Queda una semana...

There´s a week left and still so much to do!

First, my first solo travel experience went rather swimmingly. Jaén was okay. It kind of reminded me of Almería, but with a seriously adorable Moorish quarter like Granada. I kind of just wandered around there on Thursday cause it was an Andalusian holiday so nothing was really open. I did find a cute park where I read for about an hour. An man walking about one mile-an-hour on a cane stopped and told me how proud of me he was for reading and learning. I never saw him before, or again.

On Friday I took a bus to Baeza, which was SO beautiful! It´s a tiny little town and I wandered around until I found the Renaissance buildings. There were all these winding paths between old stone buildings and archways and cute light posts and such. It was really neat to see, and the weather was great! I went in a museum and they put a video on for me with images of the town throughout the years. I was the only person in the whole place! I really loved it, though come lunch time I realized the downfalls of travelling by one´s self - so lonely!

On Saturday, Kelly and Kelsey met me in Úbeda. It was a feast day, plus I have never seen fog so bad in my life, so the town was eerily still. Surprisingly, it was more lively than Jaén (a much larger city) had been on Thursday. We wandered around and found the cool stuff, just like I did in Baeza. Unfortunately the pictures didn´t come out great because you could hardly see five feet ahead of you, let alone up to the top of some ancient relic of a Renaissance church... I was pretty happy to be travelling with the girls too, I hadn´t hardly talked to anyone in two whole days! On a funny note, we walked to this place that was supposed to be a beautiful look-out point, but you could not see anything because of the fog. It was pretty silly...there could have been a highway or a Garden of Eden below and I´ll never know!

I´ve spent most of my time pretending to study but really just getting lost in all kinds of unimportant things. Went for a walk today through the Arab part of Granada and was sad to think this might be the last time! Today and tomorrow are my last class days, Wednesday and Thursday are exams, and then Friday is the farewell dinner! I guess I should be studying now instead of writing this - but I´ll pull through, I always (well, almost always) do. And besides, what are a few finals grades versus my last week in this beautiful little Andalusian town?

Naturally though, I´m getting psyched for the return to my homeland - the greatest township on earth. Things I´m looking forward to include: Coyne Family Home Videos, The Muppets´Christmas Album with John Denver, sushi on Christmas Eve (and maybe a movie), Santa´s visit, etc. Can´t wait to see everyone so soon!