For the most part, I really don't like country music. It always makes me cry.  Crying for no reason sucks, but crying because some guy with a twangy voice and acoustic guitar is singing about his daughter going up to heaven to meet angels or something is a zillion and 7 times worse and I should stop crying about country music right now.  Please, someone, if you can make me cry right now, you should do it so that I forget about a sad country song and start crying about something real.

Best part of spending my birthday in Portugal :

 On the train ride to Lisbon, we were in a compartment with 2 Brazilians who were incredibly nice and would leave the compartment so we could sprawl out and sleep on the train.  (it was an overnight train that picked us up around 3am) When we started waking up, the Brazilians tried to make conversation with us, which was interesting because they only spoke Portuguese, which is definitely different from Spanish.  Somehow though, we were able to have a pretty sweet conversation with them about Brazilian and Spanish music.  One of the Brazilians asked me how old we were and I told him that in a day, it would be my 20th birthday.  At this point, he proceeded to laugh at me and tell me that I looked like I was 15.  So I told him he looked like he was 50.

Once we arrived in Lisbon, the Brazilians showed us what bus to take to get to our hostel, wished me a happy birthday, and then left.  As we walked around the city, we saw some kids skateboarding in a plaza and decided to watch them for a while.  They were pretty good and kept doing jumps over garbage bins and off benches and stuff.  Once they noticed we were spying on their mad skateboarding skills, they kept trying to scare us by skating right past us and doing jumps like 3 feet away. It was pretty awesome.

My favorite day of the trip was taking a short train ride to a beach town nearby called Cascais.  Right on the Atlantic ocean, there´s really nothing to do here but walk around and sit on the beach.  We ate lunch on the beach and watched huge waves crash on the rocks and tried to take sweet pictures of it that didnt turn out.  When we walked a little further, we found a kiosk that rented out bikes.  We decided to rent some and then found out you could rent them for free! What a sweet birthday gift from Portugal.  So we biked through Cascais for the rest of the afternoon and stopped at random beaches along the way.  My favorite beach was realllly big and slanted down towards the shore slightly.  A group of little kids were playing near us and they were having a jumping contest, so I decided to start my own jumping contest with my friend Rachel.  it was pretty sweet.  Overall, Portugal is a charming little place with amazing beach towns and lots of great opportunities for people watching.

How to start a Falla on Fire:

1. Spend all year constructing a figure out of shards of leftover wood, paper mache and some pretty colors of paint.  Make sure the structure resembles either a politcal figure or someone else very famous but also be sure to distort their physical features so people know you are making fun of this person.  Also make sure that your falla is big enough to occupy the space of 2 intersecting city streets, so that when you do set it on fire, everyone in a 100 m radius can feel its scorching heat.

2. When the falla is constructed, string a circuit of fireworks around the entire structure and leave some of the fireworks off the structure so you can start it on fire from a safe distance.

3. Before actually igniting the circuit of fireworks, be sure to get some Valencian firemen (in the valenciana language, they´re called Bombers hehehe) to spray down all the buildings surrouding the falla with their ginormous fire hoses.

4. Stand back and light the circuit of fireworks, so that in a few seconds, the entire falla is a huge melting mass of paper mache and wood.  Watch intently as parts of the satircal figure gets droopy from the heat, melts away and then finally turns into a pile of ash on the ground. 

5. Go eat some paella or ice cream or churros and chocolate but I wouldn´t recommend the oranges on the orange trees because they are verrry sour.  They are a good alternative to a soccer ball though.

6. Be sure to forget to book a hostel or hotel 4 months in advance and spend the rest of the night wandering the streets of Valencia and finally crash in a stinky, cold train station around 6 am, 2 hours before your train leaves.  When you get on your train, don´t be surprised that they have overbooked it so there are a bazillion people trying to find seats and you end up sitting in the isle and later attempting to sleep under a luggage rack.

7. When you get to the Madrid train station from Valencia, watch your bags and purses, because I defintely saw an old couple get robbed and had to tell them that the woman´s purse was stolen... sad :(

8.  Finally, fall asleep on the last leg of the trip from Madrid to Valladolid after not sleeping for a good 28 hours.

Hiking to Portugal:

A really good way to meet Spaniards around here is to go hiking with them, because you have nothing else to do but hike and talk.  So I decided to go on another hiking excursion with a group.  This time, instead of climbing a mountain, we hiked along an old, rundown railroad line that is no longer in use.  The day started off chilly but around 11am the sun was shining and the Spaniards were warning me to put on sunscreen because the sun reflecting off my white, non-spanish-skin was blinding them and they were worried I would burn.  Parts of hike were through railway tunnels that got incredibly dark and I had to use my little flashlight that my mom insisted I should bring with me to Spain.  It ended up being very useful! Inside the tunnels, I could hear little bats flapping around and we even stopped to look at a nest of them.  Did you know that bats like to cuddle? When they sleep, they all huddle together in a little cluster so they can snuggle with each other.  Thats pretty cute.

We hiked along a valley, with the river clearly in sight below us.  Just beyond the other side of the river was Portugal and as we continued hiking we came nearer and nearer to crossing the Spanish-Portuguese Border.  At certain parts in the hike, the train track that we followed would turn into a bridge, overlooking the valley below us.  These were the exciting parts of the hike.  Since the bridges were old, there was no way to walk along the middle part because too many planks of wood were missing, and if we fell, we would fall a very very long way.  In order to cross the bridge, we stayed to one side, gripping a handrail for support on one edge, and using our opposite arm for balance.  We only had about 3 feet of space to walk on, and as we approached the middle of the bridges, wind became very strong and we often had to stop to regain balance.  We crossed bridges like this about 3 or 4 times, each time with increasing distances, increasing windspeeds, increasing the likelyhood that I would pee in my pants out of fright. 

As we hiked, we could see little groves of olive trees across the river and sheep and bulls further up and down the slope of the valley.   I even saw a farmer call his sheep in with a cowbell and they all went running to him in a line! It was pretty cool.  Around 5pm, we neared the end of the hike, and finally crossed the international bridge in to Portugal.  Hiking from 9am to 5 30 pm means that Katelyn slept most of the busride home :)

Finally I have some free time to write in this silly thing and I have writers block.  Not that I haven´t done anything cool for a long time.. I definitely have... but I just don´t know how to describe it all. 

-Lots of studying lately--- exams this week but now they are OVER!

-Finally some sun! Lots of sun actually.  We played frisbee in the middle of the Plaza Mayor and a police officer told us we were disturbing the peace and we couldn´t throw there.  So we decided to play outside of school instead which is cool except for all the broken glass bottles in the grass. 

-We went to Salamanca for an excursion with the university.  It was awesome because it´s a city known for its university and so there are lots of students there-especially international students.  In one bar I talked to a person from Ireland, Peru, Portugal and Mexico.  Pretty awesome. Also, since we didn´t have a hostel in Salamanca, we stayed up all night and just hopped from one bar to another.  The discotecas are a lot of fun there too.

-Last Sunday I went hiking with the university hiking group again.  This time we went to a city called Leon which isn´t too far from Valladolid.  The mountain peak that we climbed wasn´t quite part of the Picos de Europa but it was right on the outskirts of them. It was cool because once we got to the top of the peaks, I could clearly see a lot of the Picos de Europa mountain range.  Also, to actually get to the top peak, we had to walk along the backbone or the crest or whatever of the mountain.  This meant that while I was walking along the crest, if I fell in either direction, I´d be falling down the entire side of the mountain.  It was pretty freaky but also a huge rush.  AND, it was really rocky and snowy so my shoes were wet and slippery.. greater chance of falling.  Im surprised I´m not dead right now because I tend to be mighty uncoordinated in situations like that.  But lucky for you, I´m alive and well to talk about all of my adventuras.  After we got to the top of the crazy DANGER peak we decided to climb up to another one.  This was interesting too, because in order to get there we had to walk along the mountain side, which was covered in snow and had an incredibly steep slant.  I had to tener cuidado with this one too.  Once we got to the top of the 2nd peak, the views were incredible though.  We decided we´d hike down the snow covered side of the mountain but instead of walking (because walking is no fun) we busted out our jackets and slid down on the mountain side on our bellies! I felt like a little penguin! And it was sweet because I slid down on someone else´s path so I was just flying for a while.  It was pretty freaking awesome.  Oh also, I met a guy named Gandalf (yeah like LOTR) from Canada.  He was really entertaining to talk to the entire ride home, mostly because whenever I looked at him I thought "this guy´s name is Gandalf".  I also met 2 girls from France and another girl from Canada, not to mention the handfull of spainiards that I hiked with throughout the day.  Pretty much, I enjoy mountains and hiking.  Anyone want to go out west this summer with me?

Well now since my exams are over, my friends and I are travelling to Valencia this weekend to see the festival called Las Fallas where they just burn huge structures that they spend all year building.  its pretty sweet. I realllly cant wait because this is the one cultural event that I´ve been really interested in. 

In other news, it´s my birthday on April 1st.  Anyone who really wants to show me that they love me should send me something :)  But if you don´t, I´ll still love you.  Have a good day loves!

We were told by our geography professor that the Canary Islands are where people go for "Sol y Playa"  Yeah right.. more like "Lluvia y calles"!  Yes it rained a lot during my 5 day stay in Tenerife but I did not let that spoil my trip.  I had intended on going to Teide, a volcano that is still active but  hasn´t erupted in a very long time.  I wanted to hike around and see all the cool nature things there but guess what?  There was too much snow, so they closed the hike to all visitors.. Yeah.. snow on a tropical island! WTF mate? However, Paddy Dillon, the british travel book writer, saved the day because he showed a friend and I around the town with the highest altitude in spain and also showed us some awesome Almond trees, Orange trees and lemon trees!  Then he told us about a different hike we could take, and since he didn´t have anything else to do that day, he decided he would join us on the hike.

In order to get to the trail we had to hop a fence that happened to have a sign on it, clearly stating that the trail was closed for the day.  Paddy explained that if we were German, we would never disobey the signs´ orders, but since we weren´t it was perfectly OK to hop the fence and risk the danger of a trail called¨"Barranco del Infierno" or "Gauntlet of Hell" in English terms.  The Gauntlet was not very hellish though... it had lots of lush green foliage and even more prickly pear cacti which we learned from the ever-knowledgable Paddy that they were NOT a native plant to the island, but rather they were brought in from Mexico.  And since the volcanic soil is excellent for growing any crop, the cacti had sprung up all over the island.  (By the way, you actually can eat the prickly pear but only the inside jelly substance.  The outside of the pear has spikes on it and it would hurt to chew on that). 

After a while, Paddy had to take off to catch his flight back to England but my friend Jen and I proceded to the end of the trail to see the waterfalls of the Gauntlet.  As soon as we reached the trail´s end (which was really only half way because we had to go back along the same trail to re-hop the fence and get back into town) it started to downpour on us.  By the time we actually got back into town we were drenched and locals on the bus gave us crazy looks but it was well worth the slight-humiliation. 

Sometimes, things just end up going your way and you really can´t complain when that happens :)