Cumpleaños, Suiza, Marruecos, y más!

Hello friends!! As you all know by now, I am a terrible blogger!! But I will try to recap the last month (I can't believe it's been a month already since my last post!) without making it superrrrr long and boring! Here goes!!

First off--Birthday Weekend!!

Thursday night was Lindsay's birthday (another girl in my program) so we went to a Flamenco show to celebrate, it was my first Flamenco experience, and it lived up to the name of being very "interesting and cultural" for sure!  

Then, on Friday, we went hiking!! I was really feeling pretty crappy that day, but thankfully Spain's mountains are no Rocky Mountains so the hike was easy, and I survived (:

For my birthday, we went to the beach at Matalascañas and rode horses on the beach! It was so much fun! It was a great day that I got to spend with 10 of my best friends from studying abroad and an experience I will never forget!  

Me and my horse Niebla (:

None of us had swimming suits, but somehow we thought it would be a good idea to jump into the ocean anyway... 

 The after effect: me soaking wet, but it was the best decision we made all day (:

Next Stop--Granada! (I warned you this would be long....!)

The following weekend we had our next ISA excursion, which means we went on a trip with the other people in our program, and the staff organized everything for us.  It was super nice to not have to be worrying about paying for hostels and such as we went along and to not be worried about anything happening because if something went wrong we wouldn't have to take care of it for once!! 

Our first stop on this trip was Córdoba where we saw La Mezquita.  It was not my first time in Córdoba, because my trip to Spain in high school stopped there, but it is a charming little town and it was nice to see it again (:

 A typical flower pot-covered street in Córdoba 

La Mezquita: Catholic Cathedral built inside a Muslim Mosque, gotta love Spanish culture (:

After spending most of the day in Córdoba, we migrated on to Granada, which I would say is basically like the Boulder of Spain.  It is basically in the mountains, and has a lot of hippies.  We even found a hippie hang-out place while we were there, and after observing the gente and feeling way out of place for about a half hour, we moved on.  While in Granada, we saw the Alhambra, an old palace, and the most visited site in all of Spain.  It really is a beautiful place, but way too crowded by tourists (including myself!) for my taste. 

 Inside the Alhambra

 One of the views looking out from the Alhambra

In our free time we decided to just hike around and see what we could find.  Along with finding the hippie hang-out place, we found some great views like this one: Granada's pretty (:

The rest of our time in Granada was spent touring one more Cathedral, hiking around a bit, hanging out in a park playing Psychiatrist, and enjoying free tapas, that's right, I said FREE! One of the best things about Granada is that if you go basically anywhere and order a drink, they will bring you tapas for free!! Such a great system, I think all of Spain should adopt that! 

Stage Three: Suiza! (aka Switzerland!)

The following weekend my friend Deirdre and I went to Switzerland.  We covered two cities in our little weekend including Zurich and Basel.  When we got there, we were met with a little surprise--turns out Zurich doesn't have mountains!! What a bummer! Guess we should have done our research! haha BUT lacking mountains does not mean Zurich is an ugly city by any means.  Deirdre and I rented bikes and rode around the Lake and throughout the city--for Free!! (Are you noticing a theme? We really like free stuff!)  

 Zurich at night!

 Switzerland speaks German, which means my last name was EVERYWHERE!

 Along the bike path (:

 No, we did not steal this child, she is the daughter of the family we stayed with CouchSurfing!

 The largest clock face in the world, pretty cool huh

 This is how Switzerland drinks out of water fountains...que guay

 We payed two franks and sprinted up multiple flights of stairs for this view, so worth it (:

 Basel is pretty (:

The Rhine River

After spending a very long night in the Basel airport to catch our very early flight, we returned to Sevilla at around 11:30 the next morning where I took a very long nap before going to meet MY PARENTS!!

That's right, my parents came to visit me this week!! It was so much fun! I realize now that I don't have any pictures of their visit (que pena) but I assure you it was lovely.  Things got a little interesting because of the Huelga General (General Strike) that Spain had on the Thursday (March 29th) that my parents were supposed to fly out of Sevilla to make it to Barcelona for their cruise.  Their flight was cancelled so I snagged them tickets to the only train going from Sevilla to Barcelona the entire day.  After making a couple of trips to the train station, we had tickets in hand and I was sending them away.  I realized that it is a lot harder to be the one sending someone off on an adventure than to be the one leaving for an adventure!! My time with them went by WAY too fast after how long we had been looking forward to it, but it was nice to show them my home and have them meet my Spanish family (:

Whew! We're almost done, hang in there! 

Exactly 12 hours after my parents train left for Barcelona I left for Morocco! Take out your maps people, because Morocco is in AFRICA! Pretty sweet, huh?  I could type forever with stories about Morocco, but I will just let pictures tell the story (: Here we go!

 This (to the left) is the view from the Ferry on the way to Morocco, welcome to the land of the Arabic!

Our first stop in Fes was at a huge arabian palace.  This is a picture of us in one of the doorways.  Arabians sure know how to decorate!

Our first day in Fez, we wandered through La Medina which is basically a HUGE (the largest in the world) market place with tons and tons of shops.  We stopped at a few of them to see how Moroccans make their items and to see a bit of how they live life.  It was a really interesting little culture lesson! To the right is where they die leather.  If you look closely, you can see people standing in some of the little wells where they put in and take out leather all day to die it.

This is our tour guide, Fued (I really have no idea how to write it, but it's pronounced foo-ed).  He was pretty much the coolest, we had the best group.  

That night we went to a traditional Moroccan show (aka cool Moroccan music and belly dancing). Here's a picture of one of the performers!

The following day was another day of travel as we headed toward the Sahara Desert!  We stopped for lunch in the middle of an oasis. SO. MANY. PALM TREES!!!! I could hardly contain myself!! Here is us looking down on the oasis we were heading toward!

When we got to the place we were supposed to leave our buses and get into 4x4s to head into the desert, we found a huge sand storm waiting for us.  This is how we protected ourselves from the sand..scarves have so many uses!

When we got to the desert we had a full day ahead of us, including:

RIDING CAMELS!!,

 Hiking through some dunes,

Playing with some niños,

And chilling with some locals (including several marriage proposals).

The next morning, we woke up early to watch the sun rise over the Sahara Desert.  It's kind of one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments that a picture really can't capture, but here's the best effort we got:

Finally, we had to head back home, but only after a couple of stops, including one stop where we saw some wild African Monkeys!!! They were so cute! (well, at least the baby ones were).

After countless hours on the bus, we were finally on the ferry that would take us back to Spain.  While riding the ferry, we saw some dolphins jumping which was a first for me!  It was a beautiful ride filled with great conversation, and some beautiful scenery (: