Feria last night was awesome! I will have to put up pictures later. I forgot to bring money and my keys, so that caused some drama, because I had to walk from Prado to Feria instead of take the bus. I also had to walk back at 3 in the morning. I also had to call Maria to tell her to let me in, but I had to use Carmen's phone because I don't have any more minutes on mine. My phone also died. So apart from all that, I had a blast! I tried to find the caseta that Maria told me about, but nobody seemed to know what it was, so I found the rest of the group and we were allowed to go into Carmen's. I was surprised at how big it was! And there are hundreds of these things! It was so much fun! We danced the night away, literlly, in our pretty flamenco dresses, except for John, who in fact was not wearing one. At the end of the night we had to say goodbye to Inga, which was sad because she's going back to Germany and I don't know if i'll see her again. I'm going to Feria again today, and this time i'm more prepared. On to the Ferris Wheel!

Morocco

This weekend was amazing! We went on the Ferry, which was more like a floating airplane, to the town of Ceuta, which is still Spanish. We had to drive a little to get to the border. On the Ferry over we passed the Rock of Gibraltar, which belongs to the English, but has an Arabic name, and is on Spanish soil. It's special. We weren't allowed to take pictures at the border, but it took us 45 minutes to get everyone's passports stamped. We were told that this was where everyone came to buy things that weren't made in Morocco, i.e. made in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. We went to a town called M'Diq to spend the night. We were on the beach, which was fantastic. The next day we went to a town called Tetouan. We did some shopping and touring. It was loads of fun. After that we went to a town called Tanger, or Tangier might ring a bell. On the way we stopped where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic ocean, then a little later we rode a camel! It was hilarious. When I say we, I mean me and Yasmin and Carmen, two of my friends here in Sevilla. They're fantastic. Anyway we had a good day looking around at all the shops and eating Moroccan food. That night we had a show with lots of traditional music and Belly Dancers. It was interesting, and they really got everyone involved. It was great, and I actually thought it was worth the money. The next day we went to a town called Chaouen, and everything was blue. They painted it that way to keep Demons and Mosquitos away. It was really cool! I say this literally, because it rained that day, and we were cold and wet, but we had an umbrella, and Carmen let me borrow her scarf, which was really nice. The streets really do look like they do in Aladdin, except a little bit smaller. I bought a magic flying carpet. Carmen and I are going to race, but we haven't tried yet. I was so grateful that God worked out the three of us being able to go together. The trip wouldn't have been nearly as fun without Yasmin and Carmen. However, in Yasmin's words, travelling with Spanish people is a totally new experience. They are hilarious. I loved it! 

We got back into town and decided to walk down a street that Brian had told us about, and we ate supper at an outdoor restaurant. Our waiter was hilarious. The food was ok. We walked around a bit looking for some chocolate but were unsuccessful, so we went back to the house. The next morning I had to hop on a train and head to the airport while the guys went to the concentration camp Dachau. We said our goodbyes and then I got on the platform. There was a really nice woman who talked to me for a few minutes while we waited on the train. She seemed really excited to try out her limited English, and she was very pleasant.  I made it to the airport ok and flew back to Madrid. I hate Madrid's airport, by the way. It is one long building, and they don't tell you which gate to go to for your flight until about 5 minutes beforehand, so you have to sprint to get there on time, wherever you are. It is really annoying. Fortunately, the people on the plane told us which one to go to beforehand, which was nice. I finally got back to Seville, only to find things very much altered. For one, the trees were blooming, and now there are flowers everywhere! It is warm and beautiful here. They also moved my bus stop. This confused me greatly, because I wasn't aware they could just uproot the big plastic stop. Now I have to wait at a certain pole for my bus. It was a fun experience to figure out. Feria is right around the corner and I can feel the excitement. I have to write a paper on it so I'm planning on getting very involved. A few more things to mention, I did manage to acquire a box from every country that I visited. I plan to find one this weekend in Morocco as well, and who knows where else I will go. Until next week, that's all I have! I look forward to writing about my weekend!

Munich! One of my favorite places so far. I found that the people there were really nice. We had to make a stopover in Frankfurt to get there, and I don't remember if it was this or the train from Amsterdam, but on one of these adventures I decided that I wanted Burger King. Apparently the people who work at said Burger King don't understand that they work at a train station, and people don't have time to sit around and wait all day. Literally, the slowest people i've ever seen. This is a FAST food restaurant people! I almost missed the train, but thankfully, I didn't. I did have some trouble finding the platform again, and I did a lot of running, but I made it ok. On the 8 hour train ride there was a very interesting woman from the US. (She was from the midwest, don't remember exactly which state.) I had opted out of bringing my ipod with me on the trip so I had nothing to occupy my time, and so I naturally listened to the people speaking in English. There was a German woman and a man from Iraq sitting with her. Most of her comments were true, but slightly off, and all of them were bashing America, which made me really angry. I was really proud of myself for ignoring her and keeping my mouth shut, because it wasn't my battle. (Thank you mom.) Well, then Keith stopped listening to music, and he decided to ask her what she meant by a few things. It turned into an interesting conversation, with everything from politics to food to painting to religion. And more. I didn't really like her very much. Her opinions were very strong, and she stated them as fact, but I think she did learn a lot while she was there. For one, the Iraqi guy said that he didn't want the soldiers to leave, because it would be chaos. She thought they hated them over there. She was right about the media not giving us this information, but if you ask a soldier how it is, or if you search for the information you seek, you can find it. At the end of the journey she said her daughter was like me. She said we both had red hair and blue eyes. I just smiled. I do not have red hair. For anyone who is wondering, I have blonde hair, strawberry blonde if you want to count the red tint, but I have never in my life had red hair. Rant over. We met Scott's uncle's college roommate/best friend right outside of Munich. He let us stay at his place for the two nights we were there, which was incredibly nice of him. It felt really good to be with a family, sleep in a nice bed, and his wife gave us a great breakfast each morning. (They also had a bathtub.) We all got to call home as well, because their phone still has it's American number, so the calls are "local". Scott did get some sad family news that night, so please pray for them as they struggle through this hard time. He decided to stay and finish the trip though, and we did have a good time the next day. And that is all of the preliminaries, now to the fun part!

In the morning we got to sleep in, which was really nice. We missed our first train, because of a few issues on the metro (i.e. um...i think we're going the wrong way...is that our stop we just passed?). This did allow some people to get coffee, and we got on the train to Fussen, (Bavaria) Germany. Here we toured the Castle Neushwanstein, which means New Swan Stone. King Luwig was having it built, and he loved swans. He dedicated this fairytale castle to the works of a famous opera writer. Unfortunately the King was killed before it was completed, hence the tour was only 16 rooms, but it felt like 5. The castle was pretty, but a bit disappointing. I had hoped for more history. In typical adventurous fashion, we hiked up to "Mary's Bridge" and then I took off up another trail. The guys took it a step further and literally took off UP another trail, to the top of the mountain. This was totally worth it. The views were indredible, and we found a geocashing box. I loved being up in the Alps, it was so peaceful. I wish we could have stayed longer and explored, but daylight was fading and we needed to get back to town. We quickly walked around the outside of the other castle, Hoshwangau (not sure about the spelling on this one) and then hopped back on the train through the lovely countryside. Round trip, I saw lots of deer and bunnies, and a few other animals. If you know me, this should excite you because I always miss these types of things. I'm going to pause and post a few pictures now, and then finish up in another post. First, here is the best meal i've had so far; the sauerkraut is amazing.

From Brussels we went to Amsterdam. There really isn't much to say about Amsterdam. It isn't the most pleasant city, especially if you don't smoke or drink and such. There was a cool fairground place where Keith and I rode the swings. Scott wasn't feeling up to it. Our hostel was interesting. We did walk by Anne Frank's house. Mostly the only thing interesting was the next day we went to a place with windmills called the Zaanse Shans? Not sure on the spelling... Anyway, it was then that I fully realized I was in Holland. They had wooden shoes and windmills and cheese and bread. It was pretty cool. So then we went to get our stuff and we headed to the train station, and went off on an 8 hour train ride to Munich, Germany.

Taking a quick break from explaining the trip. Today I:

Got a library card

Heard the most beautiful rendition of Pomp and Circumstance while walking through the University of Seville's main campus, it was a choir, and I think they were singing in latin. It just echoed and I loved it.

I also ate at McDonalds. If you want to know my further thoughts on this, ask me.

This weekend I am going to Morocco. More on that when I return!

And now back to the story...

We finally found our way to Brussels. The first day we found our hostel and walked around a bit, exploring the city. There was a fun market in town where I bought some small trinkets, and we went chocolate shopping. Apparently you can walk into almost any chocolate shop and they'll give you a free sample. This was an incredible experience. Belgium chocolate is now my favorite. We got some 10% discount cards as well, which was really nice. Keith had gotten a map of things to do from the hostel, and he wanted to go find the stock market building and then play chess at some restaurant that was famous for it, so we went, and afterwards we had a late supper of pizza. The next day we got to sleep in a bit, which was fantastic, and then we went to the Mannekin Pis, the statue/fountain of the little boy peeing. It was very small. I'll spare you the picture. We met Keith's friend Helena, who is living in Brussels, so she was our tour guide for an hour or so. We also got some very good Belgian waffles (mine had strawberries and chocolate) and we went to another Triumphal Arch in a very nice park. There is a small statue in Seville that my aunt told me was originally in Brussels, and to go see it once I got there. Unfortunately it was expensive to go out to see it, but in the map/brochure we got it said there was a garage from which it was visible, so we trekked up to the top of that. It was a hazy day, so none of my pictures turned out really well, but I could tell that it was a huge silver atomic structure, that up close would have been very impressive. After that we purchased some chocolate, and I also looked for some lace, although the ladies in the shops were not very helpful or friendly at all, and then we went on our way to Amsterdam.

Paris, Day 2

So the next morning we woke up, and had breakfast, and met James, and went to the Lourve. It was free admission because it was the first Sunday of the month, so that was nice, but I would have liked to have gotten a ticket to keep. As it is I only have a map of the Lourve, but that will work fine. The Lourve was pretty cool. Got to see the Mona Lisa, and a painting called Victory Leading the People, which I recognized as the one they use with the Broadway Musical Les Miserables. I was pretty excited. We got to see most everything that we wanted to, including Napoleon's Apartments, which were pretty cool. We even went to see the Medieval foundations (castle style) of the Lourve, that were only discovered a few years ago when they started digging for the pyramid. Pretty awesome stuff. They even found a crown in a well down there, and broken pots and such. After the Lourve we headed to the Champs Elysees so I could look at the shops, and so we could get to the Triumphal Arch.  After that, we jumped on the metro, had to say goodbye to James, and we got our stuff from the hostel and jumped on a train to Brussels, Belgium. Once there we walked around a bit to find our hostel, which was definitely nicer than the one in France.

The reason I haven't had a chance to update is because I spent most of the week with Anna and Papa at their hotel, and there have been French girls staying here and using my room as well, so internet has been out. I have it now, though, for the moment. On April 3rd Anna and Papa flew back home safely, and I flew to Barcelona, where I waited about 8 hours to get on a flight to Paris that had been delayed for two hours. I left at about the time I was to have been there. The picture above is where I spent my entire day. I finally got to the airport to find Scott and Keith waiting on me, which was not the original plan, I was supposed to be waiting on them, but whatever. We hopped on a bus hoping to go where we needed to and took a 45 minute ride into town. Once off the bus we stopped to look at a map to try and find our hostel, when a couple came up and asked us if we needed any help. They were really nice and the man even called our hostel for us, and got directions (exact metro stops and walking meters) straight to our hostel. It was incredibly nice and considerate of him, and as far as we know there were no strings attached. We finally made it to our hostel in Montemarte (not really the greatest part of town) and then went out to get drinks, for which we paid 8 euro a piece. I cannot say I was not warned. Somehow we crashed and awoke the next morning to free breakfast (toast and hot chocolate...mmmm.) and were soon joined by James, pretty much an awesome guy who lives in Paris at the moment, and is Scott's girlfriend's cousin (disclaimer, on this trip the guys had all kinds of weird connections, which made it fantastic). So he was our tour guide for the two days we were there, and we were all agreed that it would have been nowhere near as fun had he not been with us. He made it a blast. Thanks James! First he took us to the palace of Versailles. This is where King Louis XV (I think) built his very large estate, gilded golden facade and all. (I know facade is spelled wrong, but I can't figure out how to put in the special c). Versailles took us all day. We looked in the palace and out in the gardens and fountains and the big lake that the king made so he could have floating dinner parties. We also went to Marie Antoinette's estate and Hamlet where she could be a shepherdess. It was all very interesting and beautiful. I really enjoyed all of the chandeliers. After that we went to get some supper and got some kebabs with french fries in them (I took mine out and ate them separately.) I suppose I shouldn't call them French fries, they just call them fries, in fact the rest of the world calls them fries or fried potatoes or something like that, except in Germany where I saw a menu with "french fried potatoes", but all of this doesn't matter, because they were actually created in Belgium. But I'm getting to all of that, right now I'm still in Paris, day one. After our kebabs we went to the Notre Dame Cathedral, just to get pictures of the outside. It wasn't as grand, nor large, as I thought it would be. I suppose i've become desensitized because the cathedral in Seville is what I thought a cathedral would be like, and coming from probably the largest in the world, I'm not going to be impressed by much else. Still, it was cool to see the inspiration for Victor Hugo's novel, and to enjoy the peaceful Seine flowing right beside it. Of course, soon after we trekked to the Eiffel Tower, and we went up to the top, because I was not going to the Eiffel Tower to sit on the ground, there was no point in that. Unfortunately my camera is terrible, so none of my pictures really turned out well. But here is a video of it sparkling, which it does on the hour, for about 5 minutes (we got to see it three times).

Hi all, I know I have a lot to catch up on so i'll do my best. Papa and Anna (my grandfather and Aunt) arrived in Seville on the 28th of March. We had a really great week. We enjoyed the usual things such as the Reales Alcazar, The Cathedral, The Archive of the Indies, Italica, and we even got to see a Flamenco Show. We did a lot of shopping as well, and Anna and I went to Cadiz to spend a day at the beach. We found a cool cathedral there and an exhibit on an ancient house which was really cool. Overall we had a great time and it was really nice seeing them and showing them around. They brought me macaroni and cheese and a Hershey's Chocolate bar.