Madrid

Well, we´ve finally made it to Spain! Now the real fun of having to speak spanish all the time begins. We tried to eat lunch at a nice restaurant yesterday, but apparently high school spanish did not cover fine dining vocabulary and we failed miserably. In case anyone wants to know ¨chapatas¨ are nothing like chalupas. They are hard bread filled with cold, fatty meat. No cheese, no lettuce, no nothing. Anyway, our five star hotel is amazing and we are getting plenty of rest. We are also spending a lot of our time waiting for the other students arrive and brushing up on our spanish by watching ¨the magic schoolbus¨ in espanol each morning. Tonight is our first group meeting followed by a city bus tour.

St. Paul's Cathedral-a symbol of England's strength during WWII (according to our crazy bus tour guide) 

Mel, Kel, Genna, Danielle and Amber eating out at Pizza Express on King's Road 

Parliament and Big Ben from the bridge 

Lost in London...we had some bad luck with public transportation. 

In front of the Palace gates (the bulge on Amber's back is a purse, not a dangerous growth of some sort) 

Genna and Kel sitting in front yard of Buckingham Palace 

Genna, D and Kel in the rain at the park in front of Buckingham Palace 

Posing at the phonebooth 

Genna and Kel at The Trafalgar Bar, where we faced our first reality that water isn't free and London is reallllly expensive 

Genna, Kel, Amber and Mel enjoying some Italian gelato  

Kelly and Danielle on the stairway to our cute flat we got to call home all week! 

Mack, Brittany, Bailey, Mel, Kelly, Amber, Danielle and Genna representing Wake Forest well at Henry J Beans to watch the closing ceremonies and a last dinner before we all go our separate ways 

Danielle and Amber at Henry J Bean's American Bar after a longggg day of touring London 

D and Amber on King's Road 

Big Ben 

Tower of London 

London, England

Even though we flew into London a week ago, we didn't really see much of it until the last couple days. After our Irish adventure, we only really had energy to explore Chelsea, the borough where our flat was. Our long and informative bus tour let us get pictures of all the big sites, but we didn't have much time to really explore them (or the energy for that matter). London is a bit too much like New York with all the people and craziness, so although its an amazing place to visit, we can't wait to get to Sevilla, live and relax with the Spainards!

Our first trip--Dublin, Ireland

We flew into London, England on Monday to arrive at Kelly's Uncle Mike's amazing flat as our base for the first week! On Tuesday morning we left for Dublin by way of a 4 hour train ride to Wales, then took a 3 hour ferry ride into Dublin City. In a quick two day trip, we shared a room with 2 dutchman and 2 Italian guys, saw a Irish comedy show, went to an Irish pub with Irish dancing and music, took a bus tour of Dublin and experienced how jolly Irish people really are!

St.Patrick's Cathedral  

The lighthouse on the coast of Ireland 

An amazing castle that we saw from the train 

The beautiful English countryside 

Liffey River from the bus tour 

In Temple Bar district, where most of the pubs are located) 

The Dublin Spire 

We decided we had to get a beer since we were in Ireland and that's all anyone does is drink beer. Too bad it was disgusting and we didn't want to drink any of it. 

Ohh, Amber's Irish too!