I’m quite surprised at how pumped I am to be back in my tiny dorm room in Salamanca. Its been a very long 7 hour bus ride, and a long weekend. We’ve done and seen so much I really am looking forward to a normal week of class. This weekend I saw 4 cities and did a ton of tourist things so here’s the highlights:

We had Friday off of school, so we left as the sun was coming up and headed south for 4ish hours to the city of Toledo. We had a really strange tour guide who liked to do his own Arabic renditions of just about any phrase. He showed us around the city on the bus, and then a tour through the city where we saw La Catedral de Toledo, El Alcazar and their plaza. Afterwards we were back on the road for several more hours to Granada. We arrived late to our nice hotel San Pedro? Whitney and I shared a HUGE room with a great view! We had a great buffet dinner around 8 and then I invited our sweet friends Rachel, Kelli and 

CJ to our room to do our favorite “8-mintue abs” workout on youtube (thanks to Kristen for telling me about this!) The ne

xt morning we woke up early, as usual, to go La Alambra. Hands down La Alambra has been one of the best places we visited on the trip! It was absolutely beautiful! I personally like gardens, parks and outdoor architecture way more than any castles or massive buildings. Don’t get me wrong, the buildings are extremely impressive, but I could spend all day in these beautiful gardens. So be aware of massive amounts of pictures from La Alambra. After the tour there, we returned to our giant purple bus and road tripped for another several hours to Sevilla. Sevilla is the 4th biggest city in Spain after Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. In our hotel Don Paco we had a buffet dinner and time to explore. The next morning we had a tour of Sevilla, first a panoramic tour on the bus, then a walking tour downtown. We saw the Guadilqivir, the place where the Macarena was born, and even the settings of several famous movies!! Then we walked through the Alcazar and had a break for lunch and shopping and such. After spending my last little bit of cash, my credit cards decided not to jive with the ATMs. After a few minutes of panic, and texting mom at 6am, I realized I spent my last few Euros on 3 mosaic crosses. It was the perfect reminder to trust God to take care of me and my needs. I was easily 

able to skip lunch because I never got hungry, and then I was able to talk a lady at the Cathedral into giving me a student discount (I never thought Spain would want to see my tigercard). So a friend lent me 2 Euros and I got to see the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world. I even got to meet what’s left of Christopher Columbus! You can meet him too in my facebook album:) Then we dominated the 34 stories of the Giralda Tower to have an incredible view of Sevilla. Last night we wanted to see a movie, but never found the theater. I think we’ll try again when we have time in Salamanca. After the first two hours on the bus, we stopped in some town for 30 minutes and had the option to see some really well preserved Roman ruins. Most people opted not to go in, but I knew Daniel and my Dad would have wanted me to go, so I did it for them:) I really enjoyed it and took a lot of pictures! Our second break was in the middle of nowhere for lunch at a restaurant called “Tuareg”. Now for those of you who have heard my Timbuktu stories, this might sound familiar. Tuareg is the name of the nomadic people of the Sahara desert. Maybe the restaurant was making some middle-of-nowhere connection, but I was quite surprised at the irony. For the rest of the ride, I’m hoping that we’ll at least have some good views of the beautiful mountains again. 

Insert of my opinion here: I think I’ve decided I like mountains better than the beach. Its the sand. Sand looks pretty, but it sticks to you and gets EVERYWHERE. I’m pretty sure the windstorms of the Sahara desert did me in for a while. So I now prefer the greenery and seclusion and immensity of the mountains over the sand and crowdedness of a beach. I know I will have fierce opposition to this statement soon.

Back in Salamanca, we have classes tomorrow through Friday. (Oh, thanks also for the prayers last week. My two Civ presentations went well and I’m glad to have them done.) This week I have midterms on Thursday. They are intimidating me a good bit because its SO MUCH information in like 6 days of class, and I’m still uncertain about how the tests will be. No big deal though, its just not an option for me to make anything but an A, so with some faith and some studying and I’ll be able to do it. After classes on Friday we leave to go to (the beach in) Portugal! It should be a blast, and everything will fly by after that.

Again, I’ve loved being able to talk to people on skype: my screen name is a.g.dub. and its free to download for computer-to-computer video conferencing. So no excuses for not talking to me if you’d like:) The other night I talked to Mom and Dad for probably a good 30 minutes and they were hysterical. Dad was playing with applications and decided to give himself a super amazing 80’s fro with the sweatband and all. Anyways, its been fun talking to them, and maybe I feel like I’m getting older faster than they are, but sometimes I feel like they’re my age and my best friends that are just cracking jokes and being silly. Most people don’t realize they’re my parents because they’re still so fun and good looking:) Haha anyway I love them a lot, if you can’t tell.

Before I post I’ll add some pictures here, and later on facebook. I love you all and am halfway done with my trip-how crazy! Can’t wait to see you soon.

Psalm 139:13-18

Love, Anna Grayce