The next day we stopped in Laguardia for lunch in a palace, which was really good and a nice ending to the trip and then we headed back to Madrid. It's still cold here and poured this morning but hopefully it will start to clear up and warm up because I'm MORE than ready for some sun! Tomorrow night my family comes!! I'm really excited for them to come and be able to show them the city and then Sunday morning we go to Portugal for a few days which I'm really excited about. Hopefully it will be warm/sunny there!!

Ok I think that's a lot of catch up for now...Hopefully I'll remember/have the time to write again soon!

Halfway through...

Midterms are over!!! We all breathed a huge sigh of relief on Thursday afternoon after our last test (art history). The past week was hell, a lot of writing and studying all crammed into a few days. But it's over now and there's been a bit of time to relax. :-)

But the scary thing about that is that, ok, midterms are over, but that means the program is half gone as well! This semester has really flown by, it's crazy how fast it's going. This weekend I'm here in Madrid just relaxing, and it has been wonderful so far. Yesterday, I did absolutely nothing except for catch up on some American tv shows and read (which I haven't done since probably the first week I was here) so that was a nice little break. Today I'm waiting for lunch at home and then going to venture out to the park (because it's finally sunny! - although still kind of cold) and continue my search for cute flat shoes. Very productive I know.

Thursday, after midterms, those of us from my theater class that were still in town (a bunch of people left for their weekend trips early) went to see La Casa de Bernarda Alba at the theater. I had read and seen the play in high school (yay C.T.E) but the class had just finished reading it so it was a great way to make sure we all fully understood the script. Plus, the play was obviously in Spanish which was of course different from the version I saw. The play was great, I really enjoyed it. By far the best one we've seen here in Madrid so far. There were tons of American students in the audience, probably because almost everyone reads the play in a Spanish drama/literature/culture class so that was kind of a neat experience.

After the show, I went out to dinner with some of the girls in the program. Mexican food at the only good Mexican restaurant I've found in Spain so far. Yum! I do miss my L.A. Mexican food though. Then, we treated ourself to some churros con chocolate and tried to make it home before the metro closed.

As I said before, this semester is really flying by! I'm here this weekend, then next weekend I actually head to Barcelona again (I just can't stay away), then the weekend after that we have a group trip to the north of Spain. Then my family comes!! Yay! And it's spring break where I show them around for a few days and then we head to Portugal. Then it's April, basically the last month of our program and I'm here in Madrid for a few of the weekends and traveling to Amsterdam for one of them. :-) Craziness...

Alright well it's just about lunch time (I hope...) so I'm going to head off. More updates to come if something exciting happens!

Ciao!

Midterm Avoidance

It's that dreaded week again: midterms. Lovely USC Madrid scheduled all of our midterms in the same week, and yet we still have our normal class schedule as well, so it's going to be a bit of a hectic week. I had a paper due today for my theater class (in spanish of course) so at least that's out of the way, but still three more tests to go! Two on Wednesday and one on Thursday. But then I'm done :-)

This past week was relatively uneventful, as I spent most of it sick at home. :-( But now I'm feeling much better, so at least it was worth it. On Friday we had a group day trip to El Escorial, a royal palace built by Felipe II about an hour away from Madrid. It's in a beautiful location, surrounded by mountains which still have snow on them and lavish gardens. The palace itself is very dark and gloomy though. Felipe II was a very Catholic king and wanted to show the citizens of Spain that even the king lives by Catholic principles, which apparently meant his palace had to be cold and dark. There were tiny windows and big stone walls, and although lots of magnificent artwork, not enough light to appreciate it with. There was, however, a very cool library (with almost all of the original books!) that was beautifully decorated and lavish in contrast to the rest of the building.

On Saturday, frustrated with my theater paper, I left and met up with a few girls to explore more of Madrid. It is finally sunny and (slightly) warmer so we walked ALL around the city for hours, exploring parts we hadn't gotten to yet. It was definitely nice to see more of the city, instead of traveling from freezing point A to freezing point B underground on the Metro. Saturday night we celebrated one of the girl's birthdays on the trip. We started at this restaurant/bar/hookah spot near her homestay which was really fun and different and then of course the big group split up and my part headed to the university area to check out some of the cheaper bars. It was a fun night!

Today I am avoiding studying for my tests (as always) and trying to figure out my plans for after the program ends. Planning travel is always very stressful for me. Anyway, just a quick catchup to a slightly uneventful week. This weekend I'm in Madrid again (taking a break from traveling for a few weeks) so I'm sure I'll find time to post soon!