Last few days...

It is here at last, my last few days in Spain. It has been a great four months out of the country but it will be nice to go back home and back to stuff I know. It will also be great to be able to say whatever I want because in Spanish I am limited by the vocabulary that I know. I have been spending the last week in hotels with my family which has been fun but I already miss Granada and Maribel. If you want to check out the pictures that have been taken this past week, you can go to Meg's web page, go to travels, pictures, and then Spain. They are not all there but there are many to look at. There is not too much else to say so I am off!

Last day of class

Well it has finally come and gone; the last day of classes in Granada. I still have exams to do which is next week but I have no more classes to go to. It is so strange that it is finally ending because it seems like just yesterday I was complaining about the grammar classes that I had to take in September. Meg flies into Madrid tomorrow or at least I am hoping so. Apparently there is a winter storm brewing back in the states and her flight might get delayed. That would really stink so I hope that doesn't happen. I am scheduled to be in Madrid a little after 12 noon and I expect Meg to have already landed. I guess we shall just have to wait and see. If her flight is delayed, I will just have to bum around Madrid while I wait. In addition to a probability of her flight being delayed, my parent's flight might be delayed too or maybe even canceled because there is another storm scheduled for Sunday. Jeez, of all days for storms to come to New England, it just had to be the two days that family is flying out to see me. I guess they will all eventually get here but it is not a fun situation for any one involved. Well onto other news, I have uploaded pictures from Morocco and made sure to include many of me. For the first half of the trip, Karen took pictures, and then for the second part, I did because we were afraid of our batteries dying on us mid-trip. They ended up surviving the whole way but it was just a precaution.

Tonight is the farewell tapas thing for AIFS. We are going to see a flamenco show some which should be awesome. We are all meeting at 8:15 and then going to where ever the place is. They said that we should get back around 12:30 so this means that I will not be getting much sleep. I can always sleep on the bus ride up to Madrid though so it won't be too awful. I need to remember to bring my camera for tonight to take some pictures but even though I will have it, I probably won't take many. Adios then!

Morocco

This past weekend, I went on a trip with AIFS to Morocco. That is correct, I am the first Bellows to go to Africa, how exciting. Well anyway, we went to Marrakech, Casablanca, Rabat, and Tetuan. It was an interesting experience, needless to say. It was the first time I have gone to a country where the primary religion was not christian. It was weird to see a few of the women covered completely and I felt like more of a foreigner than in Spain. In Spain, I at least know the language so I have never had a serious problem with communicating. In Morocco, on the other hand, I was extremely overjoyed when I encountered people that either spoke English or Spanish. This was just something that I have never had to deal with before. It was a nice experience though and it was nothing like what is at Epcot. The cities were fun and the hotels were all nice but to get to these nice cities and hotels was not so fantastic. We totaled up all the hours and it came to be around 30 hours on a bus for the weekend. Awful, I know, but I survived. I guess it is a good preparation for my 24 hour trip back to the states. Anyway, back to Morocco, the food was good but there was alot of couscous involved and also many pastries. All the cities had cool market places that were kind of daunting. Oh, and I got lost with Karen in the market in Marrakech. It was such a lovely 10 minutes or so of my life that I hope will never be repeated. I did not panic though and I knew that if we just stayed where we were, our tour guide would eventually find us. He did find us easily though, I suppose it is not too hard to find a white girl and a chinese girl that are both together in a country like Morocco. Aside from that and the fact that our tour guide that we were stuck with for 4 days was absolutely awful, the trip was fun and it would be cool to go back again.

I did not get to buy many souvenirs but I did get a henna tattoo. It is on my hand and it should last for a week or two. It is just a little flower design and there is also my name written in Arabic. I also got some dirham to show to everyone when I get back. Dirham is the currency that is used in Morocco and you are apparently not supposed to take it out of the country but no one checked our bags to make sure of this. So I have one 20 dirham bill and a few coins. They are pretty interesting so make sure you ask to see them when I am back which is in only 2 and a half weeks. Aren't you all just so thrilled to have me back in the states? If not, you should be.

Oh my, it is December

I can't believe that it is already December. Time has flown by and Meg will be here in under 2 weeks. Pretty crazy, huh? The picture above is the one that won the photo contest. Don't I just look so cute? Well onto other news, the AIFS group went up to the mountains today to a little ski town. There was snow on the mountain but not what I am used to back home when I think of skiing. It was slightly pathetic but not as depressing as the bunny slope of a mountain that we have in RI. Anyway, it was fun to be there but the ride to and from was miserable. Our driver went slightly faster than he should have and the road was just a bunch on twists and turns the whole way up. I think everyone felt sick and one girl actually threw-up. Oh well, at least it was not me and we made it back safely. After getting back, I walked around a while with Karen and we ended up going into this cool looking cafe and we split a waffle with hot chocolate syrup drizzled over it. It was yummy and the place was pretty relaxed so we are thinking about going there again tomorrow if it is open for something else. I will most definitely have to start a work-out regimen when I get back home after all this eating. I feel like I have not exercised in such a long time. Lots of work to do when I get home then!

Words of the day: Nieve - snow
Montaña - mountain