La vuelta

So today is the day. I am leaving home again to return to Cadiz for spring semester. I've had a wonderful month here; I got to spend a ton of time with my family, I was able to see a lot of my awesome friends, and even play a bit of ultimate. Oh! And I got to snuggle my kitties and give them lots of kisses, that alone was worth the hellish trip home. Kiki is on my lap right now, she must know I'm leaving because she is being very loving which is super unusual. She is SO cute. I am going to miss the babies so much.

Looks like today I have a ten hour flight and then a two and a half hour flight and then a one hour flight. Sounds fun, huh?

Tortitas

Last night I made pancakes for my host mom, she absolutely loved them :) I'd never made them from scratch before but they turned out pretty delicious. My host mom had some real maple syrup as a gift from some other student a while back so we ate them with authentic syrup. Deliicoussssss... I am definitely in the mood to get back home now. Plus John texted me last night and said it was snowing in Seattle?! Crazyyyy and excitinggg! Now, who is going to take me to Blue Star when I get back? I LOVE BLUE STAR!

Me encanta Ultimate

This past weekend was by far the best I've spent in Spain. I went to a beach ultimate tournament and met a ton of awesome people and played ultimate on the beach all weekend and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was so nice to be around ultimate players again... Now all I am thinking about is going home to Seattle for the holidays and also planning trips to tournaments in the spring time when I'm back in Cadiz. I think possibly going into debt in order to go to awesome tournaments is worth it, right? Right.

Photos from the weekend!

















My team placed somewhere in the middle but we won SOTG!! I had such an amazing time, I didn't want it to end :)

Granada

Last weekend the school group went to Granada and Cordoba. It was really neat! I really liked the city and the diverse architecture and everything. I bought some neat Christmas gifts, too. Here are some photos :)


In the cathedral in Granada


Outside of the Alhambra


Still outside the Alhambra




With Skye inside the Alhambra


Cool ceiling


Children messing with the kitty


Pretending to lay on a bush


Britney got her hand through the really dense bush!


More pretty plants in the gardens of the Alhambra


A tower in Cordoba


Chasing a dove


Something important in the Mezquita, it was like... a dome thing they built to make it so the sound of the caliph's voice carried better during religious ceremonies because the building got to be so big. Or something like that.

Cumpleaños

On my actual birthday I got up and began my day by getting dressed and stuff then heading to lunch with my host mom, brothers, sister and sister's boyfriend. We went to a place with tapas that are "muy típico de Caí" according to my host mom. It was very yummy, I thoroughly enjoyed the food. After we ate I came back home because I had a date to Skype with my mom and dad. I got to talk to them finally around 6PM I think. Archie was very sweet and let me look at him for longer than normal on webcam. I miss him. Kiki was apathetic as usual. It was good to talk to my mom and dad, too. My host family got to come on webcam and say hi to them. It was quite entertaining. My host mom was like, "!la cuido muy bien!" and my host brother busted out some English like I've never heard him speak before, I was impressed. He said something like, "you have a very nice daughter, blahblah..."

After the family time I got ready to go to my Czech friends' flat where we were to have cake and hang out. They ended up feeding me a bunch of gin and then made me go out when all I wanted to do was stay home and eat cake and then sleep. So we went out and hung out with people, went to bars and chatted, no dancing. I was too tired. It might not sound exciting or very fun how I just described it but I had a very nice time, I really have a good time with the Czech guys. They're fun to be around.

One other highlight of my birthday was receiving flowers :) they're beautiful.

Now for some photos!


lovely flowers


some of the lunch


Miguel (Gema's boyfriend), me, Juan Antonio, host mom


crammed in the car on the drive home


garbage toy. I played with this and then my friends told me they found it in a dumpster...


Lukas, me, Alex

And my favorite photo from my birthday...



Compare with:


monkey business in Gibraltar

Punta Umbria

Okay so I went to this place and watched a tournament the other weekend. I made some good friends from Sevilla and I will see them again on the weekend of December 6. I took photos, go here to see the album:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67371717@N00/sets

I celebrated my birthday the last two nights, it was nuts. My Czech friends made me this awesome card and gave me a stuffed animal monkey and we went out and it was a lot of fun. Photos to come later.

La espera

I go home in 44 days. I wish it were more like 4... Not having the most fun here but the next few weeks will hopefully go by quickly. I am happy about the election, but watching the videos of the speeches and the people in the street celebrating makes me homesick too much.

My birthday is soon, hopefully that will be enjoyable. I haven't blogged in forever, just wanted to update and say I'm alive and stuff.