Weekend Dos

Today is a dreary day--pretty cold (but nothing like Boone, of course) and ugly.  So what better day to add onto my blog!

This weekend was a blast.  Ten of us, including one Italian guy and one French girl, all went to Ronda for two nights and three days.  Ronda is a town about two hours north of Sevilla in the hilly region of Andalucia.  It is small, consisting of 40,000 people.  It was pretty darn cold and windy, but luckily I had my three jackets and gloves!  We went walking through the charming streets a good amount of the time.  The restaurants (which, a great deal of them were Italian, oddly) and apartment complexes and stores are all piled on top of and next to each other, lining the cobblestone, narrow roads.  And pretty much all around you is white-washed buildings.  It was really delightful and quiet, with enough things to do to last for our time staying there.  We stayed in a hotel which was a hoot; because there is not much hoppin at night, we all piled into our biggest room, the 4-person one, and danced and hung out with music there.  It was a good time, and being in Ronda was definitely a great bonding time for all of us. 

We spent a few hours exploring this gorge that divides the whole town.  It's hard to explain, but imagine vast green, hilly farm scenery with mountains in the background (that had snow when we were there!), and then the white town is perched on plateaus that go straight up from the green hills.  Pretty darn beautiful.  That was the highlight of the trip. Seeing that.  Then of course we threw our paper airplanes from the top of the plateau and watched them float down, one by one.

Now I'm back, and things have changed.  In a good way.  The day I came back from Ronda, there were two new roommates from Texas Christian University sleeping in their room.  And then later on, almost in time for dinner, Ann came in from her voyages around Europe. This will be her second semester here.  The other girls are Alex and Sara, one from Kansas, the other from Texas.  And boy, are all my roommates cool.  Just so sweet, all of them.  We talked for a while in the tiny hallway of our piso, for quite some time before dinner.  Turns out they all sing or have sung in high school.  That made me super happy, as you can probably imagine.  Ann, who just vacationed in Greece, Italy, and Austria, will be joining up with her home college's choir for a trip in Hungary this summer.  How cool is that?!  So yes, I like my roommates already. 

Tonight we foreigners are invited by this program, "We Love Spain", to a pub for a get-to-know-you gathering.  I am so fortunate to live right by the center, because just as this pub is a short walk away, so is the action and the meeting places for all the times we've gone out.  I am very thankful for that, that I don't have to pay for a metro every time I want to go out.  Tomorrow we go to an orientation/reception and also find out our schedules.  And then the next day, I start classes.  Then ya know what else is great? No classes on Fridays.  Woo hoo!  I definitely need to do some research for some bound-to-be awesome weekend trips! 

"Thanks for stoppin by, and you stay classy."

Love,
Allison :)