ciao bellos!

bueno chicos!!!
porfa perdonenme que no haya escrito nada por más de un mes....

if you can read that you rule

you guys i´m still having so much fun here in BCN. sometimes i have anxiety issues when i think about going back!!! i got back a week ago from semester break. YES it´s true...we had christmas break which lasted for like 4 weeks and i traveled to greece, brussels, madrid, and wandered around bcn with my fam, then had two weeks of a lot of school and exams, then 2 more weeks of VACA!!!! when we were leaving italy (my last destination of that break), my friends and i were discussing how hard it will be to get back to "reality". hah....hah...hah

me and my friend andrea went to Istanbul, Turkey then to Italy where we met up with our friend Mo. Istanbul has been my favorite place so far because the food was DELICIOUS!!!!!! and the guys were so hott!!! but actually the guys are so hott in every country i go to but turkey it seemed like there was an exceptional amount. plus they love american girls so it just seemed too easy. hahaa....but we drank a lot of tea, smoked a lot of hookah, and played backgammon!!!! plus my favorite cousin reenie was looking out for me and emailed her friend Chad who lives in istanbul...he took us all around and showed us a lot of good places. for the superbowl we went to the american consulate and i pretended like i cared at all about who won (but of course i was rooting for the cardinals....) and i was sad for 4.3 milliseconds (if that´s how you spell that word) until i was on to flirting with another marine. the marines were so cute and very hospitable...i missed my dad´s chili but hanging out with marines can distract you from the delicoius, spicy, amazing chili i´m accustomed to (barely)

in italy we flew into milan, took a day train to venice, walked around venice for 4 hours then took a night bus to rome, and walked around rome for 2 days before we travelled back home. my favorite things in italy were the colosseum and pizza...it´s really amazing how you learn aobut all these places when you are 8 years old in school then years later you are literally walking on history!!! i love it!!! there was a building in rome that was built to celebrate the unity of italy and there were these 2 guards guarding what is called the tomb of the "unknown soldier". as interesting as that sounds, we were more interested in the cute guard on the right hand side. even from afar a girl knows when someone is looking at her so me and andrea started messing with him....we were smiling and giggling and waving and we could see that he was grinning....so we took it a step further and did the "CALL ME" hand motion...(hand=phone, put it to the ear, and mouth the words CALL ME) so the best part was that he smiled even bigger and shook his head YES (thank goodness!) in front of all the people that were taking pictures and whatever...

ok so i just read that and i guess you had to be there but believe me it was hilarious....

now my favorite cousin mike is visiting!!! the first day he got ehre we went to razzmatazz with a bunch of my friends and we all danced till like 5 am!!!!!! he got tired after a while though because by like 445 am i saw him, eyes closed, swaying back and forth (not to any rythm btw) so that was my clue that spikey needed to go to bed...which he did and he slept until like 7 pm the next day!! haha.

classes are still really fun. life is great

i never go a day without thinking about how happy i am and how lucky i am...i know that this experience is once in a lifetime and i´m SOOOOOOOOOOOO lucky to have had the chance to do it. anyone who is reading this has helped me get to this point some way or another and i just want to say thank you again!! i love all of you and miss you tons. hope everything is going well for everyone and would love to hear from you guys!! jcollin5@illinois.edu