Around the UK in 10 Days

Hello all! Hope you didn't miss me too much while I was away (though that's not completely true)!

Contrary to popular belief, I am, in fact, still alive and kicking, even after a very exhausting and wifi-less (I know, poor me) 10 day vacation to Ireland, Scotland and London that unfortunately resulted in a really bad cold this week. But hey, no pasa nada, right? :)
Who knew traveling could take so much out of you? The leisurely strolls I was picturing myself taking through the streets of Dublin and tours I planned to take throughout Edinburgh and London that were supposed to leave me feeling well-rested, rejuvenated and culturally superior were actually more like sleepless whirlwinds of cramming everything you could possibly want to do in any of these cities into a 3-day-or-less period....

...Whew!

As far as the "cramming everything you could possibly want to do" part goes, I'd say we were extremely successful. Our group (there were 6 of us, 3 boys and 3 girls) partook in two guided tours whilst in Ireland, one that took us to the Cliffs of Moher and one that ended at Blarney Castle, both absolutely amazing things to see in person. Ireland is just as beautiful and green and Irish as I'd imagined it to be, and the tours were so fun because we had awesome tour guides both days, and the buses made pitstops in lots of cool places along the way, one of them being a restaurant where we stopped for lunch in which I ate the freshest & most amazing seafood chowder I think I'll ever have the pleasure of tasting. My dad would've really liked it (hey Dad!). Naturally we just had to do the Guinness Tour alongside other touristy activities while in Dublin, and we also went to a lot of really cute/cool/old pubs that had awesome food and live music...I'd say I'm pretty well-versed a few Irish drinking songs by now. 

After exactly 3.5 days of fun seeing all the best that the land of Ire had to offer (I forgot to mention how nice the cab drivers were!!), we said our goodbyes and made our way onto the 2nd leg of the trip. All in all, it was a great time, or as the Irish would say, Great Craic! (pronounced "crack")

And then off we flew to Edinburgh, Scotland! 

Scotland wasn't a part of the original plan for our break to the UK, however something in this tiny little head of mine told me we'd be making a mistake not to go, so everyone agreed on spending one day and one night there, and all I can say to my group is...you're welcome. I am SO glad we got to see Edinburgh, as it was NOTHING like any other place I've ever seen, and definitely not what I expected, either. The architecture is absolutely amazing, and combined with the winding, hilly streets and green grass and lakes in the distance, it was a beautiful city. It has a really gothic/dark/punk-y kind of feel to it, too...lots of really old graveyards and underground dungeons (which we took a tour of and saw a functioning Wicken temple), and the nightlife consisted of a lot of really small, dark bars where the bartenders dressed very gothic and played music that screamed at you. Safe to say this was not my cup of tea, but it was still interesting to see and experience...although I did leave to go home to bed quite early that night. The next morning we ate breakfast at the cutest cafe called "Elephant House" where JK Rowling sat and wrote Harry Potter! Hogwarts, the school in the books, is apparently based off of Edinburgh castle, which you can see perfectly out the windows of the back room of the cafe where we sat (I tried to channel some of her creative juices for my blog but I'm not sure I succeeded, sorry everybody!). 

And then I blinked, and suddenly I was in LONDON!

Has anybody ever gone to London and had a bad time? I'd like to think not...it's too pretty and classy and the perfect mixture of old and whimsical and modern and (best of all) Chicago-like. The only bad part about it is that it's just big enough and there's just enough to do to the point where it got a tad overwhelming for a group of six 20 year olds on the 3rd leg of a 10 day break with minimal sleep under our belts. To give you some perspective, here is a rough list of all the things we somehow managed to see and fit into a 72 hour long journey in one of the most famous cities in the world:

1. Tower of London

2. Tower Bridge

3. National Gallery

4. National Portrait Gallery

5. Big Ben/Parliament (I couldn't stop quoting, "There it is, Wendy! The 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning!".....I think I got annoying)

6. The Crowned Jewels

7. The Monument (really tall overlook of the city built after the London fire of 1666)

8. St. Paul's Cathedral (Where Princess Di and Prince Charles were married)

9. Wellington Arch

10. Westminster Abbey

11. Buckingham Palace

12. St. James Park

13. Southwark Cathedral

14. Picadilly Circus

15. Abbey Road

16. London Bridge

17. Harrod's

18. Wimbledon

19. London Eye

20. And of course, Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station :)  (From Harry Potter, for all you non-nerds)

Just writing that list made me tired. My favorites, you ask? It's hard to say because everything was so different. However, Westminster Abbey is definitely in there somewhere. It is so much bigger than I imagined it to be...it has at least 10 little chapels all along the sides of the center nave where, like, 50 famous kings and queens are buried! I did an audio tour and there is just so much cool history and stories about it...and to think I just thought it was the church where Will and Kate got married! Naturally I walked up the aisle silently pretending to be her once or twice...I don't think anyone noticed. Big Ben was another one of my favorites, just because of how pretty it was to see at nighttime all lit up. 

I really wish we could have spend more time in Wimbledon. It's much bigger than you would think and has a lot of cool museums and trophy rooms, and it's obviously just a different kind of history than most of London's other landmarks we saw. It's actually a tennis club as well which I'm sure costs a pretty penny to get in to. 

I'm also really glad we decided to make the trek out to Abbey Road on our last night there. I found my favorite Beatles quote on the wall of graffiti (which rivals the graffiti on the John Lennon wall in Prague, I'd say)! For only a 10 day long trip I felt like I was in my fair share of famous peoples' old stomping grounds!

And then we blinked again (though this was more of a 12-hour-long blink, complete with a 3 hour layover in Malaga), and suddenly we were back home safe and sound in Granada! After all that running around from city to city with remarkable ease and minimal problems, I came home Sunday night and fell asleep dreaming of what a great Amazing Race teammate studying abroad is transforming me into!

And it only took 5 days, but I now feel officially caught up on sleep; perfect timing considering.... 

MY SISTER COMES TOMORROW!!!!

I don't remember the last time I've been so excited for anything....we are going to have so much fun!! She's staying for 2 whole weeks and we have many journeys of our own to take in that time...the first of them being to Barcelona this weekend! More to come on our (very safe and responsible) shenanigans later on next week!

Until then, here are some of my proudest pictures/moments whilst wandering the UK:

 Enjoying our Guinness pints at the top floor of the Guinness Factory 

At the baby cliffs of Moher (only 200 ft high)

At the actual Cliffs of Moher - 800 ft high!

With Marge outside of Blarney Castle!

                                               

Kissing the Blarney Stone

 Edinburgh! Amazing!

 In front of Edinburgh Castle 

Our group outside the castle! 

We saw a Scotsman playing bagpipes the last day there! So pretty and cool 

In London with my new friend Ben (While on a riverboat tour)

We found Starbucks! With the Tower Bridge in the background

Buckingham Palace! The flag was up meaning the Queen is in!

Center Court at Wimbledon!

3 Weeks In!

Can't believe tomorrow is February 1st and that I've already been here for almost a month! I know May 7th is gonna creep up on me way sooner than I'd like it to, which is a shame because I could really get used to this whole No Pasa Nada thing for good. I haven't done anything particularly exciting recently, so this is just a post to update ya'll on what's going to happen when my life does start to get exciting and I don't have the down time to write about it like I do now! No class until 4:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays has its perks...
I've been in the process of kinda-sorta-maybe booking trips to all of the places I want to go for quite some time now, and if doing so has taught me anything, it's that I have a way bigger phobia of spending too much money than I ever thought I did (I'd like to thank Tom Orlowski for that...as that trait had to have come from him because, let's be honest, I sure didn't get it from Mom). Booking flights is scary and stressful to me, because along with said booking comes the need to find a place to stay in (insert name of foreign country here), as well as figuring out expenses for food, transportation, and fees for museums/tours/etc. Not to mention the chance that the cost of the flight will go down after I purchase my ticket. All that stuff may seem too petty to be deemed worrisome while on a 4 month excursion in Europe, however, contrary to my sunshiney disposition, fantastic sense of humor and all-around general awesomeness, I tend to worry a lot more than most people that know me probably think I do.
With that said, I have booked trips to quite a few places already, the first trip being the one I will take on my first (of two) 10 day long breaks to Ireland, Scotland, and London!!! I could not be more excited for this trip, especially because it's coming up in less than 2 weeks!! You'll be hearing enough about that by the time I get back, I'm sure, so I won't bug you with the details now :). I also will for sure be spending the weekend of St. Patrick's Day visiting one of my best friends Lauren in Brussels, Belgium! I better brush up on my ever-so-fluent Belgian before I get there. The last trip I have booked so far is to Lagos, Portugal which will be a weekend trip at the end of April, about 2 weeks before I come home!
Pending trips, that I haven't bought yet due to the fact that I believe I can find better deals still, include the trips I will take with Jilli when she comes (yay!!!!!!) to (hopefully) Sevilla, Barcelona, Paris and Cordoba, as well as the Amalfi Coast and other parts of Italy for my second 10 day long break. This leaves me with about 3 open weekends to conjure up some magical ideas about where else I want to go. I know I want to go to Amsterdam, and I would probably give my right pinky toe (a vital part of the human anatomy if you didn't know) to find someone to go on the "Sound of Music" tour in Salzburg, Austria with, and I think Prague would be such a cool place to see as well.
The worst part about this trip is that, no matter how hard I try to be frugal (and believe me, I'm trying), the money really does add up. Sometimes I feel like I'm the annoyingly cheap friend in the group, partially because I don't buy anything when shopping for clothes here and, am trying my hardest to make due without having to pay for a 30 euro European-voltage hairdryer (which is working out better than expected thus far), but when 30 euro is what I'm paying for my flight from Dublin to Edinburgh, I'd much rather spend the money on that. Priorities, people!
The other thing is that the reason everyone is spending money on clothes and (albeit really cute) bags and ridiculously expensive trips and meals here is because "I'm only going to have this opportunity once in my life." Obviously this is a valid statement, as I'm guessing most people probably don't make it to Europe every summer to spend time in their villa on the island of Santorini. However, pardon me for sounding idealistic, but the question I generally ask myself when I'm up in the air about where to travel to and what I want to buy while site-seeing is, "is this somewhere I want to go or something I need to buy THIS time around?" If one day saving up the money to come back and travel through Europe again some day isn't justification for higher education, I don't know what is.

In other news, I've been taking lots of leisurely strolls through the city lately...here are some of my findings:

 Graffiti of El Padrino (The Godfather)

 We hiked up to a lookout to watch the sunset over the Alhambra and Sierra Nevadas on Sunday

 La Alhambra at sunset

And this is my view on my walk home from school at nighttime. This river is down on the left. Not too bad :)

Mólly in Málaga, Chocolate con Churros, and other fun alliterations...

My deepest and most sincere apologies go out to anyone who is a religious and diligent reader of this blog (Hey Mom!), as I have gone far too long without posting something to help remind you of how jealous you should be of my life right now! 

The days here are absolutely flying by! Well, not really the ones that I spend sleeping until noon and blogging until it's time to go to class at 4:30, like today, but I'm starting to realize that 4 months is really not that much time to be here, especially when you're an ambitious little ball of Spanish energy (and cuteness) like me! I have been in the midst of planning all the trips I want to take while I'm here in Europe, and the fact that I only have about 9 weekends and 2 breaks to travel makes seeing the 3,829,374 places I want to see a tad problematic. I'm sure you all feel so bad for me! Anyway, upon figuring out that we will not, in fact, live in this dreamworld forever, my friends Margaret, Amy and Matt and I decided to make a spontaneous day trip to the southern coast of Spain in the magical city of Málaga! Granada is still far from the tropical 80 degree weather we were all expecting upon our arrival here, so we were all just tickled when we stepped off the bus in Málaga and found that this is where the beautiful beach weather had been hiding all along! It was in the mid-70's and smelled like North Carolina in the summertime, and after exploring the city, visiting the Cathedral and doing some illegal picture-taking at the Picasso Museum, we were able to slip off our shoes and take a walk down the beach! I've learned later this week that Spaniards actually consider Málaga's beach to be sub-par in comparison to the white sand that most coastal cities in Spain sport, however if someone had told me this information while I was enjoying a plate of calamari and glass of sangria with the Mediterranean wind in my hair, I probably would have told them to stop talking and enjoy the view. After the beach we walked around a little more, ate some ice cream, visited the Plaza de Toros, and then cried when it was time to go home. Que lastima!

It has also come to my attention that I've never talked about my school (Because contrary to popular belief, I do have to learn while over here)! My school is called El Centro de Granadí, or CEGRÍ for short, and it was basically a school built for UofI, University of Michigan, and Wisconsin-Madison students to attend. We don't go to school with any actual Spaniards, however the teachers are all from Granada and no English is allowed to be spoken in any of the classes. It's sweet! I don't feel embarrassed to speak in Spanish like I used to in classes at UofI, and the professors are so helpful. I love my Historia de Arte class, because every Monday we get to actually go to the place who's art and architecture we're learning about and actually have class in the building (so far we've been to the Granada Cathedral, and the Royal Chapel where Ferdinand and Isabel are buried)! I also like my Arab-Muslim class a lot because strangely I know a lot about Islam so I'm doing well in it. My culture class is a favorite as well because the main goal of the class is simply for us to become fluent speakers...and it doesn't really matter what we speak about as long as it relates somewhat to Spain (In the last conversation we discussed the overwhelming amount of Caca that owners leave on the streets of Granada without cleaning up. Caca is dog poop. People are gross.).

In other news, I'm still fine, tonight I'm having seafood pasta for dinner, and last night I went to a bar to watch the Barcelona-Madrid game on a 20 foot screen while drinking cerveza and cheering for Real-Madrid (they tied)! I think I'm becoming a real Spaniard...although my host madre tells me I still have to work on not smiling so much. I tell her I was born smiling, and then we laugh together. I think she finally understands how funny I am!

That's all for now, next time I won't leave you hanging for as long as I previously had...that was just rude of me! 

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Málaga (not in any order...sowwy)!

And how could we forget Molly's First Day of School?? :)

Adios!

i Me Encanta La Alhambra !

...Or "I love the Alhambra!" for all the single-language folk out there.

Anyways, I have finally won in the war between myself and jet lag, and thus now have the energy to start doing all the wonderful things that study abroad students get to do, such as blog, eat churros, and be international!
With that said, I would like to begin by telling you allllllll about a little day trip my group took together this past Sunday to a muy famoso place in Granada known as La Alhambra! As you'll be able to tell by las fotos that follow, La Alhambra is a very huge and very old castle/fortress/miniature town overlooking the city of Granada. It was built by the Moors back in 711 and eventually taken over by the Catholics in 1492, and I can definitely see why. If I ever came across a place that was that beautiful and detailed and came with sweet gardens and a view, I would want to take it over too!
Anyway, the group met at the meeting place that morning, and we walked together up the hill to get there. I'm using the word "together" rather loosely, due to the fact that I'm pretty sure our group leader Miguel thought he was participating in the 100 yard dash at the Olympics, so naturally, on a 30 minute walk up a hill that was probably equivalent to an incline of 20 on a treadmill, the strong and healthy were separated from the weak and whiny. I'm embarrassed to tell you what group I was a part of.
Once we finished climbing that wretched hill, we dove right into various parts of the Alhambra. My group started by walking around the ruins and taking pictures of all the views, and then we got to go into the buildings. Que hermosa! I could not believe how beautiful all the fountains, statues, baths and even just the walls were! The walls were especially one of the coolest parts porque they all are COMPLETELY carved with either verses of the Qu'ran or just other designs that meant something or other to them. The tour of the inside took about 2 hours, and after eating lunch (my host mom made me a sandwich with a spanish omelette and ketchup on it, probably because the only conversation we've had where we've understood eachother was about my newfound love for spanish omelettes), we took a tour of the Generalife, the name for the gardens that surround the Alhambra. I don't know if I've ever seen something so beautiful, and the only thing that could have made any it better was if it had not been a rainy day in the middle of winter, because unfortunatamente not all of the flowers/trees were in bloom. It is easily my favorite thing I've seen since being in Spain, partially because it made me think a lot about my mom. I thought she would really really love all the flowers and exotic plants and how good everything smelled. I can't wait to go back in the springtime, and then again in 5-10 years to get married there! Todos son invitados!

In other news: I am fine, my host-mom still intimidates me with how fast she speaks, and I am currently in the midst of planning all the trips I want to take to various european destinations with all my new amigos! Suggestions are welcome and encouraged, and the money to do so is encouraged even more! :)


And now, La Alhambra....

 The outside baths/ruins

 There's me!

 The watchtower/ruins of the mini-city

 The atriums looked just like my apartment in Champaign's atrium!

 Overlooking the city!

 See, i have made friends

 These are my artsy pictures...

 I loved all the ceilings

 Another ceiling

 An example of the wall carvings...i told you!

Until next time, Alhambra!