As i'm sitting her at 5:30 in the afternoon with my roommate next to me listening to David Archuleta on youtube i'm thinking about the undeniable fact that tonight i begin saying farewell to Sevilla. tonight is the CEA program farewell dinner which means the semester really is coming to a close. and as i cling to the thought "NO! i have 2 and 1/2 week left!!" i can no longer resist the idea of going home to the great U.S. of A. any longer.
while my time here slips away i'm trying to live every moment to its absolute fullest. and im realizing that its not the traveling and seeing the world, or the independence, or the incredible learning experiences that i'm going to miss the most, instead, it's the little, quirky things that make my life here so different and amazing. the little things that would never be "normal" in the US. those tiny details that for most of the semester i overlooked, but now am trying to hold onto as i experience each one every day.
it's the little things like my 10 minute walk to class every day when i listen to my ipod and stay as close to the buildings as possible so i can stay in the shade and not burn alive. the dog that has dreadlocks who sits outside the bar on the corner and always makes me laugh. the building i take classes in with its big indoor patio and chandeliers in every classroom. how it has become totally normal to walk 45 minutes or so when i need to go somewhere and how i don't even remember what it feels like to drive. it's ordering a bocadillo (sandwhich) at my favorite bocaillo place and eating it walking home. it's walking up my beautifully tiled staircase to enter the apartment that has no air conditioning and is impossibly hotter than it is outside. it's laying in bed for an hour laughing with steph because we can't sleep because it's so hot and the fan won't stay on without the light. or listening to the little children on the street speak in their little spanish voices. or the beautiful little prams that new moms push their babies around in. it's getting stared at for wearing shorts and a t-shirt in 90 degree weather while i stare right back because these spaniards are crazy for wearing long sleeves outside. it's staying in with steph instead of going out and watching stupid youtube videos and laughing histarically until the early hours of the morning. it's going out for tapas and trying something new every time even after four months. or drinking tinto del verano every wednesday at 100 mondatitos when everything is a euro. it's watching a little spanish boy and a little english girl play together and discovering that laughter knows no langauge barrier. it's the little old ladies who walk arm in arm down the street. it's the openness of affection that spanish people know so well. or the dos besos (2 kisses) you recieve upon meeting someone knew. it's wandering around for no reason whatsoever other than to see more of your own city. it's knowing that no matter how much i travel, sevilla is going to be there when i get back. it's going to bed every night knowing that if the dog who insesently barks, or the men who drill at 8 a.m, or our obnoxiously loud folding bathroom door don't wake you up in the morning, the heat sure will. it's sitting by the river doing nothing but enjoying your life in that moment.
these are the things that i will miss most. not the big obvious things, but rather the little quirks that make up life for me here in Sevilla. the things that are so not normal back home in the States but that i have come accustomed to here in Spain.
i would have to say that i'm ready to go home. i have so much to look forward to: nights spent hanging out with my parents, helping my beautifully pregnant sister get ready for the twins, a wedding on the beach. with all of that, who wouldn't want to go home? but i really will miss Sevilla. there is so much that i wish i could take home with me and i know i will make my best efforts to incorporate parts of my new life here into my old one in Charlotte.
but for now, (once i can convince myself to get off my bed and get ready for the farewell banquet to the tunes of David Archuleta, who seems to be the flavor of the day), i will enjoy my 45 or so minute walk down the streets of Sevilla and soak up all the spanish life that i can until the day that i truly have to say goodbye.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Italy and France pictures
had to take the classic cheesy picture =)
it is tradition to kiss under the bridges. steph wasn't havin it.
the pope is speaking! he's waayyyyyy back there
the cross in the Colosseum was my favorite part of it
hanging out on the airport "overnight porch" right before taking turns with steph to sleep
the back of Notre Dam
steph and i ate A LOT of crepes
riding a carousel in front of the Eiffel Tower
The tower itself
Steph and i fondly refer to ourselves as "super tourists" (we are at Versailles)
the Eiffel Tower as it sparkles
the Arch de Triumph
Welcome to the Moulin Rouge
This is what steph and i did when we were supposed to be on our way back to Sevilla
it is tradition to kiss under the bridges. steph wasn't havin it.
the pope is speaking! he's waayyyyyy back there
the cross in the Colosseum was my favorite part of it
hanging out on the airport "overnight porch" right before taking turns with steph to sleep
the back of Notre Dam
steph and i ate A LOT of crepes
riding a carousel in front of the Eiffel Tower
The tower itself
Steph and i fondly refer to ourselves as "super tourists" (we are at Versailles)
the Eiffel Tower as it sparkles
the Arch de Triumph
Welcome to the Moulin Rouge
This is what steph and i did when we were supposed to be on our way back to Sevilla
10 days 6 cities 3 showers 1 backpack
the title pretty much sums up the my trip to Italy and France. but i'm going to give you a lot more detail. put on your seat belts kids because it's going to be a long ride.
our adventure began on Thursday a week and a half ago. we flew out of the Sevilla airport into Pisa Italy. there were 10 in our group to begin with but some left, some left and came back, and one switched out with another girl in our program when we changed countries. but for the general reference of "we" just assume there were 7 of us (and sometimes Naveen, our token male). we only spent a few hours in Pisa because other than the leaning tower there is really nothing to do. so we went, saw the thing, took our pictures and headed to Florence.
That night in Florence we got our first taste of Italian food. and let me tell you it was awesome. we spent one day in Florence but we covered a lot of ground. we saw the David, who is a heck of a lot bigger than i thought, and the Medici chapel, we climbed the Duomo (only 463 stairs and a heart attack to the top), and went over the oldest bridge in Italy. my favorite part of that day was when we climbed a hill and watched the sunset over Florence. it was gorgeous! the prettiest sunset i've ever seen. i was sitting on a hill in a beautiful city with good friends and laughing, i was a happy girl.
have i mentioned yet that out of our 5 days in Italy we only spent 2 in a hostel? well, when we booked the trip we thought it would be a really good idea to take 2 over night trains and 1 early morning flight and save the money on hostels, good thinking right? uhhh..maybe not so much. this part of our trip definitely made for some really good stories though! we were supposed to take an overnight train from Florence to Venice. we double checked with the train station lady that we were doing everything right. she told us to go to another Florence train station and catch the one to Venice from there. well, we get to this other train station at 12:30 and it is completely abandoned, not a soul to be found. there wasn't another train scheduled until 5 a.m. needless to say we were all a little worried. we were 7 girls in an unknown city in an unknown country alone at night in an empty train station (without the actual station part, just the tracks). another thing i forgot to mention was that Steph and I were unofficially elected the leaders of the group (not a position we asked for) but thrown in there all the same for our common sense and ability to read a map (a skill no one else in our group seemed to posess). so it was steph and i to the rescue. steph saw a taxi without a driver but had the good idea to call the number on the side, i jumped into mother hen mode and made sure everyone had their passports and important documents on their person. this caused all the girls to freak out and say "we're going to die" over and over again. but when you're all alone it's just good sense right? 2 taxi's came and took us back to the original train station where we found out we couldn't take another train until 4 a.m. so what did we do? we slept in a 24 hour McDonalds. "slept" begin in quotes as the McDonalds bouncer (ha) wouldn't let us actually sleep.
we eventually got to Venice after a freezing cold train ride, 2 hour layover in another train station holding room packed with homeless people, and another 2 hour train ride. Venice was gorgeous! i knew what i was in for, but actually seeing the canals instead of roads was incredible. we mostly wandered around that day taking in the beauty of the city. we did ride a gondala which was so much fun. our drive was hilarious and said the word "guys" approximately every 5th word. "hey guys, look at this guys, over here guys, guys look" haha, he was great. we all bought glass necklaces as that is what Venice is known for. it was a good relaxing day.
that night we took another over night train. this one was my favorite as we got to ride in compartments just like in the harry potter movies. i think i said "this is just like harry potter" roughly a thousand times and might have overdone it a bit with the enthusiasm. but i didn't care, i was so happy to be fulfilling a life dream by riding in one of those trains.
again, we arrived early in the morning. Rome was.. well.. i can't actually come up with a word that is good enough to describe Rome. i can't pick a favorite city of Italy, but my favorite memories come from the two days we spent in Rome. for me to write about all we did there would take longer than anyone would want to read, so i'll just hit the highlights. our first day there we met up with our friend who told us that the pope speaks at Vatican City the last Sunday of every month. it was the last Sunday of the month! we got to see the pope speak! the pope himself IN Vatican City! i still can't get over that i saw the pope speak in the Vatican. this was by far the best part of the whole trip. i'm sure it would mean even more if i was Catholic, but common, who gets to say they saw the pope speak in the Vatican?! we then headed towards the Colluseum. as i walked toward the ticket box i heard a "hey" coming from the right and turned to see the most beautiful man in the whole world. his name was Brent and he wanted me to take a tour of the Colluseum for 20 euros. it took me a minute to understand what he was telling me because i was dumbfounded by how attractive he was. the next thing i noticed was that he was wearing a Lacost polo and had no accent, which caused me to quickly deduce that he was American. oh man was Brent beautiful, but enough about that, he told us that for 8 euros more we would get a tour of the Colluseum and a tour of the old Roman city. we decided to do it and it was definitely worth it. both tours were about an hour and the tour guides were wonderful (unfortunately Brent was not one of the tour guides). the Colluseum was really cool. a bit smaller than i expected and i was a bit disapointed to find out that only 50 percent of it is orginal. but none the less, it was awesome.
after our tours we made our way to the Vatican museum to see the Sistine Chapel. boy do those guys over there make you work to see that ceiling. we followed signs leading to it for forever. we had to go through the whole museum to get to it. it was every bit as cool as the pictures we studied in class. better, actually, although i'm sure that comes as no surprise. steph and i looked at it for about an hour before leaving to go into St. Peter's Basilica. i spent my time in there with a friend named Lauren. she and i wondered around and then decided to out to where the pope had stood the day before. as we were headed that way i said to her "i hope they let us back in" and she replied with "it's free to get in, we'll be fine" before we were even out the door, security gaurds were sweeping us out. i kept saying "we're supposed to be in here, we have tickets" to which the gaurd repeatedly replied "prego - out" i had no idea what was going on because lots of people were being forced out of the doors. i asked the guard why and he promptly replied "security problem" Lauren and i had no problem leaving after that! we got outside and headed towards the group meeting point. after a long time, the rest of the group joined us and when we asked if they were so late because it took a while to evacuate the whole Basilica they had no idea what we were talking about. apparently, Lauren and i were the only ones evacuated. we still have no idea what happened that caused us to be evacuated but no one else. after that we went tourist shopping and ate our last gelato (where the gelato man wore a steelers hat) and got on a train to go to the Rome airport.
our flight was at 6:30 a.m. so we figured with having to be there at 4:30 we could just go sleep in the airport. well, the airport was closed. but they did have an "overnight porch" meaning a holding room. where steph and i took turns staying awake while the group slept because no one else found a problem with everyone sleeping at the same time (can you say stolen passports?)
we got to Paris early, took a nap, and then met up with Bethany, a girl in our sorority studying in Paris. the next day, Bethany took us to Notre Dam and down the Champs Elesee. while everyone else had erands to do, steph and i wandered into Louis Vuitton (200 euros for a plastic key chain) and took a lot of really good picture of the Eiffel Tower. we found a carousel in front of the Eiffel and rode it. i'm pretty sure we are the only people over the age of 10 to ever ride that thing. the looks we got were hilarious. these few hours when it was just steph and i are my favorite spent in Paris. then we met up with the rest of the girls, and went up the Eiffel. it was awesome, until it started raining and we had to fight our way onto the elevator. then we went to the Louvre because it's a reduced price on Wednesday evenings. we saw the Mona Lisa and other paintings that we have learned about at Grove City. other than the Mona Lisa we accomplished 1 hallway. Bethany told us you need at leat 3 weeks to get through the whole thing and i totally believe it. after a delcious dinner we went to bed. woke up the next day and went to Versailles. steph had mentioned when we arrived in Paris that she would love to take a trip out there. so i came up with a way to work the plan to include that along with everything else we wanted to see. i knew it was important to her. and it was awesome! the palace is crazy extravagant and the gardens are insane. the rest of the afternoon was spent tracking everyone in our group down and then that night we went up to the Arch de Triumph where we got to see Paris by night and watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle.
Our last morning we visited the Sacre Cou'r (Sacred Heart) another really pretty church, and the Moulin Rouge. unfortunately, the rest of the day was not to be so great. steph and i missed our flight and had to spend an extra night in Paris and spend a lot of money trying to get back to Spain. we all joked the whole trip that we were homeless but this time we really were. but more than upset we were frustrated. being thrown into the role of leaders with no help the whole trip. we both felt that if anyone should have been stuck it should not have been the only 2 responsible people in the group, especially when we pushed them so hard to be on time for that flight and then we were the only ones left behind. had it just been steph and i we would never have been late in the first place. but it's in the past now and steph and i are doing our best to let our anger go and just enjoy our last three weeks in Sevilla. arriving back was like coming home. not quite as euphoric as i know actually going home is going to be, but pretty close. in the past 4 months going back to Sevilla has been the best feeling. I feel like i belong here and i cherish that feeling so much.
i wish i could say that the whole 9 days was breezy and wonderful but among those great days was a lot of frustration. a lot of time steph and i felt like we were babysitting 5 year olds instead of traveling with adults. but despite a lot of annoyances that culminated in what was quite possibly one of the worst days of our (steph and i's) life, it was an incredible trip. one that i have so many amazing memories of. a lot of it i still can't believe happened, such as seeing the pope, riding the gondala, and riding a carousel in front of the Eiffel Tower.
i take a time out here to write a little blurb about the food. this paragraph is dedicated to Ashleigh Blue who always loves to know about the food i eat on my trips. but i hope you will all enjoy this little rabbit trail: most of the stereotypes hold true, pizza is better in Italy, french onion soup is better in France. i doubt i will ever have as good of lasagna as i had in Rome. if i had to choose between gelato and a nutella crepe i'd probably die before making a firm decision. and french bread is better than Italian bread. there is one stereotype that does not hold true however. i am happy to report that the great country of Italy can't hold a candle to my dad's spaghetti. it doesn't even come close. which means, if Italy is supposed to have the best Spaghetti in the world, and my dad's beats it by a landslide, then all of you who have had the priviledge of being a part of the famous spectacle that is spaghetti night at the Zaepfel house, then you have had the best spaghetti in the world. so there ya go, forget Italy, you want the best spaghetti you come to the Zaepfel home. (but don't let this go to your head too much dad)
so that's pretty much it. i spent 10 days, in 6 cities, only took 3 showers and my only luggage was 1 backpack. impressive huh? and you thought girls couldn't travel light.
(i will be posting pictures in a seperate blog)
our adventure began on Thursday a week and a half ago. we flew out of the Sevilla airport into Pisa Italy. there were 10 in our group to begin with but some left, some left and came back, and one switched out with another girl in our program when we changed countries. but for the general reference of "we" just assume there were 7 of us (and sometimes Naveen, our token male). we only spent a few hours in Pisa because other than the leaning tower there is really nothing to do. so we went, saw the thing, took our pictures and headed to Florence.
That night in Florence we got our first taste of Italian food. and let me tell you it was awesome. we spent one day in Florence but we covered a lot of ground. we saw the David, who is a heck of a lot bigger than i thought, and the Medici chapel, we climbed the Duomo (only 463 stairs and a heart attack to the top), and went over the oldest bridge in Italy. my favorite part of that day was when we climbed a hill and watched the sunset over Florence. it was gorgeous! the prettiest sunset i've ever seen. i was sitting on a hill in a beautiful city with good friends and laughing, i was a happy girl.
have i mentioned yet that out of our 5 days in Italy we only spent 2 in a hostel? well, when we booked the trip we thought it would be a really good idea to take 2 over night trains and 1 early morning flight and save the money on hostels, good thinking right? uhhh..maybe not so much. this part of our trip definitely made for some really good stories though! we were supposed to take an overnight train from Florence to Venice. we double checked with the train station lady that we were doing everything right. she told us to go to another Florence train station and catch the one to Venice from there. well, we get to this other train station at 12:30 and it is completely abandoned, not a soul to be found. there wasn't another train scheduled until 5 a.m. needless to say we were all a little worried. we were 7 girls in an unknown city in an unknown country alone at night in an empty train station (without the actual station part, just the tracks). another thing i forgot to mention was that Steph and I were unofficially elected the leaders of the group (not a position we asked for) but thrown in there all the same for our common sense and ability to read a map (a skill no one else in our group seemed to posess). so it was steph and i to the rescue. steph saw a taxi without a driver but had the good idea to call the number on the side, i jumped into mother hen mode and made sure everyone had their passports and important documents on their person. this caused all the girls to freak out and say "we're going to die" over and over again. but when you're all alone it's just good sense right? 2 taxi's came and took us back to the original train station where we found out we couldn't take another train until 4 a.m. so what did we do? we slept in a 24 hour McDonalds. "slept" begin in quotes as the McDonalds bouncer (ha) wouldn't let us actually sleep.
we eventually got to Venice after a freezing cold train ride, 2 hour layover in another train station holding room packed with homeless people, and another 2 hour train ride. Venice was gorgeous! i knew what i was in for, but actually seeing the canals instead of roads was incredible. we mostly wandered around that day taking in the beauty of the city. we did ride a gondala which was so much fun. our drive was hilarious and said the word "guys" approximately every 5th word. "hey guys, look at this guys, over here guys, guys look" haha, he was great. we all bought glass necklaces as that is what Venice is known for. it was a good relaxing day.
that night we took another over night train. this one was my favorite as we got to ride in compartments just like in the harry potter movies. i think i said "this is just like harry potter" roughly a thousand times and might have overdone it a bit with the enthusiasm. but i didn't care, i was so happy to be fulfilling a life dream by riding in one of those trains.
again, we arrived early in the morning. Rome was.. well.. i can't actually come up with a word that is good enough to describe Rome. i can't pick a favorite city of Italy, but my favorite memories come from the two days we spent in Rome. for me to write about all we did there would take longer than anyone would want to read, so i'll just hit the highlights. our first day there we met up with our friend who told us that the pope speaks at Vatican City the last Sunday of every month. it was the last Sunday of the month! we got to see the pope speak! the pope himself IN Vatican City! i still can't get over that i saw the pope speak in the Vatican. this was by far the best part of the whole trip. i'm sure it would mean even more if i was Catholic, but common, who gets to say they saw the pope speak in the Vatican?! we then headed towards the Colluseum. as i walked toward the ticket box i heard a "hey" coming from the right and turned to see the most beautiful man in the whole world. his name was Brent and he wanted me to take a tour of the Colluseum for 20 euros. it took me a minute to understand what he was telling me because i was dumbfounded by how attractive he was. the next thing i noticed was that he was wearing a Lacost polo and had no accent, which caused me to quickly deduce that he was American. oh man was Brent beautiful, but enough about that, he told us that for 8 euros more we would get a tour of the Colluseum and a tour of the old Roman city. we decided to do it and it was definitely worth it. both tours were about an hour and the tour guides were wonderful (unfortunately Brent was not one of the tour guides). the Colluseum was really cool. a bit smaller than i expected and i was a bit disapointed to find out that only 50 percent of it is orginal. but none the less, it was awesome.
after our tours we made our way to the Vatican museum to see the Sistine Chapel. boy do those guys over there make you work to see that ceiling. we followed signs leading to it for forever. we had to go through the whole museum to get to it. it was every bit as cool as the pictures we studied in class. better, actually, although i'm sure that comes as no surprise. steph and i looked at it for about an hour before leaving to go into St. Peter's Basilica. i spent my time in there with a friend named Lauren. she and i wondered around and then decided to out to where the pope had stood the day before. as we were headed that way i said to her "i hope they let us back in" and she replied with "it's free to get in, we'll be fine" before we were even out the door, security gaurds were sweeping us out. i kept saying "we're supposed to be in here, we have tickets" to which the gaurd repeatedly replied "prego - out" i had no idea what was going on because lots of people were being forced out of the doors. i asked the guard why and he promptly replied "security problem" Lauren and i had no problem leaving after that! we got outside and headed towards the group meeting point. after a long time, the rest of the group joined us and when we asked if they were so late because it took a while to evacuate the whole Basilica they had no idea what we were talking about. apparently, Lauren and i were the only ones evacuated. we still have no idea what happened that caused us to be evacuated but no one else. after that we went tourist shopping and ate our last gelato (where the gelato man wore a steelers hat) and got on a train to go to the Rome airport.
our flight was at 6:30 a.m. so we figured with having to be there at 4:30 we could just go sleep in the airport. well, the airport was closed. but they did have an "overnight porch" meaning a holding room. where steph and i took turns staying awake while the group slept because no one else found a problem with everyone sleeping at the same time (can you say stolen passports?)
we got to Paris early, took a nap, and then met up with Bethany, a girl in our sorority studying in Paris. the next day, Bethany took us to Notre Dam and down the Champs Elesee. while everyone else had erands to do, steph and i wandered into Louis Vuitton (200 euros for a plastic key chain) and took a lot of really good picture of the Eiffel Tower. we found a carousel in front of the Eiffel and rode it. i'm pretty sure we are the only people over the age of 10 to ever ride that thing. the looks we got were hilarious. these few hours when it was just steph and i are my favorite spent in Paris. then we met up with the rest of the girls, and went up the Eiffel. it was awesome, until it started raining and we had to fight our way onto the elevator. then we went to the Louvre because it's a reduced price on Wednesday evenings. we saw the Mona Lisa and other paintings that we have learned about at Grove City. other than the Mona Lisa we accomplished 1 hallway. Bethany told us you need at leat 3 weeks to get through the whole thing and i totally believe it. after a delcious dinner we went to bed. woke up the next day and went to Versailles. steph had mentioned when we arrived in Paris that she would love to take a trip out there. so i came up with a way to work the plan to include that along with everything else we wanted to see. i knew it was important to her. and it was awesome! the palace is crazy extravagant and the gardens are insane. the rest of the afternoon was spent tracking everyone in our group down and then that night we went up to the Arch de Triumph where we got to see Paris by night and watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle.
Our last morning we visited the Sacre Cou'r (Sacred Heart) another really pretty church, and the Moulin Rouge. unfortunately, the rest of the day was not to be so great. steph and i missed our flight and had to spend an extra night in Paris and spend a lot of money trying to get back to Spain. we all joked the whole trip that we were homeless but this time we really were. but more than upset we were frustrated. being thrown into the role of leaders with no help the whole trip. we both felt that if anyone should have been stuck it should not have been the only 2 responsible people in the group, especially when we pushed them so hard to be on time for that flight and then we were the only ones left behind. had it just been steph and i we would never have been late in the first place. but it's in the past now and steph and i are doing our best to let our anger go and just enjoy our last three weeks in Sevilla. arriving back was like coming home. not quite as euphoric as i know actually going home is going to be, but pretty close. in the past 4 months going back to Sevilla has been the best feeling. I feel like i belong here and i cherish that feeling so much.
i wish i could say that the whole 9 days was breezy and wonderful but among those great days was a lot of frustration. a lot of time steph and i felt like we were babysitting 5 year olds instead of traveling with adults. but despite a lot of annoyances that culminated in what was quite possibly one of the worst days of our (steph and i's) life, it was an incredible trip. one that i have so many amazing memories of. a lot of it i still can't believe happened, such as seeing the pope, riding the gondala, and riding a carousel in front of the Eiffel Tower.
i take a time out here to write a little blurb about the food. this paragraph is dedicated to Ashleigh Blue who always loves to know about the food i eat on my trips. but i hope you will all enjoy this little rabbit trail: most of the stereotypes hold true, pizza is better in Italy, french onion soup is better in France. i doubt i will ever have as good of lasagna as i had in Rome. if i had to choose between gelato and a nutella crepe i'd probably die before making a firm decision. and french bread is better than Italian bread. there is one stereotype that does not hold true however. i am happy to report that the great country of Italy can't hold a candle to my dad's spaghetti. it doesn't even come close. which means, if Italy is supposed to have the best Spaghetti in the world, and my dad's beats it by a landslide, then all of you who have had the priviledge of being a part of the famous spectacle that is spaghetti night at the Zaepfel house, then you have had the best spaghetti in the world. so there ya go, forget Italy, you want the best spaghetti you come to the Zaepfel home. (but don't let this go to your head too much dad)
so that's pretty much it. i spent 10 days, in 6 cities, only took 3 showers and my only luggage was 1 backpack. impressive huh? and you thought girls couldn't travel light.
(i will be posting pictures in a seperate blog)
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