Ibiza

So it has taken me a while to blog because I have been busy studying for my exams and doing my projects and there has been a lot of despedidas (going away parties).

However in May, I went to Ibiza for a week with 2,500 other Erasmus (international ) international students from all over Spain. This was the craziest/best/wildest/unbelievable trip I have ever been on in my life. Words cannot describe how much fun I had on this beautiful party island. 

The first day was the bus/boat ride over to the island. And when I say boat I really mean yacht. It was 4 floors including a bottome floor for semi trucks that needed to get over to the island. The 2nd 3rd and 4th floors were filled with erasmus students and other people going to the island. The top of the boat had a pool and a DJ that was playing all night. Everybody was dancing, drinking and having a splendid time. The boat ride was about 4 hours and we finally got to the island around 1am and then had to wait another 2 hours to get things at the hotel sorted out. 

The next four days were spent laying on the beach and going to the famous clubs esParadis, Eden, Privalege, and Space. The beach was absolutely beautiful especially when we went to the island of Formentera. We sat on the beach for hours playing the fabulous game of "would you rather". This game consists of two really bad situations and you have to pick one of the two. 

People watching is one of my favorite past times and the beach in formentera was the perfect place for this. We saw an extremely tan man with a star of david tramp stamp, a man standing up arms folded head towards the sky just standing like that for like an hour haha and many more. 

I absolutely loved this trip and I am so lucky to have this experience with all of my wonderful internatinal friends <3 

The "boat" we went on.

The pool on the boat!

DJ on the boat!

Creepy security guard taking pics on his phone.

Pool outside our hotel

All the hotel rooms

Beautiful Beach:)

Privalage club

Formentera Beach

I am going to miss Murcia SOOO much! 

Best partiers in the world: Spanish people

So for the past 3ish weeks it has been nonstop parades/festivals/parties because of Holy Week and then the week after is a spring festival week. Lucky us, all the parades went right by our apartment so I could just stand on my balcony and take pictures of it!! My roommate Paige and I felt like we were in Disney land during these parades that’s how big and long they were! The Easter parade had to be the longest at 3.5 hours!

Bando de la Huerta was the biggest and craziest of the festivals. On this day the entire city and I mean the ENTIRE city was partying and drinking. There were parades, costumes, prizes being thrown, and fireworks. Needless to say the entire city was filthy by the end of the night. Countless bottles and trash lined the streets and also urine… eww. Murcia has a pretty awesome cleaning crew though because by the next day everything was back to normal and the only thing left was the stench.

One of the many parades!

Beer of Murcia

I have come to the conclusion that the Spanish definitely deserve the best partiers award. I don’t know how they do it, they would all stay up till 6 or 7am and then be up at 11am for the next parade. Loco!! I am definitely going to miss the craziness of this country. I have come to the conclusion that I don’t really want to leave Spain just yet but I think in two months I will be at peace with having to leave. I think the reason for this is that I have so much going on for me when I get back home and I am excited to start a new school yearJ I feel like such a nerd saying this but I miss real school. I say real school because no offense but school here is not really that difficult. I don’t have 15 page research papers and I don’t have 40 page JSTOR articles to read every night. School here is less stressful but I miss learning about stuff I have interest in, aka poli sci, translation and phraseology is deff not for me!! I’ve been looking at old pictures lately and that could also be the reason that I have been so nostalgic. I need AGD in my life and I miss driving home every so often to see my family. The longer I’m here the more I’m torn between my two homes, Nebraska and Spain. My last hoorah here in Spain before I have to start studying for finals will be a week trip to the island Ibiza. I am SOOOO excited for this trip! For those of you who don’t know where or what Ibiza really is its an Island off the coast of Spain and has some of the largest clubs in the world. It is basically margaritaville plus clubs. The island is absolutely gorgeous and to give you a visual it kind of looks like the island that they are on in the movie Couple’s Retreat! But that is all for now, my next entry will be more about Ibiza and all the crazy adventures that happen there J

Hilary im like a snake now! Maybe you should joing slytheran

Note: Pictures will all be at the bottom. 

So my mom and kala came to visit me for a week and we had an awesome time traveling. First they came to my city to see where I go to school and where I hang out a lot. I took them out for tapas with a group of my closer friends which was fun 

Our first stop was to Rome, Italy. Now this was my second time to Italy but I love Italy so much that I didn’t mind going again. I love Italian food!!! It is absolutely delicious especially the pizza! We saw so many historical things in Rome I was in heaven. Things that I have been waiting my whole life to see in person. We saw the Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Vatican/Saint Peter’s Basilica/Saint Peter’s square, Castle of Angels, Angel’s bridge, Coliseum, ancient ruins and of course countless gelato shops!! We walked all around the city and my friend that studies there also showed us a couple of really cool sites.

Rome was really pretty and I loved seeing all the historical sites but I would not want to live there. It is a huge city and takes forever to get from one end to another and the people are kind of rude and hesitant to help out tourists, but all in all Rome was a good experience.

London-

So the main goal we had in London was to get to the 9 ¾ platform for Mikala the Harry Potter nerd =P haha Which we ended up doing on the last day haha

We saw sooo many things in London as well and it was especially cool because it was so close to the Royal Wedding and so there were a lot of run-throughs of the procession with the horses.

The things we saw in London were Buckinham Palace, Wesminister Abbey (which you couldn’t go into because of holy week and the wedding being so close super bummed!), Parliament which you also could not go into, Big Ben, the London Eye, Tower of London, Harrod’s, we went on a Jack the Ripper walk, a boat ride, and we did a double decker tour ride around the city and got a lot of cool information. I had a friend that lives in London and he took us around the city as well showing us some cool sites.

London was a really cool city but really big as well and took a long time to walk from place to place. The other thing about it was everything was super expensive! An average meal was about 50 pounds just for 3 people! We did try the traditional fish and chips meal and shepherd’s pie. I fell in love shepherd’s pie!! Its basically a stew with potatoes which is like my favorite foods combined haha.

Mom and Kala getting palms for Palm Sunday

Eating a delicious Italian lunch

Pantheon

Trevi Fountain

We spent a lot of time looking at a map.

sisterly love

Westminister Abbey 

Big Ben 

Shephard's Pie! Yummy!

Fish and chips 

Us with the Royal Family 

It was a good trip with my mom and my sister. I loved being able to spend some time with after not seeing them for 4 months! We had a lot of fun and I am glad that I got to share my European experience with them <3

Trip to Latvia to visit Maggie and Justin

So about a month ago I went to visit my bff Maggie in Latvia for a couple days. It was such a fantastic trip between getting to spend some awesome time with my Mag and getting to see Eastern Europe! The language barrier was really bad though because obviously I do not speak Latvian or Russian and hardly anybody spoke English so that made things interesting.

First off, people in the Berlin airport probably think I am special because I could not for the life of me find the gate for my flight!! The arrows seemed to all be pointing in the same direction. So I asked this pilot to show me where the gate was which was a tad embarrassing….

Things got much better once I finally reached LatviaJ I didn’t get into town until like midnight but Maggie and I ended up talking till like 3am! The next day we went to see her school and the center of the city. Riga is a very beautiful city full of history! The buildings were completely different from all of the other countries that I had been to. We met up with Justin, a fellow American later that night to pre-game before we hit up the bars with Maggie and her other friends to celebrate her 21^st allllll weekend! We also sang our hearts out to Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a prayer".... you could say we had a few drinks in our system at this point.. 

 

Apple Pie shots

Justin and Mag singing

Me and Justin Singing

Gangsta Gangsta

Get ittttt

The following day we needless to say got a late start to the day but went to the mall to pick out Maggie a birthday outfit. The stores in the mall had some cute clothes but they were SOOO expensive and with the Lat being worth way more than the dollar I didn’t buy anything.

Maggie's school

Really really good pizza place

I hate cobblestone!

Pretty church we went to!

One of Maggie's Italian friend's made us a delicious dinner! 

We had mannnny photo shoots!

Saturday was my last day in Latvia and it was also Mag’s official birthday and I helped her celebrate her 21^st American style and bought her a couple of shotsJ Mag Justin and I ended up going to TGIFriday’s for her birthday and a yummy greasy “American” meal. It was quite tastey, I got a bacon cheeseburger, Mag got a big juicy steak and Justin got some friiiiiied chicken hahaha

burger

mag's steak

justin's friiiied chicken

Birthday shot for the birthday girl

Needless to say my trip to Eastern Europe was fabulous, it was awesome to see the bff and reminisce on old timesJ

La Fondah 

I will tell the cops on the gypsies! (Granada Trip)

So I know it has been a while since I have blogged so I am going to make a couple entries so they are not a mile long. I really need to get better at being a consistent blogger ha

Paige, Camila, and I took a quick weekend trip to Granada which is a city in southern Spain near the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was the last Moorish city in Spain and has a very Arabic look and feel to it, it reminded me a lot of Morocco. We mostly walked around the city to all of the historical sights, one of them being a very famous view point where you can get an amazing view of the Alhambra.

Me with the Alhambra behind me

After visiting both Morocco and Granada I have found that I am very fond of the Arabic decorating style. We went to a Hookah bar once and I just loved the bright colors and the low seating and sometimes pillow seating. It is just a really cool atmosphere and I have decided that when I get my own apartment/house I am going to have my living room decorated in a similar manner.

Camila, Paige and I at the Hookah bar

The last night we were there we got the chance to see a flamenco dancer which was really cool. I love the outfits they wear and the music is absolutely beautiful. Granada has definitely been my favorite city in Spain so far and I could potentially see myself living there if I were to come back and teach English. 

They had really cool ice cream (yes that was a pun) I probably ate it like 5 times while I was there because it was so delish!