adios!

Today is my last day in Bilbao and it looks like I'm going to be eating all day. Lunch is in a few hours and then the university is having a closing ceremony where there is bound to be food and wine and then we are having a huge goodbye dinner at home and then I'm leaving on a bus to Madrid. I finished my last finals yesterday and celebrated with a pastry that Renner and I call a chocolate butt...because it is literally the shape of a butt...gonna miss those things! Last night my host mom gave me a necklace as a goodbye gift and the charm on it is the sidewalk pattern in the city. She's the best. It's been a great semester here in Spain but I'm definitely ready to go back home to my family, friends, and pets too although I know I will miss it here. Again, I wish I could write something expressing my gratitude for my time here and everything but I really just don't know what to say...all I can say for now is adios España, gracias por todo, and I'll be back home so so soon! Oh and adios to my blog too!

one week

I told my host mom the first thing I want to eat when I go back to the states is buffalo wings...so what does she do?...goes out and buys wings for me to eat for lunch the next day. This woman is entirely too sweet.
Things are really winding down now, only one more week here! Ahh! Classes ended today and final exams are on Monday and Tuesday and thats basically it. It seems like I just got here!
I feel obligated to write an inspirational post about everything I've learned here buuuuutttt I really don't know what to say... that sounds really bad. I've learned so much about myself, about Spain, about people in general but I think I need to be away from it all to really put it in perspective and put it all into words. I've been told to prepare for an even bigger culture shock coming home. So I'm preparing. One suitcase packed! Hopefully all my stuff fits in the other one!
See you all in a week!

supermoon!

In accordance with my last post, my host mom fed me tripe. It was gross. Probably the only food I haven't liked since I've been here. And I've been here for four months. The countdown is really on now. Only twelve more days...11 sleeps though since I'm leaving at 1:30 am to get to Madrid for my 8 am flight. Its hard to believe its gone so fast and as happy as I am to be coming soon I know I'm going to miss this place.
We had our last ISA excursion to Burgos yesterday, a medieval city two hours southeast of Bilbao. We went to a museum of human evolution that is home to a bunch of bones found in caves in northern Spain that were occupied for thousands of years. Apparently they are the oldest European remains. The rest of the day was spent (in the rain ironically because it was sunny in Bilbao) touring the giant cathedral and sampling the cities delicacies such as morcilla (type of sausage) and chocolate.
Look for the moon tonight! It's gonna be the biggest moon of the year! Supermoon! And you have to do like the Bon does, open your wallet, hold it up to the moon and say, give me money give me money give me money! And some unexpected money will come your way!

...the things your host mom doesn't tell you

Well here I am sitting in my room on yet another misty rainy foggy miserable and gray Friday with nothing to do but wake up from a nap and blog about everyday life in Bilbao because I am too poor to travel anymore. Last night there was (apparently) a really important soccer game here against Portugal and when Bilbao won I could hear the sounds from the stadium all the way from my house! Mind you I live a good two miles away from the San Mames stadium. People here take soccer, or futbol as they say in español, so seriously. Everyone has Athletic (Bilbao's team) flags hanging in the balconies of their appartments and on a game day everyone, even the babies, have on an Athletic jersey. All of the kids here kick around soccer balls after school certain that they will become the next player on the team. One day I was walking in the city and saw a bridal shop and the featured wedding dress in the window had the trademark red and white Athletic stripes in honor of the team. That's just a bit too far.
As I was listening to last night's game on the radio with my host mom I was reading a magazine and was looking at a few recipes. I asked her what a word meant and the word was tripe which is like the stomach of a cow or sheep. She started going on telling me about all the weird food she likes such as tripe, feet, liver, and tongue. I told her I had never tried any of those before and she tells me oh yes you have. What? Oh yeah you've had tongue before, I've made it a few times but didn't tell you. When? What dish? She makes this dish, tongue apparently, with red peppers on top and it is DELICIOUS. Probably one of my favorite things that she makes. If she told me it was tongue before I ate it though I probably wouldn't have...
I've been reading a lot here but it has all be in English aside from books for class so I decided to buy a book in Spanish. I didn't want to read anymore classic Spanish literature about the Civil War so I bought Eat Pray Love...but in Spanish! Come Reza Ama. It takes a lot longer to read in Spanish but its definitely good pratice and I only need to look up a few words on each page.
My friend's host mom's daughter just had a baby and in celebration she (the host mom) made a ton of food and brought it to the ISA office for all of us to have a picnic! Turns out it was more of a feast than a picnic but everything was soo good. She made three different types of tortilla española, three different cakes one that was like a banana bread without the banana but made with strawberry yogurt which I really want to learn how to make, a cheese cake, sandwiches, and a ton of ham and cheese and bread for us to snack on. Yum! I am indeed going to miss the food here when I go home. Sure it'll be great to eat normal portions again and eat when I want to but the food is delicious and that is why I have been learning how to cook things with my host mom the past few weekends so I can make Spanish food for my family! Last week we made ham croquetas which are like little fritters, think of a mozarella stick, filled with ham and cheese. Next I told her I want to learn how to make these seafood stuffed red peppers so hopefully that's on the agenda for tomorrow! ...So these are the everyday things in Bilbao that have been too boring to write about compared with my travels. Twenty days till I'm America bound!

From the Sahara to the Alps

Two weeks of traveling and no internet makes for a very long blog post so get ready!

Renner and I flew into Sevilla on March 30th and spent the afternoon and night walking around the city which I really enjoyed. It was a bit rainy but the air smelled of orange blossoms which made it okay. We visited the Plaza de Espana which is almost like a tiny castle surrounded by a mote which we rowed around for a bit in cute little boats like in the Notebook. After walking around all night and a long Spanish style dinner of tapas, paella and wine we went to bed and got ready to wake up at 4 am to get on a bus to Morocco.

I don't know how many hours I spent on a bus during the six days I was in Morocco but it was a long long long time. We left at about 4 am and took a bus down to the southern tip of Spain where we waited about two hours in the port to board the ferry..another two hours on the ferry...and then another busride to Fes, a city in Morocco. We got to the hotel and a few of us decided to explore the city...we walked about 500 feet out of the hotel and turned right around after being stared at and realizing that this was not a city to be enjoyed during the night as an American tourist. The next morning we went to the Medina which is a marketplace with over 9,000 streets and 50,000 inhabitants. We had a guide who grew up in the marketplace and said he sometimes even gets lost...this being said it was very important to stick with the group...there were about 100 of us ISA students so that wasn't a problem. Our tour consisted of various visits to shops such as a carpet store, a ceramic place, and an apothecary. Everywher we went people tried to sell us stuff; walking around in the marketplace we were offered various wallets, jewelry, keychains...everything. Needless to say it got really annoying after a while. That night we all went to see a typical Moroccan show with belly dancers and all. Before going to Morocco I was warned about the food and water there and was told that everyone on this trip gets sick. As a precaution I took a probiotic the week before and the week during my trip but I was still paranoid and really did not want to get sick. So I lived off of bread and packaged foods for a week. Everyone must have thought the Bilbao students were ridiculous for not eating the food but our director really scared us about everything. And hey, none of us got sick!
The next day we got back onto the bus and headed for the Sahara. We passed through a miniature Grand Canyon and we stopped in the middle of nowhere for lunch where we saw various Moroccan kids begging for money and food. During the lunch we snatched a bunch of oranges to give to the kids and in return they gave us crafts woven out of palms, I got a bracelet but I lost it somehow. After countless hours of the bus we came to a stop in a parking lot and before I knew it I was out of the bus being wrapped in a turban by some Arab guy and getting herded into a jeep...this sounds like an abduction but it was really part of the plan. So there were six of us in a 4x4 with some Arab guy that doesn't speak English or Spanish so we pulled out a French dictionary and tried to communicate...he didn't speak that either. About an hour and a half later after jeeping through the desert in the rain...rain in the desert? yup... we came to a stop...a flat tire. We all got out and starting taking pictures and laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation while more jeeps pulled up and helped fixed the flat tire. Two other men came up on motorbikes..I'm not sure if that's what they're called but the boys started learning how to ride them and after the flat tire was fixed we all boarded our jeep except for Renner who rode on the motorbike with some nomad Arab guy to our camp in the desert.
Camping in the desert...an interesting experience indeed. We slept in tents made out of blankets, our camp looked like someone built a really intense fort. There was a big tent where we ate and a nasty desert cat kept accompanying us for our meals and people were feeding it and petting it and I love cats but that one was just disgusting and that really bothered me. We were woken up at about 5:30 in the morning by the Berbers (some nomadic desert tribe people) to see the sunrise. One of the nomads that was helping out with the camp walked with us across the dunes of the Sahara to get to a high point where we'd get the best view. The sunset was beautiful but afterwards the nomad insisted that he show us his work in return for taking us to see the sunset and out of his backpack came some fossils and sculptures of camels and things that he had made in the workshop. It was all cool stuff but I really didn't want any of it and he got annoyed with us for not wanting to buy his things. The next part of our day was a camel walk into a typical Moroccan desert town. Camels are gross and the ride was long and I swear my camel was trying to knock me off the whole time but it was really cool. They didn't tell us that we had to walk back though in the desert sun and heat so that was fun. The town was full of clay buildings and dirty children begging for money and I felt bad for them living like that. The one kid found a lizard in the ground and kept trying to give it to people to hold and another kid was holding what looked like an albino fox or something...strange things live in the desert. Both nights we slept in the desert it rained. What are the chances? And it was freezing at night. Before bedtime I could overhear people complaining of diarrhea and stomach pains and I was happy that I wasn't in their situation. Camping in the desert was rough enough I couldn't imagine being sick. There were only two rickshaw bathrooms for 100 kids and with about half of them sick it was better to just do your business in the sand dunes.
The second day in the desert we spent hanging out at the camp. I don't even really remember this day I think I took a long nap and then the next day we got back onto the jeeps, then the bus and up north to a city called Meknes. We didn't get to see the city because the next day we got back onto the bus and headed for Spain. We got into Sevilla around ten that night and had a flight to Milan the next morning.

Flew into Milan, got our luggage, go to the car rental desk to pick up our car that we had already booked...and the woman behind the counter tells us...we haven't got your car. I'm sorry? You don't have the car we booked two months ago. No. Sorry. You can wait until 6 tonight and we might have a car for you (its 10 am) No that's not an option. Do you have another car we can rent? Sorry no. And so the conversation went. Sort of. The company didn't even have the car we rented in their fleet of cars and there was nothing similar and there are restrictions of the cars that people ages 19-21 can drive. We were fuming. And the lady was too. So we went around asking every single car rental company in the Milan airport if they had an available car. Finally we found one and we didn't have to deal with that terrible company, Maggiore, for the record: never rent a car from them. So we drove to our hotel in Milan got there around 3...passed out at 4 and woke up at 8 the next morning. Oops! Africa really tired us out.
That morning, Easter morning, we drove into Austria. By far my favorite part of the trip. We spent the day driving through the alps and when we got far enough into the mountains it started snowing! So pretty. The town we stayed in looked like something out of a fairy tale and there was a beautiful lake set between two mountains and the whole time spen there was just wonderful. We went to the church in the town for Easter but there were no services at the time. We ate at one of the few open restaurants in the town and I had the most delicious meal: a pork chop covered in bacon with a layer of cheese on top. It sounds like a heart attack but it was sooo good. And a huge mound of potatoes with it. Yum!
The next day we drove into Liechtenstein because we were close and it'd be cool to say we went there...and it was really cool! I think we drove through the whole country because it's so tiny. We visited the capital where the prince's castle is and we went to the postage stamp museum! Which is probably the country's biggest tourist attraction...I really liked it there though. We drove to the Rhine River and took some souvenir stones and walked across a bridge that is the Liechteinstein and Swiss border. We got lost for a few hours driving to our next hotel in the Austrian alps. The place was really nice and we had an amazing breakfast in the morning and set out for Munich.
Before getting to the city we drove to the Neuschwanstein castle which was the inspiration for Cinderella's castle in Disney World! It was really touristy but the forest and the mountains surrounding the castle were so pretty I felt like I just plopped into a fairytale. We got lost a few times getting there and then by the time we got to Munich we had such little time there that we didn't see the whole city but we saw the main square and the marketplace and got pickles which were gross and some delicious chocolate ball things and walked around a bit. In the main square we found a cafe called cafe Renner! Obviously we had to go in and had coffee and chocolate cake yum! At night we went to the most famous biergarten and had  yummy beers and then went to a restaurante where we had more yummy beer and bratwurst and other wursts and pork and sauerkraut and potatoes and it was all so good and I love German food and German beer and being German!
In the morning we went to the BMW plant which was kind of disappoiting because we couldn't tour the plant because there were no available tours and poor Renner couldn't rent a BMW to drive for an hour because you have to be 21. But we walked around the sat in the nice cars and went into the shop. Then we drove to Stuttgart to see the Mercedes museum! Clearly all these car museums were not my choice but the Mercedes museum was actually a really cool place. The building is like a cylinder and on each floor is a different point in history with the main events of the time and the cars that were made then. We spent a good chunk of the day there and then had dinner at some random cozy restaurant where no one spoke English and where we had more good German food.
The next day we drove to Zurich but we took a route off of the main highway so we could drive through the Black Forest. We stopped at a random store on the road that had all sorts of Black Forest souvenirs and German things and we stopped at a cafe where we tried Black Forest cake...not the tastiest thing I had in Germany and the amount of alcohol in that one piece of cake left us almost drunk. I got a recipe for it though! Then we stopped to see the Triberger waterfall and the little town around it reminded me of a storybook.
We got to Zurich in the afternoon and driving in the city was almost impossible with all the buses and trams and people and bikes going every which way on one way streets. We went to a restaurant that the hostess at the hotel suggested and had another delicious dinner; cordon bleu! sooo good! And beer too! The next day we spent walking around the city and going in stores and eatin delicious swiss chocolate truffles before we drove to Geneva. We didn't see the city and stayed in France actually just outside of it.
The next day we drove down throught the Alps again through a huge tunnel through Mont Blanc, the tallest point in the Alps, until we got to Milan. We returned our car and spent the last two days of our trip in the city. Well one day of sleep just like our first night and the last day in the city. We were lucky enough to see an orchestra at the famous Opera house, La Scala, for 5 euros! I ate pizza for lunch and dinner every day and it was great.
And as a great end to the trip I left my purse on the bus back to Bilbao from the airport but thank god the bus driver brough it back to the bus station just as I started freaking out searching for it. I better count my blessings I don't know if I lose anything else that it'll come back!
It felt good coming back to Spain but I'm definitely missing home and getting ready to leave here. I had a great past two weeks of travel and now I only have a month left here which is blowing my mind right now but it'll feel great to go back home after being away for so long.

spring break in less than 24 hours!

In fifteen hours I'll be on a plane to Sevilla, Spain where I will begin my journey to Morocco! Then off to Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and France for a euro-road-trip! I come home April 16th so if you don't hear from me before then don't panic!
By the looks of it my host mom thinks that I'm going to starve these nexts to weeks..I mean I am going to Africa but I'm going to get fed...on the table ready to be packed in my suitcase is: two boxes of granola bars, six chocolate bars (no joke), two packages of babybell cheese, a tupperware container of cheese, another of chorizo, five or six packages of sliced pork products (ham, chorizo, salchicon, lomo) and then she asked me if that was enough. Oh and she's packing a sandwich with a tortilla espanola in it....which will be put on an entire baguette and weighs about 5 pounds. We'll see if they let me through airport security...I might end up wearing lunchmeat for two weeks because I won't have any room to bring real clothes. At least I won't be hungry!
Anyway, I'm super excited for this trip I've been waiting all semester for spring break and I can't believe its here and then only one more month until I come home! Woah!
Bye for two weeks!

sharks

Since I've been in Spain I've tried every single dish put in front of me and have been eating things I never used to like. Red peppers, potatoes, red meat, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, squid...the list goes on. Today I ate shark. Well probably a shark. An entire shark. My host mom doesn't understand the concept of normal portion sizes and even when I say "bastante" (enough) she continues to fill my dish. So I ate a shark. And it was delicious, even my vegetarian roommate tried some. I tried to explain to my host mom and her daughter the concept of Discovery Channel's Shark Week series but they didn't really get it...things I miss about the US. Poor shark. That's all!