Prologue

After letting it begin to digest, I’m excited to start writing about my trip! There were plenty of ups and downs, amazing experiences and some pretty terrible ones. I’m sure it will take a while to get them all down on paper (well, they’re actually already on paper but you know what I mean), so please be patient with me. I’ll give you a brief overview, a table of contents if you will, to use as reference:

Dublin, Ireland

Holyhead & Bangor, Wales

London, England

Munich, Germany

Innsbruck, Austria

Füssen, Germany

Prague, Czech Republic

Česky Krumlov, Czech Republic

Vienna, Austria

Grünau im Almtal, Austria

Budapest, Hungary

Prologue

   26 December 2015

More about yesterday later, but first: I’m currently sitting on the AVE, getting ready to leave and I somehow ended up in the silent car again. It was really strange when I left/as I was leaving the house, I was overcome with an overwhelming feeling of wanting to cry. My stomach also felt weird but I’ve settled down a bit, trains have a way of doing that for me. They say, “traveling is the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown” and man is that true right now. All the feelings make it more exciting, right? Here’s to safe travels and many adventures!

Still on the train- the sunset is breathtaking

I’m sitting at Madrid Airport. Flight is delayed. Yay. I had overpriced Burger King for dinner, so healthy, right? At least there’s wifi and I country iTunes radio to listen to.

Okay I’m finally on the plane so I suppose I can start on my Christmas day festivities: I spent the morning relaxing and only had tea for breakfast because I was still full from dinner...

 Lol the people sitting next to me just moved so now I have my own row.

Around 1:30 we headed over to Rocio’s parent’s house. There was a bit of “who are you?” and “does she speak Spanish?” but not too much because most of them host students during the year. My favorite was Lola, a little old lady. She’s an “in-law” from the north of Spain so she’s much more understandable than your average sevillano. She was sweet and funny and made me feel right at home! It was weird at first because the party felt so much like a party with my family and I kept thinking about what it must feel like to be a new/temporary member of a family. Shout out to all the boyfriends/girlfriends that get dragged to family parties! The food was really good, especially the pisto empanada. The wine was excellent and one of my favorite parts of the day was doing shots of café flavored liquor with the family cheering me on (except the aunts who told me to be careful). I for one was impressed because I’m terrible at doing shots. After dinner there was a huge singing party complete with traditional Spanish songs, the guitar, and a bunch of other instruments. I played the Anís liquor bottle. The aunts did some sevillanas dancing with the boy cousins (who, of course, hated every second of it). I loved looking at the pictures of Rocio and her sisters when they were younger, especially the ones of her wedding! Even though it was probably awkward for me to be there, I loved it and I can’t wait for feria! Later that night, just as I was getting into bed, Hannah messaged me and I video chatted the cousins for a bit until her phone died. It was nice but made me miss being home! Also, they were making gingerbread houses, since when do we actually do cute Christmas things?