cadiz carnaval!

first off, why am I writing this? my flight to athens leaves in 3 horas.

oh yeah and hello parents! I didn't know you read this blog. how did you find it anyway.....

third, I was just at a bookstore called FNAC and tried to use my credit card to buy some books. but apparently I needed my pasaporte. lame.

okay so quickly, here's arundown of cadiz. we left on friday through this travel company based in madrid called european vibe. everything was really convenient, all the buses and the hotel was arranged. it's nice not having to scramble for transportation. and the hotel was really really nice. like we had a suite for four people and the breakfast was insane. scrambled eggs, hard boiled eggs, over easy eggs, churros, fruit, a whole counter with every bread you've ever wanted, and the best part - a deli section. so we made sandwiches and snuck them out for lunch and dinner. so nice.

the first night we went to some club. it was kinda cool to see a bunch of slu kids at the same place.....that's not in madrid. I ran into my tango partner.



saturday was susan's bday. we were gonna go explore cadiz, but settled on the beach instead. not settled. more like enjoyed a lot more. our hotel was technically in chiclana which is the mediterranean beach town of cadiz. on a golf course too. it was super pretty. kinda cold still. like everything in europe so far!




carnaval itself was crazy. a huge botellon, like the place was absolutely trashed by the end of the night. all the spaniards had organized their costumes for their groups. so there were smurfs, firefighters, and a bunch of others I can't remember. oh yeah all the spanish dressed up as some asian - sumo wrestlers, ninjas and whatnot - got really excited when they saw my korean friend zach. haha they're so racist.




anyway I should really leave. what a terrible post!

mi senora just showed me she destroyed one of my sweaters. haha. no me importa.

Portuguesa

guys, blogs are tedious. and like I think 5 people in the world might read this. hi Lauren. the one with the separate colored eyes. do you even want to read this? doesn't this take up your life? anyway this is Portugal:





We saw a bunch of stuff: the Castillo de San Jorge, Pastries de Belem, there was a labor strike that stopped our tram. But my personal favorite was the monastery. the building so intricate and breathtaking. and Vasco de Gama, the guy from all your social studies books who sailed around Africa is buried there. well his tomb is there. he's not even buried.



These are all the Portuguese conquistadores:


Our hostel was soooo cool. It was called Hostel Kitsch, so it was all decorated with these risque photos next to like old wallpaper and hearts. it's hard to describe. plus we had kitchen priviledges so that really helped with costs. it was fun just hanging out with random students too. I met some girl who goes to Wisconsin who knows the kid from Creighton who got shot last year! what a small world! this is the kitchen:



We spent a day at Fatima, which was like an hour and a half away. It's probably the holiest place I've ever been. I burned a candle.




Overall the trip was alright. It wasn't the most exciting because I didn't know anything about Lisboa before we went. But it was a nice jumpoff for stuff to come. This weekend is an off weekend before Cadiz for Spanish Carnaval (some wild party) next week and Greece for "Winter Break" the week after that. So stay tuned. Actually don't. This probably won't be updated for a while.

oh more photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nathanancheta