this is Spain :)

i wanted to make a list of everything that makes me think of spain/salamanca this semester :)

plaza mayor
skinny streets
free shots
meeting people from all over the world
chatting with random people at 3am
paella
sangria and red wine
spanish people and loud spanish girls
window shopping
olive trees and orange trees
mountains
sitting in the same classroom with the same people for 5 hours straight
tortilla espanola
cathedrals
Rocio and Anna Lilia
pints of beer
toros
las ferias
La Alhambra and the mosque of Cordoba
walking down the same street cars are using (no sidewalk)
the amazingly gorgeous buildings of Salamanca
roundabouts
super fucking guay / super fucking ego waffle
carmen
efectivamente and mmm?
pepe
jamon...so much jamon
Santiohgodno
la rana
las casetas
tapas
sitting in Plaza Mayor having drinks with friends
coca light
intercambios
Erasmus, Rock Roice, Cubic, and at the beginning, Irish Rover
Real Madrid and Barca
crazy madres
pan
excursions
our bus, the tequila sunrise as ann calls it
chorizo
rojas
miguel
bocadillos
washing the streets
"patatas fritas y una hamburguesa con queso"
Leonardo's
Alfredo, my padre :)

ok there's DEF more..but its a great start :)

my madre is a crazy bitch

there have been a few nasty bugs in my room the last couple days, one of which crawled out from under my sheets, so i've been trying to keep my window closed. but my madre opens it every day when i'm gone. so last night i left a note ON THE WINDOW that basically said please don't open my window because there are bugs in my room and i don't want any more / i don't want to get bed bugs like a few people here already have. so i came back from class a little bit ago and my window was open! with the note on it! such a crazy and confusing madre. also, there was a bug in my soup for lunch. maybe she likes bugs. i dunno.

in other news, ireland tomorrow! yayyyy. so excited, it's gonna be beautiful :)

haley

awesome halloween weekend :)

omggggggggggg i had SUCH an excellent weekend.
ahhhhh.
so many great things happened.
so everyone went to Barcelona this weekend, and Lauren ended up getting stuck here because apparently you need a passport to travel to Barcelona even though it's in the same freaking country....but even so i'm so glad she was here because she helped make this weekend excellent.

it started Saturday night when Rachel's roommate Katherine asked me if i wanted to eat dinner at her friend's house, that he was cooking. i thought it'd be a good chance to meet some more new people, so i went. it ended up being so much fun! there were 5 other people there, 2 of them lived there. a guy and 2 girls from germany, a guy from brazil, and a girl from connecticut. and katherine is from hong kong lol. but they made pasta with this really good mix of veggies and nuts and cream to put over the pasta...it was delicious. then the guy katherine is friends with gave us some super good chocolate for dessert. oh and they had wine! it was so nice. they just invited whoever over to their house and just cooked for them. it was awesome, and everyone there was awesome. so after that i left to meet Lauren at Erasmus. she got one of the cocktails, and i was just gonna get a beer because the cocktails are 7 euro....so she ordered a gin fizz and another bartender brought it to her, and then right after that the bartender she told that she wanted a gin fizz to brought a blue lagoon and was confused for some reason..so he just said to take it, that it's free! so i took it...haha. and that was just the beginning of the free drinks i got this weekend holy crap. ok so after that we went to la chupiteria and got some chupitos, then to cubic where we danced for soooooooo long! and omg was it fun. cubic is always fun, but not very just because the crowd is usually like 16 year old guys, but Saturday night it was packed! and there were actually people our age! yay! so we danced for forever and then Lauren was tired so she left, but i stayed for a while after and danced some more. i met a few guys and danced with them and it was way fun. i was walking around and saw this guy dancing with really cool black and white pants and a mask on, so i started dancing next to him. we danced for a while and asked the general questions like "where are you from?" blah blah blah and then danced some more. and then he asked me if he could kiss me! like it was so cute..usually guys here start dancing with you and 2 seconds later try to stick their tongues down your throat, but it was so nice that he actually asked lol. so i was uh yeah! so it was way fun. we danced and such for at least half an hour, then his stupid friends kept telling him they were leaving and pulled him away and they all left. lame. but then i walked around some more and met 2 other guys who i chatted and danced with for a while and they were really funny. they were obsessed with america and thought it was so cool that i was from there. by that time it was about 330 and i was super tired so i went home. but pretty successful night i would say!

then last night we went out again because it was actually halloween! i am so surprised at how popular halloween is here. its not anywhere near what it is in the US, like no one really decorates very much or anything, but so many people dressed up every night this weekend! it was great. i tried to get a costume way too late..yesterday lol..but of course nothing is open here on sundays. so anyway...we went to erasmus again because it was buy one get one free cocktails for halloween, and i was definitely willing to pay 7 euro for 2 cocktails. so we went up to the bar and i ordered a long island and was about to pay when the bartender was like "gratis para chicas guapas!" which means its free for pretty girls haha. sooooooo i was like alright i'll take another free 7 euro cocktail, yes please. then i went to get my second one and he still didn't charge me haha. so that's 21 euro, which is almost 30 dollars, worth of cocktails at erasmus this weekend fo FREE. glorious. then we went to chupiteria and got a few chupitos and actually danced there for a while. there were some great costumes! one guy was freddy krueger and his costume was legit. he looked awesome. then there was a gangsta from california..lol and we all just danced for a while. then after that we went to cubic again and saw some of the people from owu there. they had some friends with them from australia and we all danced for a long time there. i danced with one of them for probably like an hour..it was so much fun. he was also dressed as a pirate and i kept telling him i wanted his sword and when we left he actually gave it to me haha. and that's basically it..definitely a super fun super successful halloween weekend!!

and even though i'm sad for lauren that she didn't get to go to barcelona i'm really glad she was here because i had so much fun with her!

on another note...a bug just crawled out from my sheets....so scared there are bugs in my bed....ugh. seriously hope not..i could not deal with that! 

LOVE haley

dying..

..slowly....

in history class.......................................

papa americanooooo

it's been way too long since i've regularly updated this!! ugh

but really not much has happened lately....i've been sick since the first week we were here...so it's been almost 7 weeks now...i got a little better for maybe 2 weeks and now my cough is back, especially at night. i've been waking up every night this past week coughing a bunch. annnnnd my right side like where my ribs are hurts in one place..i don't know what i did to it! i'm seriously thinking it may be because of all of the coughing lol. i'll be sick the whole time im here...perfectly fine.

i'm going to ireland next weekend!! leaving the 4th. sooooooo very excited. i've heard it's absolutely gorgeous. and i also found out that the blarney stone is like a 10 minutes bus ride from cork, so i'm super pumped for that!!

also, i can't believe how fast this is going. we have this week, then 3 weeks of november, then excursion to the south, the boom! finals and we leave. so so so crazy. but i'm also pretty excited to go home :)

we met some spanish girls the other night who i'm fb friends with now. they were really cool and we're hoping to actually hang out with them again. it's so frustrating that we keep meeting people one night and then never see them again.

ok so my madre's cooking. i know i complained alot about it at the beginning saying how much she stuffed me and everything..but now it's the opposite! she isn't feeding me nearly as much now. i think i'd rather have it the other way around! even so, i'm still getting awesome food. i feel really lucky to have such a great cook for my madre. she makes tortilla espanola, paella that is way more excellent than any other paella i've had here, french fries!!, little hamburgers (without the buns) but they're seasoned so well!, lomo which is a part of a pig or cow i forget which one but its awesome, salad with oil big chunks of tomato and pomegranate seeds, this pasta dish with all kinds of seafood in it that is excellent!....ahhh as much as i miss american food, i'm gonna miss her cooking so much when i leave!!

one more thing in this mezcla of a blog....we have membership to the gym here, and they have classes there, so on friday i went with a few of the girls to a class called body combat. omgggggg it was insanely cool! it was hardcore nonstop punching and kicking and running and jumping for an hour. it was so hardcore and i was sooooooo sore all weekend, but it was awesome and i felt so good! and the music was sick too. definitely going to be doing that class a couple times a week now :)

haley

Madrid, La Granja and Segovia

im sad im writing this now because its been several days since this weekend's excursion and ive definitely forgotten alot of the details, but to sum it up:

we left at 7am on Saturday, so we had to get up at about 6 blah. and they ran us the entire day, with a 3ish hour tour of Palacio Real, and a shorter, but not by much, tour of the Prado museum. they were super cool! it was just super boring being on a super long tour with a lady speaking spanish at you. Palacio Real was gorgeous, im sad we couldn't take pictures inside. but those 2 things took up basically the entire day, with a great lunch in between! and by great i mean it was one of the worst experiences of our lives. for the first course i got paella, which is always good, except the meat, which was questionable, that was in it had little bones and i kept taking bites and getting a mouth full of little bones. then! a bunch of us ordered calamari for our second dish. and when i think of calamari here in spain i think of the fried rings of deliciousness, so i was pretty excited after my bone paella. omg it was the opposite of what i was hoping for. we got squid, which is ridiculous because since being here i've ordered squid/calamari 3 times in restaurants thinking it was going to be fried and awesome and all 3 times i've gotten cooked squid that was super chewy and flavorless. that's exactly what this was, except it was also stuffed with it's own intestines AND covered in INK. yes, its own ink. holy shit it was nasty. it didn't exactly taste disgusting, because it didn't have much of a taste, but just the fact that the squid was swimming in its own black ink was horrible enough. omgggggggggg i can't believe that's what we had for lunch. but we were laughing our heads off the whole lunch, it was hilarious and we were in disbelief.

then we went to the palace then got to our hotel and went to dinner. it was one of the funnest dinners of my life. omg we were laughing like crazy. first of all they gave us wine, and after our day of extreme exhaustion and no lunch we were so ready for some wine. needless to say our whole table, which consisted of just the 7 of us girls, was drunk, or at least feeling the wine. and everything we did seemed hilarious. the waiters were also opera singers! haha so they kept singing opera and having us sing along. and after dinner which lasted over 3 hours, we had champagne and then a double shot of this stuff that was red but tasted like jager. by this time it had been 4 hours of sitting in the restaurant, and we were soooooooooooooooooooo exhausted. but 4 of us decided to go out anyway! because we were in Madrid for only one night so.....duh!

so we went to this club and danced for probably 2 hours. just danced. it was glorious. oh but before this...we took a taxi to their plaza mayor and right when we got out christina lost her shoe in the road and was like "oh my shoe" then right after she said that we saw her shoe get run over by the taxi that we just took. probably my favorite part of the night. it was so good.

the next day, Sunday, we got up at the ass crack of dawn yet again and left Madrid for La Granja and Segovia. they were both GORGEOUS. and! it was FALL there. im having a real problem with there being very little trees in Salamanca and the trees that are here aren't changing pretty colors like they should be. but in Segovia and at La Granja it was falllllllllllllllll. i literally cried a little because i was so happy to see fall leaves, smell fall, and walk through crunchy leaves on the ground. omg. so La Granja is a palace that of course we took a year long tour through, but afterward we walked through the gardens behind it which were huge and absoulutely gorgeous. it was SO PRETTY. this is when i cried lol. and after that we took a 5 minutes bus ride to the city of Segovia, which was gorgeous as well, and had an awesome aqueduct. it was so super cool to see. it also has the castle that was the inspiration for the Disney castle, which was also super cool! i also bought a pretty scarf and ann and i bought keys there :)

so although we were dying the entire trip, i had a wonderful time because of the beautiful things we saw!
also, my pics on fb explain more, so if you're reading this you should check them out :)

haley

we're fucked

and by that i mean we're not getting fucked.

things i miss

my mom and brother
my dogs
my cat
my friends at owu
driving
wendy's...SPICY CHICKEN SANDWICH oh how i miss you!!
taco bell
fall in Ohio...pumpkins, fall leaves, pumpkin scented candles, etc.
living in a society where people don't judge you if you aren't at least semi dressed up aka i miss wearing sweatpants in public
my blackberry / not using T9
speaking english at home
wheat bread
going out to eat / restaurants, american style
any size drink at mcdonald's for $1
CVS/Walgreens
diet coke
mcdonald's sausage egg and cheese mcmuffin!! i'm dying inside just thinking about it

haley

casablanca, morocco

wow what an experience. i really wish i could have blogged every day we were there because so much cool stuff happened.

ok so thursday morning we took a bus from salamanca to madrid, then flew to casablanca and arrived at about 4pm their time. it was really weird because even though morocco is basically right under spain, they are 2 hours behind spain, so it got dark super early there. so we went into the airport and one of the first things we saw was a cat just walking around inside. i think that's when we all knew it was going to be a super different experience. btw lizzy if youre reading this..so many times while we were there i wished you were there too because there were sooooooooooooo many cats. you would have gone crazy :)

so we went outside to find a taxi to get us into the city, and found one for 300 DH, which is about $40, and split 5 ways is about $8 each person..and the ride there was probably around 45 minutes, so basically a super cheap cab ride. and this ride was when we first experienced the driving in morocco. its crazy. there are roads and highways just like in the US, but no one really pays attention to the lanes. alot of people just drive in the middle of 2 lanes, right down the line, and if you want to pass someone you just go around them, not paying any attention if there's anyone in the lane you're about to pull in to. it also seems like they park wherever they want also. there were parked cars lining the streets, but there were also some just parking up on the curb or the sidewalk or anywhere else a car would fit. and also there were people just crossing the streets whenever they wanted. there are no walk/don't walk signs, so you just kind of go whenever it seems reasonable. it was kind of madness.

so we experienced all of this on the ride to the hostel, and right before we got there we had to drive across oncoming traffic, and it was definitely a little scary because the driver stuck the car into the traffic and the cars were just driving around him. it definitely seemed like the front of the car was gonna get clipped. so once there was a chance to cross he did, and we went up this hill that looked super sketchy, and it was pretty scary for a few seconds because it looked so sketchy. but once we got to the hostel it seemed fine lol. there were alot of men just sitting around and staring at us, and a few of them said things to us, but thats it. thats what basically happened the whole time we were there. alot of people, mostly men, staring at us and some of them saying things, like one time a guy passed us and said "hey baby" to me, but thats about it. no one came up and touched us or anything like i was kind of expecting. it was definitely alot less creepy than i thought it would be lol.

our hostel was nice. we got pretty lucky, especially for the price we paid. and the guy at the front desk was awesome. he was super weird, and we had a good time with him. 4 of the 5 of us ended up buying bongos, and ann bought 2, so each of us had bongos to play, and we played them a couple times in the lounge area of the hostel, and of course our friend came and danced and played a little with us also haha. it was really great. it also seemed fairly clean, as clean as morocco gets i guess, but on the second night rachel and ann (i shared a room with them) passed out pretty quickly, so i was awake for a few minutes, and i saw a bug crawl across my pillow. i thought/hoped it was just a spider, but i lifted up my sheets and found 3 more in the crease of the matress! there was an adult and 2 babies. it was disgusting. so i turned on the light and killed them, and there was an extra bed in the room so i moved to that one. rachel and ann were still kind of half asleep so they just fell right back to sleep, but i layed there for a few minutes pretty paranoid that there were bugs in that bed too, and when i saw one i knew i couldn't sleep there. i lifted up the sheets and there were 3 more under the sheet. so i thought about just sleeping in ann's bed with her, but then assumed there were also bugs in her bed lol so i slept on the floor. man was that a shitty night! we had like 6 or 7 clean towels in the room, so i made a little bed on the floor with them lol, but it was an effing hard floor, so needless to say i didn't sleep much. but! the next day i told our front desk guy and he just handed us a key to a different room and that was that. and there were no bugs in that room!! but after that experience and the fact that ann had bed bugs in her house here in salamanca, i think i'll always be a little paranoid when i'm sleeping in a different bed that there are bugs in it. i just got chills just thinking about it!

ok so the first night we went to this restaurant by the hostel recommended by our friend, and it was really good food and a super cool place, but it ended up being pretty expensive. our bill said 618.00, which was really funny, but it ended up being about $12ish each person. there were also a few cats in there, which was also pretty funny. they just let the cats roam wherever they want. then it was also recommended to us that we go to this place to get drinks and such, and it also ended up being around $12 each person, just for some wine and a couple beers. ann and i ordered 2 beers, and they were $12 each!! but..we got a taste of casablancan beer, so i do not regret it. there was also a little band there playing traditional music, and it was super cool.

the next day we spent basically just exploring and buying things. the little markets/shops along the streets were really cool, and i think all of us wanted to buy everything we saw. everything was just so pretty and for the most part really cheap. and the coolest thing was the bargaining. everywhere we went there were no price tags. you have to ask how much it costs, and then go down some on the price and go back and forth with them until they agree with a price you give them. it was really cool, but i would not want to do that all the time. 3 days of that was plenty! but it was usually really easy to get the price down really far. for example, i bought bongos for less than $4 and this gorgeous box, which is a pretty good size, for about the same price. i also bought a poof, which is like a foot rest, or i guess you can just use it as a seat too, but it collapses and you have to fill it with something for it to stand up. it super pretty too. they had them everywhere. also that day we were walking through the market and it was time for prayer, and hundreds of men lined this one little street to pray. they all took off their shoes and kneeled on their mats (definitely not what their actually called) and were silent, listening to someone speaking over a speaker from the mosque nearby. they left a small path for people to walk through, and we walked through them. it was probably my favorite part of the trip. it was pretty amazing to be in the middle of that, especially since there were hundreds of them. something else which was cool was most of the women were covered..i forget what it's called when your head is wrapped..but most of them wore those. and you see them sometimes in the US, but it was really cool just to be in a country where most of the women are dressed like that.

the next day we went to the Mosque Hassan II. it is the 3rd largest mosque in the world, with the tallest minaret in the world at 200m tall. it. was. gorgeous. it was right on the Atlantic, and the waves that day were incredibly huge, and it was just a beautiful site. omg it was huuuuuuuuge. we took a tour of the inside of it, and they told us that 25,000 worshipers can fit inside, while 80,000 can fit outside, and during Ramadan it is filled. now that would be an incredible site to see. after the mosque we walked to mcdonald's for lunch (in the pouring rain) and had lunch for super cheap! why can't mcdonald's be that cheap here in spain?? afterward we had a tour of the city planned, and they were to pick us up at our hostel. so we walked back (still in the pouring rain) and the guy was already there, waiting for us in his white unmarked van lol. so we piled in, and started the weird adventure that was to be the next few hours. our guy was another weirdo, asking us weird questions and making weird comments. we started off by driving around a bit, and it was really cool seeing some more of the city, most of it was pretty poor. we stopped along side the ocean twice. once was a gorgeous view of the mosque, with the ocean in the foreground, and oh my goodness the waves were incredible. it was stormy and raining, and they were just gigantic. it was quite a view with the mosque in the background. then we stopped again close to this island. it was really small, but packed with super run down houses on it. he told us that that's where women used to go to give birth, but now just really poor people live on it. it was very cool to see that. after that we just drove around for a while, stopping a few times just to get out and walk around and such, and then he took us to where he said was the jewish area where he lived, and we went into this shop.

at first it was really cool because the room we went into was covered with rugs hanging on the walls, and the guy talking to us gave us some tea (we had so much free tea in morocco!) and showed us so many different beautiful rugs. but then he told us to pick which ones we liked, and we each picked 2 or 3, and then 5 men came in with pads of paper and the guy told us that we were going to bargain with them on the prices. now yes, if we had the money to buy gorgeous moroccan rugs, we would, but we really don't. so my guy took me into a different room with the 3 rugs i picked and said that he was going to make an offer. i saw him writing 850, and i thought he was going to write durhams, which is the currency of morocco, but he wrote euros! like wtf. thats well over $1000. so i just stared at him and he told me to make my best offer! oh lord. so all i am willing to pay / all the money that i really have to spend on a freakin moroccan rug is like 30 bucks, so i just wrote that down. he was not happy haha. and omg these men were pushy. men selling things in morocco were SO PUSHY. you basically either had to buy something or get the hell out of there haha. so after bringing the price down to 200 euros, i finally said i was going to talk to my friends, and saw that ann and rachel were having the same problems, and we just walked out. but omg these men would not leave us alone. they told us that we could go get our credit cards in our hotels and make payments. wtf. they definitely thought that we had a shit ton of money because we were from the US. but even though at the time i was pissed off and just wanted to leave, i'm super glad now that we had that experience. so fiiiiiiiiiinally we left, and our guy took us to this "pharmacy", where a guy showed us all these spices and teas and oils and such. then he asked us what else we wanted to do, and we just wanted to go back to the hostel at that point. it was a super weird "tour", but in reality mainly our guy helping out his friends selling things.

so we had dinner at another restaurant nearby, and decided that it was my birthday haha. last week ann and i went out and met a few guys and talked to them for a while, and they made up new names for us because our names aren't very spanish, and they named me alicia, which i really like. so we told our waiter that it was alicia's birthday haha, and they brought out this cake thing and sang to me and i blew out the candle and everything. it was pretty great. after that we had a drum circle in the lounge area, and met this guy from australia who sat with us for a while. he was super cute! but kinda weird, but super cute, so it was ok. then we had our evening chat in our room and went to bed (this was the night after my bed bug night so i slept like a champ) and the next morning we had a cab come get us and take us back to the airport. our tour guy from the day before actually called this guy to take us, and we're pretty sure it was just one of his friends again. australian guy, aaron, needed to get to the airport also, so he just came with us. so our "cab" was this white car with no markings on it that suggested it was a cab haha. and there were 6 of us, so with no questions asked we all piled in this car..4 crammed in the back and ann in the front with rachel sitting on her lap. it was great. we arrived at the airport, paid 50 DH each with is like 6 bucks..awesome price..and were on our way.

it was such a cool experience and i am so glad we went. so different than anything i've ever seen. yay!

haley

Casablanca soon!

we're leaving for Casablanca on Thursday morning! so super excited. it's gonna be me, Christina, Leah, Ann, and Sam. i'm mainly excited because it's going to be such a different experience, one unlike we've ever had before. the culture there is just so different, and i'm SO pumped to experience it :) we're staying for 3 nights, so hopefully we'll get to see alot of the city and experience as much as possible!!

ps still sick! im starting to think i'll be sick the entire time we're here. my sinuses are super stuffed up and the glands in my neck and pretty swollen, but thats pretty normal for me this time of year. it just sucks that i went straight from bronchitis to the common cold! but on the bright side i'd much rather be this way than be hacking all the time! we also read that the food in Morocco takes a few days to get used to because they use so many spices, and you'll probably have a stomach ache for the first 2 or 3 days, so basically the whole time we'll be there haha. greaaaaaattttt. o well, im in Europe for the semester, so not a big deal at all if im sick the whole time :P

haley

class. blah.

so we started classes this week, and overall its pretty meh. we have 5: grammar, latinamerican literature, literature of the 21st century, art history, and history of spain. the grammar teacher is awesome. hes hilarious and i really feel like we're going to improve from his class and actually have better grammar, but the other 4, not so much. they're kind of all similar, and pretty boring. the teachers are not nearly as engaging as the grammar teacher, and i find myself falling asleep in all of them. especially art..blah! super boring. and our schedule is pretty crazy as well. they split us up into 2 different groups, so we have slightly different schedules, but for the most part we have class 9am to 2pm monday through thursday, then 3 of those 4 days we have either an hour or 2 hour class in the evening. its so much class! im just super excited we only have 2 months of this.

so im feeling a little homesick. fall is my absolute favorite month, and i loooooove the smell of pumpkin candles burning in the house, going to the pumpkin farm with my family, making fall foods, seeing all the leaves change, etc. etc. etc. im actually pretty sad im missing all of it :( i just really love the feeling of fall and everything that comes with it. i wish i could come home for just a week or 2 to be able to do/see all of this!

lung update: i feel like its definitely getting better. my lungs are still full of phlegm which im sure is super attractive everytime i clear my lungs/throat in class. but im not coughing nearrrrly as much, so yay! and i was waking up every single night and coughing, but that hasnt happened for a few nights! so hopefully it'll go away really soon...its been about 3 and a half weeks already.

so last night was an adventure, and i really dont remember all of it, but id like to share what i do remember haha. we went to this house party and chatted with people for a couple hours, and we brought sangria. we had these little cups..they were alot bigger than those little cups you put in the bathroom, but alot smaller than solo cups..so if you can imagine that..and i had around 10 of those cups of sangria lol. its just so delicious i just kept drinking it! so we left and went to the chupiteria (a chupita is a shot) and met up with a few owuers, then went to this bar called gatsby. we didnt stay too long there and ann, rachel and i ended up walking over to this area of bars that id never been to before and it was pretty cool! i def want to go back there and check it out some more. but there were a ton of people in the street..it reminded me of portugal. and we came upon these guys who were all dressed up and had wigs/hats on. i really dont know what was going on, but i took this guy's hat and tried to run away with it but he was so persistent!! i tried several times and everytime he came after me. but then he pulled out this deck of cards and these 4 girls just seemed to appear there..i really have no idea where they came from..and he handed me this card with 7 swords on it and the girls were chanting "siete! siete! siete!" which is seven in spanish. it was all just so weird. so i took the card and he ran away lol. and then a little later we ran into them again and he told me if i brought the card back tomorrow he would give me his hat. so odd. then we came up to these 2 guys, one wearing 3D glasses. so ann took his glasses off and chatted with them for a bit..one of them had a ridiculous mullet, it was super gross. so after a bit she said bye and ran with the glasses, and so rachel and i ran also, but he followed us and got his glasses back! lame. but at least i got that sword card as a souvenir lol it also has blue fleur de lis on the other side! perf.

botellón!

so im pretty positive i have bronchitis. ive been coughing/hacking for 2 and a half weeks, have lots of phlegm, its usually brought on by smoke, which there is ALOT OF here, it is worse at night/when im trying to sleep, and it usually lasts between 3 and 4 weeks..thats what webmd told me lol. i am SO SICK of this cough, its so annoying and every once in a while it will get so bad that im hacking and basically sounds like im choking. blahhhhh.

a couple weeks ago one of my friends here, lauren, wasnt feeling too hot and went to one of the 4387543075 pharmacies here and asked for amoxicillin and got it for a euro haha. so crazy. and it made her feel better in a couple days. so ive been using the target brand of mucinex that zandra so nicely gave me, and it helps for a couple hours but then goes right back to coughing a bunch after. so i thought i might as well try some amoxicillin, its worth a try since cough drops/mucinex isnt doing anything. but amoxicillin is for bacteria, not viruses, and only rarely is bronchitis caused by bacteria, sooooooooo we'll see if it helps lol. but if webmd is correct that it usually lasts about 3 to 4 weeks and then just goes away on its own, then im pretty close to freedom! :)

it also said that you should just stay at home, rest alot, and drink lots of fluids. does wine/beer count? haha. and about the staying home part..i dont think that'll be happening much lol. althought i did stay home last night and feel great today, though of course ive still got the cough. im just hoping ive only got maybe another week of this!!

oh also..its such a fall day today!! i LOVE IT. fall is by far my fave season, and its about 57 degrees right now. perfect fall day. :)

ok so i just realized that i never blogged about the nightlife of lisbon, and that's definitely necessary. so the night ann and i stayed in lisbon we ate dinner then went to find this area of town called "bairro alto", which we were told is where all the bars and such are. so we went to find it but really couldnt find anything. we found a few bars, but not many, and there were very few people out. so like an hour or so later we came back to the same area, but walked a little further down the road and hit this street that was paaaaaacked with people. ok so the streets there, alot of them are really skinny, and in bairro alto several of the streets were just lined with bars. and all the bars were super small. so what they do is go into bars, order drinks, then go outside and just stand in the streets and drink. its called a "botellon". we learned that in class lol. we passed this girl carrying a wine bottle, and this guy drinking liquor straight from the bottle. it was nuts. so we got 2 gigantic mojitos for only 5 euros each, which were soooooo delicious, and took them into the street. it was seriously packed with people just standing around drinking and talking. so we met these like 50ish year old guys from the US and they were NASA test pilots hahah. they were funny, and one of them introduced himself to me as "mr. white", and later another guy said he is called "commander white". it was all so confusing but hilarious. and they said they were in portugal because they were sent there to learn portuguese, then were going back to the US soon. it was really great. then we met some portuguese guys who, like basically everyone else there, spoke good english, so we chatted with them for a while. so basically everyone has a giant botellon in lisbon and its totally normal. it was a really cool experience, and im super glad we got to have it. :)

haley

excursion to the north :):):)

omg this week was AMAZING. i really wish i would / could have blogged all week because im not going to remember alot of what happened.

so monday we left salamanca and went into the beginning of the mountains up north to a hotel that was SO COOL. it was by far the coolest one we went to this week. it was up on a hill and the view from our rooms was fantastic. the mountains were as far as you could see and there was a gorgeous lake right below us. so we had a few hours before dinner so we decided to go swimming in the lake! omg it was glorious. the lake was beautiful. and it was a pretty far walk, but it was nice walking with friends all the way down the mountain. and i also got over a fear! well two kind of :) so ive had many dreams over the years about me being in water where i dont know whats under me and freaking out, and so i have a fear of being in water and not knowing whats under me and freaking out lol. and also the huge rock we were swimming off of to get into the lake..it was slowly going into the water and then disappearing, and that just freaks me out as well. so i was super scared to get in, but finally i did!! and also, i freak out when im too cold. like i super hate winter because alot of the time when im outside too long i just freak out cuz im so cold, and the water was freeeeeeeeeeezing, but i still swam!! yay! and some of us were jumping off of the rock into the water, and ive done that before, but one of the girls elyse and i held hands and jumped in together and it was awesomeeeeee. so great great night!

then the next morning we left for the picos de europa, or peaks of europe, and OH MY GOSH they were breathtaking. we took this little car thing on wire haha i dont know what its called, up to the top of them and we were on the highest point in spain!! it was gorgeous and awesome and ahhhhhhhh. so our little group walked around and took a nap on one of the rocks haha. ah it was so awesome. then that night we stayed in santander which is on the north coast on the ocean, and our group of girls went skinny dipping in the ocean. it was sooooooooo great. ive never gone skinny dipping before and im glad my first time got to be with some awesome girls in the ocean in spain!! perfect. afterward we sat on the beach and chatted for a while, and it was just a super awesome day.

the last 3 days were good, but they really couldnt compare to the first 2. we went to a museum and a cathedral and a monastery which were all really cool, but im definitely museum cathedral and monasteried out for a while lol. today we went to this castle up where we stayed last night, and ben jedd, one of the guys on our trip, was apparently late, and rojas told the bus driver to leave without him haha. so we did. and we were there for about an hour and came back to the hotel and some of us were thinking he had tried to find us or something, but he was there haha. i really dont know what we would have done if he had left the hotel, because his phone wasnt working! soooo after that we went to a winery in "wine country" as rojas called it, and it was so cool! we went into the fields where the wine was grown and ate some of the grapes and they were really good. then we walked back and had a tour and tried the wine, and most of us bought a bottle! i bought some from 2006 which they one some awards for, so im really excited for it.

so basically i had an amazing time this week and am excited to actually sleep in tomorrow! we've had to get up pretty early all week. rojas also brought his daughter along, and omg she was really amazing. shes 7, and im pretty sure shes actually our age. she was so cultured and smart and had a great personality and always had something to talk about. she was soooo adorable! she loved all of us, and always made us laugh. and today when we got back to salamanca she was crying because she didnt want to leave us! it was so cute. none of us wanted her to leave either!!

also, we had SO MUCH VINO (wine) this week. holy crap. oh food also. a bunch of wine at lunch then a bunch of wine at dinner. every day. and then one day we went out after dinner for some more food! and a beer and sangria haha. and jeezy cow we stuffed ourselves. i thought the portions here at home in salamanca were crazy! but no, what we had on this trip was ridiculoussssss. we had lunch at around 2 every day, and at dinner at 9 i usually was not hungry in the least, but we still got soooo much food. and wine. haha. for example, last night for dinner we had the biggest steak i have ever seen. it was like a whole cow was laying on my plate. ridiculous.

i also bonded alot more with our group of girls :) im super excited to get to know them so much more over the semester, because its only been like 3 weeks and we're already all really close :)

but yeah, it was an incredible trip, and im so excited for the one to the south because i hear its even better :):)

haley

PORTUGAL

so ann and i hopped a train to lisbon at 430am last night haha. its soooooo sweeeeeet. its incredibly gorgeous!!!! omgggggg. we went in a sweet castle with a panoramic view of the entire city. SO BEATUFIUL. and there's some sick monuments and statues, and all of the buildings are painted different colors. ah. so cool. and our hostel is super sweet also. really clean and chill and awesome people so far. yay! we're gonna explore more tonight, and hopefully do a boat tour woo! super pumped. we also took a boat load of pics today, so im excited to get them up on fb. yayyy

haleyyyy

have you ever used a straw before?

so much goodness happened last night that im sure im going to forget things :( but i will most certainly be able to include alot :)

ok so a few of us i think were going to just have a chill night, but only ann and i showed up cuz everyone else said they just wanted to stay inside. so we were like ok, lets go partayyyyy. so we did. we first went to this bar we discovered that is super chill and super spanish and had their special of the day which was a 2,20 euro pint of the pretty good beer. so we sat at the bar and chilled for a while then decided, in the words of ann, to grow a pair of pelotas (balls) haha and while we were leaving we passed these 3 guys sitting down and asked them questions for our project. so we have to find a spanish bar and an american bar and compare and contrast, so we asked them their favorite bars and favorite beers and such. but before we went up to them i was like ok, im gonna say "tengo una pregunta" (i have a question) and then ann would start with the question and we went from there haha. and it ended being like we asked them, then ann started saying how one time we got beer, drank it, then found out it was nonalcoholic beer and then i said "es una problema!" (thats a problem!) and blah blah blah and then we left. so afterward since that went so well we decided for the next 3 months we will just do exactly that. i will say "tengo una pregunta!" and we'd just go from there haha. we'll just have a project for 3 months, its fine.

so after that we went to the rover which was having an america party! and!! an effing booty dancing contest that ann and i didnt even get entered in!! we were sooooooooooo disappointed, because we totally could have beat most if not all of those girls. there was one black girl who really knew how to shake it, but thats about it. ugh. totally wouldve kicked ass. so the rover was absolutely packed, and there was a gigantic american flag outside and red white and blue decorations inside, and we got american flags painted on our faces lol. so, like always, after the contest we decided to have our own little booty dancing on the stage. duh. so we were dancing for a while, and finished our beers and it was all you can drink for 5 euros, so we wanted more but didnt want to push through all the people to get to the bar. so we told these couple of guys who were kind of dancing with / near us that we needed more cerveza! so one of them was like oh, i'll take your glasses and get you new ones! perf. oh except after he left ann was like yeah, we're probably gonna get date raped, and i was like omg, we probably are! cuz i didnt even think about it. duh. so we were watching him from the stage the whole time and right when the bartender was giving him our beers 2 of his friends asked us what our names were and everything, and we didnt see him take the beers or bring them up to us. shit. so we really didnt want to drink them, and the guys were like yeah, drink! and making drinking motions and shit. ok so then we REALLY werent going to drink them, and took them back up to the bar and got new ones. creepy. so we were getting new beers and this spanish guy in a super unattractive red vneck started dancing with us and bought us each a tequila shot haha. except it was super disgusting and i was so glad i had beer to wash it down with! but basically there were just a shit ton of girls and creepy guys at the rover, so we left after that beer.

so then we wanted to find the bar that the guys at the first bar recommened, called "enojada" or something with an "ada" at the end, and while we were looking we just needed to pee so bad so we went into this bar we've never been in before / we have no idea what its called, and used their restroom. then we came back upstairs and there was a group of like 6 guys who were probably around like 30 and talked with / made fun of them / they made fun of us for a while. one of them was talking really fast spanish and he knew we couldnt understand, so super fast we were like "oh i bet you cant understand what im saying right now we could be saying you guys are super ugly and creepy and blah blah blah and you would have no idea what we're saying yeah they have no idea what we're talking about" etc. haha. and one of them said something really fast about flamenco and did this dance so i did it too and it was just all pretty weird. then they left and didnt even buy us drinks. lame. so we ordered beers and sat there and like i think we sat there for a freakin long time, its really hard to tell / remember haha. but there were 2 bartenders and we were being so weird. so there was sangria sitting infront of us and once we figured out it was sangria we decided to act like stupid bitches and tell the one guy that we'd never had sangria and if we could try some, gratis (free) of course haha. so he brought us a pretty good sized glass of sangria gratis with 2 straws lol. so we were like "omg so good!" blah blah blah haha and then i asked him what straw was in spanish, he told me and i definitely forget now, but he then asked if we had ever used straws before hahahhaha. oh yeah he also asked us if we were french. i mean, we did have giant american flags painted on our faces, and theres really nothing about us that could be french, and so ann said "tenemos la bandera de los estados unidos en nuestras caras!" or "we have the american flag on our faces!" but like, the way she said it was hilarious, i guess its a you had to be there / hear it / be as drunk as we were to think it was as funny as we did haha. and then!! the other guy was eating ice cream..with a straw..and the way he was eating it just made us laugh so much, and finally he realized we were laughing at him and ann told him he was eating his ice cream with such a "lengua sexual" or "sexual tongue" hahaha and so we went on with that for a while and then the other guy tried to explain to us the difference between sexual and sensual and we were like "es lo mismo" or "its the same thing!" and it was just a pretty weird time. oh yeah i also forgot at the beginning of being at this bar we met this gay couple and the one guy tried asking me how old i thought he was for like 10 mins because i couldnt understand his horrible english haha so finally i got it and i guessed 24 and he was 30 lol but we got pictures with them lol, and ended up getting a picture with our bartenders also!! / lots of pictures of our borracha selves haha. so after what was definitely a long time we got up and our bartenders were outside and the one (without the lengua sexual) told us to come back jueves (thursday) because wednesday was his day off.

it was pretty beautiful. so by this time it was like 330 and we decided to check out a couple more rando bars that we had never been in, and there just wasnt anyone very interesting in them. so we went home lol. and woke up 4 hours after going to bed to go to class. ugh. last night right before we parted ann said for me to call her in the morning and she would just do whatever i did with class. and we decided that if we didnt go to class we would text one of the girls and be like hey tell carmen that we arent in class today because we were doing our project all night haha. because, like, we basically were! we are supposed to find out things about the spanish bars, and we def did! we're also going to make a power point with pictures haha. but class today wasnt nearly as bad as i thought it was going to be!! it was interesante as usual with carmen and i only kind of fell asleep a few times lol.

also, i just remembered that we pinkie sweared last night and i have no idea what it was for, and i just asked ann and she has no idea either haha. so she said we have an unknown promise. awesome.

yay last night and more great adventures to comeeeeee!!

amorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, haley

sad lungs

so i may or may not have some kind of sickness. ive had a nasty cough the last several days, my lungs hurt a tad, and there may or may not be white dots on my tonsils blah!! but, even though im a bit of a hypochondriac, im just gonna take it easy for a few days because im thinking its just the abuse i have been putting my poor body through: mucho drinking, not eating great (just a little bit of fast food), and the massive amounts of smoke inhalation here! so. much. smoke. so im hoping those are the reason why my body is sad !

ummmmm nothing super interesting has happened the past couple days lol i know theres lots i could talk about but i cant think of anything so thats it for now haha.

haley

my friend has a house filled with potatoes

first, im in an internet cafe place with ann and ordered a coca cola light, their version of diet coke lol and they give it to you in a little bottle with a glass with giant ice cubes and always a lemon. i love the lemon in my dc. but there are no free refills :(

last night was sooo gooood.
first in the evening we went to a museum in town and it was really cool. they had a part with Picasso drawings from the Picasso museum in Barcelona and it was sweeeeet. then we went to this apartment party and like it was cool, we met some people from london and holland and such but after a while ann and i decided to leave and go to los bares. but first, of course, we got some mcdonalds and chatted about life for quite a long time. thennnn we went to the rover and had a shamrock, which is a shot with bacardi and kiwi, and a tequila sunrise, and then had a dance off with 2 guys. pretty normal for us. but afterward we decided to explore! and we found this sweeeeet bar. we had a couple beers and sat at one of the tables. the tables all had slabs of glass on top and people had put letters and pictures and train tickets and such under the glass, so we decided to write our own letter! then ann realized she had a go greek pin with her and put it in the table too hahah.

after that we kind of just wandered around and found 2 more really cool super spanish bars. the first one we didnt stay in too long, and the second was completely packed. so we were trying to get through and this guy stopped us and started talking. he asked us where we were from and ann said chicago and he was like oh, like idaho. and we were like i mean, no, not really. and he was like the potato state! so we just decided to go with it and started saying how much we like potatoes which, is definitely true. so then he said that his friend studied in idaho, and we asked his friend and he didnt speak english / had never been to idaho. so this guy, who is from belgium so probs knows nothing about the us or idaho, told me that his friend had a house filled with potatoes in idaho haha. then he asked me my name and i told him and he told me that its not a real name. omg it was so weird / great. but also, the bars we found last night were so spanish! we've just been going to i guess more american bars, and these were soooo spanish. it was sweet. so we're def planning on finding more / going back to these alot :)

my intercambio guy failed again today and didnt show up! boooooo. so whatev..we decided last night that we're probs going to go on a ton of intercambios with guys aged 20 - 25 ish and we'll probably find some cool guys to hang out with hahah. intercambios = dates. most def!

ps i want taco bell, and so does ann. meow.

haley <3 <3 <3

flamencooooo

totally forgot.
so yesterday evening we went to a caseta with our whole group, and had SUCH DELICIOUS FOOD. omg it was so good. there were sardines and calamari and little fried squids and tortilla espanola and sausage with bread and white wine....just wonderful. and then there were flamenco dancers in their awesome dresses dancing while we were eating. then after we ate there was a stage right where we were and a huge crowd gathered to see these three women do some hard core flamenco. it reminded me of tap dancing, but with alot more stomping and with heeled dance shoes. it was so super cool!!

haley

no soy terrorista!!

OMG so my first intercambio the other day was dreadful!!
This guy Antonio arrives in head to toe denim. cute. and it went down hill quickly from there. he asked me if i wanted to go with him to his "premises"??? and i was like what does that mean. and then he was all like dont you know what premises are? I thought you speak english and kept spelling it. and i was like yo dumb shit i know the word you're using it incorrectly and making NO SENSE. great. so we end up going to this place and it was the office building of this freaky violent anarchist organization. no joke they had a poster on the wall that said "it wasnt an accident. it was assassination"
HUGE WOOF>
so then, he proceeded to talk almost the entire time. first in really shitty english and then in spanish saying the exact same thing about this radical organization. and he kept trying to convince me it was basically the same thing as amnesty. and i was like i mean NO.
cool. but then i had this awesome intercambio the next day with this girl who is like super involved in amnesty she's even the leader of the university of salamanca group! and she was super passionate about human rights and politics and activism and we just clicked right away and had an awesome 2 and 1/2 hour long conversation about all these human rights issues and like random stuff too! and we are planning on having more intercambios/ she's gonna help me get involved with the amnesty here!! HELL YES. so that could not have gone better!

but yes, having a ton of fun! last night as haley described was loca! we are dancing machines!! im excited for what tonight has in store!!!

KLAM.

no shame spain

last night ann had another intercambio and she was super scared because we've both had horrible experiences with guys, and this was another guy. so we're walking through the plaza and i see my freaking intercambio guy from the day before!! so of course he sees me and hes like "haley! haley! oh haley!" and runs infront of us and does the kissy thing and hugs me and shit and then does the kissy thing to ann. and then he proceeds to tell his friend that hes with, who looks terrified, that we are so beautiful and asks his friend if he thinks we're beautiful too. so i try to go and say we need to leave and he wont. let. us. go. omgggggggggggggggg. ann said we had to go to class, and he was like oh at this hour? what class? what are you doing? holy shit dude!! and then he said te amo again. and after we got away ann said he was even creepier than i had described hahaha. so. bad. so this probably means i'll be running into him lots. GREAT.

so the festivities going on in the city right now are super cool. there's been really awesome performers on the stage in the plaza. like last night there was a group who had these weird instruments and a couple were dressed as bulls and it was super sweet. and theres been a bagpipe player, break dancers, clowns, etc. performing in the streets. its been cool to walk down the street and just come up on these things.

also last night, we sat in the plaza for a little bit with our group of girls and then everyone went home except me ann and lauren. we went to cubic for a bit and danced and then lauren left, so ann and i decided to go to the irish rover. we talked to these 2 guys who def thought we were crazy. we had had a bit to drink...and by a bit i mean more than a bit haha. before we met with the group ann and i were at some casetas, or little bar places on the streets, and we had a couple beers. but we got christmas drinks haha which consisted of a green shot of bacardi and kiwi and then a red drink of i dont even remember what it was....but our cheers was "feliz navidad!" haha. but after we talked to those guys and danced some, we went up on this kind of upper level thing where no one was and we kind of had a dance off. it was sweet. we danced for like ever and it was super hard core. at one point i looked over at the bar and all of the bartenders were standing there watching us hahahhh. it was glorious.

oh, also, ann and i are up to eating fries 13 times since we've been here..9 days? yeah..haha. omg almost forgot!! last night before the group left, we wanted mcdonalds (duh) and ann and i ordered beers! so funny. and we got our food to go so our beers were to go, and they had a lid and straw bahahaaa. it was super great. and cheap. we're def gonna have to get beers there more often! and it really embodies our favorite saying of the trip: no shame spain. basically, we're in spain, so have no shame. perf.

i was supposed to have my second intercambio today but my guy said he was too hungover hahaaa. he suggested we just plan our meeting and such on fb because he doesnt check his email too often, so we're friends on fb lol. but hes supes cute and plays soccer, which i think soccer players are soooo attractive, so im excited to meet with him! i think we're meeting at a coffee place tomorrow at 4, so cross your fingers that it goes well!!

haleyyyyyyyy

"i need to peace"

holaaaa.
so i had my intercambio last night. OH MY LORD. it was horrible. i met him under the clock in the plaza, and he seemed super outgoing and nice and the first like 10 minutes it seemed awesome, because we just kept talking and there wasnt ever a lull. but then we sat down at this little place outside the mall and oh my gosh he was such a creeper. first of all, he wouldnt stop telling me how much he loves my country, and wouldnt stop talking about britney spears and how gorgeous she is and how hes going to be rich and marry her...wtf. and every nice car we passed while walking around he was like "oh this is my car. haha just kidding!" so yeah, after we sat down he kept saying "more questions more questions" like trying to get me to ask questions. and then he said he was going to point to something and i had to say it in spanish. so ok, spaniards have less personal space than americans do, so i wasnt surprised that he sat so close to me when we sat down, but when he was pointing at things for me to say, he touched my nose and my eyebrows and my eye (wtf) and my lip and my teeth! and he freaking tried to touch my tongue and i was like effin hell no haha. he also kept telling me that he was going to be my teacher for the semester and i would learn alot of spanish! and also, he has friends in toledo, ohio and would come visit me in columbus when he was in ohio. WTFWTFWTFWTF.

ok so he also kept using the word "bimbo" and i really thought he didnt know what it meant. so i asked him what he thought it meant and he said its a woman with blonde hair and large boobs. ok....but then i told him that most people in the united states dont use that word, that we all know it but dont use it. so then he asked me "well what do people call women with blonde hair and large boobs?" omg...... so i said we call them women. duh. so then he proceeds to tell me that hes a "teacher of sex" and teaches people psychology and blah blah blah. thennnnn he started to tell me how the american women he has met with are "disgusting" and im pretty sure he meant "ugly" but thinks disgusting is the right word, and at that point i didnt really give a shit anymore because he was a creeper and i just wanted to frickin leave! so by now we had been sitting there for 2 hours, and intercambios are only supposed to last about an hour. and so i told him several times that i needed to go meet my friends in the plaza, and he was like "oh, well the concert there goes til around 1, so you can see it later!" wtffffffffffff dude! he would not let me go. so finally i was just like i have to go, and got up and we walked out and he said "i need to peace" and im pretty sure it was "i need to pees" as in "i need to pee" omg it was hilarious. so i was like um..ok. well i need to peace, as in peace out.... so when he went into the bathroom i seriously considered making a run for it, but after contemplating for a bit he came out before i had decided. so he walked me all the way back to the plaza and said he would help me find my friends. so i said i can find my friends myself bye! so then he does the 2 cheek kiss thing that they all do here, and tells me a zillion times how beautiful and nice and blah blah blkjfksldafjoasdlf;k i am, and kisses me several more times!! jesus christtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt. so he hugged me for like the 5th time and i just said i need to go and pushed away and ran for it and he yelled after me "te amo!" which means "i love you!" holy shit. so even though i was incredibly creeped out, its def a good story to tell now hahah.

oh also, he smelled really bad. barf. and he told me he would email me to set up another time to meet. HA.

so yeah, great story. but i have another great story! so a couple hours before that ann and i decided to try one of the little restaurant places on the streets near the plaza. they have a bunch of outdoor seating, so you can just sit down and a waiter will come to you. so we were just walking and saw one with some people sitting at it, so we thought we'd sit there. then the waitress comes with our menus and ann laughed and told me to look at the name of the place. it was called "50's rock, fast food" hahahhhhhh. so even though we tried realllllllly hard to not eat mcdonalds / any fast food, we STILL somehow ended up at a place where all they serve is burgers and fries hahaha. i told ann its probably the only restaurant in salamanca that serves burgers and fries haha. i feel like fate will always just bring us back to the french fries. the other day ann said our friendship is growing stronger through food, and its totally true haha. so funny.

we booked our trip to casablanca today for october 7th i think. supes excited :)

haley

"que guay!"

so basically there was a beer pong tournament last night and ann and lauren played. i wanted to find a cute guy to play with but there were like 9570752895073 people there and like 937549072 people waiting to play, so i just said screw it. but ann and lauren won their first game woo! and almost won the second game if it werent for the dirty playing of the guys of the other team. boooo. but anyway, lauren and ann distracted the guys with some super good dancing lol in the first game and i was like, i love dancing like that, i want to help out with the distraction next game! so yeah, thats what we did. they totes shouldve won the second game though. next week i deffff want to play!

i have my first intercambio tomorrow! this is when an english speaker gets together with a spanish speaker and they help each other learn the other language. so excited!! ann had her first one today and lets just say it didnt go so well. she needs to blog that shiiiiiiiit. but the guy im meeting with is 37 and super excited to perfect his english. hes good now but wants to be better because he has friends and family he wants to visit in america and wants to be really good at it yay! and another guy who is 23 just emailed me back and hes pretty good too, so im just really excited to be able to talk to more spanish speakers other than my madre and padre all the time. although our conversations are getting better and more interesting and im feeling alot more comfortable talking with them at lunch and dinner. :)

oh yeah, ann and i are up to 10 times eating fries. in the words of ann, "woof".

also, there are soooooooooo many baby perritos (little dogs) here i want one soooooooooooo baaaaaaaaaaad and by one i mean my coco baby at home :(:(:(

the festival thats going to be going on for a while is starting tonight and im excited to see everything thats going on! there were so many freaking people in the plaza this evening, so we're gonna go there and walk around and see what good things we can get into tonight :) woo!

amor, haley

mmm

ps i learned my padre's name is alfredo!! alfredo sauce, fettuccini alfredo, etc. haha

mi patata frita :)

bloggggggggg.
ok so i have a few super great things to talk about today :)

so last night a few of us were going to get together and just sit in the plaza and chat and drink a little, but only ann and i ended up showing up, so we went on a date!! awwww. so we went to the plaza and got some helado (ice cream) and sat and chatted for like 2 and a half hours! it was so good. loves her. but even better! sorry ann...was when i was walking home, and this guy was standing next to me waiting to cross the street and he said hola and starting talking to me. He said something i didnt understand, then said he was from France, and i told him im from the United States. I asked him if he spoke english and he said "a leetle a leetle" but that was about it haha. So all of his sentences consisted of crappy spanish with a bunch of french words thrown in, and i know no french whatsoever. But it was so sweet! We chatted for like 10 minutes and he was saying that he is staying with his friend who is from Salamanca but didnt know where he was at the moment and such, and some other things but it was super interesting to just try to understand each other with the mixings of spanish and french lol. But we got to my street and i said adios, then he said what im sure is goodbye in french, then i said "hasta luego!" which means see you later basically, then he said "goodbye!" haha it was so great. He also said his name was something like Oliver, but like pronounced "oh-lee-vay", not sure though lol. And, like everyone else here, I said my name was Haley and he repeated "ahh-lee"? so i just went with it lol.

But today in class even more fun things happened! haha. so ann and i are each up to 8 helpings of fries since we've been here, and have a tally going haha, so like patatas fritas has become a sort of theme of this trip already. so today in class we had to write an anonymous letter to someone else in the class, and we misunderstood the assignment, thinking you had to pick one person and write to them, but we were supposed to just write a general letter than anyone in the class could get. So of course we wrote letters to each other, and they were titled "A mi patata frita" or "To my french fry" hahaha. So mine basically said "i saw you in McDonalds (our french fry place of choice) and it was love at first sight when i saw you eating the large fry, and so quickly!" blah blah blah "we should meet tomorrow at McDonalds and eat fries together because i love them also!!" -Tu patata frita (Your french fry) and we used her cherry chapstick, which we kissed a girl with and liked it, and made kiss marks on them haha. So of course our teacher collected all of the letters and randomly gave them to people to read, and they were read out loud lol. and Ann's said things about Kappa, so it was a bit awk haha. but anyway, we got our letters back so we can keep them foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Ann and i are going to a spinning class tonight so im supes excited for that!! yay exercise!

so im not gonna lie, the first couple days i was here i had a constant sick feeling. i think it was mostly shock of being here and having all this super new stuff being thrown at me at once and being suuuuuper overwhelmed, but yesterday the entire day i felt great, and same with today, so im just so glad im getting used to everything and am 100% enjoying myself now

woooo espana 2010 !!!!! loooooove haley

donde estan mis llaves??

omggggg. so about 2 hours ago i was walking home and almost got there when i went to get my keys from my purse and could not find them. so thank goodness i put my madre's phone number in my phone, so i called the house. no one answered. so i called her cell, and she answered. i had to tell her what was up 3 times before she understood me, and she told me they were at the "round church", and then said a few other things i didnt really understand, then "hasta luego!", or "see you later". greattttt. so i knew dinner wouldnt be until like 930, so i decided i would go to the plaza mayor and get a drink or something before heading home when they got home and could let me in. so there was this clown guy at the plaza doing juggling and tricks and such and talking to the crowd in espanol and when his show ended every little kid watching ran to him and he opened this bag and they put money in haha it was funny.

so yeah, i went home, and this was about 920, and called my madre to let me in and she did yay! but when i got to my room i could not find my keys. i was freeeeaaakingggg out. like, how do you tell your madre you lost her keys and need her to get you some new ones? and i probs wouldnt understand what she was saying if she told me when i would get new ones or whatever. she would not be a happy madre thats for sure. so i kept looking everywhere, and finally fould this like hidden pocket in my freaking purse and they were in there. SUCH a relief. and then my madre and padre were like "why didnt you come to the round church where we were?" woops. did not catch on the phone that they wanted me to go there. lol whatevsss. super scary 10 minutes thats for sure.

ps ann needs to blog about the jersey shore parade she saw. mk good.

Haley (pronouned "ah-lee" here)

never have i ever crashed a wedding in spain...oh wait....

So Ann and I decided to keep track of how many times we eat french fries, i mean, patatas fritas, since, ya know, shes had them 6 times and ive had them 7 since we've been here, ya know, less than 4 days. no big deal. haha. but the good news is there's a super nice gym here that we took a tour of the other day and im def planning on using it lots. 5 of us went there today and swam for a while and it was sooooo nice. you also have to wear swim caps there, which ive never worn one before, so it was a tad odd. when we took the tour there were some classes going on and oh my gosh 2 of the classes we saw were so sweet!

so the first one looked like a kempo class, and they were listening to super loud technoesque music, and the lady leading the class was super hardcore omg. she was super in shape and had a cut off shirt and shorts on and had super long dreads, and was just yelling into her head mic thing and jumping around the room. it would be an amazing workout. then the other class was a spinning class, but it wasnt your ordinary spinning class. the lights were off and there were colored lights like a disco ball, and they were also listening to super loud techno music and spinning super fast to the beat. so awesome. so we're def gonna take some classes..get into shape! i know i need it after all this food im being force fed. ann calls my madre "pushy madre" haha. i think she just feels like everything should be in order and everything and that its only the right thing for me to eat all of my food even if i say i dont want more lol. she also doesnt give me much personal space. like i have my own room and bathroom and she does leave me alone at night and such but in the morning she always opens my room, i think to get me to wake up. and she'll tell me to come eat breakfast when im not out of bed yet lol. oh and my window connects to the porch, and yesterday she was on the porch and just stuck her head in my window and was talking to me. WHAT IF I WAS NAKED MADRE?!! haha. oh madre, eres loca.

so last night we went out, obvs, and went to lots of different bars with our group of 7 girls. we have a super solid group, its fun and a really good size for going out and such. yay :) but i think, well i know, the highlight of the night was when a lady came up to us and gave us a card for a free second drink at this bar and said she would take us there, and so we followed her. so we got there and went in...the only people in there was a wedding party haha. so the bride and a few other people were dancing, and a couple of us started dancing also, and this really old guy in the party was doin some nice footwork and ann started dancing with him. it was wonderful. kind of a dance off? yeah haha. and these 2 guys were wearing these chef looking hats and ann took one of them and i tried to take the other but he ran away from me, then the first guy took his back from ann. so basically we crashed a wedding in spain. awesome.

another thing ive noticed is that the people here make fun of us alot. us meaning americans. like, its not that surprising, but i guess i was expecting them to be more accepting? or at least talk to us like we're normal people and such. they also think all of us are rich, like one of the girls here said she was talking to this guy and was talking about traveling somewhere and he said it was expensive there but that it wouldnt be a problem for her since she was american. really odd. im also surprised at how few people speak any english. ive met very few. es locoooooo.

LOVE haley

Fiestassssss meow

Hola!!!
Heyyyy its Ann! YAY my first blog!! woohoo!! So far Spain is pretty awesome! I had an absolutely wild time in Poland this summer and so far it seems that the madness will continue in Spain!
I flew into Spain on Tuesday night and spent the night in a hotel near the airport then came back to the airport monday morning to meet up with HALEY and the rest of the group.  Wednesday we got all settled into our casas with our madres! mine is really sweet! its just her and I but I like it! though its a little awk awk at times because she def barely eats and gives me a ton of food and i chow down as she nibbles on a little fruit. but whatevzies
then yeah these past couple days we've been reviewing our spanish (although I keep randomly saying some words in polish ooopsies) and getting to know our way around the city! except omg wooooof so on Wednesday night shortly after arriving here, I went on a walk with my host mom's niece to buy things like shampoo and random stuff I needed and then it started pouring rain and she was like ok yeah just walk that way straight and you'll be back and i was like uhhh what and then she was gone. WOOF. so i wandered around in the pouring rain for literally like an hour but then I ran into mark and zandra thank god and they wandered aimlessly with me! then finally we found my house. yikes. it was a little scary though because my phone was dead and i had forgotten my map and i didnt know my address and was essentially super screwed. however I feel like now I will never get lost trying to find my house again because of my scenic tour of Salamanca in the rain on my first night. yays
and then we went out on thursday and friday nights!! wooohooo! thursday night haley and i were def the last ones to leave the club dancing on stage like maniacs to the wee hours of the morning. glorious. then on my way home, I randomly stopped into some cafe/ bar place and had a sandwich and some dranks with some randoms but it was a good time!
and last night (friday night) we went out again, danced a ton again and met some cool people. met a guy from new york and then later 2 spanish dudes. overall very good time!!
i look forward to what tonight has in store!!

loveeee rawr
ann

me encanta el fast food

so i realized last night that our dinner was significantly smaller than lunch, thank the lord, but we just had lunch and  i commented on how in los estados unidos, or united states, we have alot less food for lunch, and my madre said their main meal is lunch. but i totally knew that at some point! so thats why shes been killing me with food at lunch time. they also eat fruit for dessert, which i guess is good considering our desserts consist of like ice cream and things just a little less healthy than fruit. but we had nectarines for dessert and i taught her the word nectarine lol.

something else i find strange is that there are alot of people walking dogs here, and most of them have leashes, but the people just hold the leashes and let their dogs just walk far ahead without the leash attached. kind of strange. i saw a tiny pom pom (pomeranian) yesterday and oh my gosh it made me miss my beebee coco at home soooooooooooo much :(:( que triste..  ann told me today that when she was staying with a family in poland before she came here they took their dog for walks and would come back without the dog hahah. and she asked them where the dog was and they said it was still walking hahaha. soooo funny.

i dont know if ive said this yet or not, but the fast food here is so expensive! which is a huge prob cuz ann and i kind of like fast food. its kind of crazy how much american food ive had in the past 3 days. i thought there would be like none. por ejemplo, for lunch my madre made french fries and chicken legs with salad. theres so much french fries here! crazyyy. but they have mcdonalds and burger king, and the meals are like 7,50 euros, which is over 9 US dollars! big problem. we tried burger king today and i got chicken fingers which werent really chicken fingers and a drink, and it was 5,75 which is around like $7.25 haha what the hell. we've also had fast food 4 times in 3 days. super healthy.

oh another thing...i drink alot of water at home, but everytime there are little things floating around in the cup haha. not so clean..

ok so the bars. i really wanna talk about the 2 nights we've had so far with ann so hopefully we can get together supes soon. but we've been to Cubic and the Irish Rover and a couple others, and its basically consisted of free drinks and dancing on stage / other things to stand on..haha. and last night we were wondering around and found a super good fast food place, cuz freaking mcdonalds and burger king close early. so i mean, its probably not a good thing that we found it, but whatevs. its delicioso.

Haley

menos comida por favor

ok what the hell madre......I DONT HAVE A BOTTOMLESS STOMACH. i might go puke in a few or else i might explode. so we just had lunch, and after my giant helping of soup salad and bread i said "estoy muy llena" which means "i am very full", and i put an accent on the "muy". so she takes my bowl away and i was about to get up when she put two pork chops in front of me. So i don't want to be rude and say i dont want them, so i ate them. at this point i was sure we were done, then she brings over a gigantic piece of watermelon, sits in front of me, and tells me to eat, because i need to eat! according to her. so i ate the whole freaking thing. oh. my. gawwdddddd. haha im gonna weigh 29574985729 pounds after this semester.

also something i find interesting...in america i think of myself as a really fast eater, because im usually the first one done eating. but omg my madre and padre eat SO FAST. and they ate all of their soup salad bread pork chops and watermelon just like that. so quickly. i have no idea where they put it.

so last night was cray craaayyyyyyy. omg. but i def need ann with me so we can blog it out together. hopefully later today we can do that :)

ps we've had mcdonalds twice in 2 days. just sayin.

love, Haley

im. so. full.

so we went on a little tour of the city today, and afterward ann and i decided we were hungry, even though we were going to be eating dinner in about 2 hours, but knowing us we would be hungry again by then. so, knowing us, again, we went to mcdonalds, because we just love fast food that much. we got kids meals because the regular meals are like 6,50 euros, which is around like 8 dollars, which is a bit expensive for mcdonalds. its a pretty fancy place here in europa. the food was really similar, except ann got a "chicken roll", which was kind of like the snack wraps in the US, except with just ketchup. they also came with apples and dip, but the dip was chocolate, but it was kind of solid but kind of not. it was weird but so delicioso!

afterward i came home and then my madre came home and i told her that i had eaten and wasnt hungry, but she basically made me eat again. she told me that i need to eat! like yeah, true, but not that much. but on top of that she told me to keep eating until i ate everything, which was alot, and now i am stuffffffffed. too much mi madre. she also watches me eat when shes done eating, which is super awk.

another thing...she only eats fruit for dinner. she told me she does that every night, which i find so weird!

but anywayyyy, the tour was awesome today. i took muchos fotos and saw really cool things, and in about an hour we're all meeting and going out! wooooo!

hasta luego.

Haley

we have arrived!

Yay Salamanca!!!
Ann and i are going to blog separately because we aren't allowed in each others houses, but sometimes we can blog together when we are together at school.

So we arrived in Madrid yesterday! i think i slept zero on the flight over, so before i went to bed last night it had been about 30 hours since i last slept blehh. And i also didnt sleep well last night, so needless to say im exhausted, but i think we all are. We met Miguel, Maria Angeles', the director of the program, husband. He's so cute and super nice and we've been with him since then, but we meet Maria Angeles in a day or two when she gets back from Chile i believe.

We got on a bus and drove to Salamanca, and on the way we stopped at a restaurant called AutoGrill and ate. I got a sandwich which consisted of some kind of meat, cheese, and what looked like uncooked bacon haha. but it was pretty good. After that we finally arrived in Salamanca and it's sooooooo bonita! We pulled up to this building with a bunch of old ladies standing outside and realized they were our madres awwwww. Then we got off and Miguel read our names one by one, we did the kiss on each side of the face thing, and our madres took us away to our casas. 

My madre got a taxi and a few minutes later we got to her apartment. It's super cute! My room is really small, but i like it alot. She has a husband also, but no children. We had dinner last night, and she kept asking me questions and half the time i didnt know what she was asking, so it was kinda awk, but whatevs, it'll be fine. 

So today we had our first class, or i guess it's just a review for the next 2 weeks, at the university. We met in La Plaza de La Libertad, and walked through Plaza Mayor, to get to the university. We came upon a cathedral and it's the biggest building i think i've ever seen. Not tallest, but just biggest. soooooo biggggggg. I'm super excited to explore the city and travel around and see other amazing monuments and buildings and such. 

But after class we all went back to our houses, and it was then that i realized i didnt know what street i lived on, just the general vicinity, and the number of our apartment is 8. So i ended up getting lost, and wandered around the same area for a little over an hour with my map out, with no money and no phone and super hungry. it was greeeaaatttt. I don't even know how many doors i tried my keys in haha, but finally i turned a corner and saw an 8, and hoped so much that that was my 8 and that i wouldn't have to wait until 5, which was 2 and a half hours away, when i was going to meet a few of the girls in our group. I got in and was half an hour late to lunch, but my madre understood! yayyyy. So i just ate and am now going to take a siesta which sounds marvelous, then wake up and go get some euros and a phone :)

I think we're also all going out tonight at 1130ish, so im super pumped for that. yayyy espanaaaaaaa :)

Haley