Spring Break Highlights

Last week was spring break so Katherine and I decided to hit up the iberian peninsula and see the cities of Barcelona, Lisbon, and Porto. We were hoping for beautiful weather and time at the beach but had to deal with cold wet rain for most of the trip. We made the most of it and had fun anyways.

Our trip started in Barcelona. First stop: The MAGIC Fountain! It is a fountain that plays music and does a little water show- tourist trap? you betcha! But it was cool and it was a nice night so we enjoyed the show.

Katherine is a flying fish.
We happened upon a good friday parade. And this was the jesus float- for more details head over to my picasa photo albums- i'll put the link at the bottom of the post
Then I turned into a dinosaur and ruined the flow of my blog- it happens.
Some more participants in the procession. 
The virgin mary float. LOTS of candles.
Barcelona has it's own arc de triumf (lacking the Ph but it happens) 
Gaudi architecture is present all over the city from parks
To his giant temple/cathedral which is still being built.
Whitwhicky got attacked by a lion
Gaudi designed this cool looking lizard fountain

Next we went to lisbon...
This is an example of an Azueljos (I most likely didn't spell that right) but it is a mosaic/tiling that is present in a lot of portuguse architechture
That's a view of the city that we found at the top of the tallest hill in lisbon where the sao jeorge castle was.
Danger- be on the alert for slide-tacklers 

This is a crazy summer home built in sintra portugal- about 30 minutes away from lisbon. It had a really cool garden.
This is the cool looking castle where the last king of portugal lived. Of course on top of a hill.
This is whitwhicky looking out over the bay and the not golden gate bridge.
The inside of the monastery. It was really pretty.

Me infront of the tower of belem. 

Like I said more details are in the picasa photos found on this link . I don't know why some of the pictures are small on the blog but they're all big here. 

And I haven't uploaded the pictures of Porto yet- sorry with all these pictures my computer is running low on memory! I'll get around to it later though I promise.

Celebration!

Today I finally received my Carte de Séjour! I've only been waiting for it since November! Now I am free to come and go in France as I please and even get a job. The wonder of a little piece of plastic. The stupid thing is that it isn't the proper size to fit into a wallet. Nor have I noticed that french people have bigger wallets so how do they carry their IDs around? Anyways, I've decided to have a weeklong celebration for this by traveling to Barcelona, Spain; Lisbon, Portugal; and Porto, Portugal with Katherine starting tomorrow. Let the celebrations begin! 

Les Poissons d'Avril!

Instead of April Fool's day in france they have Poissons d'Avril (April's Fish) In the good ole days the citizens of france would stick a little paper fish on the back of friends etc. which was essentially the equivalent of a kick me sign. Malheureusement, (Unfortunately) outside of high school french classes this practice is no longer in use : ( but I did see the evening news paper had a cover photo of a kid with a fish on his back so- not forgotten. AND in my bakery today all the little goodies were fish shaped. I decided to grab one! How cute! Hélas (again meaning unfortunately) the little raisin eye fell off during the swim home.  :( 
On tuesday my friend Amelia needed some shopping therapy after her first french exposé at sciences po- and a week full of other projects. We headed over to the Galleries Layfayette- if you caught the youtube videos Lauren did a little update there (Day 3). Anyways we found this gem of a dress. Sequins and what not looked tacky-licious and it costs- wait for it-   595 euros ($788) due to the price tag they actually have the dress and others like it connected by a cord to the rack! 
Tonight Emily, Ashley, and I took up the opportunity to see a world cup qualifying match of France vs. Lithuania! This is the outside of the stadium. It is very big 80,000 people
can't really tell, but everyone has french flags and were waving them it was pretty crazy (think rally flag night at Turner field- except these weren't handed out for free before the game- the fans are that intense.) I even saw some Lithuanians with their faces fully painted- wearing bright yellow and green walking around the RER station. And if you know anything about Parisians you would realize how bizarre this would be. I stand out because I wear a khaki jacket instead of a black one and my pink and green sweaters are a little bright compared to the sea of black and greys around me.
At the game. France won with 1 goal at 75 minutes the whole game was like OOOh no.... OOOOOOh... no. So close. And the people behind us reminded me of Bobby at a Georgia Southern Game- But louder. 

The fans were also throwing paper airplanes- which made me say "Now let's not start that again" 

Bobby- the french people are so much more intense with their wave, I'm pretty sure you would go insane because before the wave reaches them they all look over to the side and wave their hands out in front of them and go Ooooooooo until it comes down the entire side of their stands. Face it-the wave will never die. It also went around like 10 times.

I also got my grades back this week-suprise I didn't fail- GO me!