Sevilla

After working on the farm for two and a half weeks, I went back to Sevilla (before I left I stayed there for two nights). At first, the city made me feel very overwhelmed. After being in the middle of nowhere, enjoying nature and very secluded from civilization, this big city with tall buildings and small windey streets was a little much. It also was a shock to see my expenses in the city. At the farm, I didn´t spend a single penny (okay, I had another wwoofer buy me some chocolate so I spent €1, but that´s nothing for almost three weeks!) and in the city everything was obviously much more expensive. I quickly got over all this shock though after about the second day and ended up having a wonderful time in Sevilla!
The first night I was there, I went to a free flamenco show with the hostel. It was cool to see but there was a reason why it was free. It was super crowded and everyone was drinking and talking and being really rude towards the performers. I was slightly dissapointed, but ended up making up for it later on in the week with a really great flamenco show.
I met some amazing people from Uruguay, Argentina and Chile at my hostel. We all hung out quite a bit in Sevilla and ended up meeting again in Madrid the following week. The four of us went to the better flamenco show one night and then ended up meeting up with a couple people from the farm who were staying in Sevilla for the weekend. It was then when I finally realized how many great friends I´ve made while traveling!

 
















On my last full day in Sevilla, I did a day trip to Ronda. It was amazing! By far the best place I´ve been! It´s a town built on the tops of cliffs with a gorgeous bridge (Puente Nuevo). The day involved a lot of hiking up and down the cliffs but the view was well worth it.

WWOOF

I´m back! Sorry I´ve been slacking on the updating the blog bit, internet access at the farm was limited. But now I can finally update you all on my wwoofing experience!!

For those of you who don´t know, wwoof stands for world wide oprotunities on organic farms. It´s a program all over the world that gives you contacts of farms that need your help. You volunteer your labor on the farm for however long and in return you get free room and board. The farm that I chose to wwoof at is called Los Portales and it´s located about an hour north of Sevilla, Esapaña. Los Portales is a community farm. There are about 30 people who live there (more or less) who work on the farm for their rooms and for food. Most of them have kids so they homeschool their kids together. The farm has loads of vegetables, horses, goats (for cheese, yogurt and milk), bees for honey, a woodshop, jewlery making studio, panería (for bread and other baked goods), and probably more that I´m forgetting or didn´t even know about because this place is so big! I stayed with these people for over 2 weeks and had an overall wonderful experience.

Their daily schedule is this:
7am - get up
7:30 - breakfast (tea/coffee with bread and goat cheese)
8-10:30 - first work period
10:30 - second breakfast (granola with goat yogurt and apples)
11-1:00 - second work period
1-2:30 - lunch (varies) followed by a short siesta
2:30-5 - third work period, wwoofers stop working at 4 for a total of 6hrs work
5:00 - tea break! followed by more siesta and free time till dinner
8:00 - dinner
on sundays they show a film after dinner

Usually for work I just sorted out seeds or weeded. Both are very easy and what we liked to call ¨zen work¨. I also milked the goats (my favorite task!), cleaned up around the house, help cook dinner, picked vegetables, and made bread (another one of my favorites, though this was a workout!! we made 40 loaves of bread!). During my free time I usually just walked around the farm, slept, read, wrote in my journal, listened to music or a book on tape, talked with the other wwoofers, or contemplated life. There wasn´t really much to do. But the experience of being out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nature was absolutely wonderful for me. I had a lot of time to think about things I´ve put off thinking about and I just think it all was really good for me.
Unfortunately, for over a week I was sick. My nose would NOT stop running. They use natural medicine at the farm, which is good, but I began to really miss the comfort of a nights sleep with some nyquil. Being sick and having a lot of time to think about stuff like my life back home made me really begin to feel homesick. I eventually got over that but I´d just like to say now to everyone that I really do miss you all and hearing any news from anyone is always appreciated!

Right now I´m staying at a hostel in Sevilla, again. Spending over two weeks on a farm and then coming back to civilization is really weird. I went walking around a little bit and my first thought was ¨um... where can I just sit and do nothing and enjoy the scenery?¨ but I think slowly I´ll be able to adapt back to the real world. It was nice at the farm because I literally didn´t have to spend any money the whole time. And first thing I did when I came to Sevilla was buy groceries and I spent over 30€ right away! So I think I´m going to look into more ways of working while traveling because it worked out great for me.

Valencia

After Barcelona, I went to Valencia for a week. I absolutely loved Valencia. The hostel was great and even though I was in a 10 person mixed dorm, I had the best room. It was full of Italian guys who cooked for us all multiple nights ;) and I became good friends with a girl from Cadiz, España so I got to practice my Spanish a lot. It became difficult at times to communicate with everyone becasue the languages spooken would change from English, to Spanish, to Italian. But we all managed, though I dare say I was definitely frustrated with the language barrier at times.
I took the week a little easy. When I was in Barcelona, I did the major tourist attractions. I spent a lot of money and was go-go-go all the time. But in Valencia I spent more time hanging out with people in the hostel and less time spending money on museums. That weekend was actually the birthday of Valencia (okay technically it was to celebrate when the Christians kicked out the Muslims and took over the city but "birthday" sounds better) and there was a lot going on all weekend. The fireworks show was THE BEST I have ever seen by far!!! It was crazy huge and it lasted forever! It was fantastic. I thought nothing could beet Disneyland fireworks, but I was mistaken, sorry Disney. After the fireworks show we went out and people in Spain are crazy because people didn´t start coming to the clubs until 4am. Most places are open till 7am, I definitely couldn´t stay up that late... There was also a parade which was pretty cool seeing all the old costumes and everything. This too went on forever.
One of the most amazing things in Valencia is the architecture of the Arts and Science Museum. It was fantastic. One of the girls in my room had extra tickets to see the inside of the Opera house, which was also pretty cool.
I arrived in Sevilla last night. The train was supposed to take 8 hours from Valencia but there was a mechanical problem and we sat in the middle of nowhere for 4 hours! I didn´t get to my hostel until 1am last night. But they gave us free food on the train and our money back for the ticket. So now I can go to one more place in Spain before I leave.
Tomorrow I´m going to Castilblanco de los Arroyos which is where the farm is that I will work on. The plan is to wwoof for two weeks and in return I will get a free bed and food. I can´t wait for the experience and I really hope I can improve my Spanish while I´m there. I most likely won´t have internet access so until then, ¡adios!

The past three days...

So I ended up getting my backpack literally minutes after I left that day, of course, but luckily someone let me borrow a shirt before I went out so that was nice. The first thing I did was go to Parc Guel which is a famous park that was designed by Gaudi. He has a lot of structures all throughout Barcelona and it's amazingly abstract and beautiful!

Then, after taking a quick nap and getting organized from finally receiving my bag, i wanted to go see the Magic Fountain show. It's a gorgeous water show at night that everyone keeps telling me I have to go see. Unfortunately, after hours of waiting we were told they aren't doing shows until oct 8th. Bust! I went back to the hostel and made tapas again.

The next day I went up to the top of mt Tibidabu! Those who are fans of Friends must know how excited I was to do this! Now I can actually honestly say "I was backpacking through western Europe hiking up mt Tibidabu..." :) anyway it has probably the best view of the city from the top. There's a church there that I can always see from he city below. There are also a few rides, like fair type, but they weren't running (I was ok with that).

Then I went to another thing by Gaudi. The place is called Casa Mila and it's an appartment complex he designed. Inside is set up like a museum displaying what rooms in Barcelona looked like in the early 1900's. On the roof there are a bunch of unique structures called "la padera" because it's "full of surprises". It was gorgeous and I took a lot of wanna be artistic pictures.

The next day I went to the Arc de Triumph which wasn't too exciting but there was a nice little park nearby that I just took a stroll around. Then I went to the Catedral. It has a very gothic look to it so it was beautiful architecture. And inside was pretty too with the stained glass and the dozens of organ pipes. You could take an elevator to the top too which of course had another great view of the city. Later I had some difficulty ordering food. Everyone here speaks Catalan not Spanish so it's even more difficult for me to understand. Only the expensive restaurants seemed to have menus in english. Buri ended up finding something and getting gelato to cheat me up after being so frustrated with the language barrier. Then I walked the famous street La Rumbla! Nothing was stollen don't worry. It's crazy busy there set up like a market on weekends and full of shops and restaurants.
There are a bunch of weirdos wanting Money to take ur picture with them. I didn't. I cared not to get robbed. There's also the famous market, la Boqueria there. There's so many fruits that just the colors of the market are amazing! But it's so overwhelmingly big and crammed with people that I didn't end up buying anything.
Today i went to Museu Picasso. It's free on the first Sunday of the month. It was pretty cool to see but I don't know if it wouldve been worth it having paid so I was glad I didn't. Close to my hostel there is a Laberynth park that I went to after the museum. It wasn't too much of a challenge but def had to retrace my steps a few times. It's a pretty park with lots of fountains and Greek statues.

Well that was the past three days. Through all of this I'm definitely realizing how difficult it's going to be to travel by myself. The language barrier is extremely frustrating and the fact that the streets here are so randomly placed and a lot of them are small doesn't make it any easier. The friends I met at the hostel before have all already left. Most people are already set in their groups. Is going to be hard, probably a little lonely and tiresome with all the walking but I'm hoping that after awhile I'll get used to it and better at making friends and finding my way around.
I've decided to stay in Barcelona until Tuesday and then I'm going to go to Valencia. I'm hoping to stay in a hostel that's owned by the same guy as the one I'm at right now. Tuis hostel is really great. Everyone who's been traveling around say this is the vest one they've been at (I'm probably getting spoiled and don't even know it). Anyway that's the plan for now! I'll keep u updated along the way. Missing everyone and I hope everyone is doing well back home! It's weird not knowing what's going on in all of your lives so please update me too! Adios!

In Barcelona!

Okay so I finally made it to Barcelona!! By the way, worst day ever to pick to come to Barcelona!! Sept. 29th, the day I arrived, was a scheduled nation-wide strike. NOTHING was open! in fact, my flight was canceled! I had a layover in copenhagen and didn´t know about the strike until I got there and saw that my flight was canceled. Being there by myself and only knowing English didn´t make it any easier. But luckily, after a good ordeal of talking to numerous people trying to figure out what to do, I ended up getting a flight out. The lady told me I needed to get out asap because she didn´t know how long the strike was going for, so it was good that i did.
So I arrive safely to barcelona only to find that my backpack that i checked is not there. They told me I would have to call the next day because with the strike there was no way it was getting here that day. So I ended up going straight to the hostel with just my carryon. Only problem, there were no busses, trains or metros running. I waited nearly 20 minutes for a taxi that was probably way too expensive.
Once I got to the hostel i decided to walk around and explore. Again everything was closed and I couldn´t take any transportation anywhere. The streets here are crazy! Nothing is parrallel to each other and the names of the streets are only found on the sides of buildings (if they´re there at all) so having just a giant map while walking around wasn´t the greatest. So I didn´t really go anywhere, but it was a nice walk just the same.
Later, I ended up making some friends at the hostel! There were four of us who went to the local market and bought stuff to make tapas (a traditional meal here in spain). It was delicious! They all gave me some great advice about the city too! They showed me their pictures that they´ve taken over the last week and they helpped me out with my lack of luggage by sparing me some toothpaste.

Last night i had to sleep in my jeens and today I´m in the same clothes as yesterday :( but I called the airport this morning and they will bring by my bag sometime today! So that´s great news! Though it was definitely an adventure getting here, everything seems to be working itself out now. I´m really excited that today the metro should be working again so hopefully I´ll really be able to explore the city!

Almost There!

Finally!!! I've been planning and talking about this for months, dreaming about it for years, and it is now officially the night before I leave for Europe! :)

The past couple of weeks I've spent in Georgia, visiting family. My brother helped me get all my gear for the trip, and thank god he did because he is a lot more skilled in that area than I am. Thanks Jared! My niece is now 10 months old. I'm sad I'm going to miss her first birthday but I did get to witness her taking a few steps!! She is the cutest thing ever, I'm so glad I got to see her a bunch while I was here!

By the time I get back she'll be running and talking! She's growing so fast!

I also got to hike up Amicalola Falls with my Dad and cousins! My Mom met us at the top of the falls and we enjoyed a delicious picnic! It was gorgeous, and a pretty decent hike. It felt good getting out of the house and having a break from planning the trip. Over 600 steps up and the same amount back down; I was pretty soar afterwards. I was going to post pictures of the falls but all of a sudden it's not letting me so I'll have to do that later.

Anyway, so far it's been a pretty good trip, but it really begins tomorrow; followed by nearly 18 hours of car/plane travel and layovers and THEN I'll be in Barcelona! I can't wait! :)

Bon Voyage...

On Saturday I had my Graduation/Bon Voyage party. Thanks to all those who came and helped out, it was  a great success! :)

My lovely roommate Melody made this fantastic cake for me!

Family :)

Friends :)