I don't think we're in Kansas anymore Todo

Here in Spain I have had one wonderful visitor so far. Her name is Julia and she is amazing. For those of you who don't know Julia is a friend from Drexel. She is studying in England (Northampton) until Dec. 18th. She arrived on November 3rd and we proceeded to have a whirlwind of adventures which she wonderfully described in her mass email. Therefore I am going to post a part of it because I can't describe it any better:
"she [me] doesn't have to work on weekends, so we planned a weekend rendezvous to Valencia, Spain (a 3 hour train ride). when i got into the train station at Reus and met sarah, we cut our time a little close, as she wanted me to meet a few of her friends, Marta and Eleni. We stopped briefly at a nearby cafe for cafes con leches, but had to rush back to the train station, only to discover we missed the train to Valencia. No biggie, we'll just take the next one, we thought.. so we go up to buy our tickets and lo and behold, there is only ONE ticket left. ONE. not two. ONE. we contemplated sneaking on, but decided the consequence of getting caught and thrown off in some random spanish town or severely fined just wasn't worth it.. so sarah goes, where else do you want to go? haha, me, knowing little about local, feasible spanish cities/towns, blurts out... "lets go to madrid!" she gives me a weird, are-you-kidding look, and then says.. ok! let's do it! haha, ahhhh.. yeah, i had no idea that madrid was 7 hours away on the train. we snagged our night-train tickets fast, but the only ones that were left were seats in a 6-person cubby. NICE. oh well, it's experience, right? we didn't care! we had to wait in the station 3 hours before the train arrived, but it was no sweat cause we had so much catching up to do! Finally, we caught the train and got our seats- we were in a car with three south americans- one columbian, one argentinian, and one woman who snored really loud and gave us mean looks... the other two were really nice, and they were all going to madrid for a jazz festival. the other girl was actually from the o.c. HA... HA. yeah, she totally looked like it, too.... she was studying in barcelona and was taking the train to meet her boyfriend and his parents in madrid. she was fake tan, and had bleach blonde hair, and had bright barbie pink toenails, and kept on complaining about her fake eyelashes... but when telling us a story about staying at a dingy hostel in dublin, she blurts out, "what did they think, i'm some sort of priss?" lol.. sarah and i just looked at each other, and tried not to laugh in her face. amazing. so, we barely slept, and when we did, it was in extremely awkward positions, and arrived sweaty, nasty and greasy in madrid at 7:30 a.m. but that didn't stop us from loving that on a whim, we ended up in madrid! how crazy! so we then bought our return tickets, spoiling ourselves with a 'gran clase' room on a night train coming back to reus on sunday night/monday morning. then we found a cheap hotel (we weren't in the hostel mood) and checked on in! the hotel, for 80 euros, was pretty damn nice. we showered, took a little nap, and headed on out in the town to explore madrid! note, i was extremely happy that i was off of the stupid pound, and now was getting 75% more for my money! amazing... in madrid we walked around a lot, visited lots of plazas, took lots of touristy pictures and didn't give a damn, visited the plaza del toros, the bull fighting arena (i was sad we couldn't see a real bull fight... not that i really expected to be able to, since it's november), ate lots of AMAZING food, went to the Reina Sofia art museum, where i stood in front of Picasso's Guernica and gawked for like... at least 10 minutes in awe, and reminiscing about loren's and my amazing performance art piece that made lydia hunn cry, we danced in the rain with our umbrellas, only to be stopped by a creepy old spanish man who wanted to take us out for a beer, rummaged through an old antique store, hunted down non-chain restaurants, met a cute belgian waiter in a belgian bar/tavern and had 'spanish tapas' with our belgian beer, that weren't really spanish at all..... lol (we should have known, and i think we did, we just didn't care that much). [I have to add that our Belgian waiter was absolutely terrible but really funny. I have decided that he is my equivalent of "Bill your waiter"...he broke over 10 glasses all at once and didn't care, it was really hilarious though, even as i write this i can't stop laughing]food. FOOD. we went to a cute family-owned paella restaurant on sat. night. paella mixto. amazing! i love paella so much... mmMMMMMM! i also had gazpacho and we ordered a bottle of wine and ate lots of bread, which we probably shouldn't have, but you all know, if bread's there, you eat it. so, sarah and i had dressed up a bit and were planning to hit the bars after dinner (our dinne reservation was at 10:30... nice. quite the contrast to the brits who eat at 5 pm, if they decide to eat at all inbetween their many many many beers/drinks) anyhow, we both were so full that we couldn't even bare to finish the wine... but we still wanted to drink it! we didn't know if it was customary, or rude to ask to take the bottle of wine with you, so sarah and i argued a bit over who should ask. regardless of who asked, they had to ask in spanish. obviously sarah's spanish is much MUCH better than mine.. mine is like, ridiculous broken spanish... sarah refuses, and from somewhere deep inside of me i muster up the courage to ask, and procede to verbalize (if you can call iti that) to the waiter, "perdona, es posible vamos el vino?" for those of you who know spanish, you must be rolling with laughter.... for those of you who don't, it means, "excuse me, is possible we go the wine?" NICE... NIIIIIIIICE. hey at least i did it, sarah..... after we had our kicks and giggles about that, we went home and crashed.woke up around 10/11 the next morning to catch up on sleep, and went to a cute little cafe for brunch/lunch. i had tortilla espanola, which was, mmmMMMM. it's like a thick, deep omelet[I would actually describe it as more like a quiche], and mine was probably about 3 inches deep. it has potatoes and onions thrown in between eggs and there's lots of flavor in it.. it's round like a pie, and you get a slice of it. wowza. yummy! while exploring madrid (and spain in general for me), we discovered many other wonderful, traditionally spanish foods. chorizo, jamon, cafe con leche (a double shot of espresso with a bit of silky frothed milk poured in), chocolato con churros (thick, melted, rich hot dark chocolate in a cup, with a side of about...20 churros- fried dough sticks...), huesos (very rich pastries- a glazed outside with a rich potato-like sugary filling- which neither nate nor alex nor sarah really enjoyed, but i did, even though a little one (about the size of a cocktail weenie) was like a brick in your stomach. hmm.. what else? i can't recall right now, but that was certainly plenty for both of us for the weekend! we arrived back in reus, spain (pronounced ray-oos) around 5 am on monday morning, took a little walk around the outskirts of reus, and then went back to sarah's host family's house to rest for a few hours until sarah had to start running errands. in the morning around 8, we showed up at sarah's friends', Eleni and Xioni (pronounced chow-knee). i immediately crashed on their couch for a few hours, then got up and explored Reus. Reus is definitely the baby capital of the world. it's crazy! i was dodging babies, strollers, and pregnant mothers left and right. but it was beautiful- old modernist architecture, small restaurants/cafes, shops of all sorts, plazas and statues, etc. One of the best parts of being in Reus was seeing Sarah, but also meeting all of her friends. Eleni and Xioni were two of the sweetest girls I'd ever met in my life. Eleni is greek and Xioni is chinese, and they were both sooo international and spoke various languages.. so impressive and amazing. and best of all- they spoke perfect english! :-) the rest of the time, my spanish skills were being put to the test, sometimes even in dialogue with some of sarah's other friends.... it was quite an experience. i'm actually thinking about picking spanish back up- i could feel my spanish improving just in the few days i was there, so i'm not sure, but it's always a possibility. so sarah and i went to the market, took the kids to school, hung out, and overall just had a great time...sarah and i had such a great time in spain that we decided to meet up again, this time in dublin, ireland for the first weekend of december!"

So it was absolutely amazing and we had a great time! There's just not much else to say except pictures are coming soon...

and here are the pictures: http://drexel.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037492&l=f7fbb&id=10500847