FEBRUARY

This month always flys by! We're in the last week, and I haven't updated yet. I have been very busy.
Brent visited me and we spent a day in La Rioja, Espana, where all the grapes are grown. The bus trip up was beautiful, lots of green, fresh air, mountains, rivers. Very fun.I showed him around Madrid between classes during the week, and the following weekend we took a trip to Cagliari, Italy. Which is on the island of Sardinia. It was pretty! A big port with lots of sailboats, a beach, an old castle and cathedrals, and roman amphitheater spiraling up a mountain, and of course the pizza! that was my favorite part.
I was kept pretty busy playing tour guide of madrid, going for tapas, and visiting the museums . We visited one I hadn't seen before--the Thyssen. Perhaps my new favorite. the collection was amazing! a good mix of modern and older reinassance paintings. Van Gogh, Monet, and Kandinsky were heavily showcased.

THEN this past weekend, Carrie, Kristen, and I spent the weekend in Brugge, Belgium. It was quite an adventure--even getting there. Our flight was at 615 on Friday morning, and the metro doesnt open til 6am. Taxis are expensive, so we caught a metro before at closed at around 1 am and spent the night in the airport. We were not the only ones. I think there was easily 200 or 300 people camped out in the airport over night. we flew into brussels, and arrived in brugge around 12. We visited the North Sea and some thrift stores! which i was excited about, since i havent seen any since leaving the States. Ate a lot of chocolate, waffles, and french fries through out the weekend ,and rented bikes to ride along the canals. The city was beautiful! so well preserved. and still very antique. We liked it a lot. The local languages are Dutch and flemish in Brugge, Dutch being the one taught in schools, but dialects of Flemish being spoken at home. Someone told us that in Brugge there were more Flemish than Belgian flags flying and that the country would not make it to 200 years because so many different languages and cultures were around. People feel more loyalty to their particular language than to belgium as a nation. In Brussels, Dutch and French are the two languages, so it does vary quite a bit from place to place.
Anyway, here are some pictures from the past month or so!