Hello All!

First of all, happy Mother's day to all the mom's who are reading this. Thank you so much for all that you do and I hope you have a wonderful day celebrating. Last weekend was Mother's Day in Spain, so I thought of you twice:)

The past two weeks have been a good balance of productive and relaxing. I got a few beach days in, spent some time with friends from my program and friends from my church, and have also gotten a good amount of work done. It's weird to schoolwork to do when all my Vandy friends are done with finals and celebrating the beginning of their summer break. Unfortunately, I wont be finished until June 9th this year. Ugh! Oh well, I guess I can't complain too much. I am, after all, in Spain, and I'm excited to have 5 more weeks to explore and enjoy this country.

Yesterday, my friend Katie and I took a trip to Girona, which is about an hour and twenty minutes away from Barcelona by train. The train ride was, unfortunately, really unpleasant. It was packed with people, and we had to stand in the aisle packed like sardines. It got hot, and a girl almost passed out. They really shouldn't sell more tickets that what they have room for on those trains, but anyway, we arrived safely and were very happy to have some fresh air once we started walking around the city. Girona is probably one of the prettiest cities in Catalunya. It's surrounded by hills and still has parts of the city wall from medieval times, or at least reconstructions of it, that you can walk along and look out over the city. Yesterday was the first day of a celebration there called Temps de Flors (time for flowers, or something like that), where all the public areas and some private homes opened up their gardens and patios all decorated really elaborately with flowers. That made a really pretty city even prettier, and despite a little bit of rain we had a really good time walking around and seeing as much as we could. Here are some pictures:

flowers up the steps to the Cathedral

display of flowers inside the old Arab bathhouses

part of the old city wall

Well I hope you all are well, and I look forward to seeing you this summer in Colorado, or this fall in Nashville, and in the meantime I will focus on my classes and enjoy my last few weekends in Spain.