Random Europe Pictures

This is an old confessional that was in our Dublin hostel. The hostel was a church at one time. We went down to breakfast one morning and there it was. I was going to hear Stephanie's confession, but I don't think it would've been quite the same as if I were a priest. Oh well.

This is the biggest container of Nesquik I've ever seen. You have to be able to make at least 1,000 glasses of chocolate milk with that. It looks small in the picture, but just look at the peanut butter jar in comparison. Nuts I tell you.

This was a house on the other side of our London hostel. It looks like the house in the 101 Dalmations, so I took a picture of it. We had fun singing "Cruella Deville." Funny, funny Irish people.
A mummified cat at the British Museum. It was just as cool or even cooler than any of the people mummies we saw.

Hasta luego!

More Fatima Pictures

Hello! Here are some more Fatima pictures. The top picture is of the Fatima skyline. It was rainy on Saturday, so the clouds were full and beautiful. Fatima is a quaint little town, and most of the buildings had red roofs. I liked the town of Fatima a lot.

The second picture is of a stained glass window in the church that depicts an angel giving Communion to the three children.

The third picture is of a sculpture of a little shepherdess that´s on the wall above the tombs of Jacinta and Lucia.

The fourth picture is of a really unique sculpture of the Nativity that is in the square. It´s huge and really pretty.

The fifth picture is of the tombs of Jacinta (on the left) and Lucia. There were boxes on the ledge by thier tombs that were full of flowers that people brought. It was really cool to see. Francisco´s grave is on the other side of the church.

Be sure to look at my last entry if you haven´t already because it has more Fatima pictures and I explained a lot about our trip. Enjoy! Michelle

Hello Everyone!

I had an amazing time in Fatima this weekend. There were probably about 30,000 people there. It was actually kind of cold. It sprinkled on and off, but overall it was a very nice day. The top picture is of a chapel built next to the tree where Mary appeared, or at that's what we think. There weren't a lot of signs explaining things. It was a beautiful little chapel, and there were always people praying in there. We went to part of a Mass in English in the chapel, said by a priest from Pennsylvania. After Mass, we went and met him and he blessed all of the things we bought. He was really glad to find people who spoke in English.

In the chapel, there is a statue of Mary. There is a little ledge around the statue and the altar that people put flowers on. There was a little old, hunched over lady who had a bouquet of white daisies that she put on the ledge. When she turned around, she had the biggest smile on her face. It almost brought me to tears to see how happy she was in giving her flowers to Mary.

The second picture is of the walkway down to the front of the square. There's a woman in the picture who walked on her knees. Stephanie and I walked on our knees too while we prayed the rosary. My knees hurt really bad and are scabby now, but it was a neat experience.

The middle picture is of the square. The little chapel I mentioned earlier is on the left. At the top of the square is a church with beautiful stained glass windows that depict the stories of Fatima. Also, the three children are buried there. It was a really beautiful church. Outside of the church, as you can see, is a long box type structure that has an altar used for Masses in the square. We went to part of a Portuguese Mass in the square.

The fourth picture is the tree where Mary appeared, I think. There's a fence and shrubs around it, and Stephanie spent a long time thinking of how she could jump up or break in to get a leaf. Luckily, she finally concluded that it wasn't the best of ideas.

The last picture is of me next to a part of the Berlin Wall. Part of Mary's message to the children was to pray for the fall of Russia. To read about Fatima and Mary's messages, go to www.fatimacrusader.com I'm not sure of all of the history of Fatima myself, but it was really amazing to be there with thousands of other people who all honored and believed in this miracle.

That's all for now! Have a great week! Michelle

Fatima!

Hello Everyone!

I'm going to Fatima tomorrow and I'm really excited! I know it'll be the coolest place I've been so far. We're going to fly to Lisbon tomorrow morning and go to Fatima for a day trip on Saturday. It's about an hour away from Lisbon by bus. Then we'll come home on Sunday.

Last night I went to a free film class here at the school. The movie we watched was really strange. It's called "Viridiana." It was made in the 70s, but when Franco saw it he banned it and had all copies of it burned. There was a copy of it sent to the Cannes Film Festival, though, so it was preserved. It was about this nun who visited her uncle and he was in love with her and tried to marry her, but she left and then he hung himself. Then the nun's cousin came to take care of his father's house. The nun came back and took in some poor people, but they ended up trashing her uncle's house. There was a lot of sexual themes in it. It was just really really weird. I didn't understand a lot of the dialogue, but I got the gist. It was interesting though.

They're offering a free class starting next week so that the new teachers can practice. It's from 3:30 to 5:30 on Monday-Thursday. It's a 3 week class, but I'll only be here for 2 weeks of it. It's going to be kind of a review class. I don't really want to sit in a classroom for 2 more hours a day, but if I have the opportunity to learn more for free, I'm going to take it. I'm sure it'll be worthwhile.

We're still planning our Paris and Rome trips. If you have any advice as to can't-miss places or smart ways to travel, please let me know! Have a great weekend, :) Michelle

Corpus Christi

These are pictures from the Corpus Christi celebration in Sevilla last Thursday. There was a procession that was a lot like a parade but a lot more solemn. There was rosemary covering the streets where the procession passed. It smelled wonderful. The banner in the picture has Sevilla's symbol on it. There was a king whose son was trying to throw him out of power but the noblemen of Sevilla kept this from happening (or so I think the story goes) so he said "No ha dejado" which loosely translated means "Sevilla has not left me." The symbol on the banner represents this saying. The symbol is everywhere here: on all of the sewer plates in the street and on the police cars and on the flower pots... I think it's a really cool motto. The next picture is of a huge platform with an elaborate statue of Mary and baby Jesus on it. About 20 men walked under it to process with it. I watched them move it from inside a church to the huge platform before the procession and I was so nervous they were gonna take Mary's head off when they went through the door! The third picture is of a little altar that was set up by my flat. There were a lot of these little altars all over town. It was really neat and I'm glad I saw it. More pictures to come later! :) Michelle

More Pictures

This is Italica, ancient Roman ruins right outside of Sevilla. This building was a house, I believe.

This mosaic is of the 7 gods who the Romans attributed to the 7 days of creation. It´s remarkable that it´s still intact. I mean this stuff is OLD.

Here´s Stephanie and me at Italica. It was VERY hot outside, and of course we went in the afternoon when the temperature is at its highest for the day.

Here´s Karen and me poking our heads out of a doorway inside of a mini-colosseum type structure where the Romans used to have gladiator games and fights with lions and other animals.
Here´s a picture of a house in Italica. The walls are gone, but it was cool to see the layout of all of these places.

Hello!

Hello All! I´m sorry it´s taken me awhile to update. I can´t believe we´ve already been here for almost three weeks. This weekend Karen and I are going to stay here in Sevilla while Stephanie and Allie go to Toledo. Karen and I were going to go, but we decided to go to Toledo on our way back to Sevilla after we travel to Paris and Rome. It´ll save money that way.

Today was my last afternoon class. I still have 3 more weeks of my 2 morning classes. I liked my afternoon class because I learned a lot, but it´ll be nice to have the afternoons free to take a siesta. :) My teacher for my afternoon class was crazy though. Today he had us listen to a song about a guy who drank 40 beers and then imagined the route his pee would take in the sewer and how it would evaporate into the clouds and rain on people. Apparently it was a popular song in the 80s and made people paranoid about getting pee on themselves when it rained. I thought that was kind of funny.

I´ll put more pictures up on Monday, I promise, when I´m at school! Have a great weekend everyone!

It´s really hot here...

Hello! We´re at an internet cafe right now. Today we all went on a hop-on/hop-off tour bus around Sevilla. It was really pretty and I learned a lot about Sevillian history. I´ll explain some of it when I put more pictures up. I realized that when I post pictures, they´re positioned differently on my typing box than they are on the page that you all see, so I´ll try to keep than in mind in order to label them correctly, and make them right-side up this time. I´m learning.

Today we also rented a 4-person bicycle/carriage thing and rode it around Maria Luisa Park. It was really fun and the park is soooo beautiful. We also saw Plaza de España, a huge arena type thing. A guy was selling fans and castanets there, and he and I were having fun playing the castanets. He ended up giving me a pair of castanets for free! I had really wanted to buy some, but free is even better! The last of our touring today took us to Museo de Bellas Artes. It has an amazing collection of Spanish paintings. I would estimate that 95% of the paintings were of Christ or another religious figure. It´s really cool to see so much art like that. I bought a print of ¨la Virgen de la Servilleta¨. It´s a beautiful painting of Mary and the baby Jesus, and I really like how expressive Jesus´ eyes are.

Karen´s calling her mom, so that´s while we´re here at the internet cafe. After this we´re going to go to Karen´s place to make spaghetti. I´m really hungry and tired. The heat sucks so much out of you. But overall it was a great day. I´ll write more on Monday! :) Michelle

More Pictures

Hello! Here´s some more pictures. I hope they´re exciting for you, because apparently the last ones weren´t, according to my sister.

I´m sorry that I keep forgetting to turn my pictures so that they´re right-side up. Just turn your head and you should be ok.

The top righthand picture is a huge ferris wheel in the middle of a big park in Sevilla. We rode it and it was amazing to see an aerial view of the city. The top lefthand picture is Allie, me, and Karen in front of the ferris wheel. The middle righthand picture is a view from the top of the ferris wheel. The middle lefthand picture and the bottom pictures were taken next to the river. The river here is beautiful. We like going to just hang out there. There´s all sorts of people playing soccer, juggling, playing instruments, and just relaxing. It´s really nice. More pictures later!

Pictures!

Hello! I just realized that I didn´t explain the title of my last blog. I was remarking that I´ve been here for almost 3 weeks with 6 weeks to go still. Anyway...

I can only put 5 pictures on my blog at a time, so I think I´ll choose some everyday to put up.

Here we have my apartment building. The bottom picture is iew of the Plaza San Martin. My building is to the left in the picture, behind the trash bins. That´s a church that you see in the background. I swear there´s a Catholic church every 3 blocks. It´s nuts. The top lefthand picture shows the gates I enter, only I´m looking out at the gates from the inside so that you see the Plaza again. The top righthand picture is the door to my individual section of apartments. The middle lefthand picture shows right inside of the Portal C door, and middle righthand picture is a view of the courtyard inside of the gates. My apartment is on the right of the courtyard. I live on the ground floor, which is nice.

More pictures to come later! :) Michelle

3 Down, 6 To Go...

Hello Everyone! I hope you are all doing well. Things are going really well here in Sevilla. We walk around and see more of the city each day. Last night, we (me, Karen, Stephanie, and Allie) made dinner at Karen´s flat. Then we went on a walk to the river and hung out for a couple of hours. After that, Karen went back to her flat, and Steph, Allie, and I went to a really fun and low-key bar where we had some tinto verano. It was good, but not nearly as good as the sangria we had in Nerja.

I´m still liking my classes. Using the subjunctive is actually becoming automatic for me! It´s really exciting. I´m sad, though, because this is the last week that 4 of my classmates will be here. I like them a lot.

Right now we´re researching how we can go to Fatima for the least amount of money. Allie´s mom and grandma are coming in a couple of weeks and they´re going to Fatima. They have plane tickets and a hotel booked. So, Karen, Steph, and I are trying to see if we can swing it. It would be amazing! Karen and I are also in the process of making plans for our 2 weeks of touring after Sevilla. This is what I think we´re going to do: we´ll go to Madrid for a couple of days via a bus. Then we´ll fly from Madrid to Paris and spend a couple of days in Paris. After that, we´ll fly from Paris to Rome and spend about a week in Rome. Then we´ll just reverse all of the traveling so that we can get back to Sevilla in time for our flight home. Planes will be cheaper than the Eurail, I´m pretty sure. Please send me any advice you have about cheap ways to travel in Europe. I would greatly appreciate it!

I´m trying to get my photos organized and all that jazz. So, hopefully there will be another entry with photos right after this. Wish me luck!

:) Michelle

Nerja

Hello Everyone!

Right now I'm in Nerja, Spain. It's on the southern coast, on the Mediterranean Sea. We came here for the weekend. It's really beautiful. Yesterday we went to the beach, where I got a really painful sunburn on my back, shoulders and legs. We went shopping too, and I got a lot of new jewelry that was really cheap. For lunch we ate at a seaside restaurant and I tried paella again. This time it had shrimp that was really good, but I still didn't like the mussels or calamari. The shrimp still had their eyes and it freaked Karen out a lot. We all thought she was going to vomit. It was great. For dinner we ate at a really good Italian restaurant and had sangria. It was really good. I only had 2 glasses of it, but I definitely felt a buzz. :) Oh! On Friday night as we were walking around we met some high school kids from Olathe, Kansas! It was really weird, but cool. It really is a small world.

I need to finish eating my toast now. Have a good Sunday!
Michelle