where the road meets the sun

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about home and how I miss my family, the food, understanding everything everyone says, and just being close to everything. How I can't just go downstairs and play with Sammy, or drive a short ways to hang out with friends, or even work. I miss it all a ton and I think about it a lot, which probably makes it worse, but I have also been thinking about how great this trip is! I keep thinking about how different my life here is from my life in the States. I have been needing to remind myself that I am going to learn so much more by being here in Spain than if I was just in a classroom in Minnesota at Bethel. I am in Spain! What better place to learn Spanish than in Spain? There is so much that you can't really learn from a book or a lecture, you just have to experience it to actually understand it. At first, I thought it was weird that people didn't allow friends in their houses, but now I get that it is just an extra opportunity to learn more about the culture (at least for me), and learn more about what goes on at every time of the day. In the mornings, no one is out until about 9 and the streets are flowing with seas of people, but if you were to walk around the city just 30 minutes earlier, there would be a total of about 2 people on the street, you and some random person (probably a tourist) wandering the streets. From 2 until 4 shops close for lunch and there is basically nothing to do but sleep or do homework (guess which one I choose!). At 4 on the dot, people just mozy around like they have all day to get to whatever they have to do. No one walks fast, no one is on a mission, they just walk slowly and take in the day, something I should probably learn how to do, but it's difficult because I HATE slow-walkers! The streets are busy until about 9 or 10 when people go to their houses for dinner (my dinner is always at about 10:30) and don't go out dancing or to bars until about midnight and they don't go home until about 5 or 6 in the morning.

Enough of my thinking for the day...... So this weekend I got to go to La Granja on Saturday to see the Royal Palace and a place where they make crystal everything. I got to see a guy make two blown glass bottles but that was about as interesting as it got, besides the amazing chandelier that we couldn't take pictures of. It was a replica of many chandeliers in the Palace in La Granja and was made entirely of glass and just a little bit of metal to hold all the pieces together. When we went to the Palace after lunch, we got to see people arriving to the wedding that was in the chapel attached to the Palace. I got my little wedding fix for the week and I loved it! I did take some creeper pictures of the bride because I love weddings and her dress was so unique and GORGEOUS! It was so amazing because you could tell that she was so happy and she was anxious to get in there and start her life with the man waiting in there for her. The wind was blowing her veil around and she barely stopped long enough to let her personal attendant fix it. I know, random tangent... but look how pretty her dress is!

Anyway, back to the Palace. The inside of the Palace was amazing. It was so colorful and the ceilings were almost all painted and the chandeliers in the rooms were so beautiful. But my favorite part was walking around the royal gardens for an hour and a half. The fountains were so interesting and there was so much detail and thought put into everything. It was so calm and it just kind of makes you forget everything and you just take in everything around you. It was so much fun and I think I got some good pictures.

I am starting to get really excited for this coming week because I am leaving for Italy and Greece on Saturday! I have to sleep in the airport on Friday night because there aren't any buses that leave Segovia really early in the morning and my flight leaves at 6am on Saturday. I am going to Cinque Terre from Saturday until Monday, and then I am going to Rome from Monday until Thursday. Then we leave on Thursday morning for Greece! and we are staying there until Sunday. I am staying on the island of Rhodes, which from the pictures I have seen I am gonna have awesome pictures to show you all when I get home! I can't wait to go! But, unfortunately, I will not be bringing my computer with so I won't be able to blog while I am over there (Sorry Amanda)!

I think that is all for now but I will write before I leave for fall break! I love you all!!!