summer plans

 LSA 2013 in Ann Arbor this summer is a go for this girl! So stoked! 

I loved it when I went to Boulder in 2011, so I'm even more stoked now; now that I've more fully realized my interests in Ling. I love doing education and I'm excited to be a teacher, but I think I'll always love linguistics and language the most. 

Plus, I've never been to Michigan. Always down to go to states I've never been. I really want to travel in America more. Should be fun :) So, LSA 2011/U Ling friends, who's headed to Ann Arbor?? 

Walt Wolfram AND Noam Chomsky are giving presentations. Wooo. That is awesome!

xoxox,
ash

quick update.

I am headed to Yellowstone today. It should be a fun little trip. My mom came up with the 14 days of fun, because when it started, there was 14 days left til school starts for Bryce (10) and Maddie (6) and me as well :) Every day since then, we have done something fun, like swimming in our family friends' pool that they invited us to have to ourselves for the night, a hot dog roast, and other fun activities. My mom has a long weekend with time off work, so that's what we decided to do, is take a roadtrip! The last time we went to Yellowstone {in 1998, a freaking long time ago}, my dad left my suitcase that my mom was going to check and make sure everything was there, so when we got there, I had no clothes! We had to go get a few things at Kmart the next day! It was pretty comical! We'll see what adventures await us this time.

Also, I believe that things are starting to fall into place for me regarding school and such. I'll update more on that when I have more info after I get back from our mini vacay!

xoxoxo
ash

End of Oviedo; Southern Spain, Paris and London

The end of my Europe trip was freaking amazing! I loved it. Barcelona {My last post} happened on week three of five. The last two weeks of the program were fantastic! My Spanish got way good and it made me wonder why the freak I just didn't save for longer and do a full sememster. Oh well, live and learn. Maybe, just maybe in the future, I will be able to go back. I heart Oviedo. It's a great place. I didn't want to leave, and Rosa (host mom) didn't want me to leave either. She said I could come visit whenever though :) That's a plus.



Just a quick recap on what I did after, since the deets are written in my journal. We left to Madrid (five hours by bus) and then got on another bus to Grenada (another five hours by bus) {oh, and just for the record, I have freakingggg bad luck with buses.} Grenada was a blast, probably my favorite part of Spain, besides Oviedo and Llanes. While the other yahoos watched freaking soccer that wasn't Spain or the US, (I loved watching the World Cup and all, don't get me wrong, but really only when the above teams were playing) Jessi and I went to explore the gypsy corner. Definitely not what I was expecting, but it was soooo fun to see all the stuff. On the way back, we stopped at this sweet store and bought....drumroll....GYPSY PANTS! Everyone there wore them so we had to find some, and they are awesome! haha. Let's see--next stop was Cordoba, which entailed more bad luck with buses haha. Cordoba was my least favorite place of all. We had this disgusting and hot hostel room and there were six of us (Jessi, me, Rachel, Michelle, Michael and Harrison). Jessi and I wanted to go exploring while the other four slept. Reallly? who does that? Goes to Spain to sleep. Lame! There wasn't much to explore there and the next day we were leaving anyway. We got up the next morning, visited this huge Moorish mosque thing; that was one of the good things about being in the South, is the Christian/Muslim history was very noticiable and made me remember. Then we headed out to Sevilla. We were in Sevilla for five or so days, and let me tell you, IT WAS HOT!!! We would come back in the middle of the day for siesta because it was just too hot to be out. On at least two of the days, it hit 44 degrees celcius (sp?) which translates to 110 degrees farenheit, no lie! Insane! Plus the streets stunk haha. heat plus reeking whatever equals no bueno! Good thing our hostel was nice because we spent time there in the afternoons. I got to see a flamenco show in Sevilla, that was really cool, we also went to this bar that had soooo many beers from all over the world. I don't like bars, but that's the culture there--that's where they spend their time. It was cool to see that one bar though. Well, then Rachel, Michelle, Michael and Harrison left and the next day, Jessi, Grayson and I went to the airport in Sevilla. They were leaving for Barcelona and I was going to Paris to meet up with my mom!



It was interesting because on the plane to Paris, the lady in the seat next to me was like, "It's not often that you sit by someone in these parts of the world with an American passport." So I chatted with her for the rest of the flight, and I found out that she lived within a few blocks of the hotel I was staying at and she said that she would show me the way. How cool is that? Not that I was worried, but I was concerned, because I don't speak any French at all, so I didn't really know how I was going to get around on public transit and didn't want to pay for a cab because I didn't fly in to centrally located Charles De Gaulle, I flew into an airport that was out of the way. The lady wrote down a list of all the not-so-touristy things I should do while in Paris, and I was so excited! I'm one for those types of things, the off-the-beaten-path stuff.



The next day, my mom got in and we went to the Louvre. Pretty cool stuff there! We had six days in Paris and had a lot of fun. My favorite things we did: going to the top of the Eifell (I know I didn't spell that right) tower (we took the stairs this time, last time I went, we elevatored! Quite a climb!) Amazing view! And we listened to where all these people were watching a world cup game and Spain won!!!! Good thing I had my jersey on! Anyway, back to my favorite things--going into Cartier and looking at jewelry. Those who know me well, know that I love rings, and man alive!!!!!! The guy let me try on the most spppaaaarrrkkkkllllyyyy ring you've ever seen in your life! hahahahaha great fun. I also loved going into Louis Vuitton and looking at purses {I'm definitely a purse girl}. One day, I will own a Louis; I've wanted one since I was 12 or so and went to Hollywood and saw the store! ha. I also loved Normandy and seeing the beaches and the visitors center. That was a sombering experience. So many people fought for our freedom and died for it too. I'm grateful to live in such a great country and appreciate all the hardworking servicemen and women who fight for our freedoms.



Next stop, London!!!! This is the place that I was most excited to go to after leaving Spain. My favorite thing we did here was see shows!! London's West End is like New York's Broadway {only it's a lot easier to find tickets for cheaper! yessss}. We saw Jersey Boys, Wicked, Sister Act (before it's even in NY, cool huh?) and Legally Blonde. They were all fantastic, and I'm usually not into musicals AT ALL, so that definitely says something! Of all the touristy things, we only saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. My mom had way too much fun taking optical illusion pictures! i will have to post some pictures. We also went to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, and on the way there, we saw a hunger strike for peace/to bring the troops out of Afghanistan. It was kinda crazy! There was this almost naked hippy lookin dude that would walk around the block and bang pots and pans and maracas! Talk about random. I loved shopping in London, even though the pound is 1 to about 1.50-.1.60USD. It actually adds up quite fast and I was not happen to look at my bank account! ha. That was lame! We went to two really cool markets too, and one was just like food type stuff! Holy moly. I had the yummiest chicken curry ever and pineapple juice :) Hard Rock Cafe was really cool too, I bought a hoodie that I am excited to wear. Let's see...I would go back to London whenever I can! I loved the people, the culture and just the cool vibes! It was awesome! Last semester, I had a roomie from Scotland and there were so many things that reminded me of her! So cool!

My mom's family comes from the Lancashire area in England, which is big (about 200-300 miles in area) but she wanted to go out there and see what it was like. After looking into the pricing and options, we found that it would be too expensive and time consuming. We chose to go to Manchester instead, some locals told us that it would be similar to Lancashire but not as far. Manchester and ahhh I can't think of what the village was right now were fun. Not much to do, so we wandered around and got lunch and such. Then we were headed back to the train station, and while we were waiting for the tram that would take us into the train station to go back to London, we met a guy from Bolton, England and he told us that Bolton used to be part of Lancashire, but the changed it to be considered Greater Manchester, and he said that the older folks didn't like that, that they wanted (and still considered) it Lancashire. That's where we should have gone. We had one more day in London after that, and we just goofed around. Getting out of there was a joke because of some illegal immigrants that got on a plane without documentation (obviously, but how does that work???) and needed to be sent to New York on a 24 hr visa. Oh I was sooo mad, but that's an entirely different story. We were there in plenty of time, then we had to wait in this huge line because we were being involuntarily removed from the plane and no one (of the Delta people) knew what was going on. That was frustrating. We were supposed to fly from Heathrow to JFK and from JFK to SLC and be home at 7, but instead, we flew from Heathrow to Minneapolis, had a freaking 5 hr layover and then our plane was delayed by almost three hours! So we got in at around 2 am. Could have been a lot worse, but just sitting in airports is not a fun time. hahaha.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to be in Spain on that study abroad and to travel elsewhere. It showed me that I really can do things like this, because two years ago when I started looking into it and saving the money, I sometimes thought, "Am I really going to be able to go and be ok financially?" But I worked my butt off and it definitely paid off. This is the most expensive thing I've ever done, but it's shown me that I can if I work hard, am dilligent and save. That goes for anything, not just travel. I also learned that I can be by myself in foreign places and be just fine. I'm proud and happy I did it. I highly reccomend study abroad. Next summer, I will be headed to Italy and I will plan out my after-program travel better, so I think I will be in Rome for a week, Greece for a week and then head over to Thailand (it's been on my travel-to list for awhile, as has Greece) and spend about two weeks doing humanitarian aide. I'm pretty stoked!

xoxox
Ash

Barce-freaking-lona!!!

BARCELONA WAS SOOOOO AMAZING!!!

That's to put it simply! Where to begin--

We left Oviedo at like six and it was pouuuurrring rain! Luckily, there was a cab right by the Gorda (a meeting point statue) and it was five euros to the bus station, the ride was well worth it, especially since my paraguas did me no good! The bus station was uneventful, as was sthe airport. The airport in Asturias is super small, but it was way cool to watch the planes take off. The flight was short and sweet :)

When we got to Barcelona, I was blown away by the size of the airport (huge.) and the amount of English speaking, and the weird Spanish (different dialect, and I was like huh??? Sounded more French than Spanish). Yada, yada, yada, then we got to our hostel. It was not as bad as I was expecting. It was just like a dorm I stayed in at Weber State for a leadership conference, but better. The WSU dorm was baaad. Anyway, the first place we went was the La Sagrada Familia. It's this amazing church that was started sometime near 1926, and Gaudi took over designs of it. It's not expected to be completed until 2040!! We get up to the front of it and my camera DIED!! {It's a good thing I am not putting pictures up til I get home, so I can get the Barcelona ones from friends} I paid for the audio tour because that was the top of my list to see in Barcelona. It was way cool! Kind of hard to explain, it was one of those things that you need to see for yourself to get the meaning and significance, etc.

After that we walked all the freaking way across to this big office building that appeared to be a giant blue penis. ha, it was funny, believe me. It was a disappointment--nothing to see. Then we missed our bus like three times {The public transportation system in Barcelona was difficult!}

Night came and we hit Las Ramblas (huge shopping, touristy streets) for some dinner and meandering. I didn't love Las Ramblas, it was kinda lame, but that's ok. We went home and crashed!

The next day was quite an adventure! One of the girls in our group was an art history buff and found out about this Dali museum in Figures. It's this teeny town 30 minutes from the French border. We knew the train ride would take awhile (two hrs each way), but we had it all planned out and got an early start, so we thought we were good to go. Not so much...

We headed to the train station and waited in line got our tickets, and asked where to go (nothing is listed on the tickets--i.e. gate, number, etc.) Keep in mind that the Spanish is different and this person that we were talking to knew no English. He told us to get on at 14, so we did and it left. Two stops later, they were announcing that this was the end of the line. We get off there and go to ask someone, and he tells us to go back to where we came from and ask them. We head back there and ask someone who appears to know what he is doing and he says, "Oh you just missed it, take the train at 12:46--two hours from the current time!) We weren't too happy about that, chillin in the train station for two hours, but we tried to make the best of it, got some lunch (I had a sandwich with no traces of pork anywhere! Yay for chicken!) and sat there. We asked some other guys, just for clarification, and they were like, "Oh, you could have taken the 11:40 one. Apparently, the first guy we talked to earlier didn't know about that train. So we waited some more and finally, it was time to go get on the train. The ride was long; we probably should have kept going the 30 minutes to France, ahaha, but none of us had out passports :( sad day.

I loved the little town that this Dali museum was in, so cute and quaint. I didn't love Dali's stuff, he was a sex-obsessed weirdo, and it showed in his artwork. After that, we did some shopping and had the best ice cream ever.

We were hoping to make it back to Barcelona in time to watch the futbol game, but no such luck with the trains. More waiting, and time on the train, we got back to Barcelona and went back to the hostal, it was late.

The third and final day I had in Barcelona was the best one. We started out with the Picasso museum, AND the public transportation system was good to us! Yay!! The picasso museum was really cool {and cheap.} There were way cool shops near there too! Then we went to Gaudi's Park Guell, this park that Gaudi designed, it was soooo interesting! We got some great pics that I will have to put on when I get back to the states. We also hit the cathedral too, that was pretty ordinary, considering I've been to quite a few cathedrals here in Spain, but they did have an elevator to the roof, the view was ammmaaaazzziiinnnngg! Best thing ever.Seriously. So sad I did not have my camera :(

The next thing we did was my fave! There was this huge fountain in front of a palace that had a water show that night!! It was soooo awesome, and the view of the entire city was incredible! We also caught a free concert, so awesome for music junkie me, even though I couldn't understand what they were saying. It was still good. Then we just sat on the steps of the palace listening to street musicians and watching the artists. At around midnight we headed to the subway, it was CLOSED. I mean really, it's Barcelona! I expected it to maybe close at two or so, but midnight?? No way! We did find one gate that was open and luckily there were still trains going to the stop that we needed.

The next day, we checked out of the hostal really early and caught our flight back to Oviedo. We got back and were already late to school, so I went home and Rosa was like, "Do you have school right now? I thought you were in your bed!" So note to all you people--if I go missing in Spain, make sure they check my bed first, because she didn't even make sure! hahaha kidding.

What a great {adventurous} weekend.

peace out, girl scouts
xoxox ash

¡Vida!

I just took a test and think I did rather well on it :) and I also have an hour to do some random stuff, so here´s a post! Spain has been wonderful the past week and a half! I really do love it here and as time goes by, I can´t help but think I want to spend more time here. Who knows, maybe I will do a full semester here! More on that type of stuff later.

Last weekend, we went on an excursion to Santillana del Mar and Llanes. Santillana del mar was pretty fun, it was an little town with authentic shops and such and there was also a tourture museum that we went to! It was pretty gross, but interesting. There was a lot of gender seperation aspects with the tourture instruments--women had it a lot worse! I know that that was to be expected in those days, but that would never fly today, and I am so glad for that!

There were things that I had never even heard of, let alone seen! There was a real live chokey!¨{for those of you that have seen Matilda, you will know what I am talking about!} That was crazy haha.

Llanes was definitely my favorite place! Ahh I love it! I can´t forget the little adventure me and my friend Katie had in getting there, though. So the whole group drove about two hours from Oviedo to Santillana de Mar, then we got back on the bus to go about an hour to Llanes. Well the bus started having problems and we stopped and they discovered that one if the front tires was flat and off we went. We got to a bus station for our current bus to get its tire changed and for us to get on a new bus. Me and Katie get off the bus to go to the bathroom, and I was washing my hands and Katie comes back and is like, "How do you feel about walking?!" The bus had already left! Maybe we should have been worried? But we both just laughed. Luckily we were together and we both had Fernando´s number. So we call him and he´s like, "You guys aren´t on the bus? We started to count off (usually they count us all the time, multiple times) but then we stopped." He told us to stay there and that the bus with the flat tire would be done in about 15 minutes, so we waited and took pictures, that was fun. Riding a huge bus with no one on it was fun too! Good times.

Finally we got to Llanes. It is this little village right on the coast. There were lots of fishing boats and fishermen. It was really tranquill, not a ton of people, the weather was kinda rainy, etc. We got to see these huge cement blocks that were apparently put there to hold the barrier up long ago. Then some artist came along and painted sections of the blocks. It was a tribute to something, but I don´t remember what. It was cool. Then we climbed a bunch of stairs to this grassy view area, that was waaaayyyy awesome! You could see forever over the ocean. I loved it. We didn´t have very much time, but on the way back to the bus, we were starving, so we stopped at this pizza place and were asking about just slices (in Spanish) because it looked like they just had whole pizzas, and the guy responds in English and is like, "This isn´t America, there aren´t pizza restaurants on every corner. I know you guys have Pizza Hut and...." That was quite comical! We also stopped in a few little shops to look around. I found this quaint little hotel that I want to stay in someday! It was just cute how it was all tucked in on the beach. :) Little things like that make me happy.

The weather in Oviedo has been rainy the past few days, which I love! One night this week, we walked around just as the sun was setting and it was perfecto!! I´ve gotten a lot of use (and complements on) of my cute green raincoat :) Love it!! My umbrella is broken in one place, but that´s ok. I really want a paraguas (umbrella) from here--they´re totally legit!!! I just don´t know how I would get it home.

Yesterday, Rosa took me to Las Caldas and San Claudio, that was sooo fun!! I saw this cool castle, and some cool building and bridges. Rosa took me to her parents´house and showed me around. She also said I could come back and visit anytime I want! That was pretty sweet! ¡Estupendo!

Tomorrow, I head off to Barcelona for three days! yay! I´m loving life for sure!

xoxox Ash