zomg robbed! (was New and Old Friends!)

Also, I think Brian might be in Morocco right now with his program.

Due to being robbed on Friday night, I have no pictures of Alyssa, Carrie, and Basie's visits, or of my trip to Brussels. But I'll put up pictures from Carrie's visit that she left on my computer.

The robbery was actually pretty exciting, it was after me and Amber got off our bus in Brussels. The actual act of robbery sucked because it was scary and all my screaming at this man in French and then running after him after he tore my purse off my shoulder (literally the leather ripped super easy) did nothing. But I managed to file a police report in French, and then we went to a club for free because one of the officers knew the owner, and it was overall a really great trip thanks to couchsurfing.com and cheapo food everywhere. Yum Belgian waffles are amazing! Their fries are pretty normal and the beer was good. A pleasant adventure overall, wish i had a picture of me and Amber there to put up!

We went to Versailles last weekend, and I met up with Carrie and Alyssa there, and then had swanky dinner with Alyssa and her mom. This was the day after our ridiculous dress up dinner party (which was amazing! damn all the pictures of the food are gone too) including all our homemade chocolate mousse, strawberry tart, roasted rosemary chicken with tomatoes, and potatoes daphinois, and Carrie sleeping over. Oh Carrie and I got delicious Vietnamese food that day too, at La Bambou, best Vietnamese in Paris I think. Versailles was really cool inside but it was a pretty miserable day outside.

I need to focus on school now; I've been missing a lot of class because I was sick last week (yay health insurance! the doctor recognized me and so did the pharmacist. Also, I don't have mono!) and I need to skip more to go to the Embassy tomorrow to see if I can get a passport. Right now I'm totally off the map. Aaah midterms!

les vacances en espagne!

I just spent a weekend recovering from my amazing week of vacation in Spain! (I also went to the Centre Pompidou and library yesterday which was awesome and got Viet food which was delicious.)

Too much to do typical chonology, so here's some lists and commentary from my three days in madrid (sat-mon), one day in granada (tues), and 2.5 days in barcelona (wednes-fri 5 a.m.):

1) Things I lost: hairbrush in Paris, knife/fork/spoon tool at airport, shampoo twice in hostels, extra batteries so no photos of my last day
2) Famous Madrid places I went: Reina Sofia (no line and free!), Palacio Real, Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol, Prado museum, that park behind the Prado, a big cathedral, El Rastro flea market
3) Spanish food I ate: tortas and bocadillos (sandwiches), tortilla espanola (potato omelet), chocolate con churros, tapas, gazpacho (mmm), paella (triple mmm), crema catalana (spanish creme brulee)

4) Famous Barcelona places I went: Placa Reial for flamenco, Santa Maria del Mar (just another big church, not as cool as the one in Granada that Brian showed me), La Rambla (cool and touristy), La Boqueria (aaah sheep's head!), Parc Guell, La Sagrada Familia (crazy architect, that Gaudi with his yet-unfinished but amazing cathedral), Montjuic (pretty Olympics mountain)
5) Spanish drinks I had: tinto de verano (red wine + lemon fanta, a very girly drink that Brian had), claro (beer + lemon fanta), cerveza, homemade sangria (red wine + fruit is amazing!), calimocho (red wine + coke and surprisingly good), delicious tea in Granada
6) Famous Granada places I went: the Alhambra and lots of places to look at it from, following Brian (who has evidently turned into a mountain goat in the past month)

7) Crazy stuff I did: stayed up til 7 a.m. my first night in Madrid dancing at a club with random Spanish kids, climbed two mountains on my last day in Barcelona with other travelers, made sangria and stayed up til 5 a.m. to get the metro to the bus to the airport on my last night, met a Minnesotan everyday (what?!), learned lots of Spanish, snuck into a bullring with Brian, fell asleep in the Reina Sofia (it was late!) with a soccer mom-looking woman nodding off on the bench next to me.

8) Photos in this blog: crazy demonstration in Madrid, me with the bear and the strawberry tree (?) which I guess is a symbol of Spain, two german kids a spanish girl and a french erasmus guy with whom i stayed out til 7 am, a view of one of the palaces in the Alhambra, and me and Brian in a bullring.

Also, Brian informs me that he has blogs he plans to write, just hasn't yet. Stupid.