The end of school

So, school's coming to an end pretty quickly here. While technically classes continue until the very last day of May, most of my classes are ending before that.

Next week is pretty much the last week of class for me. My programming class (the theory part) is done after Wednesday's class, and then there is nothing until the exam on June 9th. The practical part has one class next Thursday, the final program is due on Friday, and then the exam is during class time the following week. We are doing two practice exams for my Internationalization Strategies class during class time next week, and then nothing until the exam on June 2nd. Same idea for the International Marketing class, with the exam on June 13th. My literature class still has class next week and the final paper is due on Friday. No class the next week except the practical exam is on May 30th, and the theoretical exam is on June 12th.

And then I'm done!

I just finished writing the program for programming class this morning. So that's exciting cuz it means I have almost the entire week to test and debug it! Yay!

My roommate is leaving to go back home to the States tomorrow. Sad... But there are two other American girls living here now also. They are just here for the month of May, but at least I'll have somebody to hang out with. And then apparently another girl is coming in the beginning of June for a month, and two Canadian girls are coming sometime in the first week of June, also for a month. My madre definitely always seems to have a full house. She told me that I was her 81st student ever! So she's been doing this a while.

My friend Jenna (roommate from my three weeks in Sevilla) is going to come down to visit for about a week during the last week I'm here. That's gonna be pretty cool cuz she was supposed to be living here and going to school here in Alicante with me, but at the last minute decided she wanted to go to Pamplona instead. Something about living in the mountains or something... But, it's cool that she's gonna come visit!

I bought another new pair of shoes the other day. They are black stilettos! They are actually pretty comfortable. They're way cute and they can be dressed up for work or dressed down for just wearing with some jeans. I'm pretty excited! Even more excited because I realized recently that I can actually walk in them without breaking my ankles! Hurray!

I've started thinking about packing for going home (mostly because Elise spent the past week packing up all of her stuff and "gifting" me with everything she didn't want to pack). In the past week I have acquired sunscreen, shampoo, packs of travel tissue, aloe lotion, etc. all because Elise doesn't want to pack them and take them home with her. So I guess I'll use them while I'm here. But since my madre seems to always have students, I'll just leave any toiletry type items I don't want to pack with her for the next students she has.

Also, I apparently managed to walk past this every day for five months so far without noticing, but the other day as I was walking home I saw a large container on the sidewalk next to the dumpster and recycling bins that says "Recogida de Ropa". That translates to "Clothing collection", which made me think it was something like Goodwill at home. So I asked my madre and it turns out I was right. So, since I've been shopping and bought new clothes, I'm going to donate some of my old ones that I've replaced in the hopes that I can make it back home in just two suitcases. We'll see though, I've bought a lot of stuff!

The weather has been cloudy and slightly rainy for about a week or two now, which is kind of lame. It's warm out still, usually, but the sun is only out about half the time. Definitely not beach weather, which is sad. It got really hot this morning and my madre said that this is what happens when summer comes (the weather gets unbearably hot), but about an hour later it started raining. So maybe summer is not quite here yet. Hopefully soon though, cuz after next week I'm mostly just sitting around studying and packing, one of which I can do on the beach!

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GAH!!!!

Ok I'm sorry it has been so long since I've updated, but life got insane after Spring Break! I got home from Barcelona and only had two days of class the next week, but since that week I have barely had time to stop and think much less write about what's going on. Insane...

So, basically, we're getting pretty close to finals time here. Our last day of classes is in about three weeks, and then finals begin. Since finals are basically our only grades the teachers have been working us pretty hard "preparing us" to take our finals. The cool thing about finals in Spain is if you fail them, you have two chances to take them again. The problem with that is, your next chance is a month later, and your second chance another month after that. And I'm going home a week after my last final! So, I've gotta do it right the first time. And, in all fairness, that's how it works in the states, so I should be used to it. But in the states we also have quizzes, tests, homework etc. as some sort of feedback on our progress through the course, which we don't have here.

So we'll see I guess!

I got my RA letter written last week and I sent it to my boss. The letter just basically introduces me to my future residents and tells them about the house that we're gonna be living in next year. Turns out my boss really liked my letter, so she forged my signature on it and sent it out without any revisions or anything! So that's pretty cool.

Life got a little less insane last Friday, when I turned in my second program for programming class. So last weekend my roommate and I took a day trip to Valencia to visit the largest aquarium in all of Europe. It was so amazing! It was like a combination of SeaWorld and an aquarium. The exhibits were divided between the regions of the seas (Mediterranean, Arctic, Pacific, etc.). There were paths and gardens going between exhibits (like sea lions, dolphins, flamingos, etc.) and then next to each exhibit was a stairway that took you down to under the exhibit where the "aquarium" part was. So you got to see the sea lions from above and beneath the water, plus all the fishies etc. that live in the region. There was also a dolphin show, but we just missed the show. So we just took pictures of the dolphins swimming around instead. Speaking of pictures, the pictures I took from that trip are here. My roommate also took some pictures, so when she updates her photos I'll update mine.

This week of school is also short because tomorrow (Thursday) is some sort of holiday. Classes start again on Friday, except the teacher of the only class I have on Friday wants a four-day weekend, so he canceled class for that day! So I get a four-day weekend too! I think that some friends and I are going to try to go to Benidorm on Thursday and visit Terra Mítica, which is a huge theme park there. Should be pretty fun!

Hopefully school stuff won't get too crazy again and I'll be able to keep this updating thing a bit more regular!

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Barcelona again!

Barcelona was awesome!!! I got there last Friday and my parents didn’t show up until Monday. So I spent three nights in a hostel just hanging out by myself in Barcelona. It was pretty cool actually. I walked around a bunch and figured out where everything was so that we would know when my parents showed up.

We did so much cool stuff while we were there too! Though, we took all of the pictures on Dad’s camera. He says he’s gonna email me the pictures, but until he does I can’t put any pictures up of the trip. I have a few pictures on my camera from the weekend I was there before Mom and Dad got there, so I guess I could put those up.

Anyways, we stayed in the neighborhood called Barceloneta, which is a tiny strip of land that juts out into the sea. So our apartment was literally about 100 yards away from the beach. It was way cool! The weather was a bit chilly though, so we didn’t ever end up going to the beach.

We went to Parc Güell though. Parc Güell is this huge park up on top of a mountain that was built by (or at least has tons of stuff built by) Gaudi in it. Gaudi was this architect who had a very weird sense of style, so all of his buildings and things that he built had weird lines in them, or were swoopy, or something like that. So anyways, that entire park was pretty cool. We also saw La Sagrada Familia, which is a church that Gaudi designed. It is still in the process of being built, however, even after Gaudi’s death. The part that has been built so far is very cool!

We also went to Montserrat, which is a monastery on top of a huge mountain about an hour outside of Barcelona. We took a train to the base of the mountain, and then took the Cremallera (another train that had a cog wheel track in the middle of the other two tracks to pull it up the side of the mountain). There are a bunch of hiking trails that lead from around the monastery. So once the cremallera got to the monastery we took a funicular railway up to the start of one of the trails. The funicular was so cool! It was just one smallish car (holds about 40 people) that was completely slanted (the physical car itself) because it went even further up the mountain at about a 45 degree angle! Maybe it was even steeper than that…but anyways, it was crazy steep! Pictures of that to come later. We hiked about 8km that day, and the last kilometer was all stairs going down. My legs are still aching from that!

We also did a lot of walking around Barcelona itself. We walked up and down La Rambla (the main street) a bunch of times. We went to one of the “marketplaces” and bought some fruit. We ate a bunch of different restaurants all over the city. On the weekend we walked around past all of the street vendors and did some shopping. We walked over La Rambla de Mar which is a long wooden bridge over the water to a sort of peninsula of land on the other side of the harbor. On that piece of land we went to the mall, and the aquarium, and just sat around a bit in the sun. We took the metro all over the place, and it was very easy and awesome.

All in all we just had a lot of fun. We woke up at about 11 or noon every day, which was a nice treat. The last day (Monday) we woke up at 4am because my parents had a flight at 7am and it was raining! After I got my parents set up in a taxi to the airport I went back into the apartment to wait for the landlord to come check us out because my train back to Alicante wasn’t until later that day. By the time I left Barcelona at 11am the rain had completely stopped and the weather was gorgeous again. So apparently we weren’t really missing anything by sleeping in until noon every day!

And now I’m back in Alicante. I had one class today, and one class tomorrow. But other than that, this week is also a week of vacation for me. So that’s pretty cool!

I asked my “mom” about April Fool’s Day, but they don’t celebrate that here in Spain. They have something similar though, on December 28^th, called Dia de los Inocentes. It’s the same idea, though they seem to take it pretty far. She said even the news stations on TV and the radio take part, telling fake stories about crazy stuff happening! Pretty cool.

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Barcelona

So I'm in Barcelona now! It's pretty cool here. I've been here for three days, staying in a youth hostel. My parents show up later today actually, so I have to go pick them up from the airport, but that will be cool!

I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday walking around, getting to know the city, because my mom has no sense of direction and it's pretty easy to get lost in Barcelona. Our apartment is right near the beach, so that will be great.

I shared my room in the hostel with a couple other girls. The first night there were four Italian girls, two girls from Mexico, and a girl from Canada. The Italian girls left on Saturday morning, and four new girls from California showed up. Turns out they are studying abroad in Italy, but are on Spring Break also. And! Weirdest coincidence ever... they know one of my best friends from grade school because they all go to UC Riverside together! Such a small world!

I'm pretty excited about this week in Barcelona with my parents, it should be really fun!

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A crazy few weeks...

Oh man, I feel like right now is the first time I've had to even really stop and breathe lately! I've been working nonstop on this program for my class. I finished it last weekend, but of course "finishing the program" just means that I got all the code written for all of the functions it is supposed to have. So I've spent the past week working out the bugs, making the code more efficient, etc.

Also, last Friday I felt kinda sick, so I didn't go to school because I only had one class that day. I figured I would get the notes from a classmate on Monday. So I wake up and go to campus for that class on Monday (which again, was my only class that day). I get to campus with a few minutes to spare, so I check my email. I had a few emails, but I had one from my mom saying that the time changed in the United States for Daylight Savings Time, and did we need to reschedule our Skype time? So I freaked out a bit, because I was sure that the clock in the kitchen had said 10:00 when I left, which is when I'm supposed to leave the house. So I ran over to my classroom building and got there five minutes before class was supposed to start, by my watch. But no one was there. No students that I recognized waiting outside the classroom, nothing. And the teacher usually has a class right before mine in the room next door, but that room was completely empty. So I asked a girl sitting there if there had been a time change, but she said no. She said her class was also late, so I figured I would just wait a while. Ten minutes after class was supposed to start I still didn't see anyone I recognized, so I went across the street to another building to get some material printed out for another class. Then I came back and still, half an hour later, no one was there. Well, the class is only an hour long, so I just left!

I sent an email to the teacher, but he still hasn't responded. So, tomorrow is supposed to be that class again, but I don't even know if we have it or not! I guess I'll go anyways, because I have other stuff I can do on campus if the class is canceled (*cough PROGRAMMING *cough).

The weather here is gorgeous!!! I have been walking around in jeans and a tank top every day and it has just been sooooo nice. I'm spending a lot of time on the beach too, on the weekends. It's super awesome.

I'm way excited for break to start! Break starts Wednesday of next week, and we basically have two weeks off. And then another week three days after we get back. It's gonna be way cool. And my parents are coming out here to visit. So that'll be awesome.

Oh, speaking of which, I gotta go add to the list of stuff I need them to bring me and email it to them again! I'll post more later!

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Life in Alicante

Well I figure I'm pretty much settled in here in Alicante. My class schedule is finally worked out, and I pretty much have my routine down.

I have an awesome friend from back in the Bay Area who says he can help me with my programming stuff, which is super cool! I freaked out a bit because we have our first program due in three weeks (we have to make a two player chess program) and I don't really know the language yet. Apparently the kids in the first semester class learned a bit of C/C++ in that class, and so we are supposed to be able to do this chess game with just that knowledge, but I don't have any of that knowledge yet! So I've been trying to go to class, learn new parts of the language, go to "labs" and work on the program, and teach myself the language through internet tutorials in English (cuz it's super hard to learn another language in another language!) and it's just been a bit crazy. But Mike's a savior and he says he can help. So that's awesome!

Also, one of my "intercambios" turned out pretty well. This girl Raquel is studying to be an English teacher for native Spanish speakers, and she has her official licensing exams in June. So she wants to practice speaking and have me help her with pronunciation and grammar and all that stuff. It works pretty well actually because you really learn a lot about a language when you have to explain it to another person. Also, she studied in Scotland for a semester as an Erasmus student, so she knows the drill, and she is answering all of my "dumb" questions like "How do I make photocopies?" It's pretty cool. And she says in return for me helping her with her work, she'll help me with mine, which is awesome because I have a literature class where I have to write a paper type thing. So having a native speaker check it over will be awesome!

All in all things are working out pretty well here. I miss everyone from back home, but I'm having fun here also. So it sort of evens out.

My parents are coming out here in three weeks for a week during my "spring break"! I'm way excited about that. We're renting an apartment in Barcelona for a week. Apparently I've been designated as the "DD" for communication in Spanish because (and I quote my father here) "I don't know Spanish and your mom doesn't want to deal with it". I think she underestimates her abilities, but I'm perfectly fine with translating for them. I'm starting to think and dream in Spanish, so I think I'll probably be ok with being the liason!

The culture here is super different. It's 12:15am on Friday night (er, rather Saturday morning) and I'm sitting in this cafe which also happens to have free WiFi. Usually they close right around midnight, but apparently not today. At midnight there were three big groups of people here besides me. Fifteen minutes later the cafe is completely full! It's insane! But I enjoy it, since I'm sort of a night owl anyways. Most kids don't even go out until right about now anyways. From about midnight to 4am is the "going out" time for most kids here. Crazy...

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I don't have any brilliant title ideas...

Alright, so it's the weekend again...but this last week went so much better than my first week!

First things first, I went to the other section of the programming class on Wednesday, and it was absolutely perfect! I understood the teacher perfectly, I understood the material he was teaching us, and I think the class is going to be one of my favorites! So, that was exciting.

Also, I found out last week that I got the job I applied for at school next year, as an RA (Resident Assistant) in one of the small houses on the East Side (which is where I have lived for the past two years). So that is also really cool. I'm super excited to be an RA, it's going to be amazing!

I'm slowly getting to know more people here, which is good because it's a little hard to find things to do when you don't know anyone. Walking around by yourself at night is mostly not a good idea... But, I'm meeting a bunch of Erasmus students in all of my classes. And I also found a cool thing through the Sociedad de Relaciones Internacionales on campus. They have "intercambios lingüísticos" (language exchanges) that you can sign up for on their website. Basically they just have a message board of sorts where you can post a little personal advertisement based on what languages you can speak and what languages you want to practice. So I posted a thing saying that I was an American student here for a semester and I spoke English and wanted to practice Spanish, and in the past four days I have gotten more than 20 email responses! It's pretty cool. So I've replied back to some people, and I've already met with two different people yesterday and today, and it's a pretty cool program. Basically, you just get in touch with the other person and meet them somewhere and sit and talk. So today after class I met with a guy named Daniel who is a student at the University who studied abroad in Ireland to learn English, and we talked for like an hour in Spanish. It was really cool because a) I understood him completely, b) we actually had things to talk about (like TV shows we liked, travel, etc.), and c) my ability to carry on a conversation in Spanish was pretty impressive. It wasn't difficult or awkward, and there were only a few times when I had to ask for a word or how to conjugate something. So anyways, that's gonna be a pretty cool thing for me to do. We're gonna meet up again sometime next week and speak in English so that he can practice.

Umm...I think that's about it for now. The weather got a bit colder here these last few days, so I haven't been going out to sit on the beach or in the park. The wind is pretty nasty when it's cold out. But hopefully it will get better in the next few days. I'm still working out a few kinks in my class schedule, but I mostly know what I'm doing, so that's good.

Oh, I got my first phone bill since being here in Spain. It wasn't too horrible, but I'm gonna have to be more careful. My parents also got their first phone bill since I've been in Spain...that one was pretty bad. We realized before I left that it was cheaper for them to call me than for me to call them, so most of our calls have gone on their bill. Well, let's just say that now that I'm settled into a house and school and stuff, Skype is going to be our new way of communicating, cuz the phone thing is pretty expensive! Oh, by the way, if any of you use Skype and wanna chat with me while I'm here, that would be awesome! My Skype name is the same as my email: phoenixrisen41.

So, that's all for now. I'll keep you posted!

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