Hello, America. Farewell, Blog.

I had every intention of writing my final post within 24 hours of returning to the US, but sleep, seeing family, and going to a Jack White concert took precedence over that. This is the first time I have had time to sit down and relax since I've been back. So here is the (pretty anti-climactic) 3-days-late farewell post of my blog. (If I come off as overly emotional, it's because I'm listening to Damien Rice Pandora and I'm tired, so apologies in advance.)

Our final hours in Spain were spent reminiscing on all of our memories from the past six weeks as we realized how close we had all become in such a short amount of time. It was a relatively normal night. We just sat in the hotel, drank wine, watched my friend Jake eat cereal out of the cavity in his chest, and watched Trapped in the Closet. 

Ok. Maybe the cereal part isn't normal. But it was funny.

Saturday was our farewell to Spain, and we had 14-hour travel day. But good news! No delays and no deaths on the plane this time. Everything went smoothly. But I arrived to Ohio quite delirious. I didn't sleep on the plane from Madrid to Philadelphia cause it has free movies (a fw of which are Wes Anderson films), which means I got to watch the Royal Tenenbaums.

But by the time I had gotten to Cleveland, I had been awake for 21 hours. My family was trying to get me to answer questions and tell stories, but I was too tired to function. (This has actually been my state of consciousness since I've gotten back.) I kind of just stare at people like this:

Now that I'm home, this is all I want to do.

But I can't cause I have friends that I am dying to see and work that needs to be done. But I will continue to hope and dream that one day I will be Liz Lemon.

I am so grateful for this incredible trip, and it was way more than I could have ever expected. This trip is full of memories that I will hold very dear to my heart. And I have gained life-long friends along the way. This trip would not have been nearly as fun without such a fantastic group of people. I can't wait to get back to Duquesne and spend time with them outside of Spain. 

Our group on our last night in Granada.

That's it. That's the end of my 6-week Spanish journey. And with the end of the journey comes the end of the Spanish blog. I've actually had a blast writing this, and I'm sad to see it end. Maybe I'll write again on a different blog. Maybe I won't. It just depends if I have anything exciting enough to post. Thank you so much for reading this. II have had way more views than I could have ever imagined. (Once again, thanks mom.) You guys are all the best, and you make me feel like a true comedian (which reinforces my dream to be Liz Lemon as mentioned above). So here is my (somber?) goodbye. I hope you're not too sad. I know I am. 

Now I'm going to go to bed at 8:30 PM cause I can. Back to my American lifestyle that I love so dearly.

Adios for an indefinite period, amigos. It's been a pleasure.

Time is Running Out: Last Week in Southern Spain

I have been so busy this week and have struggled to write a blog. Then I wrote it and it got deleted, so here comes my very long second-to-last blog post. I apologize (or are you excited?) in advance.

Sunday, we all went to the town of Peñafiel in the province for Valladolid for a touring of castle and (more importantly) a wine tasting to commemorate our final day in Castilla y León.

My friend Bri and I in front of the view from the castle.

 It was quite the pretentious experience, and I really can't take it seriously. There were so many rules. It just seems silly. But to tell my wine tasting experience, I will be using a few gifs from the most notable wine drunk, Kathy Lee Gifford.

So due to my underage status in the USA and my constant semi-antisocial tendencies, I know nothing about wine except that it's either red or white and sweet or dry. So when we first sat down, he showed us how we should hold the glass, and it's most definitely the last way I would ever consider holding any glass.

I usually hold it something like this (in a much smaller proportion, might I add):

But they wanted us to hold it with 3 fingers at the stem, which is obviously going to end in a wine-stained clothing for me. I know myself better than to delicately hold a glass of liquid, so I obviously didn't listen to that instruction. I just held it how I wanted to and toasted to my devious actions.

Besides the abundance of pretentiousness, there weren't too many exciting stories from the wine tasting. I was hoping that someone would do something embarrassing, but there was no such luck. However, we all got a little bit of a wine buzz. So when we got to the bus, we got to our seats and said:

So Sunday was our last night in Salamanca. It was sad to leave host parents that were so hospitable for the 4 weeks we spent there. They really couldn't have given us a better authentic Spanish experience and I am so grateful for that they were so welcoming to my roommates and I.

After a crazy last night in Salamanca, we embarked for southern Spain for a week of touristing on Monday morning. And the further South we went, the hotter it got. The weather was 100 degrees most of the week, which is a lot different than the occasionally mild weather we encountered in Salamanca. We got off the bus in Sevilla yelling

 The problem with southern Spain is that a lot of the steps and sidewalks are made of marble, which is just a giant invitation for me to embarrass myself. Our first stop in Sevilla was a beautiful palace with a lot of Arabic influence. (Fun fact: Andalucía has a lot of Arabic influence because Muslims used to rule over the Iberic peninsula back in the day, and southern Spain was where they were most prominent.) In this palace, I was walking down marble steps when I took quite the fall down the entire staircase. 

Most of my friends here know about my tendency to fall and they usually laugh, but this fall was so bad that my friend Mark asked if I was ok (and then of course he laughed cause who wouldn't.) Needless to say, it was a moment that bruised me both physically and emotionally cause ya know it's kind of embarrassing to fall in front of a bunch of people.

Now I really love Sevilla. It's one of my favorite cities that we have visited. But it's also extremely large and very confusing because it's filled with tiny street/alley things. On Tuesday, my friend Mary and I stopped to listen to some street performers on the way back to the hotel from lunch. But when we turned around to catch up to the group, they were gone. We weren't entirely sure where we were, but we headed in the general direction of the hotel and hoped we would stumble upon the hotel.

But then we got lost for 2 hours. We really had no idea where we were, but we kept thinking that we recognized certain landmarks. But we didn't. We walked three giant circles around Sevilla in 100 degree weather for an hour and 45 minutes until I realized that I could turn on my data and use my Google Maps on my phone. 

Oops. It was a dumb move by me to forget that very important task on my phone. But oh well, I really didn't care. I had so much fun exploring the city and seeing everything.

We spent Wednesday and Thursday night in Granada and Thursday in Córdoba touring cathedrals and castles and palaces. They were all so beautiful. Thursday night, we went to watch a flamenco dance, which was so incredible to watch, and then we went to Clinton overlook (yes, as in Bill and Hill), which overlooked La Alhambra, the giant palace in Granada. It was breathtaking.

My friend Mary and I in front of Clinton's Overlook.

***DISCLAIMER: SENTIMENTAL MOMENT:

I'm currently writing this post on the bus as we travel back to Madrid so we can catch our flight tomorrow morning. And as I sit here watching everyone chat and interact, I am astonished by how close we have all become in 6 short weeks. Before this trip, I didn't really know anyone on this trip. Now, I'm convinced I have made some great friends and that there will be many more memories to come. This trip has been one of the best experiences of my life, and I will be sad to see it end. Even though we will hang out when we get back to Duquesne, saying goodbye to this group and this experience is going to be rough.

But I am so excited to come back to the USA, land of free water and Netflix (and my loved ones.) Tomorrow, I hope to do one more farewell blog.

Adios for now, amigos!

P.S. My "friends" that I just mentioned above just tricked me into eating potpourri because they told me it was a chip. Just call me Liz Lemon. That's all.

Miscellaneous Embarrassing Stories

So exams are over and I've returned to the Internet and the blog (which just passed 1200 views and I'm super shocked and pumped about it.) So now that we are done with classes, we are spending a week in Southern Spain before I returned to the United States on the 26th. So here is a post of a few miscellaneous things.

Last weekend, I went to San Sebastián as mentioned briefly in the last post. When we planned the trip, it wasn't supposed to be great weather, but it ended up being beautiful. My friends and I hiked up a large hill/small mountain (sorry I don't know how to precisely categorize geographical structures) that overlooked the city. Despite the difficulty of hiking up steep hills in a maxi skirt and flip flops (el oh el at my inability to appropriately pack), the view was actually breathtaking. Here's a picture:

But the best part of the trip came before we even got to San Sebastian. We had train tickets that had a 30-minute layover in Palencia. However, our train was late arriving to the station and we have 5 minutes to reprint our tickets and then get back to the loading dock (I don't know what you call it at train stations but I'm pretty sure this isn't right? You get my point). We were stressed and nervous that we would miss the train. However, as we were running to the tracks, a bird took a giant poop on my friend Lila's purse. It was the biggest bird poop ever. We were kind of like:

And another one of my friends, JoJo, who so smartly remembered to bring his towel unlike the rest of us, had to use said towel to clean up the poop that was sprayed all over Lila's purse. So RIP to JoJo's towel, you will be dearly missed.

(Truer words have never been spoken. JoJo's is in the trash...)

It was a fabulous weekend, and I absolutely loved the city!! 

So tomorrow night is my last night in Salamanca, and thus my last night with my host family. I've been so lucky to have great accommodating host parents, and I've had such a great experience in Salamanca. However, most of you know that I have the tendency to do really embarrassing things. So in the culmination of this fabulous 4 weeks, I will share 2 incredibly awkward stories that will leave you saying this: 

But I have no shame. So here goes nothing. 

A few weeks ago, I had a terrible cold. Class had just started, but my nose was really runny. I had forgotten my tissues back at my apartment, and I didn't want to be the gross person that obnoxiously sniffed all class long. So I decided to quietly duck out of the classroom and grab some paper towels to keep my nose from running. Except when I got up, I tripped over my chair and accidentally ran into the light switch. Then instead of turning them back on, I accidentally turned off the other half of the lights. So my attempt at slipping out unnoticed as to not disturb class turned into a very noticeable dark room.

Here's how the process kind of went in a more dramatic, acrobatic, and graceful fashion:

Anyway, even though it was embarrassing, it was funny. 

Now for a slightly more humiliating story. One of the very first nights I was here, I clogged the toilet. (Don't act all weird about it. Everyone does it). But I didn't know what to do cause there wasn't a plunger, and I don't know how to say "where is the plunger? I need it cause I clogged the toilet." in Spanish. I was panicking. I didn't know what to do.

So I just ran away and decided to blame it on the German boys staying in the apartment. 

But they had moved out and I didn't know that they had. My plan failed, and I'm not really sure what my host father did or who he blamed, and I never want to know. Now I know what you're thinking:

But some form of this story has happened to everyone. If you're acting like it hasn't happened to you, I'm pretty convinced that you're lying. So at the end of the day,

So there's two stories that are (as Elizabeth would call) "Leah-tastic."

And I have nothing else for today. Tomorrow, I'm going to a wine tasting, where I will act as pretentious as possible and then blog about my exquisite tasting of wines.

Adios for now, amigos!

(I'm really enjoying the parentheticals today and I'm not sure why.)

Weird Quirks and Stressful Times.

Hello friends!

Today's blog post is going to be brief because I'm in exam week and in the cramming lifestyle. But like any student, with great studying comes great procrastinating.

So that's why I'm writing this blog post.

After a fantastic weekend in the beautiful San Sebastián, we began this week with the tough realization that this is our last week in Salamanca. So along with the longing to make the most of it, we are unfortunately burdened with exams (after all, this is study abroad...) The problem is there is only one exam that determines our entire grade, and my grammar class is so unbelievably hard. Honestly Britney Spears couldn't have said it any better.

It's a beautiful and very hot week in Salamanca, so it's tough to stay positive when you would rather be at the pool than studying. Needless to say, it's been a rough start to the week. But with all the stress building up, there's nothing like partaking in my all-time favorite (not-so) guilty pleasure to make my worries go away.

Trapped in the Closet marathon, obviously. 

But even when that fails to fully cheer me up, I discovered the best news.

Right now, I'm sure you're asking yourself, "But Leah, what could be better than a Trapped in the Closet marathon?" Well, you're right. There aren't many things better than that.

EXCEPT WEIRD AL RELEASED A NEW ALBUM.

For those of you who don't know, I grew up listening to Weird Al. I'm pretty sure my family owns every single CD. So this release, which only comes around every few years, makes this very stressful week into something a little better.

So rather than blogging more about my weird quirks and interests, I'm gonna return to studying. 

And you should go watch Trapped in the Closet and listen to Weird Al.

That is all. Happy listening.

Adios for now, amigos!

A typical night at the discoteca (as told by Dance Moms)

If you've been reading my blog, you obviously can tell that I love gifs. However, my absolute gifs are from the show Dance Moms. I don't watch the show that often, but I think that it's an enigma, and it's easily my most favorite guilty pleasure show. I haven't used any Dance Moms gifs in preparation for this post, so be prepared for a long post with a lot of gifs rather than text.

 So without further ado, I give you a typical night at a discoteca as told by Dance Moms. Get excited.

So the discoteca is just the Spanish word for club, but it's the popular night life scene in Spain. But they don't get busy until like 1 AM at the earliest. So basically what we do is we go out to a few different bars and have some drinks, and after we spend a day full of classes and we take our siesta, we are ready for a night out on the town.

So you get to the discoteca, and there's a bunch of drunk people dancing. Very typical, I suppose. The club we go to has a lot of American influence, so there isn't much salsa dancing or anything like that. But  things always get interesting. Really it's just a bunch of really drunk Americans dancing in very close quarters.

Honestly, it looks pretty ridiculous. The club has a balcony, and one night I observed from above, and everyone looks like a school of fish squirming around in an attempt to "dance." I kind of just wanted to scream down at them like:

But oh well, it's a prime people watching spot if you enjoy that hobby (which I do).

Obviously, being in the club can be very uncomfortable, so some of the time I stand there like: 

And I can pretty much find any excuse not to dance like this girl (who is kind of my idol).

But if (and when) I do decide to dance, it's kind of a big deal.

As much as I like to diss the overly drunk people and the mildly inappropriate dancing, it is actually really fun to boogie with all of your friends, especially when they play the grade school bangerz.

 But the problem is that if you are aware enough, you realize how gross and annoying a club can be for several reasons, most particularly the attempts for men to make a move. I go to the discoteca to dance with my friends, not to have a random hookup with a stranger. But picking up a girl is on the agenda of many men.

Sometimes men will approach one of my friends or me and be like: 

But then we give them a look that shows we are completely uninterested:

But then you see a super drunk girl take the bait of the boy, and it's really hard not to stand there looking at her like:

But I manage to resist the temptation every time. I supposed I can't judge anyone.

So now that I've given an overview of the typical background information of a discoteca, it's time for a story to exemplify the strange things that can happen. Last week, a group of students from England came to study at the same university as us. One of the boys is in my class, and he came up to my friend Mark and I at the discoteca to give a big HBD to America on Friday. Then, he went up to my friend and randomly asked him if he watched porn and then walked away. It was weird, and we kind of just stared at him like:

But we obviously knew the answer. What an awkward moment for my British classmate. I couldn't even look at him in class yesterday cause I was so embarrassed for him.

(I only told this story cause Mark wanted his name in the blog)

But no matter what crazy stuff happens or how gross it seems, we always have a great time. And obviously our group has the best dancers. We always leave the discoteca with this sort of reaction: 

And there you have it, your regular, run-of-the-mill discoteca experience.

Shout out to Dance Moms for being the best show ever.

This is close enough to a Dance Moms gif, right?

Well said, Kristin, well said.

Adios for now, amigos!