Valencia, kind of like a home away from home...

    Okay... this Valencia is nothing like Valencia at home... but that's a good thing right??? Well this trip was much anticipated because it was a GSE trip, our last weekend one ;( with the whole group. The days are passing by like pages in a book and I am still loving every single minute of this incredible experience, but can't I just put my bookmark right here for a while and stay in this moment until I'm totally ready to leave? ... Don't answer that... I don't want to face the truth...

    Well last week was quite eventful. Ashley and I were very productive on Tuesday (long-story short) we went to class, took a class at the gym, went to lunch at a new place, went grocery shopping, laid out on our roof (a new find that we are soo excited for), got our hair cut and eyebrows done, found a great great new chic cafe by our house where we had coffee, went shopping and finally made a nice dinner at home. Pretty good huh? We thought so!

    Wednesday was school all -- day -- long-- and then came home, wrote our paper for class really quick, and got ready to go out. A bunch of our friends were planning on going out to the club Otto Zutz that night, I had been there before and really liked it, so we invited friends from school to get ready at our place. It's really cool that we have such a small school (probably 150 study abroad students) because we all have classes together and have made so many friends outside of our amazing friends in our program. Most of our program goes to school at UB, we go to UAB.

    So our friends came over and we took the metro to Otto Zutz, where we met a ton of other friends both from school and our program. It was a really fun night and so good to be with so many friends. Thursday was the exact opposite of Tuesday. We didn't get out of bed until noon and went to lunch in the middle of town and then later that night to Champagneria. Let me just tell you how much we have missed Champagneria since we left for Italy... A LOT! We don't just miss the cava or the tapas (which are amazing) but we really missed the atmosphere and the people we meet and go with. So Thursday night was the perfect night to give into our withdrawals and Noelle and I went with Alex and Mark to Champagneria.

    It was a good time, as always, and we enjoyed each other's company until we had to go home and pack for our weekend to Valencia. We had to meet the group at 9 to leave Barcelona and we were so excited to see everyone after a long time away during Spring Break. We defintely had time to catch up with one another on our 5-hour-long bus ride to Valencia. Luckily, we get literally the nicest tour buses possible, so that's nice! When we finally arrived to our hotel, I was freaking out about how warm it was. FINALLY, WARM WEATHER! Well, without knowing if our hotel even had a pool, the girls and I went and changed into our bathing suits and cover-ups before lunch to get a little sun time before our city tour. Every meal on this trip was a group meal = paid for and tons of fun and laughs. Come to find out,after lunch, the pool is closed... sweet!!! ... so I just walked around the outdoor mall right next to our hotel for a little while (kind of bitter).

    We had a tour of the city for a couple of hours that afternoon, and while I can honestly say no one was really listening to the tour guide, we loved seeing the city and being led around without getting lost. It was very beautiful and reminded us a lot of Lisbon (some of these places start looking the same after a while) but beautiful nonetheless. Valencia has so much history and is the 3rd largest city in Spain, after Madrid and Barcelona. The weather was perfect and by the time we got done with the tour, we all went back to the hotel to get ready for our group dinner. We had dinner downstairs at a nice restaurant at the hotel and shared our funny and crazy stories from Spring Break with each other. We are so used to getting dessert at restaurants that when the plates for dessert came out, we were all wondering why the only thing on the table was oranges... well, Valencia is known for oranges... we should have known better! Good times!

    We decided we should all stay in that night because we had quite the itinerary for Saturday that did not include being hungover/tired, so we all hung out in one of the rooms and talked. Waking up early the next morning wasn't too bad... especially because the breakfast served by the hotel was the best we've had yet. It was huge and we were all really full and ready for a day of fun in Valencia. We started off at the Valencia Aquarium called "Oceanographic". It is the biggest Aquarium in Europe and was really cool since none of us had visited a good aquarium in a while. We saw a dolphin show, which was great (the U.S. dolphins have nothing on the Spanish) and then all had lunch before heading over to the Museo de las Ciencias Principe Felipe (the science museum). The last time I was at a science museum was for my Jr. Prom... needless to say, we all felt like little kids again, running around playing with EVERYTHING and just being immature. haha.

    After seeing some really cool things there, we went to an Imax movie of the Coral Reef. That was really fun too and we all felt like we were back in Jr. High on a field trip, but in a different country... haha. The architecture of all the buildings were gorgeous. They were white, oddly shaped and surrounded by the clearest turquoise water....Unreal!! It looked almost exactly like the Opera House in Sydney. We had a couple hour break and then got ready to meet for dinner that night and had salad and Paella. This whole time, I have refused to try paella. For those that don't know, Paella is a rice mixture with meat and vegetables and some sauce. It always looked nasty to me, but Valencia (and Spain for that matter) is known for it and it is the main dish served all over. Well, group dinners are usually my time to try something new, so I ate it, and i actually like it. Who would've thought?! We all drank delicious wine and I made a toast (a tradition for me atevery group meal) to our last dinner away as a group (besides ourfarewell dinner), to our incredible directors and to the amazingfriends we've all become during our time here.

    We ALL got ready that night to go out together. There are about 35 people in our program, and we were so excited because Jordan, Julia and Paola were going to go out with us (which getting all three of them to go doesn't usually happen). So we all got ready, walked downtown and parked ourselves at this bar in the middle of town. The bar was empty when we got there, and we all started ordering drinks and the music started playing. We were all having a blast just talking, dancing and laughing. Jordan bought us all glasses of 'Agua de Valencia' (which I think I will take back to our Valencia) which is Valencia orange juice, champagne and vodka. I made, yet another toast, and we all cheers one another and kept on dancing.

    After a while, people from our group started leaving and the bar turned into kind of a club, some of us left and went to other bars in that area and ended up staying out until they closed at 4:30... time flies when your having fun! Fun was had by all until our 9 a.m. wake-up call to get on the bus came early Sunday morning. We had breakfast, and trekked the 5 hours back on the bus and back to Barcelona... Home Sweet Home.

    Sunday was filled with sleep, catching up with mom and more sleep. I woke up early this morning to meet my friend Lisa for coffee at Cafe Zurich, neither of us had ever been, before we both went our separate ways to class. This cafe is one of the oldest and definitely the most popular in the city, located directly in Plaza Catalunya, and is always crowded. We got there at 9 a.m. and were the only ones sitting up in the antique loft --- it was lovely. We caught up on life for an hour an a half and are doing the same thing every Monday and Wednesday from now on until we leave, discovering cute cafe's, one 'cafe con leche' at a time.

    School was normal today... I love Spanish, everything about it and am serious about continuing to practice and learn more when I get home (so I can eventually come back here). We have some very big weeks ahead of us, and a lot to fit in a small amount of time. I wish there was an emergency brake that I could pull to stop dead in this moment. I feel like I have spent my whole life looking forward to the next 'big thing' coming up in my life. But for once, since I've been here, every second is big and amazing... so I am finally content and as happy as can be in this moment... Nothing could be better than this feeling...

Todo mi amor!