Welcome to my Italy/Switzerland adventure. :)

Warning- this will probably be the longest post I will ever write.... I might have to make it more than one post.

Hope you enjoy it. :P

Ok, so this past week John and I took our first road trip together. We explored Italy and a little bit of Switzerland. Of course one week is not nearly enough time but we gave it all we had. :) Also- we couch surfed for the very first time. Couch surfing is when people host you in their homes and give you a free place to sleep and sometimes even give you meals.

Friday night/Saturday morning (October 30th / October 31st) we started our journey by getting on the 1 am bus to Madrid. The ride there is 6 hours and there was not much legroom (remember John is quite tall)- so you can only imagine the kind of sleep we experienced. We arrived at the bus station early in the morning, took the Metro to Barajas Airport in Madrid, printed off our boarding passes, went through the most unorganized security line, then found our gate with time to spare!

We arrived in Milan around noon??? I am not sure but I remember it was earlier on in the day. John and I explored the city and went to the places Mateo (our host in Milan) told us to go to. We walked through the Fashion center (street where all the famous designers have their shops) and witnessed some of the most ridiculous price tags ever! John almost had a heart attack when he saw that a Versace fur coat was 52,000 Euros A.K.A 76,000 US Dollars!!!

Later we went to the Milan Cathedral and since we were told the view from the top of the Cathedral was a must see, we walked up a whole lot of narrow stairs with our backpacks on (they were at their heaviest at this point in time). When we finally made it to the top it was clear that the agonizing climb was more than worth it! The view was breath taking, the architecture was impressive and it made for some sweet pictures.

We then realized we did not have the address to get to our hosts home which meant we needed to find an Internet Café or “Internet Point” as the Europeans call them nowadays. After finding one we took the metro to a suburb of Milan and found our way to Mateo and Ane’s home. They were lovely people and very welcoming. Mateo knows three languages and understands a fourth language and Ane is fluent in five languages! They are my language heroes.

They decided to make us a traditional Italian dinner that was not Pizza or Pasta- instead they fed us rabbit (Yes, I am talking about a bunny), polenta (a corn dough substance- typical of Northern Italy), mushrooms (gross), bread (Yum!) and Gelato (Gelato simply means Ice Cream in Italian). Overall the meal was amazing (I ate all except the mushrooms) and it was also free which makes it ever more amazing.

The following morning we took a train back to the airport and picked up our amazing little car (A white, four-door Citroen)! After struggling to get Lola working (Lola= GPS) we made our way to Zurich, Switzerland.

Happy Halloween!

Hey Everyone!

Can you guess who I am dressed up as? Winner gets a hug next time I see them. :P

Have a spooktacular day!

Karla<3

Today is Tomorrow

Buenos Dias!

I believe this is the earliest I have ever blogged. I am such a pro at this blogging thing this week.

For anyone who is concerned, last night went well. I did not throw up on anyone. That is always a plus. :)

I get to go to the nursing home tonight. They eat earlier now since it gets darker earlier. This will be nice because then I get to go home earlier. I have not told you much about my experience there have I?

Well- I like the people but it is hard because most of the time I do not feel like I am actually helping. They just kind of find something for me to do but they don´t really need us there. The folks really enjoy having young people around though. They smile at me and their eyes get sparkly. :) haha That is the best way to describe them.. you know someone gets so happy their eyes sparkle? lol

Anyways... many people are sick. I really hope I don´t catch anything before this weekend. My host mom is ill, she is going to the doctor today. I feel bad for her. She looks like she is in pain. It makes me sad.

Did I tell you about this weekend/next week yet?

Well we have a few days off and John and I are going on a roadtrip around Italy and Zurich, Switzerland! Let us hope this trip goes better than our last trip. Please pray for us and our adventure. :)

I love Chocolate.

I need to go to classes soon so I shall go do that.

Thanks for reading my random things.

Peace and Love to you all,

Karla <3

My toes hurt...

Hello Friends,

1. Last Friday we had Noche de Chicos/chicas and we watched a movie in English and ate free Dominos Pizza. It was oh so good! :D

2. Saturday we went to visit Ellen Shuch in Jerez (she is teaching English there). We walked around, rented a movie and enjoyed some Sarah-made food. We also ate lots of Oreos and just sat around. It was Lovely! :)

3. hmm... School is better this week.

4. I speak at Encuentro today, pray that I do not get Nervous...

5. I Love Dove chocolate.

6. My host mom is sick.

7. I will post more mañana.

Love you all!

Karla <3

Oh Happy Day!

Twice in one week... impressed? haha You should be!

This blog post is dedicated to my friend Shell.

Today I received a package. It was filled with pure deliciousness aka chocolate and cookies! It made me very very happy. Especically because it was after my last class on a Friday afternoon... can you just say this with me please.. "God is good!" haha I am serious!

I cannot think of a better end to the busiest week thus far.

I am happy.

Oh and did I mention tonight is "Noche de chicos/chicas" aka Girls and boys night? We will be having pizza (from Dominos!) and watching a movie (Title is currently unknown). I think this also will be a good thing.

These are my current thoughts.

Hope you are also having a good day.

Peace and Love,

Karla <3

Finally a new blog post! haha

Hello again,

Well, as many of you probably already know our trip to London ended up being an awful FAIL! John and I lost too much money and missed out on an awesome opportunity to work on our British accents.

To make a long story short- we missed our flight and were unable to leave Spain because it was a Holiday. We were forced to stay in Madrid and spend ridiculous amounts of money that neither John nor I had. To say the least- it was a very bad weekend financially but we tried to find the silver lining and of course we failed at that too. I will not go into details because it still makes me sad. However- John wrote a few blog posts about our miserable weekend. Feel free to pay his blog a visit. It is very entertaining stuff (in other words, I can not entertain you with words as eloquently as he can, so I will let him take this one).

Check it out at 6foot7.weebly.com

So that was a couple weekends ago. I apologize for not keeping my vow of writing every Tuesday. I have failed you. Last week was a two-day school week. I like weeks like this. Haha The bad thing is that this week I have two tests and a presentation. It is by far the most stressful week thus far but that is not saying much because so far classes here have been fairly simple.

Anyways, the reason why we only had two days of classes this last week was because Thursday at 6:20am we had to meet outside of the school and get on a bus to Toledo. We made a pee stop and then another stop at a town with windmills. It was brought to my attention that these were the Don Quijote windmills- that of course means nothing to me. I just know that these windmills and Don Quijote are famous. So I took pictures of them… and thought of all the Dutch people I know. :D

We arrived in Toledo and settled in to our hotel and ate our lunches we brought from home. Then we visited a cathedral with a famous Greco painting and a monastery. I think I would have liked both more if it was not for the fact that it was for class. For some reason that little detail changes things. Later we had free time that John and I spent exploring the town and taking pictures. We ended up taking the long way around to a door I wanted a picture with… so we really explored the city. It is a very picturesque town so I did not mind the walk. We also found a reasonable place for dinner and got a whole lot of food for not too much money (dessert was even included!). Overall it was a successful night.

Also this day was the first time since I permed my hair (late August!) that I straightened it. I felt like me for the first time in a long time. Too bad it was a little humid and it frizzed. It felt nice to be able to run my fingers through my hair again though. :)

The next morning we visited the Gothic styled cathedral and spent a lot of time there. Did I mention that it was freezing out and I was wearing a t-shirt? I could not focus on the contrafuertes of the church because my blood was turning into ice (it really was not that cold but I have gotten used to the scorching hot days in Sevilla). Anyways- the cathedral was impressive. We then had lunch at yet another reasonable establishment. Then went on a mission to find black olives without seeds, found them, walked around some more and headed back towards our hotel because we had to leave by 4pm.

Ok- venting time:

First of all- when students are REQUIRED to go on an overnight trip for class, the school/ program/people in charge should pay for their meals or at least give them all 5 Euros for their meals. It seems like the only just thing to do since we are paying way too many thousands of dollars to be here. Does it not?

Second- it really irritates me when we are told we will be home at a certain time and then we are not. We may be on Spain time but we are not Spanish and either are they. I really wish they would respect the fact that some of us need to get home for dinner.

Also- I do not enjoy sitting on the bus for an extended period of time and then having to stop in order for others to use the bathroom, buy more coffee and then have to stop once more.

Can you tell poor planning irritates me?

Well… I am done venting now. Haha I just had to get that out of my system.

We went to the Cathedral yesterday afternoon for art and got to explore the cathedral and then go up into the Giralda. I got some sweet pictures! I shall post them on Facebook soon. I am still working on all the other ones from these past weekends.

It rained yesterday. It was the first time since I have been here that it actually rained. It has sprinkled a few times but this was more legit. I loved running around in it except for the fact that I had a group project to work on and I had to sit in wet clothes for a couple hours... and my socks were wet! Gross.

Yesterday was also Salud’s (host mom) birthday. Sarah and I took her out for drinks and tapas (small portion of food- appetizer). It was fun and she is just such a doll. I really like her.

Hmmmm… I think this is all for now and this is probably the longest blog post yet. It also has been the longest time without writing. Sorry. :D

Peace and Love my friends,

Karla <3

FAIL

Dear Friends,

I warned you- I fail at blogging. It´s been almost two weeks. Yikes!

Just so you know(if you already did not... I did not get to go to London. :( It was sad.

I will post more later tonight.

I am well.

Love you all!

Karla <3