Short one (thats what she said)

Awesome. Cinque terre was awesome.

What a great experience. It will probably be the highlight of the trip.

If i didnt have to rush to catch a bus to a train station and then take a train to La Spezia to catch a train to Roma I would upload a few pictures, but theyll come in time, dont worry.

This hostel, Ostello Tramonti, has been pretty sweet. I met bunches of people, like the Aussies (fiona and georgia), Lozza (lauren) and of course miles, my hiking buddy yesterday/tom cruise.

Seriously, he looks just like him without the dark hair. Good kid. We even hit up the nude beach, with all guys. Just how I like it.

The trip was very exhausting but definitely worth it. Seriously at times the sweat was like my next layer of skin.

A great day, topped off with dinner with Vito and Marie Laurence, whom we met on the trail to Guvano. He was really cool and seemed to like me a lot. He even rolled me an italian cigarette which was incredibly easy to smoke (not like americans).

So now Im about try and get on this bus with my insanely huge luggage and work my way to Roma.

Ill try and update soon again.

Hope everyone is doing well. Miss my Sevilla peeps, esp u andre ;) and MJ and Mario and Mom and Dad and Madi and Tai and all u hoes in gville and Abel and Yebi and Yesni.

And my friends from Sofla, i realized i might have missed someone, so that should cover it.

Ti amo,

Nikhil


Ciao bitches!

Buongiorno, bitches (not directed at women, all my friends)

yo yo yo what up

im in the italy, u know what i mean, its like crazy

actually i havent updated since i left spain, which is crazy too. but france was a trip, man. it is definitely something to do traveling on your own. especially setting up flights, and hostels and metros and trains and other shit...its not easy but im enjoying it more as the days go by

so im in milan, its fucking rainign which reall sucks and my hsotel nice and big but the mosquitoes are out and thats no fun at all

tomorrow and the day after is cinque terre time, which im really looking forward to.

i met josephine today at my hostel and turns out shes on her way to ct too, so well probly try to meet up, even though its supposed to rain there too

wtf

and in rome its scattered thunderstorms, huge bummer but i can make the best of it.

in paris i had to pay 2 euros per shower so i did a lot of italian showers and chinese showers or whatever u want to call it.. its gross, i know, but i saved a total of 6 euros. and now i can shower when i want to, even though clean clothes are very scarce right now.

its definitely been an adventure up till now, and i still have a little less than a week left. i expect to be pretty good at italian, after the crash course from ettore and francesco, two students i met on my flight from paris to milan. it really helped to meet them and speak with them about italy and america and the differences too

francescos gonna be in lmu so i have to tell tiphanie to show him around if shes there.

anyway im gonna shower now and let my other new friend oskari use the internet to look for his hostel in la cardel or something in switzerland.
ps i also met another gator, jaime! she just graduated

i also said go gators to this woman in paris near the notre dame with a gators shirt on.

sweetness

take care homies, and hopefully ill write again soon

ciao

bye bye espana

just a quick post, on around 6 euro internet for 30 mins and dont know how long ive been on. gmail, facebook, hostel, u know, the usual. been here with brady, who we just dropped off, andre, and nicola. abby and katie just got here since theyre on the same flight as nicola. mine is to france at 105. just doing some normal shit and getting my thing on. i didnt cry when i said bye to eeveryone, which i figured would happen. but seeing mj cry a little made me sad, since u know she looooves us. plus the 330ers was even sadder. anyway im pretty sure times almost up, so just a quick peace and much love to all of u. ill try to get on later for more info.

hasta luego espana y bonjour francia. fuck im gonna be so screwed. love u guys

Leaving...

On a jet plane. No, not really, actually. Sevilla is over which is sad, because I feel like I hardly knew her, but I guess thats what 5 weeks feels like. 1 to get used to it, 3 to keep doing the routine thing and then 1 to try and cram all the shit in u didnt do the first 4 weeks.

It sorta sucks, but I am definitely excited about getting out to Paris and seeing Roma, which should sweet.

Let´s see, its been a while since I´ve updated....since Barça I´ve been doing my best to stay busy and go hard every day cuz we only got like 4 left. Saturday we go to Córdoba and then on Sunday morning Papá invited us to the Mormon church with him, so that should be interesting. So far, I´ve gotten back from Barcelona, and saw a corrida de toros, which was very interesting and bloody.

6 bulls are killed by 3 sorta novicetype matadors, which takes about 20 minutes each. Amazingly enough, the nosebleed tix we bought werent actually nosebleeds so we had a great view of all it.

This week andre and I made a conscious decision to walk back each day for lunch since we havent this entire trip aside from like 3-5 times. Its been a great revelation even though we ended up deciding to finally do it at the exact time global warming starts fucking up Sevilla and the temp is like 99 degrees all the time.

literally, leaving the house provides a natural wetness that only underwears are privy to. its absurd how wet i am after a nice 30 minute walk somewhere. but somehow, its all worth it and i just wish we had done it more often.

well u live and u learn. so now, its forward and onward and to infinity and beyond, meaning paris avignon with the AAA and then roma afterwards. Should be a good time and im looking forward to it.

I wish I had taken more advantage of being in España and met more people. I am definitely going to go out the rest of this week and play my hand at the discos.

If tiphanie can, so can I.

Hasta luego, tias y tios.

Barcelona

Well this computer is some language I dont understand, probly Dutch or some eastern european one, because i was just told to logga in, which i dont understand, but it got me here to write on my blog.

the past few days have been like a bruce willis movie, fuckign non stop.

the flight to barca was fine, its jsut the sightseeing thats killing me. its nice to get my feet off the pavement, but im also glad because i saw shit without being a lazy asshole as usual.

ive got some good stories including the hostel and the nightlife here in barcelona, but id rather share it later or in person.

the hostel is not bad, we only paid around 60 euros for 3 nights, which is sweet, but i wishe we were at hello bcn, where the atmosphere is much cooler. this ones much more laid back and less organized but its not too bad. this is probly like the 5th time ive paid for internet, and i finally learned to buy 1 hr at a time instead of the short ass 30 mins, which usually only feels like 15.

anyway we did so much crap in barca. the city is really amazing, actually. i finally understand what people mean when they say they fall in love with a city. i guess thats not true, because i finally fell in love with gville, too, but it was more like an ugly girl whose personality wins u over at the end, so barcas more like the hott girl who u immediately see and are like, wow, and realize at the end, that shes sorta annoying and ridiculous but u still love her bc shes freaking sweet.

the amount of artwork and architecture thats crammed into a block is immense. its like gaudi shat all over the city and thats a wonderful thing, not in the least negative. id have to say parc guell was my favorite sight, mainly because a lot of work went into getting there and it was just very chill and relaxing, especially the marble breezeway.

if i had known barca had manmade beaches, i would have brought my trunks, but wed have been too tired to go anyway, id say.

i got to try crema catalana today, too, which was really good, as the rest of the group can attest to. especially jlo, she loved that shit. now time for a siesta because we have a killer 630 flight to catch back to sevilla. and then hopefully a bullfight on sunday.

hasta luego, dawgs.

Lagos y Buddha

Hace un poquito de tiempo que no escribí y por eso, perdoname.

Lagos was last weekend. Really pretty place, really touristy, really sunny, really cold water, but reallllly short. I wish we had spent un poquito más tiempo como Brady, Wells y Raquel. Ellos quedaron un día más, pero I wouldnt have been able to. Missing a day of a 2 hour class is almost crazy, if u think about it.

Esp with that test coming up in Jimenez´class. oh yeah, thats tomorrow, crap.

But im not too worried, since ive taken his course before the and the authors are almost all the same. Cortázar, Borges, Quiroga, Lillo, these guys are my homies, so im not too worried in the least.

The indian restaurant at Lagos was pretty funny, though, because we were like 20+ people and the only ones in the place. The guy must have been ecstatic that these tourists decided to choose his Indian restaurant among the millions in Portugal(after talking to my parents, it makes sense since the Portuguese colonized part of India, especially around Goa, which also explains the last names like D´Souza and all). anyway, the point was that we asked for spicy food and the man made it spicy! interesting cambio de la comida de españa porque por alguna razón, la comida es tan picante como creía antes de llegar a este país.

Oh well.

Last night yo miré una película gratis a traves de Carmen quien trabaja con ISA. Se llama Machuca. Interesting movie, sad, and I liked it. It was interesting because we watched it at FNAC, like the Spanish version of Best Buy but much more upscale feeling. Afterwards, I was sorta late for dinner and Andre was waiting patiently as usual so we had our dinner of Puchero(sort of like a hot soup with jamon, carrots, an potatoes and other stuff soemtimes and also thin noodles) and then mashed potatoes y pollo baked, i think?

After getting really full, i just sorta passed out at usual at around 1230 after reading the story for hoy.

Today i feel so free, even though im not because i actually read the story in advance for the first time.

Actually, I should be studying, but I have a little screwing around to do on the internet. Its such a luxury, damn.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I met a girl, or woman, on the bus to Lagos from Sevilla who is backpacking across a lot of Europe. it was funny because our entire group was sitting together on the bus to Lagos until we had to change buses for some reason and then while leaving, Andrea (from our UF ISA group) got her bag stuck in the back part of the bus, like her zipper was stuck on that mesh type rope-y thing u put things in on the back of each seat, and i was doing my best to get it undone, but neither andre or i could, so we had to get the bus driver to come back with scissors and get it, so when we finally ended up making sure our bag was in the second bus and eveyrthing, i ended up being the odd man out without someone to sit with, so i sat next to this girl, but andre told me to ask her and the girl in front of her to sit together so he could sit with me, but i didnt really get it so i was like, whatever, ill deal.

and then i sit down next to the backpacker, and she asks me ¨Do girls have gyms?¨ and I was like, huh and she repeated that, and i was stuck in this sorta no-mans-land where u dont really know what the person said but u sorta feel bad asking them to repeat for the third or fourth or fifth or however many times because u dont want them to get mad or feel bad, and beyond all this im still not sure if everyone on the bus speaks english, portuguese, spanish or even czech or whatever so im trying to just figure out what language shes speaking, but in the end i sorta figured it out when i said, ¨gyms¨?? and she was like, GERMS.

finally i understood and said, no no i just wanted to sit with my friends, and then we began speaking. she told me she was backpacking for about 3 months, had already seen a lot of italy, spain, and a few other places, and i was instantly jealous. she was from australia and 26 and doing some pretty cool shit. she gave me a few recommendations about what to do in italy and france so that was great.

also, last thing is that theres this chinese restaurant, jardin oriental that andre and i always pass on the way to class and even on the way back and theres a statue of a wooden buddha outside that has just become a ritual to stop and rub his belly. actually, theres usually a chain-type fence that we have to reach thru(like at the mall when a store closes), but its always worth it.

and finally on sunday night when we got back from lagos, our familia no estaba en casa, y teniamos muchisimo hambre, y al final we were able to get some grub on.

check it out¨:

6.5 euros, which is almost 8 dollars, for:

cruzcampo beer,like the heinie of sevilla
flied lice(forgive me, asian friends)
hot and sour soup
and a chicken dish, i got chicken with mushrooms, and asked for it picante, but as usual not that spicy. either way, though good deal
and also, flan for dessert

the only negative is that im positive they use msg, so i got a little fucked up and tingly and not feeling so good which sorta ruined it, because that shit sucks a lot. so about an hour or so later i felt okay, but it was still not fun. even askin the waitress about MSG proved futile, since she didnt know what MSG or emme esse hay or monosodium glutamate(if thats even the right formulaic thing or whatever) or anything was. so my guess is they just use it nromally as like a recipe made in advance or something. either way, it sucked.

but ill end up going again.

okay tios, im sorta beat after this gigantic update so ill chatear despues.

espero que todos are having a great summer, by the way.

love,
Nikhil