Brennan's 21 in Bonn, Germany

--(1st pic: walking across the rhine, 2nd: bren's birthday shot, 3rd: in the beer garden, 4th: brennan's house) This last weekend i went to visit brennan and monica in bonn, germany for brennan's 21st birthday. i flew from madrid to frankfurt and then trained it to bonn from frankfurt and the train ride was so amazing! there were vineyards and green hillsides everywhere, and every once in awhile you would come across a random castle on top of a hill! it was absolutely amazing! that train ride made me fall in love with germany and i hadn't even done anything yet! it was definitely cold and i had to change from my flip flops to uggs as soon as i got there! bonn was city-like but definitely not as city as madrid is, it was similar to saying santa rosa is a city, its spread out and not as fast paced as a regular city. monica met me there and then we took a bus to brennan's house, which was very quaint and in a nice neighborhood. its a three story house and she is the only one on the top floor so she has here own space. she has a sister and two brothers in her host family, all of which speak english (lucky for her). we all hung out there for a while at caught up and then headed to dinner, at a regular dinner time which was unusual for me! we ended up going to a spanish restaurant, which was really good and enjoyed sangria and some vegetable paella that i could actually eat (cause in spain they only make it with shellfish)! after dinner we walked across the rhine river and headed to this bar called flowers. we walked in and there were flowers and disco balls hanging from the ceiling and murals of the beatles everywhere, playing of course some good hippie music! we had a lot of fun there and lillie and her friend emily ended up meeting us there with two of their friends they had met in germany. we hung out there all night and had a lot of birthday shots for bren! the next day we walked around bonn and went to a beer garden to cure the hangovers! the beer garden was so great! it was hidden and the girls had been there before so they knew where to go but it sat right on the edge of the rhine river and we had some delicious german beer and pizza. saturday night brennan's host family was out of town so me, bren, monica, lillie, and emily cooked at brennan's house. we made vegetable pasta (which turned out to be absolutely amazing) and salad. we just drank wine and hung out, it was really nice (something i miss being able to do at home!) sunday i headed back home. but we had a great time and i think brennan enjoyed her birthday!   ...thanks mom and dad for letting me go! i love germany!!! hope everyone is doing well. email me to let me know whats going on in everyone's lives!! miss you all! love you lots!

xoxo, Lex

La Noche en Blanco

Saturday night was a huge festival in madrid called La Noche en Blanco (the white night), its supposedly a European festival event and it has to do with the arts and the museum and the full moon that night. all the museums were open all night and there were concerts and other art performances around the city. there were so many people, i have never seen so many people in one place!! my senora got the newspaper the next day and i saved it because it has pictures of the masses of people and some of the events. but we all met after dinner around 1130 in the palace park where we drank there and then started walking around finding some interesting people and tons and tons of tourists. we stopped at this bar/club called dream and went in, i was a little upset about this cause i felt like we could've gone there any night whereas tonight me and mikaela wanted to actually go to one of the events but i went along with the group. we went in and the place was packed we had a lot of fun dancing and this place had really good music. at around 330 me and kathleen decided we were ready to head out and so everyone left with us. so we were walking to catch a cab because it was freezing outside and we really didnt want to walk 45 mins in the freezing cold and also because one of the girls with us lived the opposite way we did so we had to find her a cab. well an hour later we were still standing on the side of the street waiting for a cab...lots of cabs were driving by but every one of them was full! so we started our direction figuring we could get out of the main area and find one...well not so again we waited an hour and still no cab and let me tell you I WAS FREEZING!! you know me always cold! so aroudn 530 gi, one of the guys said he needed to go home because he had to be ready to go at 10 am the next morning to celebrate a chinese holiday, so i "volunteered" to walk with him being that we lived 2 blocks apart and then joe came with us too. so i made it home around 6 am! it was quite a night!

Party of 2 with Don Simon

the first picture is mikaela's closet...gotta love it!!! just like the song keg in the closet except its sangria in the closet. this night mikaela and i decided that we didnt want to go out so we just drank the two of us in her room and listened to music and chatted! it was pretty entertaining! we loved it! and it was nice not to have to worry about the spanish creepers! we could just have fun!! so we had a little dance party and lots of laughs haha!!

Dubbliners

so we started at the bar that we don't know the name of but we do know the name of the waiter, kevin, so we call it kevins bar! haha! he helps us practice our spanish and told us that his mom was watching an american soap opera and decided to name him kevin! he is completely spanish too so the name kevin really doesn't fit! but we had a drink there cause its on the cheaper side and then we headed to this irish pub called dubbliners. which was a lot of fun. the drinks were expensive and really sweet but there was a deal going on if you ordered 2 drinks at once you got a discount so what can i say, you have to get the discount when you can!! haha! although the drinks were really sweet they had a good amount of alcohol in them so i felt like we got more of our moneys worth that way. we had a good time! and made it in time to catch the metro home which was even more exciting!!! save money on the metro or take a cab....METRO!!! except that it closes at 1:46 so we have gotten our timing down well to say the least.

Retiro Park

today myself, christen, bryce, kathleen, claire, megan, and sarah went to this amazing park called Retiro Park. this park was huge we didn't even make it through half before it started pouring so we had to head to the metro. but we are real excited to go back and i really want to ride in the boats and have a picnic there, so hopefully this weekend when the weather is supposed to be nice. once it started raining we decided to get churros and chocolate for the first time since we have been here, and i was actually able to find the same place nygil had taken us...im pretty sure. and it was just as i remembered!!!! sooooo good! school again tomorrow...we had a holiday today which is why we headed to the park. long story short on the holiday...the spanish people are soo lazy they made up a holiday cause they didn't have enough this year. gotta love the spanish folks! 

love all of you! miss you tons!!

xoxo, lex

cave bar and salsa bar

first we started at the tapas bar close to our normal meeting area where we ordered a bottle of red wine...well it came chilled. very interesting.... we had been told that there was a cheap bar close to our house that was really fun, so we thought we would check it out, the place was called the cave bar. so we walk in and the atmosphere was really neat and the drinks were all specialized drinks of which you had to choose from. so of course we asked around to see what was good, cause they didn't explain what was in the drinks. the jota jota was a favorite of one of the girls we met in the bathroom (girls bathrooms, what can i say). so me and christen got one to share, so we could test it out. well it came out in this huge glass (no wonder they told us to share one) and it was green. fortunately the girl was right and the drink was quite delightful, not too sweet like i expected. and then the beers at this place were huge. it wasn't quite as cheap as i was hoping but it was definitely better than what we had been paying. by 2am we were pretty ready to leave when someone suggested that we go to the salsa bar, everyone was in so we began to walk. we walked for probably 30 minutes trying to find this place (always walking in this city) when we finally found it. we went in and this was a great bar. none of us knew how to salsa except joe so he was teaching all of us and we had a great time trying to learn. andrew and joe walked me and christen home as we walked and walked and walked, not really knowing where we were going. we knew which direction we had to go in but what streets we needed to take to get there was another story. all of a sudden i looked up to cross the street and i saw my street sign on one of the buildings, so i led everyone up to my door and directed them which way to go to get to their area. overall a good night with a lot of walking with the discovery of a park and a new part of the city.

in first picture its all my girls except for lindsay, who was missing this night. the other picture is the entire group that was out with us. this night was a school night so we just decided to go out for a glass of wine and it turned out that everyone's roommates wanted to come, which was no big deal and it actually turned out to be one of the girls 21st birthdays but she didn't drink. we went to a cheap bar in puerto del sol (which is the main party area) and had a few pitchers of sangria for the table and then the girls and i shared a bottle of wine. nothing too exciting but we had a good time! although the next day at school was a little exhausting being that it was my longest day, but i sucked it up!

school started

above are pictures of my senora's house, i thought you guys would want to check out. so school started last wednesday so sorry i haven't updated in awhile but i figured school wasn't a very fun update. but the university is very small, they only have 4 buildings haha and no sports facilities or anything. but the teachers are cool, a little too strict for my liking but ill deal. they are very strict about going to class, so ill just have to feel out the teachers and go from there. but im going to go out for a run, so ill update more when i get back! ps its raining! im so excited its not hot today!!!!!

night out

(first picture - sarah, claire, me, megan, and lindsay. next picture - megan, claire, christen, lindsay and i. and pic with murphy's pub and lindsay and i.) so last night we did another night on the town. this time we were determined to find a place with cheap drinks but in a semi-good location. fortunately it didn't take long, one of the girls host mom's had given her the direction to go in. me and lindsay and megan were the first to be ready so we went and found a place and had a glass of wine, only a euro each! it was so exciting!! it was real high class wine too...hehe! but we visited there for a while which was nice just to talk to them without a bigger group and then everyone else met us there. we were ordering in spanish and everything it was just amazing, and then these guys asked all of us if we wanted to do this pub crawl with their group so the girls were all about it, luckily we had two boys with us just in case.  so i was trying to be fun and said i would go. not really my thing to go from bar to bar but i sucked it up and did it anyway. with the group we were with at every bar we went to we got one free drink (with not much alcohol may i add and very sugary). but we ended up going to 3 different bars with dancing, the first one was the best but the drinks after the free one was extremely expensive, so cheap ass over here wasn't ordering any of them. but we were having a good time dancing at this place. the next place was the same thing, expensive drinks and real sugary free drink. the dancing at this place wasn't very good this time though. the third place was lots of creepy spanish men going after all the girls i was with (all of which were wearing short dresses and me in my jeans and shirt hehe). i stuck close to the bar with andrew and joe telling the boys to save the girls every once in awhile. but we visited and noticed that christen was getting too drunk so i asked for a bottle of water from the bartender and she said that they didnt serve water!!! ridiculous!!! so i ordered her a sprite...you know how much....5 EUROS!!! i was so annoyed but i gave it to her and she was looking better after that but im still real upset about the 5 euros i spent on a nonalcoholic drink...not even for me!! so anyways the prices are really annoying and the whole bouncing from bar to bar wasn't my thing but the first place we were with the cheap drinks was great!!! we are going back there we all decided and then the bar "o'connells" had good dancing but expensive drinks so who knows if we will make it back there. but we enjoyed ourselves! 

love you guys!! miss you!! xoxo. email back with news on your lives!!! tennisangel99@aol.com