i guess that's when you know...

Last night my best friends here and I were sitting in a common room drawing and talking about how sad we were that spring break next week meant when we come back, we only have 2 weeks left together.. One of our friends in another program has a trip planned for the last weekend we are all here together (his program ends later than ours and we are all from different programs), and as we all kept thinking about it he said, "you guys, there's no way I can go to Sweden that weekend.. That's the last time we'll all be together and I cant leave you all yet!"

That doesn't even touch the surface of how close we've all become and how much they all mean to me. I thought I had already met all of the friends I wanted in my wedding someday, but after this, I'm going to have to make room for a few more :)

-k

Yes, despite all of my travel posts, I do go to school here :)

I thought it might be good to mention that I AM learning things as far as academics goes here too :) I had midterms the week before last and just got them back and I did really well! Between my four classes, I had 3 midterms because my business class through the university of alicante only has homework and then a final.. So for my other 3 classes taught by CIEE, I had a Spanish grammar and writing test, oral and communication test, and contemporary Spanish society test. I have learned so much Spanish!! I did really well on that exam and the speaking part has gotten so much easier than the first exam we had.. We sit one on one with our teacher and she asks us questions about life in general, or our opinions on things, or whatever and we have a 10 minute conversation or so with her.

The contemporary society class is interesting as well. We study the history of Spain since 1900, and how historical events have shaped the culture of Spain today. It is taught mainly in English, but our teacher is using more and more Spanish each class. Last week we took a field trip to a fish market where the boats come in and they auction off the fresh fish! Some are even still alive! Eww. It was in a beautiful little town north of alicante a little, and we got churros and chocolate before seeing the auction.






That exam was all essay (in English) and covered the Spanish civil war, the dictatorship of Franco, and ETA, a Spanish terrorist group that has been attacking its own country for years now. That is another huge difference between Spain and the US. We have some good discussions in class on how the Spanish mindset of nationalism doesn't even compare to the US. People here don't seem to have a national identity like we do. There are so many autonomous regions that each take so much pride in their own values and with 4 national languages, it can he hard to move to a different region because the languages are so different. For example, they speak catalan in Barcelona, and the pronunciation is so different that we can't even read it or communicate! And the Basque region in the north has a similar history to the south of the US. They wanted to be their own nation and still do, so they have a super confusing language that no one else gets and that is where the terrorist group ETA is from.. They started protesting against francoism at first and then it turned into a huge rebellion against democracy.. It's a messed up situation, but it makes Spain very interesting.

Also, I seem to only post about what I do on the weekends and on trips, so it might be good to also mention a little bit about my daily life Monday through Friday :)

A typical day goes a little like this... I get up around 7:30 in my dorm room to get ready for the day before breakfast of granola and yogurt with fruit in it with the girls. CIEE is where I have my 9-11 am class everyday, and it is conveniently just right outside the door to the dorms! So I leave breakfast at about 8:57 and walk right in. After class we usually walk around, lay out, go to the beach or go to the china market (a cooler version of wal mart, with literally everything but smaller. And cheaper) lunch starts at 1:30 and the Americans are always the first in line :) and starving by that point.. Sometimes I have class from 11-1 right after my Spanish class and other times I have it from 1-3, so i eat at different times. When Abby and I finish class at 1, we like to go to our favorite cafe called 26 downtown by the beach. It is a really cute cafe with huge ficus trees outside in the middle of this plaza. We work on homework, Skype people, and do the majority of our travel planning and booking there. They have good wifi :)

Tuesday's are my longest day.. I have class from 9-11, then 11-1 is my business class, then 1-3 is my Spanish society and 3:15-4:45 is the cultural seminar I decided to take extra that is only one day a week.. It makes for a really long day! Tuesday's are also the best night to go out, so I at least have something to look forward to..

It is nice to have a relaxed daily routine as compared to the busy life at Mizzou.. No meetings to go to, no events to plan, no dg finance obligations to take care of, just learning Spanish, making great friends, and realizing this surreal life is unfortunately coming to an abrupt halt. On to the working world in Chicago!

But not yet... I have 6 more cities to see in April over spring break :)

-k

Granada-the city of tapas :)

Well this is a few weeks late.. I got so excited after the Budapest weekend that I forgot to finish this blog about Granada!-Another great city in spain that I love! Mainly for the architecture and free tapa with a beer at every restaurant. That's what Granada is known for and I am completely fine with that :) A beautiful city, La Alhambra, and tapas makes for a fun 2 days with our program! I wish I could have stayed longer, but I'll have to save that for my next trip to Spain I think.

After learning about King Ferdinand and Isabel, I so admire them. They were such a cool couple! Like, literally. They seemed to be really laid back but still made really good decisions for Spain. And as the king and queen of a country that was so divided, their marriage literally brought the two sides together. Not to mention they're Catholic, they had a great relationship that the country really admired. When they came to Granada, they decided to stay there for it's beauty and cathedrals. The Moors/muslims had control of the area, so instead of destroying all that resembled moorish values, they kept them and restored them and made them even better (aka the Alhambra, and this Cathedral).

We toured this beautiful Catedral de Ferdinand y Isabel-gorgeous.

Another reason why I love Isabel so much brings me back to my Seton education :) Christopher Columbus went to Ferdinand and Isabel (mainly Isabel) to ask for the money to make the voyage to discover America! Hellooo!! Now she's definitely on my top 10 admirers list. I remembered this well known fact on the way to the cathedral, when we passed by this statue. Funny how you forget those little details..

It's Christopher Columbus either asking or receiving the treasure to make the trip! Inside the Catedral, we also saw the actual treasure box that Isabel handed Columbus the cash in. How cool! I guess I forgot to take a picture of it, but I thought that was awesome. His hands were literally touching that and it made it all the way to America (maybe..?)

After the tours, we wandered around and found some great deals in the stores! A trip couldn't be complete without a little souvenir, right? Abby got some really nice real spanish leather boots on sale, obviously, and i found some super cheap booties that all the spanish people wear and are really cute :)

That evening, CIEE took us to a flamenco show in the cave houses that the gypsies live in. They actually live in them. When they want a bigger house, they just dig further. Weird right? No, COOL! They were like real houses with pictures on the walls and tile floors and everything. And the flamenco was so good! Luckily in our spanish class on Monday they brought in an instructor and we all learned how to flamenco. It was so cool I wish we had good dancing like they have here. Like actual dance moves. I'm definitely going to practice so I can try to stomp around like these ladies did! The shoes and dress make the scene, but it was really fun!

The trip there was on the smallest windy roads down the steepest hills I have ever seen. Imagine driving through the mountains to Colorado on those steep, curvy roads, but cut the roads into thirds... That's like what it was like. On a rickety bus! Scary, but we made it :)

An evening wouldn't be complete without the sangria!

We went back to have some tapas before getting ready to go out for our one night in Granada.

my friends-abby, kim, and allison enjoying some cervesa

So the club may or may not have been in a mall.. But it was so cool! Like Madrid status. packed with people and we met some kids from Notre Dame studying in Toledo for the semester who were there too! Crazy.

The discoteca, called Mae West. Western style with pictures of her all over

The Latino room had awesome music and these really good dancers were salsa dancing! Once again, awesome real dance moves. They even showed you how and Abby and I were amazed at the skill of these people. We obviously went up to talk to them after they got off stage, in Spanish of course, and I got told my Spanish was good! That's so exciting! I'm definitely getting better. Abby met a guy, Dag, from Norway who spoke English and was about six foot eight, hence the reason she spotted him.. Everyone else was shorter than 5'8 for sure.. We were tired, and I was hungry, so I got a hot dog and we headed home :)

Saturday CIEE had a long day of touring for us. The Alhambra. Allll morning. But they luckily chose the tour in English otherwise none of us would have had a clue what she was talking about. What a gorgeous palace! The views over the mountains (where people were skiing!), elaborate gardens, and typical spanish architecture of mosaics and tile inside. And of course, many fountains.

view from one of the balconies of one side of Granada

pretty tiles! i want my house to have cool mosaics some day

an awesome pond in the middle of this fortress

The actual history of the Alhambra is pretty cool too. I wasn't really paying attention for the whole thing because it was early and we were out late, but it had been used as a palace by the Moors for years and took a really long time to build. When Christians took over, they didn't discover it's beauty for a while and it had been kind of neglected for a long time. One of the kings made it his project to restore and now it is one of the most treasured places in Spain! The architecture is beautiful. Like nothing I've ever seen before.

the lion fountain in the middle has been being worked on for over 10 years and has cost over like 2 million euros or something to restore. We were the first CIEE group to be able to see it finished for a long time!

love early morning tours... not.

some pretty gardens in the middle of it somewhere

My favorite part were the gardens! This place is literally massive. And it's all outside, like there are no sealed doors anywhere. Must be nice to have a climate that you can do that because i would be freezing if we didn't have doors!! Well, it does get kind of chilly in January here, regardless of the "mild" climate.. So we walked all over this huge place and after what seemed like miles, wandered around these beautiful gardens! 

so many fountains and ponds :)

After the tour, Jennifer had this great idea to drop us off on top of a huge mountain 2 miles from the city center to have us "explore" and walk down steep cobblestone streets after walking miles already for hours. Keep in mind we hadn't eaten in 6 hours either.. Everyone was so miserable and starving! We complained so much and just wanted to leave, but they thought we'd like to see the view.. It was pretty cool, but I didn't need any more pictures of granada.. As we attempted to run down to the city center for lunch, who do we run into, but Dag! Abby's Dutch friend from last night! Crazy... we seem to have this weird thing with meeting people on trips and then seeing them everywhere after that! fate.

Once we got a yummy kebap in us, we were ready to wander around some more and see granada before heading to the bus. Kebap's are this turkish food that are really popular in spain, kind of like the taco bell of the US. Its meat that looks like a gyro, as in it's this huge round chunk of meat that they shave off little pieces. You can get chicken or pork and they're realllyyy good. With these 2 sauces, one's white garlic kind of and the other is like tomato something or other. With lettuce and tomato, yummm. I like them just the meat on a plate, but it's also popular to have them in a tortilla like a wrap. Found the food i like now :)

We only had 1 night in Granada, so back to Alicante for the night to my cozy dorm. This was so long ago now I forgot I had moved in to the dorms 2 days before going to granada and i was so excited to come home to a warm room where my stuff hadn't been all moved and cleaned while i was gone!

-k

flying by.. And I'm not okay with it.. :(

It is hard to believe I have already had my mid terms and I am halfway through my semester here! I'm really starting to get used to the Spanish lifestyle and living in Alicante. Everyone I had talked to while I was deciding to study for a semester or for a few weeks in the summer really encouraged a semester. I am soo soo glad I made the move to spend the entire semester abroad. It is challenging to get adjusted to such a different culture if you've never experienced it before, and to be leaving after 5 weeks would hardly seem to give you a taste of becoming a part of this culture. We all are definitely going through the homesick part, missing friends, and wanting to see our families, but overall, like in Spain is great. We sometimes sit over our dinner at the Villa (the dorms), talking about our favorite restaurants from home and our favorite foods that we don't get here.. I'm not sure if that helps or not, but it's fun to see differences in all these different cities across the country.

I'm also so grateful to be here for so long to be able to make real friendships with everyone. Going from living in a homestay where I was alone a lot and unless I made an effort to go spend money and sit at a coffee shop or something with a few people, I was really only hanging out with people when we went out.. The dorms has been really nice to be able to eat with a group of kids and just hang out like the dorms freshman year at Mizzou (without my 514 ladies, of course, but Abby brings back the Jones memories enough :) I never had friends outside of the Midwest, when I actually thought about it. Even at Mizzou, most of my friends are from Missouri, with a few exceptions to Texas.. These kids are from literally all over. East coast, South Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado, California, Wisconsin, Washington... It is as interesting to learn about Spanish culture and lifestyles as it is to hear about the different regions of the US and how their campuses are different than mine. The mannerisms and accents are fun to pick up and make fun of each other for too :) I'm really going to miss everyone I've met! I've made some great friends who are all going through what I am, and we've all realized how this experience is an important part of our lives and is definitely changing the way we make decisions and look at situations.

The cultural integration has set in, I think, by now. I can hold conversations with Spanish people easily and am really surprised by how much I've picked up in just two months.. We've been going to more of the Spanish clubs rather than the "Erasmus" bars (Erasmus is the study abroad term for kids in Europe who study in another European country, so the foreigners who speak English) so I've found I use my Spanish the most when I go out actually.. Another excuse to go out more I guess, because around our friends we always speak in English.

Everyone has been asking if it's what I expected, and to be honest, I don't really know what I expected. I thought I would be really overwhelmed and lost by the language but I honestly thought people would speak English.. Like in Madrid, everyone spoke English to us. And after the first few days of Abby and I wandering around this ghost town eating terrible food and not being able to speak to anyone at all, we both thought we would hate it and want to go home. Good thing that changed real quick when the other kids came and we learned Spanish.. Now I'm getting to where I really don't want to leave! Life here is so much more laid back than my crazy busy life at school where I was working so hard to study all the time and get ahead and apply for jobs, build my resume and get leadership positions, that I kind of forgot sometimes about just living life. This was really what I needed to take a step back and appreciate life right now. Spaniards have that philosophy it seems like with a lot of things. There is no rush to get things done, they sit in coffee shops for hours talking with their friends, they stay out until discotecas close in the mornings, and they walk super slow like they are in no rush. Ever.. I'm always running around, doing three things at once, always checking my phone or twitter.. Its like i cant appreciate a moment because I'm always thinking about whats next or making my to do list for the next 4 hours of the day..

I'm happy to say that at the halfway point of my semester in Alicante, yes, I'm missing my friends, going home for a nice meal that I know what I'm eating, sitting at the kitchen table with my parents talking about life, and having a nice gym to go to much less a grocery store that doesn't wreak of fresh fish, but I also don't regret a thing. This is another one of those things that can be scary and challenging at times, but something that has allowed me to grow and experience things I would have never had the chance to if I didn't take the chance to just do it. Until you throw yourself at age 21 into another country where you don't know how to communicate and have to live there for four months, you can never understand how an experience like this changes your outlook on life and opens your eyes to such a big, big world.


-k

The Budapest Adventures!!!

On the Chain Bridge

Too many pictures of this amazing city, soo starting off with a few :) 

in front of St. Stephen's Basilica, couldn't go in at this hour but looks beautiful

the hike up the fisherman's bastion to wineee

Ben and I on top of the Castle

view from the chain bridge of parliament in the background on the Pest side

I'm going to start by saying that Hungarian food is divine. Wow. It was all literally everything that i love-grilled vegetables, raw veggies and something that resembled RANCH, normal breakfast with egg white omelettes, giant apples, great wine, even better cocktails, tasty real red meat, I could go on and on.. From our first lunch after the all-nighter at a quaint little restaurant where I had an "appetizer" of three scallops in a great sauce to our last meal there at a fantastic really nice restaurant, everything was better than perfect. Can I just say that I had my first FILET of real thick, juicy, medium-rare steak in over eleven weeks??? It did not disappoint. Bleu cheese and horseradish crusted filet with a giant grilled pepper filled with every other kind of veggie in a yummy sauce. It was basically the USA in my mouth. Yum. After a few bottles of wine between the three of us- Abby, Ben, andI- and a lovely dinner with a great string quartet playing, we experienced the best of Hungarian cuisine, that is for sure.

my STEAK dinner with grilled veggies. still drooling and it's been 6 days since..

In researching this new city Abby, Ben, and I were about to explore, I discovered the city is actually two- Buda on one side of the Danube river and Pest on the other! Learn something new everyday.. Budapest was never somewhere I had on my list to visit while I was here, but when Abby found these super cheap flights from Barcelona there for a weekend, we decided it was something we couldn't pass up. What are the chances we would randomly decide to go to Budapest for the fun of it? So we took one for the team and used one of our three absences for class and headed to Barcelona on a late Thursday night for what ended up being the weekend of a lifetime. What began by spending our first entire night in the airport ended by spending our first entire day in the airport as well.. What college kids do for cheap flights.. The overnight part was surprisingly not as bad as I anticipated, we got some sleep on a McDonald's bench using our giant backpacks as pillows while hugging our purses, only to wake up at 4:30 am for a good ol McDonald's breakfast to start our day of wine tasting, touring, and first night out! 

love sleeping on hard benches..

The return was deadly though. May have been a little self-inflicted but also terrible to come off a wild night out to sit in an airport all. day. long. Anyways, on to the exciting part :)

good morning barcelona airport!

We woke up to search for our gate and at around 5 am, we figured out we were in the wrong terminal :) good thing we still had 4 hours until our flight!

the magic vending machine that gives you free oreos :) we camped out right here.

Arriving in Hungary, we made our way to the hotel (not hostel after last time..) right in the heart of Pest- a few blocks from the river and next to the Chain Bridge. We got settled and headed for a Hungarian Wine Cellar up a giant hill near the Buda Castle for a tour and tasting by a Sommelier- someone who runs the cellar. It was so far underground that they don't take any sort of credit card because they don't even get a signal! After walking down all of these stairs through stone into the center of the earth, we began our tasting of 9 Hungarian wines. They were really good! Except for the one that tasted like whiskey.. We both dumped that one out.

literally, the center of the earth.

this is what happens when you don't have a mom to take a picture of you.. #selfie

the descent. bad part was, the bathroom was also at the top of the stairs..

After 3 hours of wine after wine, we wandered around the Fisherman's Bastion, a huge stone church it looked like with beautiful carvings and mosaics.

before the wine tasting..

Power nap and shower later and we were ready for Ben to arrive and to hit the town running.

the fisherman's bastion at night

view from top of castle hill at night. beautifullll

After walking into many bars that were filled with smoke, (I forgot how nice it was to have that law) we finally found one where you couldn't smoke. Happened to be a really hip place with about three stories, random hidden rooms, awesome decorations, and great drinks! What more could I ask for?

Abby and I at Instant, for the second night :)

The night continued as I introduced myself to a few people and quickly made friends with a group of guys from holland on a fraternity trip to Budapest for the weekend :) perfect. They knew where to go for the clubs and places that were open late, so Abby, Ben, and I headed to the Hungarian version of a Spanish discoteca. So. Wild. Those people know how to party!

deadly..

Another awesome place with great Mojitos and my all around favorite drink sex-on-the-beach. All of a sudden, 4:30 am rolls around and we realize we need to head home for some sleep so we can actually function for our one full day of sightseeing!! our new Dutch friends were so much fun, they were hilarious! A group of like 12 crazy 30 year olds basically.. We expected to never see them again because 1-there are a million bars to go to in budapest, 2-we have really cool flip phones for our international numbers that may or may not have enough money on them to use.. and 3-it's two 21 year old girls and their 30 year old cousin.. like seriously, why would we run into them again.. just wait.

looks like trouble to me..

Good thing we stumbled across a great brunch spot in our search for a bar without smoke the night before-this place had egg white omelette, chocolate chip pancakes, regular omelettes, French toast, eggs Benedict, and every other thing on the Arsenal Brunch menu I have been craving for months. After a bloody Mary and 4 entrees for the 3 of us, we were feeling a little better to head to parliament for a tour of the beautiful building.

Brunch

Parliament.. from the outside :(

Except trip advisor failed us for the first time yet.. It was sold out!! It said online tickets could be bought right before, no big deal.. Well that was a lie. We saw it from the outside but weren't able to go inside unfortunately..

Saw the "shoes on the Danube" monument-very sad story of Jewish people that were executed and shoved into the river during the Holocaust. Their shoes are bolted to the bank as a reminder of the event.. it was neat to see and understand but interesting that there wasn't anything explaining what happened on a plaque or something.. We googled the significance afterwards to figure out what it was about.

the monument

on the banks of the Danube

random statues we found walking around

 Hiking up to the Castle District was a fun time too! Great weather, a little chilly compared to Spain but still nice. Great views from the Buda side of parliament, the river, and the beautiful Chain Bridge.

view from Buda on to Pest across the Chain Bridge and to St. Stephen's Basilica in the background

Ben and I on the hike up the castle

We then were in for a treat-Hungarian Baths! Natural hot springs that are open all year long outside. Perfect way to spend the afternoon lounging in the pool, running in the whirlpool spiral everyone created, and seeing our Dutch friends again!! It is a small world when you run into the same group of guys randomly 4 times in a giant city with a million bars and clubs and things to do.

the baths. coolest pool i've ever seen!

We had a great time until we had to get out. Then the mini hand towels I thought were a good idea were the worst idea I've had.. We froze. But it was ok because the milka bar Abby and I sniped in the train station warmed us up.

I think that is a dominican cloister church steeple? it was on the way to the wine tasting, not really sure.. this is when a tour guide comes in handy.

We picked up some appetizers and got ready for the best dinner yet! The gypsy band, more great wine, amazing meat and a nice start to our evening was perfect. After wandering the streets a little bit we headed back to the first bar from Friday because it was a safe call and we knew where it was :) then made a call to some new friends and met them at possibly the coolest dance club in Europe. I've been to a lot now between Madrid, alicante, London, and Granada, and this one was so awesome. The drinks were great, the decor was even better, and we were with our new best friends who were so much fun.

the coolest new best friend because his name was PIETER-spelled the Dutch way (the right way) and Gram's way :) Uncle Piet, I now know 3 of the coolest Pieter's in the world.

Unfortunately, Abby and I had to get dragged out of there by Ben at 430 am because it was time for our 6:30 am flight back to Barcelona! Talk about roughing it. Holy cow.. That was potentially the worst flight I have ever had. Ryan air, no reclining seats, the last row, and not sober. Oh ya, and a massive backpack on my back full of stuff I have no idea where it is because I threw it in there at 5 am.. We made it, and stayed in the Barcelona airport all day because the original plan of "seeing Barcelona for the day" was not in the cards after our night..

sorry mom, this is disgusting, but i had to do it.. 

 After hitting the McDonald's one too many times (obviously...), we entertained ourselves for 12 hours and made it back to alicante in one piece.

one last Moore cousin shot, until April 27th when Ben comes to Alicante!!

That was definitely one of the best weekends of my life. I didn't do as good of job describing the amazingness of it than it really was but all I know is if you ever have the chance, go for at least 4 days. And don't choose a 6 am flight. The company is more than half the fun too. Between Abby, Ben, and the coolest Dutch guys ever, I had such a great weekend just hanging out with them! Soooo worth the bad flights, I had an incredible weekend.

where in the US would i ever see this..

Goodbye Budapest, Until next time!!

Now, the mid terms I have this week. Ouch.




-k