No more school!

I am done with finals! I had my last (and hardest) exam this morning, History of Spain (Modern Age). My Grammar and Islamic Culture exams were last Thursday, which was nice to get two out of the way before the weekend. Friday morning my friends and I went back to Nerja; we only thought it appropriate to spend our last weekend in Spain at our favorite beach. The weather was absolutely gorgeous all weekend, for once no clouds in the sky at all. I came back Saturday evening instead of staying all the way until Sunday. I wanted to go to church one more time and then I had a study group with two friends all afternoon for our History exam. Church was pretty rough because the pastor made an announcement that it was the last Sunday for all of the foreign students and then had us all go up on stage (there were at least 20 students) and said a prayer over us. Good grief, everyone was crying. That was when it really hit me that I am almost done and will be leaving all of these amazing people that I’ve met. Basically, Sunday I did not want to think about going home.
Monday I had my Art History and POE exams, which went pretty well. That evening we visited Feras (our friend who works in the kebab place by the school) to say goodbye and eat our last kebab. Then we went to Hannigan’s and Sons for the Monday night Pub Quiz. The plan was just to stay for one drink and not participate in the pub quiz because I needed to go home and study, but funny how things work out. A few hours later, we left after an interesting 6 rounds of pub quiz, and Diana Ross made another appearance in the Music Round!
After the exam today I met up with Cassandra and Whitney to have our last churros con chocolate at Café Futbol. While we were eating Mitch and Jeff stopped by and we had to say our goodbyes to Jeff because he’s leaving to head back home this evening. I really hate saying goodbyes; the worst is going to be tomorrow night when I have to say goodbye to Whitney and Cassandra after we hang out one last time. I’m going to miss seeing and hanging out with them every day, and Iowa and Indiana aren’t exactly close to Texas. This evening we are going to the piercing/tattoo place in the Centro Comercial (the mall) near our house so Cassandra can get her tattoo. After dinner we three are going to a teteria to have tea and crepes one last time. This has certainly been a week of “last times,” we’re trying to fit all of our favorite things in before we all have to separate. I’m pretty much all packed and my bags are just barely under weight limit, yes!

Coming to a close...

As the semester comes to an end, finals are beginning. Ugh. I strongly dislike studying, and it is even harder when you´re trying to enjoy your last bit of time in Spain. We had our program´s "Bye-Bye" dinner Monday night at a restaurant in the Albyzin. My close friends and I grabbed the end of the table and had a pretty interesting evening. There was so much food! About 4 courses! Things got a little messy and the table cloth was left a little worse for wear. At the end of the evening Veronica and Jose gave us all a CD of a lot of the songs that have been popular in Spain this semester, and of course Jose made sure a Diana Ross song made the cut.
Monday I finished my Art History paper on the development of prehistoric art, yay cave paintings! Today I had a presentation in my POE class on Texas, and today was also the last day of classes because finals start tomorrow!
Tomorrow I have my Grammar and Islamic Culture finals, but it will be good to get 2 of them over with before the weekend. For our last weekend in Spain we thought it only appropriate to go to the beach! So off to Nerja again Friday morning. On Sunday I´ll go to church one more time here and then a few friends and I will have another all day study-fest of History. Our study group did pretty well on the midterm so we decided to have one again. Monday I have final exams in Art History and POE, and the test of death, History, is on Tuesday. This means that I have absolutely nothing on Wed, the day before I leave! This is probably good because, in all likelihood, I will be packing all day because I´m too busy until then studying. Of course we´ll have to go out for Tapas one last time and have one last kebab and saw goodbye to our friend Feras, whose kebab place we always go to. But don´t worry, we are all Facebook friends with him now so we´ll be able to keep in touch. We´re trying to convince Sara to invited him to her wedding next summer, I think he´d show up. Better yet, he should cater, kebabs for the reception!

Amsterdam and Sevilla

A couple weekends ago Whitney, Sara, and I went to the Netherlands. We stayed in Amsterdam and made a day trip out to Leiden (a 30 minute train ride) to visit Sara’s friend Amanda, who is studying abroad there. Some of the highlights of the trip: I really enjoyed going to the Anne Frank House on Thursday. It was where she and her family hid, in the back annex of her father’s business, for two years before their discovery by the Nazis. It was cool to enter through the hidden entrance behind a bookcase and be in the room that used to be Anne’s. There is glass covering the walls of her room preserving a lot of the original photos/magazine cut-outs that she pasted on the wall to make the room homier. We took a tour of the Red Light District and learned about the history of prostitution, only legal there since 2000. While prostitution is legal, pimping is highly illegal, so each woman is her own independent business.

The second day we went to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, which was tons of fun; I’d never been to a wax museum before. We took pictures will all kinds of famous people including, but not limited to, Obama, Humphrey Bogart, Sean Connery, Rembrandt, David Beckham, Lance Armstrong, George Clooney, Oprah, and Marilyn Monroe. After the wax museum we took a free 3 hour guided tour all over the city, free is always nice.

Saturday morning we took a train out to Leiden to visit Amanda. On the train ride we passed gorgeous tulip fields that were incredibly bright with color. Amanda picked us up at the train station and showed us around town a bit; we even stopped off at her favorite bakery to try it out. When we returned to Amsterdam in the evening we did a little bit of our tourist shopping. There are an uncomfortable amount of bachelor parties that go on in Amsterdam. I think I would be a little worried if my fiancé was going to a place were prostitution was legal… While looking at postcards we were accosted by one such bachelor party. They were doing a photo scavenger hunt and needed a kiss from random people. Unfortunately for them, we did not participate and they received the universal hand signal to go away when they kept pushing the issue.

We spent all day Sunday traveling back to Granada. We flew from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, Germany where we had an hour layover before flying to Madrid. Then we had to catch the dreaded Madrid to Granada bus that wastes five and a half hours of my life every time.

This past Friday (May 1st) we went to Sevilla for a bull fight. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it and could appreciate it for the artistic aspect of man vs. beast. We had a group of old men sitting infront of us who kept explaining everything to us; I think it made them feel good to be explaining things to foreign girls. We also went to the Cathedral in Sevilla and saw the Tomb of Christopher Columbus. The bull fight was in the evening and we didn’t get back to Granada until 2 am.
Saturday I slept a lot, obviously, worked a little on my Art History paper, and did a bit of shopping. Sunday was El Día de las Cruces (Day of the Cross) and there were large, extravagant crosses all over the plazas in Granada that we went out to look at. It also happened to be El Día de la Madre (Mother’s Day), so Whitney and I bought flowers for Isabel; she was so excited when we gave them to her.
Last night we went to Hannigan & Sons Pub for the Monday Night Pub Quiz. We really aren’t that great with random trivia (although Whitney and I got the answer to “Who was the Queen of the Netherlands?” right after our recent travels), but we had a lot of fun. Whenever we didn’t know the answer to a question, which was fairly often, we made up an answer. Diana Ross made quite a few appearances on our answer sheet when the question was about a person.
Tonight Cassandra, Sara, Whitney, and I are going to the mall to get Whitney's belly-button pierced. Cassandra and Sara got theirs done earlier this semester; I hope my parents appreciate that I have not (and do not plan on) piercing anything while I'm here. Tomorrow I have my Phonetics Final and will continue to work on my Art History paper; I need to find out if it's suppose to be 4 or 5 pages long... Whitney and I wanted to go to Barcelon this weekend, but tickets and hostels weren't working out so we're planning on going to the beach instead. I actually bought a new swim suit on the way home today, so can't wait to get a chance to use it. Only 16 days until I am home! Unfortunately, I have to go to classes, write a paper, and take finals during that time. Why can't I just go to the beach and fully enjoy the last 2 weeks in Spain?