Academic Advisers

Do you ever get the feeling that the Academic Advisers that schools like to recommend so much really don't know anything? Obviously this is not true for all academic advisers, but the ones I have been to the past couple of years have definitely given me that impression. It starts when you receive an email or a notification that you have either been assigned an Academic Adviser (I'll call them AAs from now on) or that you should come visit their offices to see one. Then, you decide "hmm, maybe that would be a good idea" and go in. When you sit down with them though, they give off the air of "and why did you came see me, again?" which is totally opposite how they should be making you feel. Besides that, I feel like they never actually give me any useful information. I mean, one adviser the other day was going over  my degree audit with me during my meeting. There were two sections that  listed how many credits I had left but they both said a different amount. When I asked her why they were different, her exact reaction was : "uhhhhh..... I don't really know." Wow. On top of that, I have two majors, but no officially assigned AAs. Is there something wrong with that picture? 

Love Song for a Savior

I don't just decide to post lyrics very often, but I really like this song. It  is by Jars of Clay.  I have been listening to it a lot recently for this thing I am working on, and I thought I would share it here.  :)

"Love Song For A Savior"

In open fields of wild flowers,
she breathes the air and flies away
She thanks her Jesus for the daises and the roses
in no simple language
Someday she'll understand the meaning of it all

He's more than the laughter or the stars in the heavens
As close a heartbeat or a song on her lips
Someday she'll trust Him and learn how to see Him
Someday He'll call her and she will come running
and fall in His arms and the tears will fall down and she'll pray,

"I want to fall in love with You"

Sitting silent wearing Sunday best
The sermon echoes through the walls
A great salvation through it calls to the people
who stare into nowhere, and can't feel the chains on their souls

He's more than the laughter or the stars in the heavens
As close a heartbeat or a song on our lips
Someday we'll trust Him and learn how to see Him
Someday He'll call us and we will come running
and fall in His arms and the tears will fall down and we'll pray,

"I want to fall in love with You"

It seems too easy to call you "Savior",
Not close enough to call you "God"
So as I sit and think of words I can mention
to show my devotion

"I want to fall in love with You"

Love + America

I haven't updated anything on here in a while! well, today is not super exciting, I guess though. I really just have to study study study for a test later today. It so getting so hard to keep up with my homework AND tests! Ah!
Butttttt, hopefully this will start to come together soon! :) I've already got Sigma Phi Lambda going so that is awesome! I love my sisters!
Something I have been thinking about: Patriotism.
When I was in Spain it was obvious that, despite knowing they had flaws, they thought Spain was the greatest country ever to be a part of. That all had the  jerseys, the flags..... anything red and yellow in general lol  But here, is a different story. This past weekend was 9/11 and I didn't see any of extra "American Stuff" in stores. And I looked. In the end, they handed out about a million tiny flags on our way into the football stadium later that day, but I was still a little sad. I guess after seeing the amount of love the Spanish have for their country has made me a little jealous that we don't share that feeling about ours. So let me just say that I really love our country. It is not perfect in any way, but I do love the USA. I love the song Proud to be an American by Lee Greenwood...even tough it doesn't bother mentioning my dearest Florida lol.

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my family by my side.

I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘ Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.

And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

From the lakes of Minnesota,
to the hills of Tennessee.
Across the plains of Texas,
From sea to shining sea.

From Detroit down to Houston,
and New York to L.A.
Well there's pride in every American heart,
and its time we stand and say.

That I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

And I’m proud to be and American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

Sterling

I am moved into my new apartment! yay! I got here yesterday but I am STILL not completely unpacked, though. ugh!
Sterling is really nice though, despite just a few problems. The apartments are great, but we don't have a microwave :( I thought one of the girls that was coming had one, but they aren't even living here anymore, so no microwave. I am off to the store later to check them out. Also, I am a little worried about the parking. There is a parking garage for residents, but I don't know how many parking passes they give out. Hopefully, they don't give out MORE than the number of spots! Plus, I am not sure how much visitor parking there is.
Oh, and I don't think I mentioned it before, but every bedroom here has a flat screen tv mounted on the wall! Sweet! AND they also gave us an ipod thingy that plays your music THROUGH THE TV! I think it might even play you movies and stuff through it. :D

Home Again :)

I'm Home!
I just flew in yesterday! It was a loooooong flight. Malaga-New York JFK-Atlanta-Jacksonville
What was interesting was that the first thing I saw that really made me feel that "home at last" feeling was the sight of a football field from my plane into New York. Weird, right?

You know what was really weird, though? The food on the plane! Okay, first.... some sort of lunch meal. I gt a choice between chicken and spaghetti. Since the chicken hadn't tasted to good on the way over, I went for the spaghetti. It was an Alfredo-based sauce that had some tomatoes and onions spread around in it too. No meat. The two women sitting next to me both got vegetarian meals. Fish. Now I don't know how much of a choice they had in their meal, I would assume they had none besides that general "vegetarian or not" choice,  but some vegetarians eat fish, some do not. Furthermore, since MY meal was definitely meatless, what is wrong with NOT having a separate Vegetarian meal and instead just letting them choose the Spaghetti option over chicken?
Okay, okay. Weird but just a fluke, right?
When we were closer to New York, though, we got some more food.  Again, they brought out all the vegetarian options..... some tofu looking thing, and then everyone else's food (there were no options). Mini pizzas. Mini CHEESE pizzas. In case you don't understand the point I am trying to make here, let me stress again that they were Mini cheese, MEATLESS pizzas. Seriously? I am not sure why vegetarians would have a problem with that. What was especially funny, was that both the women beside me seemed to be of the same opinion, gazing longingly at my (also vegetarian meals) while they ate theirs.

Enough with the airplane stories, though... I am both happy to be home, and sad that I am not in Spain.
I didn't really have good internet the last few days I was in the country, so let me outline what happened for you quickly:

After the program was officially ended, the students all went their separate ways. We did have fun at that last dinner, by the way (which, just to let you know, Monique did NOT show up at). The next morning after that, I packed all my stuff up and headed with Haven to a nearby hostile. She is staying there for a week or more, but I only had a couple extra nights. The Hostel was up above the Alhambra...which involves trekking up steep hills, by the way with all of our luggage. The Hostel was nice, though not air conditioned, and had a roof-top pool. At dusk, music would play from the Alhambra and Haven and I would watch the sun set while bats flew around in the sky. It was great! So those were my last days in Spain!

I'm home again, and like I said, I am both happy and sad. I can't wait to get back to UCF, though, and hang with all the Granada buddies that will be in my Spanish classes! :)

Exams in Spain

EXAM WEEK in SPAIN!!!!
:/
D:
:(
>_<

Okay, I guess I am finished with the exam faces. haha
But I DO have exams in these next two days though (it is Wednesday now, by the way). I have my History Exam, Conversations Exam and Civ and Culture Exam Thursday THEN, on Friday, I have an Oral Exam....more like an interview, with Thompson and a presentation about Madrid for Civ and Culture. yuck. I don't think they will be very hard, but I would just rather not have to do them, of course! Oh yeah, we also have a fancy dinner on Thursday night with the whole group. I think that should actually be fun..... except I will have to wear the only dress I brought. Oh well. :) What IS interesting, is that we are doing Superlatives. You know, like "Best Dressed" and "Worst Smile" (okay, maybe not the last one). That should definitely be interesting.
I just had dinner, by the way, and it was REALLY good! It was just rice mixed with egg, shrimp, ham bits, peas and (yucky) carrots. It was yummy, but I wish we could have had more. In fact, I was just thinking about going out for some ice cream or something.

ROAD TRIP IN SPAIN

All right, you better brace yourself cause this could be a long one!
So, Road Trip. Well, a girl in my program, Stephanie, is doing Grad work for Thompson while she is here and has to collect a lot of Interviews (or Entrevistas). She really had to go back to Sevilla for more data and decided to rent a car.... hence, Road Trip. At first, only I was going to go with her, but that changed later.

Okay, so Saturday Morning:

We start out in Granada. My entire group actually had an excursion that day to Almunecar and to Nerja. We met them at the desginated place, but we rented the car that morning and just followed the bus. On this leg of the journey, it was me (of course :D )and Stephanie and Jeff. It was petty fun following the bus. We had some awesome boy band karaoke going on as well as some 70s playing.

Almunecar:

Here, we stopped to look at some Roman Ruins and an old Moorish Castle, Castillo de San Miguel. It was pretty cool stuff. I don't remember the exact years of it all, but the Moors invaded during the 7th century I believe and the Romans were there before that, so that gives you a pretty good idea.

Nerja

We stopped here to visit some caves. They were also pretty awesome but I never really got the full history of them, so I think I like the caves at Gibraltar better. I know that these caves are really old though.... some remains might have been found in them.... remains from one of the phases of evolution I think.
I think it was in Nerja that we also spotted the remains of a Roman Aqueduct. How cool is that?!
After the caves, we had a buffet lunch with food in epic proportions. You think I'm kidding, but I am not.
Then, after food.... Beach! I did not really get in because we were planning on skipping most of the beach time so we could go ahead and start our Road Trip.

Which brings me to...... ROAD TRIP!!!!!!
Okay, so during the morning, we had picked up two more for the road trip: Frank and Stephanie Pego (called Pego). Jeff, in case you are wondering, did not actually go on the full trip with us, he just rode with us on the way there. LAME. haha, just kidding, he just didn't want to spend too much money.
ANYWAY, so the four of us set out! We were generally heading towards Huelva to see Columbus' ships but to be honest, that was pretty much as far as we had gotten in the planning portion of this trip. Not very long after we had left, though, we drove under a Cable Car line that was passing between a city just below us and the top of one of the nearby mountains. We went there. We literally pulled into the next gas stop and turned the car around to go searching for this Cable Car place. Why? Just because we could.

Arroyo de la Miel

So as we drive through this city using the Cable Cars to navigate our way to their base, we noticed there was some sort of Fair going on. When we parked, because the Fair was right next to the Cable Cars, I realized it was an entire Theme Park. Cool! We didn't go in, though. Instead, we headed over to check out the Cable Cars and decided to go up. It was pretty cool. We all shared on Cable Car which took us to the top of one of the Mountains. It felt AwEsOmE up there and had a really great view of the Spanish coast line.
As soon as we stepped off the cable Car, Frank spotted a sign that said if you drink two beers up there, you get a free hat. Stephanie and Frank drank the Beers, though I think Pego might also have helped a bit. The lady up there was nice, and gave both Stephanie and Frank a hat.

So after the beers, we walked around to check out the mountain.... they had birds there! And I am talking about BIG birds..... like Eagles, Hawks, Vulture, Owls. In fact, they had an entire BIRD SHOW! A FREE bird show, more importantly. Before it started, we hiked up to the top of the mountain and the view, once again, was really amazing!
So, the bird show. It was pretty fun to watch. The guy in charge, aka Stephanie's new Crush lol, would first speak in Spanish and then in English. Later, he told us that his mother was British and his Father was Spanish. 
During the bird show, Stephanie got to wear those thick gloves the bird people use and hold one of the birds.
So the British/Spanish guy.... he told us about a German Beer-fest inside a nearby castle. Well, Frank, Pego and Stephanie were alllll interested. We headed down the mountain (using the super cool cable car, of course) and set off!
Yeah..... we got distracted. First, we saw a sign for a Hard Rock Cafe and we thought we would sort of head in that direction.... then we got lost. Well, it wasn't really lost, but we did miss the exit for the Hard Rock, so instead we just kept driving.

Estepona

We were getting hungry. We started pulling off and noticed a stadium with it's lights on full blast. Naturally, we kept driving. JUST KIDDING! We pulled in of course! Stephanie let Frank park the car because we had to drive it over a curb and then we headed inside to check out the locals practicing their soccer game. It was kinda cool. I felt sort of sketchy with all four of us just standing in the bleachers watching them practice, but oh well :)
Afterwords, we decided to head in search of some food and possibly a place to stay.

We stopped in at this one restaurant/bar and ordered some tapas. The waiter was wearing this outfit that was  ketchup-red and mustard-yellow, earning him the nickname of "Ketchup and Mustard." When Ketchup and Mustard figured out we were students from the USA, he called his buddy over who happened to be from Indiana. What are the chances? This guy had come over a few years back and decided to stay. They both gave us directions to some hostels/hotels around and we set off!

Cute pet Ferret we encountered.

Now Estepona is located right on the coast, so as we walked down the road, we were walking parallel to the Med Sea. Of course, since it was around 11pm or so, we couldn't actually see very much of it, but it is still pretty cool. A street or two over, we stopped at a hostel to see if we could stay there..... except, we didn't know how to get in. It was located above a cafe and there was no clear entrance. The cafe guy told us to sit and wait at his tables and the person from the Hostel would come down, We waited. And waited. and might have kept waiting..... but we were impatient people. PLUS, there was this creepy-to-the-max guy sitting at the counter of the cafe and kept throwing us dirty looks.... of course, thinking back, his face might have just been arranged that way permanently in which case he wasn't really creepily glaring at us every time he looked over, but who knows? In any case, we left. We found another hostel about a block over and it was really nice! We got two rooms, but they were joined together with one bathroom, for about 20 each. It was a really nice hostel, though. It probably could have been a low star hotel, as a matter of fact. We stashed our stuff and then went out for some ice cream on the beach of the Med Sea. The water was cooooooooold. No, I did not go for a late night swim, but I walked around about up to my calves. Frank, however, did take a short swim. Literally, it was for only a minute or two, before we went back to our hostel to sleep.

Next Morning:
Breakfast at a cafe then an Out-Door Market before heading off again!

Huelva

We FINALLY made it to Huelva! Yay!.... but it still took us like an hour to find Columbus' boats!
First of all, it was a Sunday. SO MUCH STUFF SHUTS DOWN ON SUNDAYS!!!!....which is weird since MOST Spaniards aren't actually PRACTICING their religions.
But we eventually found them! THEY WERE...... so small. That's right. Small. Tiny. In fact, I am pretty sure I would not consider crossing the ocean on them. The smallest one, which I believe is the Nina (but I could be wrong), was probably smaller than a typical city bus would be. yikes! We wondered around the area a bit.... they even had nude native American statues to represent the New World Area. THAT was super exciting. *insert sarcasm* lol So, back to:

Sevilla

We stopped here for some food and for some Entrevistas for Stephannie. It was here that we had to decide between going south to Malaga for some beach time the next morning before heading back, or instead swinging over to Cordoba, another of Andalucia's provinces and major cities, then on to Jaen the next day on our way back to Granada. We chose the Cordoba route.

Cordoba

We got to Cordoba that night and headed out in search of a hostel or hotel. We quickly learned that Cordoba was NOT designed with vehicles in mind. In fact, Cordoba is very very very very (you get the picture?) old. They don't even have bus tours there because they can't navigate the roads. Our time spent driving around in search of a place to stay involved tiny one way streets, streets that we THOUGHT were streets but were really just walkways, huge circles to just end up right back where we started, and an exciting police pursuit. Yeah, I am actually not kidding about that last one either, though it was not, I repeat, NOT us being pursued. Eventually, we settled on some low ranked Hotel.... partly because it was the same price as the hostel, and partly because we didn't know if we could find either one again if we left. This place was also pretty nice. We stayed in two separate rooms this time, each with our own bathroom.
In the morning, we set our for breakfast, an atm stop then off to see the sights!

Actually, we only really went to one place in Codoba, which is the Mezquita..... this HUGE cathedral. Okay, to give a short and certainly not detailed enough description: Roman temple turned Christian temple, turned HUGE MUSLIM MOSQUE from the 8th- 12th century, and then, instead of building a new cathedral after conquering the moors, the Christians just converted the Mosque into a Cathedral. Really Old. Really Huge. Really Beautiful.

Jaen

After Cordoba, we drove for a wine tasting in Montilla, then onwards to Jaen. Jaen seemed pretty cool, but to be honest, we didn't really have much time to stop or anything. We took some pictures of the surrounding area, but by this time we really needed to be heading back for classes and stuff.

Granada

Well, seeing how it was Monday and it was a school week, we headed back to Granada. Stephanie and I let Pego and Frank out close to their houses and then tried (and failed for almost an hour) to navigate the streets of Granada. I flagged a taxi down New York style after we dropped the car off and we were headed back to school!

End of road trip. To be honest, there was a lot more I could have written, but these were all the important parts, I promise!!!!