Meeting Baby Amelie

Ok ok, so I realize that I have been slacking big time in the blogging field, but I promise to get better now that I am back at school.  The past month was x-mas vacation and I spent 10 days traveling Europe and 2 very short weeks at home!!!  I traveled through Paris for 4 days and honestly I found Paris kind of overrated.  Quite possibly I went having too high of expectations, but the huge landmarks were sort of surreal to see in real life, considering that I have seen it so many time in movies, on tv, and in pictures.  Next we took a train from Paris to Florence and thus far, Florence is my favorite city!!!  It doesn't have the big city atmosphere, but has most accommodations that one would need.  The David was breathtaking and I could help but just stare for a number of minutes...haha.  We met a lot of people from Florence and it was very cool to learn about the culture from people who actually live there!!!  Last stop in Europe was Romaaaaaa, as the locals say it!!!! It was so fun!!!  I'm not sure if you all have heard of couchsurfing, but that is exactly what we did.  Couchsurfing is a program where people open up their houses for travelers to stay, free of charge.  We stayed with the coolest guy ever!!!  His name was Giorgio and he was full of life and showed us a lot of secrets to Rome.  I especially loved Rome, because I've read a lot about it, plus it has a lot of famous landmarks.  I especially liked the Vatican, because I loved the book "Angels and Demons," so I felt like I knew a little more about everything!!!  

It wasn't too hard to leave Europe, considering I had a lot of built up anticipation to see my family and meet my darling little niece Amelie!!!!  Home was just wonderful!!!  I loved just hanging out with my family and friends.  We traveled to Mammoth and Mexico while I was home and I had a great time.  I got to see some of my wonderful friends from WW, so that definitely made my x-mas that much more special.  Being away from home as really made me appreciate my family and home and it was really hard to leave.  However, it was nicer than I thought to come back to Spain and see my friends here.  I have a good feeling about this quarter and I'm trying to stay motivated on learning the language.  Ciao for now!!!