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On the 22nd of December i took 26 hours and 3 flights to get home. And now i have had a wondeful time in spain and after a great holiday break, have to get back into the swing of real school. Thanks to all who read this blog or pieces, it was great to know that other people enjoyed my time abroad as well.

Homeward Bound

Here I come

Quick Trip to Real Madrid

On a whim i decided to go on my last satarday night to the Real Madrid - Zaragosa game. Baught a ticket, hopped on a 5 ockock bus after checking if a hostel had an empty bus and off i went. In the stadium i befriended a lonely brazilian who spoke better english than spanish, and promptly watched a rout of a game. Renaldo is a simply incredible player, he may be a not perfect person but i have never seen someone so fast, so confident, and so obscenely good with his feet.

Listen to this great commentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Bf_ZxkznY

As a frosting on my cake of a night my friend Chloe from carleton who i thought had returned to the states after studying in Madrid texted me after seeing a facebook update of mine and invited me out in madrid for her 21st birthday!

This morning i rolled out of bed and caught a train home. Now i need to write a final paper, bake cinamin rolls as a thank you present, and pack alot!

Gibralter

In my final full week here i took advantage of my time to head down for two very full days in Gibralter-the british colony in the south of spain. This was my first time traveling truly by myself for any length of time. Upshot of that is that i never once ate alone (except to escape monkeys) and met some great great people. Short and sweet bullet points here we go:

• overnight buses are doable
• someone bought me a round-of hot chocolate
• Walked over 5 miles and made it to sunrise over the Mediterranean
• 
• *africa over my right shoulder
  
• Found my own WWII siege tunnel-explored
• 
• *if you saw this while lost in gibralter-would you go in?
  
• Met great Australians, now have 2 new places to visit in my last continent
• So much history its awesome, and its English
  
• Amazing siege tunnels carved by hand-god bless all the historical fiction i've read it was a nerds paradise
• 
• Carved by hand for over 300 feet to do what the brits do best-screw with the french
  
• monkeys-brave little buggers ripped the lunch bag from my pocket but are so cute what was i supposed to do? that wasn't rhetorical, what i did was climb to the top of the precipice and eat my lunch in windy Mediterranean solitude
• 
• *no he is not high-just very cheeky
  
• cold and rainy can't stop me from seeing my history-especially when it is inside of 30 miles of WWII tunnels used to house 11,000 active troops
  
• Rick Steves makes connection-when people see you instantly have him in common
• Pizza hut is the best comfort food, especially in all you can eat quantities
• Fantastic trip-thanks dad!

Take a look at the complete pictures
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=168956&id=563922118&l=2c0f682d66

And a Movie of my lunch spot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUoYFP25MVM

And for those who missed my other movie of flaming shots in Barcelona-it might be unrelated but its friggin sweet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPKNt7U_StY

Eyeing up the End

• Final weeks
• Final papers
• Final travel?

So it appears i have a mere 2 weeks exactly before leaving. My goodness, reflection will come later but i still need to wrap my mind around that. The upcoming weeks are remarkably open-and yet i don't know what to do with them. First off i have the following work:

• Final work for spanish class including lots of subjunctive worksheets
• Final paper for english in the real world in which i record and analyze all the English in my world for a day (outside my being an american buble)
• Final paper for spanish history of 4 pages in spanish summarizing 400 plus years of spanish history
• Final paper for jews, muslims, and christians class: 6 pages in spanish summarizing the life of the two minorities in avila-for all time.

Final travel options don't get me that exciting mostly because i can't find anyone with whom i am a good travel companion with whom i can travel-and i've never really traveled to touristy stuff by myself. Options include going up to Gijon to visit family friends, but they are busy and there isn't much to do there; going to basque land but thats cold and rainy; heading back south to andalucia/valencia; sitting around avila. I don't want to leave spain.

Barcelona

A weekend Jaunt in Barcelona!

• Meet up with Melissa
• Meet up with high-school friend Danielle Witt
• Night on the town-its warm!
• Gauidi Architecture is sweet
• Especially Sagrada Familia
• Watch Barcelona-Real Madrid game in a giant bar and Barcelona wins!
• Catalans being Catalans (think southerners cerca 1858 minus the whole slavery thing)
  
• 12 hour travel time to get home...

So a succesful weekend in Barcelona a week ago as you can see from the bullet points. Getting to see melissa was of course wonderful and always a highlight. Although i hate to admit it seeing danielle was kinda nice to. Wandering Barcelona with melissa as a guide we had a great view of the great 'melting icecream' archetecture of antonin gaidi, which i really liked after being inundated by romenesque and baroque for 3 months!



The real highlight was watching the Real Madrid-Barcelona soccer game from a massive bar in Barcelona-and having barca win. They just plain went nuts. Its like a yankies-red sox times 100 plus national pride at stake. After the game everyone stormed las ramblas (think park blocks) and started singing catalan songs and everything. The Catalonians really do think of themselves as different, mostly because they speak a bastard language of Spanish and french which is legible just frustrating.


Then i got back on the bus and overnighted it down to madrid and took the train-quite exciting.

All in all a great weekend!
full pics: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=165227&id=563922118&l=d9bc07b7d0

Thanksgiving

Lets just say it was awesome. (the bottle was a rolling pin-i had Fanta)

• 8.5 kilo turkey = 18 lbs of turkey or over 2 lbs per person
• 9 guests including two 'couch surfers' and a german
• 10 dishes
• i made apple pie and mashed potatoes
• a jolly group of all day cooking
• unfortuneatly had to leave early to go to bareclona

So you need several things to make a thanksgiving, and i had all but one:
Giant turkey

Guests
Great Food
A jolly enviorment

Family


To get the turkey i went to 3 different stores and eventually special ordered it for over 60 bucks from my new friends the local butcher. This baby i believe was killed that morning and was consequiently the freshest turkey i have ever eaten. It barely fit in the oven.

We had 2 couch surfers over to dinner. This is a system of traveling for cheap, you sign up online and offer your couch for people to sleep on while they are traveling and thus you can stay on other people's couches. We got lucky (when i say we i mean the 3 other americans who are teaching english and living in an apartment) and got two awesome Wisconsinites!

Food = awesome

Family = absent but still had the environment.

All in all one of the best thanksgivings I've had.
For full pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=164601&id=563922118&l=389f8f9c88