MAJOR UPDATE #1 - VALENCIA (9/11-9/13)

Whats crackin everybody... Here is my first major update on my life recently over here. Two weekends ago (Sept. 11-13), a group of about 20 of us took a short, but amazing trip to the nearby city of Valencia. Here's how it all went down...

We boarded our train around 9am on Friday, after getting there at about 7:30am to get tickets. We were able to get a round trip booked for about 42 euros, which isn't bad at all. However, since it was so cheap, the entire train ride took about 5 hours (the real trip takes about 3 hours, maybe). We definitely entertained ourselves on the way though...

Once we got there, it was only about 2pm so we still had the entire day to explore the city. It was such a cool city. There was definitely a difference being there versus Barcelona, because we got more of a small city feel (instead of the huge touristy city that Barcelona can be, at times). Weall stayed at this hostel that was ONLY 15 EUROS EACH NIGHT! Trust, it definitely

sounded sketchy when we signed up, but being

poor college students abroad who want to travel, what other choices do you have? The movie Hostel was all I thought about walking up tothe place. In the end, it ended up being such a cool experience! We were all in different rooms and besides two of the girls from our group, I stayed with two other girls from Madrid and an 18 year old from Australia. I give this girl props, because she told me she was traveling by herself for the next four months before returning back home to apply to college. I was

definitely not in that state of mind as an 18-year old.

Two things Valencia is well-known for: their paella and their infamous agua de valencia. It's this drink that mixes Cava (Spanish champagne), orange juice, and usually whatever else they want to throw in there. It's kinda like a mimosa, which I absolutely love. We had both of these for lunch and then decided to go to the store to cook up some things for the night....which meant Bradand I getting a loaf of bread and frozen pizza. Those + 2 huge

bottles of sangria + 1 huge

jug of

water = 9 euros. Legit.

After that, we all were feeling preeeeeety good and decided to do this pub crawl of the town, since we had no idea where to go anyways. 3 pubs and a club with a drink at each one for 10 euros. Not bad. It was an awesome night, but unfortunately, none of us were able to make it to the club at the end of the night. hahah

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Then, we woke up around 11am the next day and decided to be productive. We ventured off to the Science museum and the Aquarium. Both places looked AMAZING from the outside (for all you UCSD homies, Geisel has nothing on the design of these buildings). The museum was really cool and we didn't even end up exploring all of it. The aquarium was also a lot of fun, including th

e hour long dolphin show. I'm not gonna lie. After seeing the

dolphin show, I contemplated working with animals for the rest of the day. Just watching the dolphins and seeing how intelligent they are, I got

inspired to check that out. Maybe I can be some sort of a animal psychologist? Hmm, yeah we'll see about that. (haha) By the time 5pm rolled around, we were ready for a siesta before dinner for sure!

OH YEAH, a little side story about the dolphin show. So, we got pretty good seats in front of the show, but we were right by this ramp that was made only for the trainers to use to get to the dolphins quickly. Of course, there were tons of little kids running down the ramp with stressful parents running after them.

THEN, there was this one particular little boy. He was constantly

running down the ramp, getting picked up by his parents, and then doing it all over again. After the third time, my friends Dimitra, Krith, and Kyra decide to call to him and tell him to stay with his parents. Save the parents another jog! This angel turns around and stares down the three and yelled a very loud "NO!" and gave them this cute face. We were laughing hysterically for about ten minutes. Definitely one of the best pictures of the weekend. I'm glad I was able to get it...

After another night of cooking in the kitchen, we started to hang out in front of the hostel and "pre-party" there. A lot of the other people in the hostel were chilling outside too, so we wanted to join them. There were people from Germany, Poland, Italy,

Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. I am always a fan of being a foreigner with other foreigners! Sooooo, we got outside around 11pm to head out and didn't end up leaving till about 1am. After the night before, we didn't end up staying out too late. Also, since we had a cheap train ride back and weren't exactly sure if we had a 10am or 5pm departure, we decided a long night out wasn't necessary (since that can happen any night back in Barcelona).

Turns out we didn't need to head to the train station till 5pm, so we went out to the beach to lounge around for awhile and have some GELATO!

Anyways, after the beach, we headed straight to the train station and embarked on our 5 hour train ride back to Barcelona. This weekend proved something real cool that I have been noticing lately. I have always thought of myself as an easy-going person and making new friends is a skill I have been lucky to have been blessed with. After these three weeks, I don't think I have ever bonded with a group so quickly. Well, given two years of RAing and three years of OLing, that's a tough statement to make. Regardless, I feel incredibly close to "our crew" and am happy that we roll together wherever we go. It's only been three weeks. PLENTY of more adventures to embark on!

Next update: Carolyn's bday and our weekend trip to Girona and the border of France!

P.S. If you want to see ALL of my pictures from Valencia, use this link. They start at picture #34.