Here I am hanging out with my mom (that statue means faith), us at the Alli Hambra in Granada, and the Sierra Nevada mountains! Seen from the same wall we were sitting on watching the sun set, how beautiful!





As was Spain! I will show you more later. : D


I wrote this last night though ---

So I’m sitting here on my messy floor with my laptop on my skinny bed in my little cabin and I just got back from 5 days in Spain and 91 days of being in the world. I got on the ship at 8:34 tonight with 26 minutes to spare before I would officially be in really big trouble, and at on ship time I went to post port reflections, which I always do, but this time I got up and talked, which surprisingly I have never done. And now I’m sitting here and I’m thinking about it all and I’m looking at my wall. And I am overwhelmed by how wonderful everything and everywhere has been. And how much I saw and how many cities I was able to get to and how many millions of experiences I have had and by all that I have learned – which has been so much.

I mean it all starts with the first day I walked into this room and I was like I have a blue bedspread! And there is a mini refrigerator in here! And my bathroom is much bigger and there is much more space then I thought that there would be! And I cannot call to tell my my mom about it! How bizarre! How many times in your life do you experience something completely new and huge like moving into a new place and you cannot talk to a single person that you know even one bit about it!

And then multiply that by every situation for the past 91 days! I made my ship friends, but I cannot be like hey shipfriends! So those pyramids were awesome! Well I mean you can but I cannot even say how many times something huge would happen and then we would continue on with the rest of our day and 4 hours later someone would be like, whoa, remember when… ! I can only think of scary examples right now. But remember when you got lost at the Summer Palace?! And you could talk about it and process it and I mean extraordinary thing after extraordinary thing has happened to me so that it has been hard to soak it all in. And I will probably be doing so for the rest of my life :D so I have that to look forward to.

[here I have a picture but like I said, have trouble getting it, but it is a picture of my room – so don’t read the next paragraph until I post that picture or it will be boring]

And I just wanted to say that I was hit with a wave of it when I sat down to upload my Spain pictures and my computer loaded with a camel (dromedary) background, and just to my right is a poster of the Giza Pyramid light show (which as you readers know I really really enjoyed), and then just above that is Hawaii stuff, with a Pearl Harbor focus, and my school calendar I stole from the door of the advisors office (ehehe ;0 don’t tell them), the little kimono they gave us in Japan, my Thailand Palace post card collection, elephant magnet to remind me of how I road them! The invitation to my sea social, a whole host of Japanese stuff including my rail pass that got me from place to place. Pictures of the Great wall, my flight stub to Xi’an taking me to the Terracotta Warriors, the view of Hong Kong and my stub that got me up to the top of the mountain seeing it in real life. Post cards that remind me of the people and streets and water markets of Vietnam above the SAS painting, also India, where I stood inside and in front of the Taj Mahal, rode along the river Ganges and went to the Buddhist place Sarnath. There are yellow rings I wore when we won the sea Olympics! The save the date card for my friend Jess’s wedding and an Alaskan candy bar wrapper from my roommate Brett. On the right of my wall I have a picture of king Tut’s mask, my favorite new flag – the Turkish, the evil eye magnet, my soccer ticket, a stub from the club we went to in Croatia, a little print I bought in Dubrovnik, an Espana bookmark, and last, but certainly not least, pictures of my friends from home. How completely wonderful!

I have a lot to do – including learning physics in the next week, taking finials learning the histories of Turkey, Croatia, Spain, and the entire European Union; mastering fiscal policy, and reading Nietzsche. Oh all that and I have to lose a hundred pounds to fit into a dress for the ambassadors ball and I have to figure out how to style my hair not to look like a little boy. ehehehe ! oh I love the world and that is wonderful, my Spain reflections to come! Hopefully later rather than sooner because that will mean I am doing some work!

Also I am having issues because I sprained or bruised the bone, or possibly broke something in my right ring finger because it is swollen and red and painful because I got a very much too small ring honestly stuck on it for about 30 hours and I couldn’t get it off and my finger was swelling and I got a blood blister (internal bleeding!!!) and eventually for at least 2 – 3 minutes last night had Luis (who we stayed with in Spain) tug and twist it off as hard as he could until it popped off at any cost. Whew! ouch I’m dumb. And I am so tired and ready to go to sleep. Spain was glorious :) I loved it, wonderful country to end the whole trip on. Oh I just love everything!