Two more weeks!

Time is winding down here in Spain...today was our last sunday with the ward (because next Sunday is General Conference) and we had our last group trip this last week. It's crazy how fast time has gone! Since I last wrote, I've traveled to a lot of awesome places. I went to Portugal, Galicia, Valencia, and Barcelona.

In Portugal we spent most of our time in Lisbon which has been one of my favorite places so far. It's very similar to San Francisco because it has a bridge almost exactly like the Golden Gate, and it has trolley cars and hills everywhere, just like San Francisco. It's a beautiful city too! I loved it.

Galicia was a great trip because of the Spanish people in that part of Spain. I really think they have some of the nicest people in the world in that corner of Spain! We had such fun experiences talking with the locals there, and making new friends. One place we went was the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, where many people make a pilgrimage to. We met some pilgrims from parts of Spain and Italy and one from Boston. Most of them had been walking for 3 months to get there!

During Semana Santa, we took a day trip to Valencia to see Las Fallas. The streets are filled with these huge, elaborate floats that look like something that came out of Toon Town in disney land. Some of them were really cool looking, really colorful and animated... Then through out the day, people just walk around the streets looking at all these floats. Every once in awhile they would have a big firework show(in the middle of the day). We tried to get close enough to see one, tons of people were there for the show and it was so packed that we couldn't even move from where we were standing. It was really loud though! The ground shook under us and the glass on the buildings were shaking and rattling, haha. All day it sounded like a war zone from all the firecrackers people set off and all the other firework shows. That night, around 1 in the morning, they burned all the floats. We stood for four hours to get a front row seat to one of them, and it was well worth the wait! It was really cool being that close to see it!

We just got back from Barcelona yesterday, and it was such a great trip! Barcelona had so much to see, but there was so little time to see it! I loved all the Gaudi stuff Barcelona has...La Sagrada Familia, Parque Guell, La Pedrera (or Casa Mila), Casa Botllo...it was all so crazy! His art is very interesting and unique, but I really liked it. I had to give the tour at La Sagrada Familia, so I had read a little about him and studied some stuff before we went. That helped to understand it all a little more and it probably helped me to like it more as well. Before we went to the Parque Guell, I bought a cheap soccer ball so we could play around at the park. It was so fun becuase all day we had this soccer ball, and we'd carry it or kick it through the streets and juggle with it. At the end of the day, we were waiting for the bus to take us back to our hotel. We were waiting in Las Ramblas, a really busy part of town, so we thought it would be funny to stick a hat out as if we were street performers and then juggle the ball to see if we could get any money. We only made 6 cents, haha, but this kid played with us for about 20 minutes. The next day, a small group of us had just left from the Olympic musuem and the Olympic stadium (which was so awesome) and the professor's 14 year old son fell and sprained his ankle really badly. He couldn't really walk anywhere, so we called the Professor so they could come pick him up and take him back to the hotel. We had to wait there for about an hour and a half for them to pick him up, so we started having fun again street performing...this time singing! It started out this one girl singing by herself, and we were all dying laughing. But then we thought we might actually make some money if we did it seriously...so we started singing hymns, since that's something we all know how to sing. It was incredible how many people stopped and listened, took pictures or video...and then how many people gave us money! We felt bad getting money for it, so we stopped doing that, and put out pass-a-long cards. It was so cool to see so many people stop and listen! We ended up giving away 3 cards while doing this! It was actually a lot of fun, and I never would have thought I would have the guts to stand up and sing in public like that...anyway, another cool part of this story is that the same kid who stopped to play soccer with us the night before passed us while we were singing too, haha. He recognized me and said hi. I'm sure he thought I was pretty weird...playing soccer trying to get money one night, the next day singing!

I only have two more weeks here in Spain, and then two weeks traveling around other parts of Europe! I hope I can keep this somewhat updated, but if not, I'll see a lot of you really soon! Love you!