Matt comes to Spain and Paris!

So after my Morocco trip, I was finally able to get excited about Matt coming to visit for a whole week!!!
But the day before he got here was the day my entire wallet (which included my passtport) was stolen... Before I begin, know that in the end everything worked out alright. So in the beginning of the week Matt literally had to pay for everything because my debit card had been in the wallet as well. While I was getting wachovia to ship my new card here, we also had to visit the American Consulate here in Spain to explain my predicament. Now, you need to understand that the Consulate was closed all weekend, and on Monday because it was a holiday in Sevilla. So we waited til Tuesday. It wouldn't have been a problem waiting, however, I had planned a trip to Paris two weeks later, and I was worried I wasn't going to be able to go! However, I got all my information sent out to Madrid and was able to get an emergency passport to me within a few days. All I have to do now is apply for a regular one before 3 months is up. Everything, like I said, worked out perfectly. I was just lucky that Matt was here to tell me to calm down and make me stop hyperventalting! Then we officially started his vacation here. We went out to several different restaurants, including one called Carmela, which Matt loved because they had a dish called Chupa Chups. It was a meatball dish with cold mashed potatoes in the middle HAHA. Anyways, he loved the sauce and I think he ended up getting that dish 3 times he was here. On Tuesday night we went out for Chenoa's (a friend of mine here) birthday. She turned 21 and although it's not a big deal here because you can drink at the age of 18, we wanted to still have a good time with her. I took Matt around to see the Cathedral, and the river, and the Alcazar Palace... all wonderful places that are primary to visit if you are in Sevilla. Mainly though we just spent a nice relaxing week together. On our last night we went out to a goregous restaurant and had a great night! I really wish he was still here :(

Then after my week with Matt, I went back to reality of school and had to study for my midterms. It really was the hardest week I have had since I've been here and compared to my usual work load at CNU, it was nothing. Anyways, after I was finished with midterms, I looked forward to my trip to PARIS! Let me tell you now, it was probably the most beautiful city I have been to. I love the atmosphere and the people in Sevilla, but Paris just has a life of it's own. The first thing we did when we got there was go and see the Eiffel Tower! It was so awesome. And I don't know about the rest of you, but for some reason I always thought the Eiffel Tower was green... Well it's not, it's actually brown. After admiring it, we went in line to climb it. No, we weren't able to climb the whole thing, but we climbed as high as we could and the sights were amazing! The city is amazingly breathtaking. After spending lots of time there, and seeing the Paris armed forces standing around the tower with semi-automatic guns (lol) we decided to head on. We were heading to the Catacolmes, but ended up going in the wrong direction, so instead we headed towards the Louve/our hostel for the night. While we walked, we looked at all the wonderful statues and plazas. We finally came to a street called Rivoli, which we ended up calling Ravioli the whole trip, and walked down that same street for like an hour and a half. No joke. After and hour we finally found the Louve. By the it was dark and we were exhausted so we took a couple of pictures of the giant triangles out front and then headed on to find the hostel. FINALLY after a little bit of searching and our feet in much pain, we found the hostel only to be greeted by a man behind the desk looking at us and then continuing to talk on his cell phone for 20 more minutes. We waited there impatiently and when he finally gave us his attention, he informed us that we had to pay 1 extra euro for a sheet and that the people already in our room had the key... LOL Yes, we had no idea we would be with other people or that all bedding would not be provided.. I was so exhausted that I didn't even eat dinner. I went straight to bed... Apparently neight Erica nor Chenoa could sleep and it was awful for them. I enjoyed my restless night. The next night was much worse.. but I'll get there.

The next day, we went to the Notre Dame (no Quasi was not there), the Louve (which was so big and had so many artifacts I though my head would spin. Art really isn't my thing, but a lot of it actually was interesting. And honestly people could probably spend 12 hours looking at everything that is in the museum), and then we headed back towards to Eiffel Tower. After a little rest, we decided to head to the Catacolmes, in the right direction this time, only to be part of the group that just barely missed the time cut off. :( So then we sat in a cafe while it consistently rained and tried to figure out what we would do the rest of the night. That night we went to an Italian restaurant so that Chenoa could get some pasta, and then we headed towards the Moulin Rouge. By this time, it was raining a lot harder and I was pretty exhausted. However, we did not have a hostel booked for this night. My friends had decided it would be fun and adventurous to find things to do all night. We did not know it would be raining, and FREEZING. Eventually, we sat in a McDonalds until 1am and then headed towards our bus stop where we would ride that to the airport at 5am when our flight wasn't until 1pm. Then we all found a dry corner (ironicly in front of a hotel) and sat and waited. Neither of the other girls fell asleep, I managed 1 hour on the cold ground. Finally, it was 5am and time to leave. We waited/slept in the airport for our flight and then came home and got showers and just passed out. Needless to say it was a wonderful/interesting trip!!!

I feel as though all the pictures are self explanatory... If anyone has questions please comment!!!

OK... I just got lazy before...

Ok so I have a lot to update on I know. I had actually considered not continuing updating my blog because I honestly didn't think anyone was reading it... However, I seem to have a lot of complaints about not having been updating. So I believe I left off right before I went to Morocco... Well to start off it is actually really cool to be able to say I've been to Africa! However, the trip itself was not as exciting as I had hoped. For those of you who have seen my pictures, the first place we went to was a town of blue... Literally everything was painted blue. We did a lot of bargaining and dealing down prices with the shop keepers because it is considered rude there if you pay the first price they offer.. weird right? Anyways, there I bought this beautiful green handmade blanket... It's not really a warm blanket, but more of decoration and to show off that I have it lol. Then we rode on a bus forever to get to another place that looked almost exactly the same... We spent most of our time on the buses. The food wasn't really any different than what I've had in Spain. Just a lot of soup and meat. The last day we were there we had kuskus (sp?) Anyways its an authentic dish... Obviously because my family doesn't really eat anything out of the ordinary, I had never even heard of it before lol! In one of the other villages that we went to I was looking at a painting of Morocco and the guy had offered it to me for 60 euros and I said no way... Eventually we got him down to 20 euros. The bargaining was probably one of the most fun things we did. But, by far, the most fun thing we did was ride camels for about 5.5 seconds!! They have camel rides everywhere for the tourists... I had a strange experience because the guy told me to basically jump up on the camel... And I told him my legs were too short to get around the camel so he had to help me jump up. Everyone laughed at me... And then! The camel behind me way trying to eat the cloth underneath the saddle of my camel... I was just a bit scared because it was so close to my leg and eventually I just wanted to get off so the camel wouldn't eat my foot. Then we had more bus driving.. we went through a creepy market where they sold live hens everywhere... and honestly I know the culture is different, but it was just kinda gross. Anyways, I think overall it was a great experience, just had to travel a lot to do only a little.

(The two pictures above are of me and our tour guide and me almost falling off my camel lol. Our tour guide carried tobacco snuff with him on his thumb the whole time we were with him and had to constantly remind us that it was not cocaine. He told us that no, this stuff would take you to the moon. An intersting tid bit about him was that he spoke Arabic, French, English, Spanish, and German and he learned them in that order. He was so cute!)

Alright that is it for this one, and I am going to go take a break by the water, but I promise I will update more today because there is a lot for everyone to be updated on! Hasta luego!