Christmas!!

This year has been a little different. Instead of spending Christmas with the Fam I am spending it here with my new Danish family. I have had a blast here but am realizing how much I love being with my own family and how amazing they are. My brothers and their wives are headed to separate parts of the world so it is a rare occasion to find us all together. However those times together are the best. I just want to give a shout out to them because God has blessed me with two amazing older brothers, the best parents, the cutest nephew, and the best sister-in-laws I could ask for! God is good!

I finally fit in!!!!

P.S. Reason for the title is because for the first time I didn't get strange looks because I had light skin and red hair. Oh it felt good!

Irlanda – amazing! I currently have a great passion to live there. I don´t know why I just love the people, the culture, the music, the countryside, and everything. So maybe I´ll start checking on some opportunities there. OK, the trip. It was soooo much fun. We arrived in Dublin at 7 at night on Friday. Throughout the plane ride the pilot would inform us about the flight. It was the strangest thing because Sydney and I literally could not understand a word he was saying and it was in our own language. It was crazy! The accent was sooo thick. Anywho, we were staying at a friends house of Sydney. His name was Javier and he´s is really from Spain. Our stay in this house was the most interesting thing I have ever witnessed. There were 2 italians, 1 spaniard, 1 japonese girl, and 1 pakistani living in this house and the best part was that they were all speaking their second language, English. The commentary was amazing!! They loved to immitate each other and the ways they speak their native language. My favorite was everyone immitating the italians...oh i wish you could have seen it. OH, and 3 out of the 5 housemates worked for IBM in Ireland. This will have some significance later.

The first night we went out on the town to Temple Bar which is a section of the city with many bars. We went to three different bars and had so much fun. We met so many new people but we started to notice the ongoing theme, everyone seemed to be from other countries and everyone seemed to work for IBM. It was crazy! Still hadn´t met a real Irish citizin...hmm?

Saturday we headed off to see Trinity College, Graften Street, and St. Stephens Park. It was a good day to see the city. My favorite part of day was when we went into an antique bookstore to look at books. I asked the lady if there was a good place to eat nearby. She said in her very Irish accent, ¨There is a good craps place just around the corner.¨ I replied, ¨Oh, you mean crepes,¨and she replied a little annoyed, ¨yea, craps.¨OH, we had a good laugh, and there were many jokes to follow like, ¨Oh, did you have a good crap?¨ Well, I guess it´s one of those things that you had to be there to understand. Anyway, all of us decided to go out that night to a club and see what Irlands´ night life is all about. Oh it was hilarious, some of the dance moves seen that night.

These pics are part of Trinity College which was founded in 1542 by Queen Elizabeth I.

These pictures were from St. Stephens park, it was sooo pretty.

Sunday, we bought a ticket to the Dublin bus tour that took us around the town to see all the main sights. We got to see an art museum and take the Guiness tour and get a free pint. One of the housemates, Keith from Pakistan, decided to join us to see the town. That night Sydney and I decided to make the boys hamburgers and french fries for dinner...oh and brownies. They had already done SO much for us, it was so nice of them. After dins, we watched a movie and got some sleep.

Keith, Sydney and I on our Dublin Bus tour.

The different Guiness bottles over time.

Monday, we woke up super early to catch a bus for our tour at 10:00...yea, that didn´t happen. As we ran through the wet streets of Dublin, we arrived to see that the bus had left only minutes earlier...LAME SAUCE! So, I decided I wanted my Starbucks more than going to a Whiskey tour. It was good to get away on my own. Sometimes those are the best times because you can do what you want. I had my coffee and read. It was relaxing and necessary. I did a little shopping and met the two others for our tour at 2. We saw the northern coast area and Mallahide castle.

These are pictures from our coastal bus tour. There were some really pretty sights!

The trip was a blast and I loved every second of it. I love the atmosphere of Dublin. All in all, we hung out with spaniards, italians, pakistanis, tunisians, portugues, polish, french, australians and japonese. Perfect!!!

Here´s us on our last leg of the journey. Yea, our train broke and we had to take a 3 hour bus ride instead to Seville. We caught a train from Seville to El puerto and arrived at 11. Long day!

New Bike comes with a New Haircut

I finally got a bike this week! It's so fun but really annoying how hard it is to ride on the streets, LAME. However, I think I currently have a cold from riding in the cold weather, not smart. And yesterday I got a new haircut. It's crazy short and I am still getting used to it, but I like it. Here's some pics.

Thankgiving

Thanksgiving in Spain was different but so much fun. We have some friends who we met through coach surfing (if you don't know what that is, sorry). They live in our town but work in the Naval Base in a nearby town. So, they are american and a lot older than us. Which means some of them have sweet homes. My roommates and I made broccolli salad, a normal salad, and brought some pumpkin pies from the american base. The house we went to is amazing. We went to a Halloween party there as well. It is basically a mini-palace. Hard to describe but I will show you pictures. Let's get to the dinner, it was amazing. There were 15 people at dinner and we all made amazing dishes. We even had homemade pumpkin, apple, and raspberry pie!! After we stuffed ourselves we made a bonfire in the backyard and ate s'mores and talked!! That's what is good about having amazing naval friends because they can get all the sweet things from home in their grocery store. All in all, a good night. I think one of my favorite parts was having our spanish friend there, Manuel. In this picture he is on the left. It was so much fun for me just introducing Thanksgiving to someone else. He loved all the pies, but he was most surprised with the pumpkin! It was hilarious!

Ok, here is some of the house!

This is the center room. If you see that past the window there are steps leading to the roof, it's so pretty.

This is Caity, but look at the background!!

Weekend of Pure Glory (Cont.) - Sunday

After a sweet trip the day before, i asked, "How could it get better?"...and it did. The same four girls woke up early sunday morning to meet our guide at the Plaza de Toros at 9:00. Out jumps a little old man with the biggest smile. He was like my long lost grandfather, he was precious. OH, his name is Jesus. Jesus had us all jump into his blue, sleek VW van and we set off on our day long journey. He first took us to a little town on the way to get some breakfast in our bods. That breakfast just happened to be freshly fried churros and coffee.

Then he took us to a nearby town called Arcos de la Frontera. He drove us around and showed us some amazing sights and views.
Then he drove us up towards the mountains where we stopped by some towns kind of built into the sides of the mountains. He was an awesome tour guide because he seemed to know about everything. OH, at one of these towns we had yet another cup of coffee. As you can tell, coffee is not abnormal here...and neither is a beer during mid-day. After that he took us on a little hike where we ended up at his favorite spot to come think. We planted three new trees and we named them (don't remember the names though).


After the trees we set off for the top of the mountain. Once we arrived Jesus had a surprise for us. Who knew a VW van had so many hiding places? He pulled out a loaf of bread, drinks, meat, cheese, and vegies. It was one of my favorite meals so far. Once we had our tummies filled we started to climb the mountain. We almost got killed by some toros, no biggy (that's for you jules). But the sight from the top was amazing. We could see all of the province of Cadiz, from the Ocean to Sevilla.

Top of the world

Now it was about 6:00 and we decided to head down to nearby town to have yet another coffee and pastries. I sware, all these pastries and coffee is not good for me...but yet it is, hmmm? The sun was setting as we started for home and we snapped some quick photos. We drove back listening to 80's tunes and doozing off in the back seat from the long day. It was perfect!

Doesn't it remind of the movie, Chocolat?

Loving the view!

Weekend of pure GLORY!!! (Saturday)

Last weekend was one of my favorite weekends. WHY? Because we got to see 8 pueblocitos (towns) in 2 days, crazy amazing! Saturday, I woke up at 9:23 realizing I was supposed to meet my friends at 9:00...hmmmm. I jumped up, ran to the bathroom, took 20 second shower and got ready in about 10 minutes and ran out to meet them on the corner. Great start, eh? So, three other girls and I drove down to Tarifa in on of the girls cars. Tarifa is the top surfing town in Spain. It really looks like a mini-Hawaii...it was really fun. From there we drove to Ageciras which is a big port town for a lot of immigrants from Africa. We definitely got a great view of Africa, it was kind of weird. From there we visited a small beach town with some sweet ruines and ate some lunch and walked on the beach. It was probably about 75 degrees out...HOT. From there we drove up to this little town on top of some cliffs. It was like from a movie, like Chocolat. It was amazing and soooo quaint. We had coffee there and enjoyed the amazing view from the top.

This ferry connects to Morocco....CRAZY!

AFRICA

Las chicas, Nadie (Canadian -speaks french, spanish, english), Marine (French - speaks french and spanish), Talia (Mercer Island (hah) - speaks english and little spanish) You can imagine the languages being spoken.

The glorious beach of Bolonia!

Vejer de la Frontera.

The view from Vejer.

And the girls again, it was lots of fun!

Cordoba

Prayer: my computer is being super lame (aka. having a virus) so I sent it to a computer place and they were going to reboot it and put everything in Spanish, hah. But then the power cord decided it would stop working. So, it´s just a big hassle.

OK, so two weekends ago we made a quick weekend trip to Cordoba. We arrived by train and set off for our hostel. It was the first experience I had stayed in a hostel and it ended up being one of the best nights sleep since I have been here, funny huh?? The first day we visited the Mezquita which is a huge Cathedral that was built by the moors and it is not hard to see the moorish influence. We randomly met up with some of my roommates friends who are also living in Spain. We spent a lot of time touring the city with them. It was a good time just to see the city. It was really pretty. Here´s some photos.

Our amazing hostel! It was so warm and the beds were so comfy. Although there were 7 other people in the room it was such a good night sleep.

La Mezquita

We are using the reflection from the glass windows above.

View from afar of the Mezquita and the city.

El Alcazar...gardins in Cordoba

Mariposa - Butterfly

View from the top of the gardens

MIghty Mouse

Ok, this is kind of dumb but I have to write about it. Since I didn't have work today I decided to go for a run after I woke up. I ran to a tennis club just to check on availibility of lessons and costs. I showed up and walked around the courts but no one was there. So I looked a the information board. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a little tail whip around the corner as a quite large mouse bounced across the grass into a bush nearby. Two minutes later it came out of the bush and started running at me which made me want to run for my life. Anywho, it then ran to a nearby corner of the house. To myself I thought, "oops, your stuck, no where to go." OH, how wrong was I. It took a little leap a started to climb the wall. I seriously could not believe it, it was amazing. It scaled the wall and jumped over the fence into the backyard of the house. It was amazing and a little scary that a mouse is capable of scaling walls. yikes!

This is for you Julie!!

JULIE, you will be excited to hear about this. A friend of mine who just happens to be from Mercer Island (crazy!) and I have had the desire to sing lately. SO, why not join a local choir? This last monday we decided to go sit in on the choir practice which ended up with us actually joining in with the choir. The question is...what am I doing? I have no idea but it´s worth the try, right? Julie, all your voice lessons are popping into my head, I love it. However, I have to point out that the director of the choir dresses in all black and reminds me of someone who is from the Adams Family. He´s so serious and normally looks really pissed at the choir and rolls his eyes. I had to hide my face half of the time because I was dying inside, whew. The choir is mainly people over 45 with a couple of younger peeps here and there. Maybe we´ll get some free meal offers. We´ll see what happens with this but it is fun to try it out.

My First Spanish Date (HAH)

Yea, we are leaning over because the camera wasn´t pointed in the right direction...there´s the explanation, muah.

Hilarious because about 2 weeks ago I was talking with one of the teachers in my school saying I really want to speak more Spanish and get to know more Spanish people. She all of a sudden was like, “OH, really, you want to meet other Spanish people? Perfect, I will introduce you to my son!” (all in spanish, of course, ha). Oh yea…her son just happened to be 29. Anywho, he came to school this last week to meet and have coffee with me…oh, and with his mom and many other teachers. Not awkward at all. Actually, it turned out to be quite fun. On to the date, he picked me up after school and drove me to Cadiz, the capital of our province. He took me to a restaurant and showed me some more typical food, fried fish mostly. Then we walked around Cadiz, as I had my own personal history guide, and climbed to the top of the cathedral, walked to El Castillo de San Sebastian (castle), and talked in Spanish the whole time. It was lots of fun and good to finally to have a full conversation in Spanish. We spoke for at least 4 hours. It will be nice to have a friend to call or do stuff with. Anywho, nice guy and he will be a good FRIEND!

This is at the top of the cathedral.

View from the top...again.

This is the view of El Castillo de San Sebastian in the distance. I guess in this exact place near the water is where Haley Berry climbed out of the water in James Bond in her scandelous swimsuit. I guess everyone was standing right where I was just screaming and yelling when she came out, haha, funny.

Some cute little boats floating in the water...just to the right there were a bunch of cute little boats floating on land because of the tide, ha.

The walkway to San Sebastian.

There is the castle behind me...