Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday

Monday:
After my classes, Amit, Brittany, and I decided to go to a cafe to talk for a bit. Amit ended up leaving as soon we picked a cafe to go to judo class, so Brittany and I sat outside on the terrace and had a glass of wine and chatted. It was nice catching up with her, since she had visited Barcelona this past weekend. We went home around 9 for dinner. That was about it for Monday.

Tuesday:
I had one class, and after class, I went to a little cafe with Chelsea while she ate lunch. I had some bread with olive oil and tomato and a chocolate donut (oops), which were so yummy. It was nice talking to Chelsea, because we usually don't do things by ourselves. After that, I went home and had lunch, and then I walked along the sidewalk near the sea and sat on the beach for a few hours. It was lovely. Then I started on my mission. I realized I have three months left here. Three months is not very long in the grand scheme of things. So I decided that I was going to meet more new people. I got on the Erasmus Facebook group (which is the program of all the international students) and made plans with a group to go to the tapas route with people that I had literally never met. Amit joined me too. We introduced ourselves to some French, Bulgarian, German, and Mexican people along with various other nationalities and headed to the tapas bar area. Amit and I ran into some friends from Holy Cross on the way and briefly talked to them but not much, because we didn't want to lose the new group we had just met. As we ran off from those girls, we ran into another group of Erasmus students we knew and talked to them for a short time, before running off to find our original group. They were nowhere to be found (because the bars are soooo packed), so we went back and found the group of Erasmus students we already knew. We went to a bar with them and chatted for a while then went to the bar with the famous mojitos (they're only famous to us, because they are delicious and cheap). At that bar, we ran into the original group, so it made me feel better to tell them we didn't ditch them, we had just gotten lost. So now I have so many friends from all over the world! I will hopefully have lots of new interesting stories with my new friends, since we are probably going to hang out with them a lot more. We stayed there for a long time, chatting with new people and enjoying mojitos, until some of the girls said they were going to a bar on paseo maritimo after tapas. Of course Amit and I jumped on the opportunity. First we went to one of the girl's apartments to use the restroom and pick up a bottle of cheap tinto verano (red wine with sparkling water), and we all had to huddle in the kitchen while we spoke in whispers of sausages and other interesting things, due to her extremely old roommate. Then one of the girls gave us all party horns (it was her friend's birthday, who was visiting from Germany), which I am quite sure the neighbors did not appreciate. Imagine a group of 6 girls, 1 guy, slightly tipsy, carrying plastic cups of 1.50 euro wine, all blowing party horns, walking down the street at 1am early Wednesday morning. That is my life. We took taxis to the bar, since it was pretty far away. It ended up being the same bar I went to on St. Patrick's Day, but they had a live reggae band.. it was pretty strange, to say the least. The music was pretty awful, but it was fun being with everyone. Amit, Salisa, and I stayed there until the bar closed.. around 3am. It was sooo much fun. I ran into the lady who is a co-owner of the diner at the bar, which was pretty funny and random. We took a taxi back to a 24/7 cafe and got pastries at 4am before heading home. I think I got home around 4:45am, on a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. It was definitely a night to be remembered. :) I love experiences like these.

Wednesday:
I slept until I had a meeting with my program director about a study project I am working on with Hannah. The meeting went well, then we went to the computer lab to print off our travel papers for Germany!!! (Hannah is going to Germany too but to a different city.) I am so excited to be going to Germany tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be super nice too (like, 75 and sunny.. talk about lucky!) After that, I came home and ate a delicious lunch, and Kendra and I decided to go on a walk since the weather was lovely. We had some good girly chat and got some sun and exercise while doing it. Then we decided we wanted a drink, so we walked along paseo maritimo and found a little cafe with the cheapest drinks we could find and stayed there for a while. We walked back to Palma after that, and I am still pretty exhausted from all the sun and 3 hours of walking. Tomorrow, I am going to Germany! I will have lots to blog about when I return, but it will probably be at least Monday before I post again.

Hasta luego y dos besos,
Lynne

Friday, Saturday, & Sunday

Friday:
It was pretty boring. I was so sad that my mom and aunt were gone. I already missed them when I woke up at 3pm on Friday. (yes, I was pretty exhausted.) I didn't really do much of anything on Friday until it was time to go out. Amit, Andrea, and I headed to botellon and enjoyed talking for an hour or two. We decided to go looking for a group of other international students, but we couldn't find the bar they were in. We ran into someone we had met a few weeks ago and ended up going to a club with them. We hadn't drank much, so we got tired quickly and headed home pretty early.

Saturday:
I slept in yet again. That's what weekends are good for, right? (and every other day of my life here in Spain haha) Around 6pm, Hannah and I met up to go to Mercadona to buy some things for her birthday fiesta at Emma's apartment. Emma's host madre offered to throw Hannah a little party and invite everyone over to celebrate. We headed to Emma's around 7 to meet up with everyone else. Emma's host mother is a very interesting lady. She told us dirty jokes in Spanish that we didn't understand because we don't know slang vocabulary, and lots of other things that host madres don't usually say. She also really liked this one phallic balloon and kept hitting everyone with it. It was an extremely entertaining and strange party. After we left there around 10ish, Amit, Hannah, and I went to the bar attached to the hotel my mom stayed in for a glass of wine. After that, we went home to get ready to go out all night. We met up with Drew at Plaza Espanya and headed on the bus de nit to paseo. We did botellon for a while, of course attracting creepers along the way. One of the most interesting stories was when two guys, one short and about 50 and the other tall and 21, approached us to "practice English." The older one introduced his friend like this, "This is my friend Tony. He is a player....(long pause, during which we all laughed) .. of tennis." Hannah and I talked while Amit and Drew talked to the creepers. I still don't understand why they were together. We went into one of the clubs to dance and had so much fun. We headed back around 5ish.

Sunday:
Guess what I did most of the day? ... slept! I woke up around 3pm and did absolutely nothing.. until about 8pm when Amit sent me a message and asked if I wanted to go to a bar with some other international students. I quickly got dressed, ate dinner, and headed out to meet them. We went to a bar that specializes in international beers, especially from Belgium. The guys that wanted to go there are from Belgium, so that is why we went there. It was so much fun! I wish every night here could be like that. None of us had any clue what the Belgian beers tasted like, so they asked us what we usually prefer and picked out different types for us to try. I loved the two different types they picked for me. We had great conversation about documentaries, school, politics, and everything in between. It was one of my favorite times here in Palma. I went home later than I should have and finished up some homework before heading to bed.

Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday:
It was such a fun day! Though the weather was far from perfect, we had a lovely day. We took a bus to the small town of Valldemossa to spend the day. It is a little village nestled in the mountains, overlooking a beautiful valley. Needless to say, the surroundings were spectacular, even in the ugly weather. It was quite a bit chillier there too. We ate lunch at a little cafe there which had decent food. We went to pretty much every store there, and my mom and I bought something in just about every store there.. haha. We had so many bags of little things. My mom found a beautiful pearl necklace with black, gold, and white pearls that I just had to have. We bought a lot of gifts for people there. We went to a little cafe to try "coca de patata" which is a potato pastry. They were so delicious, especially when dipped in hot chocolate. Valldemossa is so picture-esque. It looks like a town where someone would want to film a movie. After we returned home from our long day at Valldemossa, we rested in the hotel for a while and watched our favorite "Aprende ingles" channel, which is intended to teach people English. It is quite entertaining. We ate dinner at the hotel bar that night again.

Thursday:
Their last day in Palma. :( I met my mom early to go on a walk around the city. My aunt visited the aquarium, which she said was very cool. I want to go there for sure. My mom and I walked all the way to Paseo Maritimo (where all the bars are), which was pretty far and hot in the sun. It was nice just talking to her and enjoying the beautiful views. We decided to take the bus back to the city, since we didn't want to walk back all the way. We went to a cafe and sat outside for lunch near plaza espanya. I had to go to my one Thursday class, so I headed to school after our lunch. After class, I met them at the hotel to make plans for the night. We went to Bar Tulsa for a drink before dinner, because they were determined to go there. We tried to explain to the workers that we are from Tulsa, a city in the U.S., but they did not understand what we were saying, even when I translated it to Spanish. We walked to a restaurant called wineing for their last dinner in Palma. wineing is a little place with tapas and self-serve wine machines. They give you a little credit card that you insert into the machines before selecting which wine you want. You can either get a taste, half, or full glass. It was pretty neat. Needless to say, we loved it. The food was amazing also. They have the best bread with olive oil and tomato that I have tried here so far. We also had meatballs and grilled provolone with tomatoes. We sampled three desserts, which were all quite spectacular. I definitely want to visit that restaurant again. After dinner, we walked back to the hotel, because they had to leave early the next day. I ended up spending the night at the hotel with them, because I was so sleepy after dinner. Well, by spending the night, I mean sleeping from 11pm to 4am, because they had to get up to catch their early flight. I rode in the cab with them until he dropped me off at my apartment, so we said goodbye in the taxi around 5am. I went into my apartment and slept... a lot.

Monday 3.21 & Tuesday 3.22

Monday:
I forgot to include that I was also losing my voice at this point. On Saturday, my throat was super scratchy and it was pretty bad for the next few days. I kinda liked it, though, because it made my Spanish accent sound more legit. I had to go to a few classes before meeting up with my mom and aunt around 2:30pm for lunch. We went to the Indian restaurant (the same one we went to on St. Patrick's Day) near the main plaza. My mom had never eaten Indian food, so she was pretty excited. We all loved the food, including my mom, and enjoyed our lunch very much. I finished up some homework at the restaurant before all three of us headed to get on the metro so they could visit campus. We got to the UIB right before my class started, so I showed them around the building I have all my classes in and went to class. They walked around the campus for a little bit while waiting for me to finish my class. After class, the three of us and Hannah went to Rosaleda for churros and chocolate.. yum. Again, they loved it. I think we went back to the hotel after that to rest a little. I think that is the night that my mom and I went down to the bar attached to the hotel and had a light dinner and Mallorcan wine. One of the waiters and I had a pretty lengthy conversation in Spanish during which he asked me how many years I had been living in Spain... Yeah, I am that good.

Tuesday:
Before class, we met at Corte to browse. My aunt found a beautiful gold and black cord necklace with a gold engraved pendant that says "Amore" on it that she purchased for me as a gift for my accomplishments. It is so beautiful! After that, we went to the hotel bar for lunch. I had to leave to go to my one class, and after class, I met up with my family for more shopping! They had visited Corte again while I was in class and had found a Mexican bar with margaritas on the top floor (The top floor changes every month or so, so you never know what you're going to find), so of course we had to go back. My mom also bought me a lovely Mallorcan pearl bracelet at Corte earlier in the day. We went up to the top floor cantina and had a couple margaritas and also purchased a bag of chips and salsa from the Mexican food section to go with it. That was so incredible, because I have been missing Mexican food so much. It was almost like going to Pueblo... almost. We did some more shopping after that and went back to the hotel to drop off our purchases. We went to the Diner for dinner, which was yummy as usual.

Saturday & Sunday - with my mom and aunt!!

Saturday:
I didn't stay out late on Friday so that I could wake up and meet them at the airport early, but they ended up missing their flight in Madrid (because the Madrid airport is the worst on the planet). My mom was able to call me and tell be they would be about 2 hours late, so I got to sleep a little more, which is always nice. I ended up not getting on the bus fast enough for them, so they took a taxi into the city and I met them at the hotel. It was so good to see both of them!! I can't believe I have been here for 2 months already. Anyway, we went up to their hotel room (which is super cool and has an awesome view of the city) and talked a bit before heading out on a walk. We walked around the city center and ate lunch outside at one of the cafes in Plaza Mayor. It was such a beautiful, sunny day. We had a nice lunch with delicious food as usual; then we went walking some more. We walked through all the main areas in town and ended up seaside in front of the cathedral. We walked along the sidewalk by the sea, taking the long way back to the hotel. We stopped by El Corte Ingles to get some water and food for their room. They were quite exhausted, so we stayed at the hotel for a while so they could rest. My aunt Karen ended up staying at the hotel to sleep, so my mom and I headed out for a walk and dinner. We went to "Bodega La Rambla", a little tapas bar that my host madre suggested. It was sooooo good. They, by far, have the best tapas I've tried here. We had bread (of course), vino blanco, sauteed mushrooms, calamari, and meatballs (that were absolutely incredible). My mom could not believe how cheap it was, haha. It was only 14 euros for all of our food and drinks. We went back to the hotel room after dinner so she could catch up on sleep! The three of us ended up talking quite a bit at the hotel, and I left around midnight. I met up with Hannah and Chelsea and the diner to see literally the last 2 minutes of a soccer game that they were watching there. Well, I really just went to talk to them. We talked for a while then headed home.. it was definitely one of the calmest Saturday nights I have had in Palma so far. It was such a great day, because I got to see my family and show them around my beloved city.

Sunday:
We all slept in! Hooray! I met them at their hotel, and we decided to go to Ses Illetes beach for the day, since everything is closed on Sundays. First we had lunch at one of the few places that was open before catching a bus to the beach. I am glad that they got to have an experience on a bus here, because the buses are surprisingly really nice, clean, and efficient. The views on the bus ride are also amazing, especially when you get close to the beach. We spent an hour or two at the beach, soaking up the sun and enjoying the views. My aunt was really excited to dip her toes in the Mediterranean Sea, because she had never visited it before. My mom definitely loved the beach, and I know she will be envious every time I talk about it in the future. Since the beach gets shady and cold around 5, we headed back to Palma. Since we had some time to kill, I was trying to think of places that are open on Sundays, and I remembered that my favorite cafe is open on Sundays! We headed to C'an Juan d'Saigo (still not sure how to spell it nor how to pronounce it) for Mallorcan treats. My mom fell in love with the charming old cafe, and we ordered just about one of everything on the menu. We had a bottle of cava, one cup of hot chocolate, an ensaimada, an empanada, and almond ice cream. It was a delicious Mallorcan feast! We stayed there for a couple of hours, enjoying the food and good conversation, before going to eat dinner with my host family. I was pretty nervous for the dinner, because I had to translate everything. That was fun. I literally translated English to Spanish and Spanish to English for over 3 straight hours. It was a lot of fun, and it was really good practice. She had placed little dishes of potato chips on the table like as an appetizer, and I giggled at that. We had some paella and stuffed eggplants for dinner. She also made an orange cake for dessert that was fantastic. It was definitely one of my favorite meals. I showed my host family some pictures on my computer of my family and where I live. I think we all had a really great time, and it is definitely one of my favorite memories of Palma. After they left, I did some homework and slept in preparation for my classes on Monday.

Thursday and Friday

Thursday:
St. Patrick's Day!!! (also, it is my half birthday.. meaning, I am half way to 22. meaning, I am old.) My one class was canceled, so I slept a lot and went shopping for something green. Tough life. Chelsea, Brittany, Amit, and I went to an Indian restaurant for dinner. I know, not very Irish, but oh so delicious! After that, we met up with a bunch of people and went to an Irish bar. It was super packed to we went to the other Irish bar that is close. It was great! They had Guinness on tap, which is incredible. We had so much fun and met people from all over the world! It was quite laughable, because almost no one there was Spanish. We did meet a few Spanish people who one of my friends already sort of knew. It was fun just talking and hanging out with new people and speaking some tipsy Spanish too. I really liked that bar and definitely want to go back for more Guinness on tap.. yummy.

Friday:
Yet another tough day in my life.. I spent the day at the beach. Hannah, Chelsea, and I went to my favorite beach, Ses Illetes, and just relaxed all day. It was soooo nice and fun just talking and enjoying the perfect weather. Hannah and I were pretty much constantly finding spots we had missed when applying sunscreen and therefore were constantly applying more sunscreen. I ended up only getting sunburned in one extremely random spot, which is typical. Friday night, Amit, Hannah, Brittany, and I walked around "La Lonja", which is an older area of town, because none of us wanted to stay out really late. I liked the area, but it was mostly older people there. We ended up at an Irish bar that we had been to before and only remembered upon entering. We sat at a cozy corner table and drank warm mulled wine (Swedish style), which was amazing! It is traditionally a Christmas/holiday drink, but for some reason they were serving it that night. We enjoyed a quiet evening and headed home pretty early.

Tuesday & Wednesday

Tuesday:
I only had one class on Tuesday for one and a half hours.. and that was my second and last class of the week. Lucky me? or bored me? Both. I feel like I'm on a 6 month vacation and love not having much work to do, but at the same time, I really miss the things I learn in my Vandy classes. The MHS classes are sooo interesting, and I am definitely missing having at least one MHS class. I miss learning random awesome things about medicine and health. I am taking 14 hours here, but literally went to class for 3 hours this week due to sick professors. Usually I go to class more, but it still feels like a lot less than I do at Vandy even though I take the same number of hours. Anyway, after class, I headed home and waited for tapas Tuesday! I talked to my mom for a bit about financial aid [I can't believe I just filled our all my forms for the last time!] and her upcoming trip here this weekend. We all met around 10pm to go out for tapas and drinks. It was ridiculously crowded, per usual on Tuesdays, but it was a lot of fun. We went to just about every bar in the little area and had an assortment of beers throughout the night. We found just about every creepy man in Palma, of which the only benefit was a couple of free drinks. Seriously, we had two different men at the same bar tell the 4 of us that he has a car and wants to drive us around the island. Do they really think we are going to do that??? Some people are just crazy, I suppose. Around 12:30am, everything started shutting down, so we all headed home.

Wednesday:
Another day of doing nothing! I wanted to go out and shop for a bit for something green, but the touch-and-go weather caused me to stay inside instead. It was pretty chilly and cloudy and rained quite a bit, so shopping didn't really sound good. I watched some movies and tv show episodes, Skyped, read some of the Bible online, showered, and ate a lot of food. Seriously, both of my meals yesterday were meals for a grown man. For lunch, I had paella (a giant 2-3 lb. plate of mostly rice) and about 5 spinach croquetas. For dinner, I had a giant plate containing about 3 servings of cheese-stuffed tortellini with pesto sauce [which was oh so good], a piece of bread, a small salad, and four small pork chops. Oh, and then some giant strawberries. And my madre sat with me the whole time, so I had to eat almost all of it. I was so stuffed. That was pretty much it for Wednesday.

Monday!

Yesterday was quite exciting. I started my morning by finding a needle in my room.. with my foot. Yes, there was a needle on my floor, and it stuck in my heel through my sock. Well that was an exciting way to start Monday! My first class was canceled, so I only had 2 left for the day. I got ready and went to the metro to go to school. I saw Hannah and 2 of my other friends on the metro, so we chatted on the way to school. On the way, as we were passing through the part of journey that has beautiful views of fields, olive trees, and mountains that is also about 2 minutes from the UIB station, the train just stopped. Well that was exciting. There was something wrong with the electricity, so we couldn't pass through the dark tunnel to the station since it would be dark. We stopped around 1:12pm, and my class was starting at 1:15pm. Hmm. The conductor opened the door and said something in catalan, so we weren't really sure what exactly happened. We sat there for a little more than 30 minutes until we finally moved again. As we went through the tunnel, none of the lights were working except for small orange lights on the tunnel wall. It looked pretty amazing to be going through a tunnel when it's almost completely dark. I didn't quite understand why we had waited for so long then went ahead without lights, but whatever. By the time we got to school, only about 10 minutes were left in the class, so we didn't go. Instead, Hannah and I got our university cards, and she showed me where the bus stop on campus is. (I never ride the bus, but the metro was really backed up from our little incident.) I hate the bus. It was super hot, because it was about to rain, and it was soooo crowded that I didn't get a seat. I will not be taking the bus again. I love the metro. So I went home and ate and finished up some homework and rode the metro back to school for my last class of the day, grammar. After class, we met up with Andrea, Chelsea, and Brittany and went to our favorite cafe for homemade icecream and to talk about our weekend and plans for the week. The icecream is soooo good. I had almond, which is their specialty, and it tastes like cinnamon, almond marzipan. Amazing. After that, we all headed home and ate dinner. Just another day, and another transportation fail.

Hasta pronto,
Lynne

Saturday & Sunday

Saturday:
Yesterday was definitely the most exciting day of my week! I feel like all I look forward to here is going out on the weekends. I went to see a movie called "Biutiful" with Chelsea and Andrea in the late afternoon. It was rainy and quite ugly outside, and therefore a perfect day to go to the movies. When we handed our tickets to the ticket-taker man, he asked us if we knew the film was in Spanish. We giggled and told him yes, we are students and know Spanish pretty well. People are always nicer once we tell them we are students here from the U.S. The film was was quite sad and depressing except for one scene in a bar which I can't really describe here.. it was one of the most ridiculous scenes I have ever seen, and it was quite hilarious. It is about a poor man (Javier Bardem) with cancer and his relationship with his children and other people in Barcelona. It definitely showed poverty quite well. It takes place in Barcelona, so it was cool to see and recognize some of the sites since I was just there last week. The cinematography and some of the random shots of Barcelona were definitely my favorite parts of the movie.
After the movie, I went home, ate, rested, and made plans to go out. I went with Drew, Kendra, Liz, Amit, and Sonia (new person! she is Kendra's friend from her swim team who is an Olympic swimmer from Poland/Canada.) to Paseo! Since it was raining, it was dead. There was less than half the normal amount of people. We went to a discoteca called Tito's, because Kendra got a ticket for free entrance for us (it normally costs 10-20 euros to get in) from one of the random people that always bug us on the street. Drew and Liz warned us that is was pretty lame, but we wanted to see for ourselves. We took an elevator (which had a great view of the port) up the disco, and there was a fashion show going on, featuring horribly ugly clothes and terrible models. That was interesting. We hung out for a while on the balcony just watching people dance below us (which was really funny), and then the "strippers" (they were really dancers wearing very little clothes, but they didn't strip. we just kept calling them strippers.) went on the stage and started dancing. That was soooo hilarious. There were two shirtless guys with amazing upper bodies and sparkly belt buckles, two anorexic-looking girls in very sparkly leotards, a manly-looking woman in a corset with her butt cheeks showing, and the weirdest one, a woman wearing sparkly underwear, tassel pasties, and holding a giant pink feather cape. This was the most awkward thing I have ever seen in my life. They all were dancing like you would if you were standing in a group of people, all spread out on the stage. One of the guys I could not stop staring at.. no, not due to him being sexy, but his incredible talent for being awkward. He was definitely gay and a really bad dancer, using some country/western dance moves while wearing sunglasses as well. The girl with the pink feather cape was basically dancing a strip tease without stripping, which just made her look even more awkward too. We watched them for 2-3 songs, because it was impossible not to watch them. There were a lot of older people there, even a couple that appeared to be late 50's, which also made Tito's kind of weird. I don't think I will ever go back there, but it was definitely interesting to see once. After that, we went to another bar for a while before deciding to head out to the 24/7 diner around 3am. I love that diner so much. Our friend the co-owner, Heather, was working (which was weird, since she said she never works the late night shift) and immediately was so friendly when we walked in. We settled down in a booth  after waiting a few minutes for some people to get up and watching an intense make-out session at another table. I ordered a sandwich with bacon, cheese, and tomato.. and it was incredible. None of us left any food on our plates. That diner is quickly becoming one of my favorite places here. We headed out to the street to catch a cab around 4:30am. We parted ways in Plaza España (about a 10 minute walk from my home). I saw something quite interesting on my walk home. Usually I spend the night at someone's house so I don't have to walk home, but the girl I usually stay with wasn't in town yesterday. Anyway, I have noticed sometimes when I walk home around midnight (which is waaaaaay early here) after tapas, there have been some sketch-looking women on the street corners on the way home about a block from where I live. I noticed this one lady who looked to be about 25 wearing one of the most hideous outfits I have ever seen in my life (a plaid skirt with black tulle underneath, super high 5" heeled boots, and some weird home-made looking shirt, with horribly greasy hair and raccoon-eye makeup) standing on the corner, and as I was walking past her, a car with a 60ish year old man driver pulled into the street next to the corner and she walked over and got in the car. I was pretty disgusted upon seeing this and immediately thought of how much I hate the porn/sex industry. It is so sad that people choose to earn money that way and that other people actually pay them. Anyway, I had a lot of fun even though it was kind of a bust due to the Spaniards' fear of rain.

Sunday:
I slept a lot today.. meaning, I ate breakfast at 3:00pm. I didn't even drink that much last night nor did I stay our incredibly late. Oh well, I guess I needed it. It is a gorgeous day outside, so I have my window open. I might take a walk later too. My mom and aunt Karen will be here on Saturday!! I can't stop thinking about how excited I am to see them. Drew and Liz gave me some tips on some restaurants to go to and things to do with them, since both of their parents have visited. I have a bit of homework to do today (which will probably take about an hour.. I love homework here) and that's about it. My host madre's brother and sister-in-law iare out of town, and their dog is staying with us. It is one of the ugliest/cutest dogs I have ever seen. I think it is a Yorkie, but it is soooo tiny. It reminds me of our "Ratdog", but it actually looks like a rat. I think it weighs about 2 lbs., it is really old, and has the weakest bark ever. I think it is scared of me, because it keeps walking up to me and running away. It is so hilarious.. I will try to take a picture of it. I have a feeling this week will be pretty uneventful, and the highlight of the week will be my mom and aunt arriving!

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday

Monday:
I went to classes all day. I walked around after my last class with some people and enjoyed a delicious coconut cake/bread from a street bakery vendor. It was incredible. I met up with other friends and walked around with them for a while before heading back for dinner. I remember being happy to be back in Palma. I also started getting pretty sick on Monday.. lots of sneezing and coughing.

Tuesday:
I felt pretty bad on Tuesday and really didn't want to go to class, but I went anyway. Also, I decided to try out the gym at school after my class. I rode one of the stationary bikes for about 20 minutes until I felt like I was going to cough up a lung. Sickness, plus already bad lungs, meant that I could not do nearly as much as I thought I could. I want to go back when I feel better. I also bought my Hanson 5 of 5 London ticket package on Tuesday with money that Vanderbilt gave me (thanks, Vandy!), so I will be going to London for a week in June and couldn't be more excited! My mom told me about the student in Madrid who was missing and found dead on this day. I was pretty shaken up by it. I read through his blog which is eerily similar to mine. I can't even imagine one of my friends here going missing and turning up dead in a river or ocean. I can't stop thinking about him and his family and friends. We were going to go out for tapas, but everyone was sick and didn't feel like it.

Wednesday:
No class yet again. My host madre calls these days my "vacaciones". This was a good day for vacaciones, since I felt pretty awful and sneezed non-stop. I spent most of my day resting and watching Gossip Girl. We went out for tapas and drinks around 10:30pm and only stayed out til midnight or so. I like these nights, because it's fun to catch up and buy cheap drinks and food. Though, I have never bought tapas when we go out for them, because I always eat dinner first. It would be very expensive to fill up on tapas, so they're more like after dinner appetizers. One of the bars we went into was playing an episode of Spongebob on a projector on a wall. I was quite excited. We all got glasses of lemon beer, which was very delicious.

Thursday:
I did nothing all day except go to one class. We had planned on eating dinner and bowling as a group on Thursday night, so I anxiously waited on that all day. We went to an American diner aptly called "Diner" that is very close to my house. It is decorated like an old 50's diner, which is so cool. It has a lot of Route 66 (I used to live a mile from Route 66 in Oklahoma) decor, Texas decor, and some Oklahoma decor too! I felt right at home there. Their menu was sooo hard to choose from, since everything sounded so wonderfully American. I decided on a grilled cheese and ham sandwich with french fries. It was definitely amazing and made me miss Sonic and my mom's grilled cheese sandwiches. Some of their menu items include omelets, hamburgers, cheese fries, milkshakes, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and club sandwich. Needless to say, I will be back. One of the owners came and talked to us [she is in her 30's and has red hair] and spoke with an American accent, which we were not expecting. She is from Texas.. ha. She talked to us for a long time, which was very cool. I am pretty jealous of her life. She opened a restaurant in Palma with one of her friends, and it's really successful. That sounds like something I would want to do. All of our food was incredible. She told us there is another location closer to the bars that is open 24/7... sounds like we have a new place to go to at 7am after paseo. We didn't end up going bowling after dinner, because the bus has already stopped running. Hannah, Amit, and I decided to get some bebidas at the foto kiosko (our favorite store) and go to a park. We got some really deliciously crappy purple cherry flavored vodka which barely had any alcohol in it and played on swings and the coolest teeter totter ever for a few hours. We were waiting on Brittany to go to a bar until 2am, but she ended up not coming so we walked down there together.. only to arrive just as it had closed. We saw some of the other CIEE and Erasmus people outside and said hello before heading home.
This is the diner website! http://www.restaurantesdiner.com/

Friday:
I literally did nothing all day except eat meals and watch television shows online. I also looked up things to do in London like Harry Potter location tours. I also have been trying to find a hotel close to the concert venue and flights too. There's a lot to sort out, but I have 3 months to do so.

This week was pretty uneventful! Lots of people here are sick, and I stayed home a lot. Another change I forgot to add is that I asked my uncle to change my flight home to June 30th, which is the last possible day I can stay in my host family's home. I know I'm not going to want to leave these perfect beaches and crystal clear water, especially during the summer. I wish I could spend an entire year here. The summer is supposedly the best time to be here, and I will be leaving before the peak of summer even starts. But, I am so thankful that I have gotten to be here at all.. I never even dreamed I would get the opportunity to live on a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea for 6 months. Thanks to everyone who has helped make that possible. :) Hopefully I will be a bit more productive today, but probably not, since the weather is pretty bad. My mom and aunt Karen will be here one week from today, and I can't wait!!! Every day when I walk by the hotel they are staying in, I get even more excited. Also, apologies for not posting in so long! I will try to be more diligent in the future.

un beso,
Lynne

Saturday & Sunday - Barcelona, part dos!

Saturday:
As I said in the last post, I slept for 12 hours the night before, so I woke up feeling awesome. I watched a Spanish tourism documentary while getting ready, which mostly focused on Mallorca. It was a really cool video. It showed before the boom and after the boom and also tons of drunk 20 something year olds on the beaches in Mallorca yelling about how much they love Mallorca. This made me a little homesick for Palma. We decided to go to a monastery/small town on a mountaintop about an hour outside of Barcelona, called Montserrat. It ended up taking about 2 hours to get there, so we were ready to explore by the time we got there. We had to take a funicular train (which means a train that can go up a steep slope) up the mountain, which was pretty awesome. It was quite exciting seeing a rock wall super close on one side, and on the other side, looking straight down a cliff. We went in the basilica there and took some photos (which I later found out was prohibited even though everyone was taking photos). We went to a really nice restaurant inside the one hotel there for lunch. I had cannelloni, olive bread, and champagne. It was amazing!! The bread literally had black olives cooked into it.. I think it might be my favorite bread ever. After our delicious meal, we walked around the little are a a bit more and took tons more pictures. We headed back to Barcelona pretty soon, though, to prepare for our grand football (soccer) adventure.
We made our way to Camp Nou, the legendary football stadium in Barcelona. There were thousands of people all over the streets waiting for the players to drive in to the stadium. Hannah and I purchased FC Barcelona scarves to wear at the game. Out of pure luck, our seats were inside the first gate we came across, which was soooo nice. We literally didn't have to search for our gate at all, because we just walked straight up to it. We were definitely two of the first 50 people let in, which was amazing. When we reached our seats in the uppermost section, the entire stadium was empty, except for about 10 other people. We got some great pictures of the stadium, including the yellow lettering ("Mes que un club" and "Barcelona") that was soon covered up by spectators. We had seats in the front row of our section, which was amazing! We got some food before it started (I got a hot dog, and it was incredible!! I was expecting it to be horrible, but it was on delicious bread and also about a foot long for only 4 euros) and settled in to our seats. The commentator only spoke in Catalan, which was fun to try to translate what he was saying. The game was quite unexciting, as I am not a huge soccer fan (as in, that was the first full soccer game I have ever watched, and I know none of the rules). Barcelona scored one goal and basically had possession the whole game. It was fun just being there in the crowd. They played some good dance songs and also some Native American sounding songs, which was interesting. The people are very well-mannered; it is very different than American football. When they get mad at the calls, they remain seated and shake their fists. We literally saw a sea of fists moving at the same time when they didn't like the call. They don't stand up during the game unless they score. It was a very polite game. I was expecting drunk people standing, dancing, fighting, screaming, and throwing things like American football, but it was quite the opposite. After the game, we searched for the train station to go back to Las Ramblas to check out the Carnaval festivities. [Yes, it was Carnaval that weekend, and we didn't even know it until we were there.] After a tricky maneuver on the train which involved taking the elevator to skip the line to go the opposite way on the train for one stop then switching trains to go the correct way in order to get seats and get ahead of the endlessly long line at the nearest train station, we headed back to the main part of town. A lady dressed like a tree yelled something in Catalan at me on the train... I must have had the most confused look on my face, because I was. She finally realized that I don't speak Catalan and asked me in Castellano who won the football game. (This was really funny, because literally everywhere we went, everyone spoke English to me. It was really frustrating, and at one point, when someone told me "2 minutes until the train leaves" I said, "Hablo español, señor!!" So it was funny that a lady thought that I would know Catalan when no one in Barcelona thought I could even understand Castellano.)We arrived at Las Ramblas, looked around at all the people, refused buying a beer from a guy with a 6-pack, and got back on the train to go home. We were soooo exhausted.

Sunday:
It was quite an uneventful day. We headed to the airport pretty early (even earlier for me since my flight was 2 hours later than Hannah's), dealing with yet another stupid Barcelona transportation fail. We had to pay 5 euros and 5 cents for a 20 minute bus ride to the airport, and they wouldn't let us use our bus cards. What a ripoff. I really don't think I will ever go back to Barcelona. It was fun to see the sites, but there's nothing else I want to do there. Everything is so expensive just to ripoff tourists, and it feels a lot less Spanish than Palma. By Saturday afternoon, I was already missing Palma. I had a lot of time to kill at the Barcelona airport, but lucky for me, the airport is amazing. It has a mall and tons of restaurants in it. I had some tapas and wine at a little tapas bar and spent a lot of time browsing the shops. The only thing I bought was a giant plastic Kinder egg man holding a banner that says "I heart Barcelona!" which also has 7 Kinder eggs inside. Pretty awesome souvenir, right? I headed back to my beloved Palma and couldn't be any happier to return there. I rode the bus back to my street and was really just so happy to be back. I missed it and wasn't a huge fan of Barcelona. As soon as I got home, my host madre made me a huge meal, which I ate all of. I am forever appreciative of having warm meals when I come home. I did some homework and slept.. a lot.

Thursday & Friday - Barcelona!

 Be sure to click on my Flickr link on the side to see photos of what I'm describing here!

Thursday:
Busy day! I had my grammar class from 3:30-5pm which is quite an inconvenient hour. I managed to cram in homework and pack before going, since we planned on leaving around 7:15pm for the airport. I had to print off my boarding passes at school which meant that I didn't get home until after 6pm, because there was a class using the computer lab that I had to wait to finish. I got home, finished up a little packing, and ate a delicious sandwich that my host madre prepared which was grilled chicken and delicious cheese on a baguette. Hannah and I met and walked with our matching rolling suitcases to the bus stop. It was easy to find the bus, and it wasn't very crowded. It didn't take very long at all to get to the airport. We got there super early since our flight didn't leave until almost 10pm. Security was a joke. There were only 5 of us in line for security. The man in front of us had a baby, so one of the security men held his baby and cuddled it and played with it while the man was going through security. It was so different from anything that would ever happen in the U.S. We went through with ease within a few minutes. It was very refreshing to not feel like a criminal going through security like they always make you feel at home. Since we were there so early, they hadn't assigned us a gate yet, so we wandered around for a while waiting. We finally got a gate, but then they delayed our flight for some reason. It was delayed by about an hour, which wasn't a big deal, except that it made us land in Barcelona really late. The plane (vueling flight) was really nice, and they played music while everyone was boarding, which was awesome. There was a lot of turbulence which was a little scary, but the flight was so short that it didn't affect us for too long. It was raining when we got to Barcelona, and the rain looked amazing from the plane. The strobe-like light flashing on the end of the wing highlighted the rain every other second, so it looked like a rain strobe dance.. it looked amazing. I thought that it looked like something a director would include in a movie. Hannah stayed with some family friends who gave us instructions of how to get to the city, which included riding a train.. and the last train left about 20 minutes after we landed. After speed-walking/running through the lovely Barcelona airport, we got to the ticket machines and purchased our train tickets just in time. We got on the train with about 2 minutes to spare. The train was really nice, but slow like the others we rode in Mallorca. It was very rainy that night. We met Hannah's friends at a train station close to their house and my hotel, and they showed us how to get around the little area we were staying in. The train station is literally between the two different places we stayed, so it was very nice and easy to get around! My hotel was a lot nicer than I was expecting. I have always heard that hotels here are horrible. It definitely wasn't as nice as the hotels I'm used to, but it was still pretty nice for the price and location, except of course there was no heat. I settled in and watched some tv, including Spanish and German channels, and went to sleep.

Friday:
I only slept about 6 hours due to us arriving late and wanting to get up early to start the day. I went downstairs and had the breakfast at the hotel which was decent. I met up with Hannah, and we decided to walk 20 minutes to Sagrada Familia, a ridiculously huge and detailed Catholic church, designed by Antoni Gaudí who also designed many other buildings in Barcelona. They started building the church in 1882, and it is still not finished. (There were many construction workers the day we went.) It was a beautiful warm, windy day, so the walk was quite nice. We definitely knew when we came upon the church.. it is huge!! We took pictures in the little park area across the street before walking up to it. The amount of detail in the decorations all over the exterior of the church is simply incredible. Every square inch (I guess I should use centimeter) of the exterior is covered in perfectly carved and sculpted detail. It is quite impressive. After searching for how to actually get inside the church, we found a line wrapped around one side of the building. It was quite cold and windy in the shade where we had to stand in line, but it went relatively fast. We went inside along with thousands of other tourists and began taking hundreds of photographs. It is quite strange to me that the inside of the building doesn't really match the outside. I already knew that before entering, because I saw pictures of it in one of my classes last semester. But it is just really strange when you actually see it. The outside is very Gothic and old-looking, and the inside is very modern. There are giant white columns and stained glass windows that reflect oh-so-perfectly on the structures inside the church. There is a giant Jesus statue suspended under a parachute over the altar. I overheard a tour guide say that it is symbolic of his protection of the altar. (Also, all along the top of the parachute are pieces of wheat. The tour guide was speaking in English and couldn't think of the word for it. She kept saying "wit" very harshly, and I could not stop laughing. She asked someone in her group how to say it, and she described it as, "You make cereal out of it. wit? wit? wit?" It was pretty funny.) The lighting in there was simply incredible. That was my favorite part, just looking at every part of the interior and how the lighting enhanced features. One of my favorite things (as you can tell from the amount of photos I took of it) was how one of the stained glass windows reflected on the organ pipes. It was so gorgeous. One thing I noted while inside the church was that it did not feel like a church at all. I would never want to attend a religious service there, because it felt empty. I definitely did not feel like I was in a church nor did I feel the presence of God like one should be able to feel in a church. It was very cold feeling. I consider it moreso to be a tourist attraction than a place of worship. We stayed there for a long time, then headed to Las Ramblas, which is the main shopping and dining street in Barcelona.
We saw a Starbucks (the first we had seen since the U.S.) and the most beautiful El Corte Ingles (my favorite department store) ever. There were tons of random street performers, including someone in a baby carriage screaming like a baby, people acting like statues, and a man in a gold dragon costume that reminded me of a World of Warcraft character. We headed in to this small, cozy tapas bar for some food. We got croquetas (fried delicious chicken stuff.. I don't really know how else to describe them haha), and some crunchy potato-wrapped shrimp. I also had one of the best beers ever (beer on tap is just so amazing). We liked the food, until we got the bill. Four pieces of shrimp cost 10 euros.. what a joke. We paid for the ridiculously overpriced food, and headed off to find more (cheap) food. Her host family told us about this place to get waffles, so we went there. It was not what we were expecting. We thought it meant like a plate of 3 giant waffles for 5 euro, but it was really one tiny rectangular waffle with toppings. I got mine with nutella, whipped cream, and strawberries, and it cost about 5 euros.. again, so overpriced. The waffles were homemade and very good, but the problem was that they gave us plastic cutlery to use to eat the waffles. Hannah broke a fork, and I broke a knife. I had much difficulty with mine, so Hannah took some incredibly unattractive photos of me picking it up to eat, which ended in all the toppings sliding off my waffle. It was fun and delicious.
We walked down to the Cristobal Colón (or as we Americans know him as, Christopher Columbus) statue near the port. It was kind of unimpressive, but it was cool to see it. This guy from Israel followed me around for a while until I told him to go away. I couldn't understand his accent when he talked, which was unsurprising since I often can't understand even British English. I asked him where he was from and he said "Iss-rell". I had no idea what he was saying which made it awkward, because I had my "I have no idea what you're saying" expression on my face, and he just kept repeating it. Finally, he said, "You know, the country that causes all the problems.." The lightbulb went on at the point.. "Oh!!! Israel!" Then we ditched him. We walked around and took photos of that area and tried to go to a nautical history museum in the area. It was really weird when we walked in, because we thought we were supposed to pay but they didn't say anything to us. Hannah tried to go in one of the exhibit halls, and a guy stopped her and asked for her ticket. She said she didn't have one and asked where the ships were located in the museum, and he replied that the museum was closed for 2 years. 2 weeks? No, 2 years. They only had temporary exhibits about sharks. Lame.
We decided to head to Park Güell, another design by Gaudí.  It was quite an adventure to get there, and Google Maps on my phone certainly helped. We got off at the train stop and had no idea where to go. We walked about half a mile or so down the road we were on and still didn't know where to go. A random construction worked asked if we were looking for the park and told us where to go. We turned left where he said to turn and saw escalators that seemed yo continue for at least a mile up a steep hill. Thank God for those escalators. We went up so many outside escalators until we got to the top of the hill, and the view was spectacular. We had to walk up part of it at the very top which was very difficult to do, so I would have never made it if those escalators weren't there for most of the way. I also had studied this park in my class, so I knew what it looked like.. or so I thought. I didn't know that most of the park is actually trails on a hill/mountain. I was quite confused, until I saw a map. We had to walk around on trails to figure out where to go. We saw some spectacular views of Barcelona on the way. We also climbed up this little platform with stairs that were falling apart and a little scary, to the top of the peak, which had 3 crosses on top of it and tons of people crammed into the tiny spot (it was probably about 7 feet in diameter.) I admit that I was a little frightened to go up there, because it was a long way down the hill and the steps were pretty unstable, but it was so worth it. It was about 10 feet high off the trail, but wow did that make a difference in views. We just stayed up there for 10-15 minutes in the strong winds, observing Cataluña and literally seeing the entirety of Barcelona. It was so peaceful and beautiful. I sat up there for a while on the middle platform, leaned against the big cross statue and definitely felt spiritual while gazing out at the landscape. It was a great moment. As soon as we descended the seemingly ancient steps, there was a man selling earrings and necklaces... on an umbrella. It was definitely the coolest, smartest street (trail?) vendor that I had ever seen. He had all of the earrings stuck through the umbrella, so even in the wind, they didn't move. The guy was super nice, and I spoke Spanish to him pretty well while some of the other Americans up there struggled to speak Spanish to him. He was a really cool guy. I bought 2 pairs of earrings from his umbrella store, for only 4 euros each. They are so beautiful. They are inspired by Gaudi's work and are made really nicely. They are definitely my 2 favorite purchases in Spain so far.. I mean, how many people can say they bought earrings from an umbrella store on top a of a mountain in Barcelona, Spain? We descended more trails to make our way to the main terrace that Gaudi designed. There is a big terrace with mosaic benches and tons of people everywhere. The mosaics are so beautiful, and all of them are so different. We went below the terrace to see "el drac", which is a mosaic dragon that is pretty famous too. There were so many people crowded around the dragon that it was difficult to get good pictures of it. We wandered around the rest of the area, watching a concert in the hall of columns (amazing acoustics.. the two people playing sounded incredible), looked in the giftshop, and then tried to figure out how to get back to Barcelona. We ended up a bus to the train station to get back to Barcelona. [Sidenote: I hate Barcelona's transportation. It is always soooo crowded, and the trains are pretty hard to figure out because the maps are misleading. I feel sorry for people that don't speak Spanish who go there.]
Once back in Barcelona, we went to Casa Batlló, yet another Gaudi creation. It is designed to look like parts of a dragon. The windows outside look like bones, and on the roof there is a giant statue thing that has scales. The house is really interesting. The lighting in it is very cool. I think again, the lighting was my favorite part about the house. Gaudi was really good at creating dramatic lighting. We had to fight with the ticket lady, because she didn't believe we were students, despite our UIB student cards. I got impatient and ended up giving her literally all my cards (UIB, Palma bus card, Palma train card, TN driver's license) until she just sold me the discounted student ticket. It was really annoying, because obviously we weren't lying about being students when we had student cards, but she wouldn't believe us.. whatever. Our ticket included a free audiotour handset, which was pretty cool at first.. but annoying later. I got sick of having to stay in one place to listen to the full tour commentary, so I ended up not listening to the full tour. The house is very cool, and it's hard to imagine that a family actually lived there. It would be like a dream house for children. One of my favorite rooms of it was a mushroom shaped sitting room with a fireplace. It looks like the best place ever to read a book and do homework. You need to look at all my photos of the house, because it is quite hard to describe it all.
After that, it was getting pretty late. We went to a cheap sandwich shop nearby and got some delicious sandwiches and also ran into some American girls there who didn't know Spanish at all. I got a little sunburned during the day, probably at the park, but it felt good to have a little color on my skin. We were out for about 9 hours on Friday, so needless to say, we were exhausted. I took about 600 photos on Friday alone. We went back to take naps, and Hannah invited me to eat dinner with her host family when I woke up. Well, I didn't wake up until 9am. I slept for about 12 hours.. whoops! I felt great the next day. :)

Tuesday & Wednesday (March 1 & 2)

So sorry for the posting delay! I have been quite busy until today. I will try to catch up today by making several posts in between episodes during my Gossip Girl season 3 marathon.

Tuesday, March 1 - El Dia de Les Illes Baleares (or, Balearic Islands Day):
Tuesday was so much fun! Classes were canceled (woohoo!), so Hannah and I headed down to the main part of town where the festivals were. There were soooo many people everywhere, including tons of tourists, which I hadn't really seen before that day. (And it seems like ever since that day, there have been noticeably more tourists.. I think the tourist season has begun!) There were a few different markets including a Roman market and a Medieval Market. It was so much fun just people-watching, sampling cheeses and roasted nuts, eating random food, and browsing all of the homemade goods in the tents. I wish they had something like that every day. Hannah and I ran into our other friends from the CIEE program, so then we walked around in a slightly larger group. I loved photographing the people there and the goods for sale. We found this really cool stand in the Roman market that was run by people from Argentina that made handcrafted leather goods. Brittany and I fell in love with their bracelets. I bought one brown leather bracelet, and she bought a few. We stopped at a bakery stand to get some food (I got an empanada which is a Mallorcan speciality. It had veggies and meat in a pastry shell.. yummy.) We stayed down there for quite a few hours, so we ate again. We had something called "choripan" (which I think has South American origins), which was a spiced brat on bread and some beer to go with it of course. It was sooo good! I had never eaten anything like it before, and of course, it was ridiculously cheap! I love the food here. The weather was kinda lame.. it was cloudy and rainy at first, sunny for a while, then cloudy and rainy again, then sunny again! I guess that is life on an island, though. I bought a Bob Esponja (Sponge Bob!) kids tshirt for myself that says Mallorca on it (it's kind of a joke.. I always point out Bob Esponja stuff here), a wooden beaded bracelet, a fake turquoise ring, the braided leather bracelet, and food. We got pretty tired so we headed home for naps before tapas. I was sooo excited to out for tapas, since I hadn't done that yet. We met a huge group of people (mostly other international students from Switzerland and Germany) around 10pm and headed to tapas bar hop. It was so much fun!! I didn't eat any tapas, though, since I ate dinner before going, and nothing looked too appetizing. (Yes, we eat dinner before going, because it would cost a lot to get full on tapas.) I just had a few glasses of wine and beer (that were super cheap.. the most I paid was 2 euro for wine) and enjoyed the conversation with everyone. Slowly but surely, people headed home until there was only 3 of us left. We headed to one of the girls' apartments since everything was shutting down around 1am (which is early for Spain.. I guess because it was Tuesday). She made some deliciously burnt popcorn, and we drank a little bit of cheap cooking wine and talked and laughed for a while until Brittany and I headed home (luckily, the apartment we were at was only about 3 minutes from my home!).

Wednesday:
It was yet another lazy day. I slept a lot, did some homework, and went on a hunt for a carry-on suitcase that fits Europe's standards. It is quite annoying that the restrictions here are just a few centimeters smaller than the normal American restrictions, and yes, they check it. Hannah and I walked in circles looking for a store and eventually found the place we needed. We each got a piece for 32 euros, which wasn't too bad for what we got. Mine is bright pink/coral, and I love it! It is very cheap, but it works (and will save me money by not having to check it if the airlines measure it!). I didn't really do much else during the day. Wednesday night, a few of us went to Paseo to a cozy bar called Hogan's for live music. It was a lot of fun, because it was very relaxing and chill.. and the band played cover songs of 70's and 80's rock. I still find it funny that 99% of the music here is American. We watched Lady Gaga's new crazy video on a tv screen with looks of horror and Avril Lavigne's new video with plenty of laughter about the fact that she still acts like she is 15. I had a Guinness and Strongbow cider mix that was heavenly.. I think that is my new favorite beverage. Thanks to Brittany for giving me the idea. We didn't stay out very late, and yet again, we found ourselves waiting at a bus stop for a ridiculous amount of time doing ridiculous things like seeing who could hold their legs up in the air the longest and while shouting "donde esta el bus?!!?!" Just another day in my life.. another day, another bus stop waiting and wondering where the bus is and if it would even stop for us.

The rest of the week will be coming soon. :)

Saturday & Sunday & Monday

Saturday was so wonderfully lazy and spent with 2 of my new fave people -- Brittany and Chelsea. We intended to go to the beach, but we ended up everywhere else in Palma instead. We had snacks and very expensive water (that the waiter spilled a glass of) at my favorite cafe. We went to a few stores but mostly just walked around.. and talked on a street corner for 2 hours without realizing that so much time had passed. Those are always the best conversations. :) We went to Brittany's to talk more, and I spent the night (because I haaaate walking home late, and I love sleeping over at friend's casas). We watched The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in Spanish and some other horrible movie partially in Spanish, until we figured out how to switch it to English.. Hey, it was 2 in the morning, and Spanish just didn't make sense any more haha.
We had planned on going to a city called Alcudia on Sunday with a group of 5 girls, but due to hard to decipher bus schedules, we missed the bus by 15 minutes. We decided to go to Manacor instead just to do something. That turned into quite an adventure haha. We got on the train to go (this was my first legit train ride!!) to Manacor, which is a city on the complete opposite side of the island. I love trains. (miss you Joey!!) The first part of our exciting adventure was when one of the girls, whom I am not going to name, had to pee very badly. This problem was resolved by another girl in the group cutting off the top of a giant water bottle with her key, and the anonymous urinator taking the bottle to the back part of the train where no one was sitting and literally peeing in a bottle in one of the little seating areas of the train while one of the other girls stood guard. Basically, we were all crying from laughing so hard. It was definitely the most epic pee of her life. At the next stop, she threw it out and came back to sit with us while we laughed even more. We noticed the director was going by and making everyone get off the train in the random small town we were in, without saying why. Someone asked him why we had to get off there, and he said... wait for it.. another train ahead of us hit a donkey, so they had to close off the tracks. Much more laughing ensued, until we realized we didn't know how we were going to get to Manacor nor did we really know where we were. I can't believe the weird things that happen to me here!! It's just one hilarious thing after another. God must really want to make me laugh. The director said a bus would be coming to get us soon, so we waited in the cold rain for a while until it came. He told us we had to wait 20 minutes to get on the bus, so we ducked in a little restaurant for some bread nom noms while waiting. We rode the bus for a while until we got to Manacor. Once we arrived, our first question was, "uhhh, is this Manacor?" That's never a good sign. It was just a typical medium-sized Spanish town and didn't really seem special. We really didn't care about anything at that point except for finding food. We wandered around the rainy streets in our own umbrella parade, asking random people smoking outside their homes where the city center was, until we found it. Exciting... not. I shouldn't hate on it so much though, since most things are closed on Sundays. We found a little restaurant, one of the few open, that had a special daily menu for 8 euro that included paella, some type of fish, wine, and dessert. It's kind of hard to say no to that (about $12 for tons of food). After ordering the daily special, they brought us two bottles of wine and lime-flavored sparkling water to mix with it. We thought it was only one glass per person, so we were pretty excited. My favorite drink is vino tinto (red wine) with sparkling water.. it is SO good. We heard a microwave ding (seriously.. they microwaved our paella, and the microwave is near the dining area so you can hear it ding), and the lady brought out our paella plates full of seashells, oyster shells, tentacles, and crab claws and legs.. aka something none of you ever thought I would touch, since I don't even like touching bones in steak or chicken. It was pretty good, not the best (my host madre's paella is my favorite). It was fun/kinda gross digging through the shells and picking inedible things like pointy crab feet out of my food. I didn't eat the crab claw or legs, because I couldn't get them open (and kind of didn't want to...). After that course was taken away along with a plate full of shells, we were brought a very strange fish dish (that had also been microwaved) with what appeared to be hardened microwaved mayonnaise on top. Let's just say we all took 2-3 bites then mushed it all together and covered it with napkins. Gross. After that, she asked us what kind of dessert we wanted. We all opted for a small piece of cake and hazelnut ice cream. That was definitely my favorite part of the meal aside from the bread and wine. The ice cream was incredible, and the cake was neon yellow. Ohhh, Spain, how I love you. We trekked back to the train/bus station after our long lunch and waited for the bus to pick us up since the train wasn't running yet (apparently it takes all day to clean a donkey off train tracks).  After a bus ride and an extremely long train ride due to the train being broken and running at half its normal speed featuring a beautiful sunset, we finally got back to Palma. Also, on the train on the way back, I smelled smoke with my smoke-detector-like senses. Sure enough, while looking past about 20 no smoking signs, I see a lady with a cloud of smoke around her. How inconsiderate. There was no ventilation, and we were all coughing and being loud, hoping she would get the memo. She didn't, so Hannah said something to her so she put it out on the floor. Again, how inconsiderate and disrespectful. We had to move to another train car, because the smoke was so horrible and did not go away. I really just can't believe some people. We all headed home to rest, especially me, because I took a 4 hour nap. My host mom thought I was sick haha.
Today I only had 2 of classes, because one (my earliest one) was canceled.  I also got stuck in a hail storm walking from school to the metro, which was quite exciting. I haven't really done much today other than go to class and sit on my computer. The best news today is that I am going to Barcelona this weekend! My friend Hannah has had a trip planned for a while, because she has some family friends there. We were talking about it the past few days, so I decided I would go too! I booked my flight and hotel today. We are leaving Thursday night and returning Sunday evening. We also got tickets to see FC Barcelona play a game! I know that I am not a huge soccer fan, but I think this is something everyone in Spain needs to do at least once. We are literally on the last row, because it is almost sold out. I can't wait to see all the beautiful architecture and explore a new city! Tomorrow is "el dia de les illes baleares" which means no school and festivals! I have no idea what to expect, but I am excited to see everything. I will definitely be doing a post about what all happens tomorrow!

Hasta luego,
Lynne