A whole year of being Michael Jordan's number --- i'm 23

Yes. You heard right. I have nothing more to look forward to on birthdays besides being able to rent a car (at 25) and then my over the hill party (at 50). Joy. 

But, to celebrate this past birthday I had some interesting moments.

My family and I went out for a nice dinner on Friday night at Buca di Beppo to celebrate both my mom and I's birthdays, since we both worked on our special days. After rounds and rounds of food (bruschetta, salad, spaghetti, penne, chicken marsala, and chocolate cake) we probably gained five pounds of birthday weight. Oh well! 

Then on Saturday everyone at Vaqueros celebrated my birthday. Alejandra and Selina bought me a birthday crown and a ribbon that they made me wear all night. This was before I got pied all over by the staff in the restaurant with whipped cream -- a little tradition in the restaurant. Although usually not EVERYONE participates, which they did for me. Then they all sang me a little birthday song in Spanish which was very nice. However, my favorite part of the night was when Rivas gave me a bouquet of birthday roses. 

After being pied with whipped cream I washed out somewhat in the sink and headed to BW3's, my favorite wing joint, with Meredith, Erin, Jane, Kevin and Joe, as well as Mariano and Lalo. They had all come to visit me at work and decided to go out for a couple drinks afterward. 

The next morning was my actual birthday. Ugh. I woke up for the early morning brunch shift at MTM and worked all day. Work on your birthday really sucks. That night I only worked a couple hours though at Vaquero's because it was the super bowl and we didn't have too many customers. So, I packed up and went home, only to sit on the couch and watch the game and Madonna with the fam. It actually was a great game! 

And, now I am old. 

Powell restaurant treasures

So tonight I went out with my parents to two delicious italian restaurants. The first place is a little local named Mama Zarella's. While I have seen this place many a time, I have never gone inside. Man oh man am I sad at the time I have lost enjoying that delicious baked ziti! Soooo good and oh so cheesy!

Mom and Dad at dinner

And the kitchen of the restaurant might actually be smaller than the kitchen of ours at home. There was one server and one cook, and thats it. But the food was absolutely to die for!

After dinner we went across the street to a place called Brooklyn pizza for some canolis. To. Die. For!

So if anyone is looking for a good restaurant, both are a wonderful choice. Plus it's always nice to support a small local mom and pop restaurant, right?

I love Powell!

Chocolate Chip Canolis 

to iphone or not to iphone

Well purple blackberry, we've had a good run. You lasted me numerous text messages, important calls and embarassing tweets, but I think it's time we break up. 

Now the question is, do I really want an iphone? Can I really deal with touch screen, ALL the TIME? 

And then, most importantly, can I find a case that I like enough to justify buying the actual phone. 

I shop for phones like a girl, I swear. 

I survived Spain

Well the whole blogging a lot in Spain thing really worked out well, didn't it? This was partly due to the fact that I didn't have internet in my house and partly due to the fact that when I had internet, I didn't want to do it. Oh well. So, since some people have told me that they missed my posts, I have decided I am going to do one big post with short excerpts and pictures to sum up all the events that happened that I never posted about. 

Well, Salamanca was fun. There's lots of bars there, so you know what we did on our weekends. Oh, and the weekend includes Thursday night-Sunday, because we didn't have classes on Friday's. Rough life.

Jessie, Milena and I out in Salamanca 

Meredith and I at the Bull Fighting Museum in Salamanca

Then was the time that Meredith and I met up with Jessie and went to Barcelona. We stayed in this really awesome Youth Hostel, which was themed skater, but was filled with young people from all over the world. It was a lot of fun. We made friends with some other Americans and a few canadians, as well as a French girl and an Egyptian guy. Sometime in person you will all have to ask me about my first interaction with him, dear God. After exploring some of the city, and mostly getting lost in it, we went to the big event -- Sensation Interspace: Barcelona. Oh. My. God. Imagine a huge indoor stadium with a bunch of drug and alcohol ingested college age europeans and people from all over, who come solely to see a bunch of DJ's who have weird names, dance their butts off, and wear all white so when they go home all the clothing is officially ruined. Perfect. We then proceeded to wake up too late from the concert, mostly my fault, and missed our flight to Madrid. So, we got on the eight hour train ride back to Salamanca. Oh, so fun.

Our group from the hostel that went to Sensation

Guell Park - Barcelona

The concert

We came back to Salamanca and I got sick for a while so I couldn't go out that much. But, I got to spend a lot of quality time with my awesome boyfran'. So that was good.

Jim and I

Then came the time where Meredith and I took a trip to Florence, Italy to visit my friend Marisa. We had a lot of fun, and had a really great tour guide. We got to see where Marisa lives and got to look all around the city filled with the most upscale shopping I have ever seen in one place. We also went out with her one night to a pretty hopping club that was apparently on the Jersey Shore. Of course, we ate a lot of pizza. All was perfect, except for our hostel which closed from 2am-6am and then kicked you out from 10am-2pm. Word to the wise: not all things here in Europe have to be specified on the internet, especially huge details about how the hostel is hardly ever open for college kid sleeping hours. Oh well. We also made a short trip to Pisa, Italy for the night. There's nothing there but the tower, but Meredith and I got to explore quite a while when we got lost in the most random part of the city. No taxis either. That's good.

Me in front of the most famous bridge in Florence 

The Duomo

Marisa, our tour guide

Panoramic view of Florence

You already know what this is, I hope.

After that it was the long haul of enjoying our next three weeks in Salamanca until our families came. And enjoying we did! We went out a lot. And when I wasn't going out, you probably could have found me watching movies and spending time over at Jim's house. Classes weren't extremely hard at that point either, so we had a lot of time to do things. During this time I met many new people and enjoyed getting to know people that I had met earlier on in the trip.

Meredith, Alvaro, Pablo and I

Then came the time where my family came to visit. Yes, my entire family -- Mom, Dad and Brad. And they had the same sentiments I had about Spanish food, but I think for the most part they enjoyed the experience. They arrived on Friday and hung out until dinner time where we went to a restaurant and they got to know Jim. Then, the next day we went on a guided tour of Salamanca and a lovely dinner with all my professors, program directors, other parents, and other students. It was literally the most fun dinner I have had in a long time. And it involved a lot of alcohol (they gave us shots for dessert, no lie). Oh, I gave a speech at this dinner in Spanish and Steve gave it in English. That was good. Then the next morning we left for our adventure to the south of Spain. This trip included visits to Cordoba, Granada, Ronda, Sevilla and Merida. I think everyones favorite place was Ronda, just because it was so remote and beautiful. 

Brad, Jim and I after dinner

Mom and Dad at the Windmills of Don Quijote (windmills around the corner, ha!)

Our group at the Mezquita in Cordoba

Brad listening to our tour guide

Ronda 

Me at the Roman ruins of Merida

After saying goodbye to my family, I had to two week homestretch of time left in Salamanca. We made the most of it! Every weekend we went out and during the week we did our fair share of final shopping trips and sites to see. 

...and now I am home. So, call me! 

I saw a real, live, Bull Fight

So the past week I haven't written on here, and honestly it's all due to my lack of time! We have been very busy lately with school, small excursions and hanging out with people. I have finally made some Spanish friends on top of my American friends, so I have been mingling in between the two groups. Regardless, a lot has happened since I bought those red pants.

First of all, I went to my first bull fight. Man, oh man! That was an experience. And just being honest, it's not really my cup of tea. What happened was our program director came into class and asked everyone if they wanted to go to the bullfight that was happening on Tuesday afternoon. She gave us a heads up about the violence and the fact that many Americans don't particularly enjoy watching bulls die. So, me being miss adventure, I decided to say yes and see the torreros. It was definitely an experience, to say the least.

The stadium was a really old, very small place with stone bench seating and close proximity to the main part of the city. This is cool, except for the fact that everyone in Spain chain-smokes and will do it right next to you. I usually don't mind people in the U.S. who smoke, but at least people there have some consideration when the do it. Not here. So, bullfight 1, Sarah 0.

We walked in as the fight was starting and took our seats. We had great seats (and they should be for 34 euro). There were three different bullfighters and six different bulls at this event. One of the bullfighters was on horse (and I felt bad for that horse) and the two others were on foot. And while I would like to say I was prepared for it, I wasn't. All six bulls died in front of a stadium of people cheering on its suffering and waiting for it to pass out from losing so much blood. It was sad. And to be honest, I don't think the fight is fair. The bullfighter doesn't even really do it himself! He has all these other people who come in and help wear the bull down so that when it's dripping blood and almost about to die anyway, the torrero comes in and "heroically" forces it to run through sheets of red before he stabs it to death.

I mean, I get it. There's a sense of tradition and culture that I might not completely understand (and there are rules and techniques to it), so that's why I try to keep an open mind. However, I would much rather go to a baseball game than go watch some innocent animal die from some guys that run around in pants that are too tight for them. You know, it's just not my thing.

At least they do eat the meat after the fight. And while my vegetarians all roll their eyes, if it's going to die, it might as well be used, right?

Next week we go to the north of Spain, which should be a very good time!