Well, sooooo much has happened since I've last written, I hope I can remember everything. Classes are going well, it seems like most of them are going to be very interesting. Mike and I have begun planning our trips for the rest of the semester. We are going to Cadiz for Carnivale next Saturday! That should be really exciting. I have no idea what I'm actually going to dress up as. But the other day I went into a Chino Bazaar and bought a little belly dancer wrap. I was thinking that I will just wear a cute dress and wrap that around and wear big gold jewlery. That way I don't have to spend very much at all on my costume.

Friday I went to Italica. It is Roman ruins in Spain. It was really interesting. Our tour guide was great! He was really funny and very informative. We saw where the houses were, where the Roman baths were, and the most impressive was the small coloseum. It was really cool. Definitely not as breathtaking as the coloseum in Rome, but it was still really neat. Mike and I went exploring through the tunnels inside. When we got back from Italica we planned out our trips and started looking at flights. We bought our tickets to Granada, we are going the weekend of the 18th with Cat and Quinn. That should definitely be fun and interesting.

Yesterday we went to Cordoba with the CIEE group. That was definitely an adventure. First, they tried kicking me off the bus because they said that I never signed up to go! Which of course I did, even last night when I got home I checked my sent messages and the message was in there so I have no idea how that happened. But anyways, I got to go at least so that's what counts. When we got there we went and saw the Mezquita. It's a cathedral that used to be a mosque. It was really interesting. Our tour guide was pretty ok. He would go off on tangents once in a while though which I kind of tuned out or I would wander off to take pictures. Then we went through the old Jewish quarter and down the street of flowers. We had some free time after all the tours and after wandering around looking for somewhere to eat lunch we ended up at Burger King. We still had an hour and a half to kill after that so we went to a bar to have a drink. We were going to sit outside in the sun but the drinks cost a euro more just to sit outside! So Mike, Cat, Kyle and I went inside. There was the funniest old man working there who was just singing away! When we ordered our drinks he was singing what we ordered. I decided I wanted to get a picture with him before we left. Then Cat and Kaitlynn showed up. He came over and said how lucky Mike and Kyle were because there were 4 girls and only 2 boys and that's never happened to him before. So that's when I jumped up and said we should get a picture. So all four of us girls got in a picture with him. He was singing away about the beautiful girls. When I paid for my drink and got ready to leave he started joking about how he was going to run away with me because I paid for mine and Mike's drinks and because I'm so pretty. He definitely made that day fun. On the bus ride home we had a late start because the other bus was having issues. About 15 minutes into the drive the other bus broke down. I'm not sure why our bus couldn't leave it but we had to sit and wait with them for THREE HOURS! By the time I got home it was 9:00 and my host family had gone out to dinner because I hadn't come home and they thought I just went out.

I had a sandwich and got ready for the Nachos y Mustachos party in el centro. We all had to draw a mustache on our fingers and if you showed up and held it up to your face so it looked like you had a mustache then you got free nachos. It was such a fun night! We stayed at the first bar until 2 then bar hopped to a dance club on Calle Betis called Demo. We danced the night away, we didn't leave the bars until 4:30 a.m. By the time I got home I was exhausted. I went straight to bed and slept in very late this morning. I needed a good nights sleep anyways so this was perfect.

At lunch the entire family came over. That was definitely an experience. They were all shouting a thousand miles a minute and I had to really work hard just to understand little bits that they were saying. It made me really homesick actually. I miss being able to talk to my parents over dinner or make jokes with my family. Their sense of humor is a little different here and some words mean different things in different contexts so even when I try to make jokes sometimes it doesn't work. But after lunch I booked my flight with Cat to Barcelona for when mom comes!! After that Mike and I watched a movie. By that point it was time for dinner so I came back home and ate quick. Mike and I have decided to go to London and Amsterdam over Feria de Abril. So we booked our flights for that tonight and got a great deal! So tomorrow we are going to check out hostels. It will be good to pay all this stuff up front now so that I don't have to worry about it later. It will also help with my budgeting because the earlier we book these flights, the better price we can get on them. I'm sooo excited! I'm going to have to do a lot of reading in my travel books though that's for sure. I cannot wait for Paris either!!! Only 3 weeks until my dream vacation!!

Well, I better get headed to bed as it's really late here. I was trying to get my Lisbon pictures put in order so that tomorrow I can try to add comments to them all. These have seriously been the pictures from Hell. I have a huge list of things to accomplish again tomorrow so hopefully tomorrow is an even more successful day!