This weekend, I went to Cádiz, which is a Spanish city on the Atlantic ocean, with 5 other Preshquitas. It was a great city to visit because it was pretty small (it has to be, since its basically an island; it's connected to mainland spain by only a 4 lane road and a train track) so it was easy to walk everywhere. We stayed in a very cute hostal, and went to the beach and climbed some torres. (towers) One torre was an old watch tower, and one was part of the catedral nueva. The watch torre had a camera obscura on the lower level (not sure what exactly that translates to in english), you know, a camera where light is let in through a periscope sort of thing, and filtered through lenses, and reflected by a mirror onto a giant white disc and you can focus on things closer or far away by raising or lowering the disc. Well, anyways, it was really cool, because you could see the movement of the ocean, and the birds flying and laundry blowing on the terraces of all the roofs. The torre worker described all the important edificios (buildings) to us, so it was like getting a tour of the whole city without having to walk all over the place. I highly recommend visiting this torre if you're ever in Cádiz.

Cádiz is possibly the oldest city on the iberian peninsula, so there were some cool phonecian ruins, under roman ruins, under medival ruins that we saw too. And an old roman theater. and the playa (beach) reminded me of beaches at home because they're man made and wide. It was nice to hang out in the ocean and be sandy and warm. and we climbed the giant ficcus tree from south america too.

Next weekend our program is going to Sevilla, and then two weekends after that, I'm going to Italy!!! We're going to see the tower of Pisa, then hang out in Florence for two days (and visit with Rebecca from Wheaton) (maybe we'll side trip down to sienna to see Marina too) and then go to Venice for two days.

The weekend after Italy, our program goes to Granada for two days, then there's one weekend, then austin/claire arrive in spain that week, so ill be spending some time in Madrid, then two free weekends, then my program is over and i go to Paris with Kristie. O man. so much adventuring. And I still want to go to Portugal/Morocco.

I feel like I'm running out of time to learn Spanish. Better start reading more articles on elpais.es, and hanging out with more Spanish people.

somehow, i stored up enough karma points to be rewarded by the universe this weekend. Not only did i go to Ireland, i went to Ireland for Arthur Guinness's 250th birthday. You can imagine how much of a party that was. So much of a party, that some irish man pulled out some of his belly hair, and tried to give it to me. oh yeah. And then! on top of that, the next night was "culture night" where everything was open late and free! So Kirstie, Jessica and I went to the Guiness brewery and had free pints of Guiness (definitely very cultural), and then we went to Christ's Church to look at the cat and rat that got mummified in the pipe organ a long time ago, and then we went to the Viking museum(!) and took lots of campy pictures with all the recreations. beause that's how we role. We definitely lucked out, because we didn't know about this before hand, so we got to save a lot of money while we were in Dublin.

On Saturday, we woke up early to take the bus to Galway, and we hung out in Galway a bit, and had crepes for dinner. Then on Sunday, we took a bus tour to the Cliffs of Mohar, and to fairy rings, and castles and prehistoric portal tombs. awesome.

Now I'm back in spain, ready to speak some more spanish. woo spanish!!!!

My next trip will probably be to Italy, around October 8th. because that week I have thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, monday, and tuesday free. Yes, you read that correctly. I have a 6 day weekend in October.