Avila

After three days in Madrid, all of us piled into our own bus and headed to Avila.
The countryside in Spain is beautiful.
We visited a huge monastery that had the crypts for the kings and queens of Spain. There's a separate area for all of the children that died.
We stayed in Avila next. It's a beautiful town. Part of the city is surrounded by huge walls, that protected it long ago.

And there are families of storks that build their nests on top of the church towers.


We visited some sites relating to Saint Teresa (not Mother Teresa). There was the first chapel she ever founded. And then there was a display at another place that held her finger. From my understanding, churches at the time were desperate for holy relics, so her body was rather torn apart. Hence places that display her finger. Yeesh. Some way to treat a saint.

Mom tried to get me lost a couple times. She put me in charge of directions, and then tries to take charge anyway. I won't let her do it again. She sucks at navigation.
Oh, I got locked outside the front gate of the place where we were staying. I was stuck on the street for 20 minutes until someone who worked there drove through and let me in.
Heh. How pitiful.

Oh, Spain has a dish called chocolate with churros. You get really thick hot chocolate, and dip churros in it. Not like the churros in America, because these ones aren't coated in sugar.
The chocolate is so good.

We took a day trip to Segovia. That place was fantastic. I think it's my favorite area so far. We got to tour the big castle there.

And there are these ancient towering aquaducts.

We also went to the royal palace at San Ildefonso.

Man, the palaces are so crazy and amazing. They are all so elaborate.

I just learned that my grandpa died yesterday.
why am I not at home to help Grandma?

Madrid

Well, I was expecting to have three posts done by this time. So I'll do my best to catch up.
As you may have gathered, I am in Spain! And I've been here for about a week.
I am part of a tour group. Everyone is great. Though I am the youngest by far, which is funny.
We're visiting a lot of amazing places.

We started out in Madrid. Mom and I arrived a day early, which was great so we had a day to adjust before all the activity began. That was a very long day, flying from America. We had a stop over in New York. I saw the city from the plane. I had never seen it before. I don't think I have even been east of Nevada, except for a trip to Yellowstone when i was really little.
The day of departure was a short day, since we were flying against the sun. I wasn't able to sleep on the plane. We arrived in Madrid on the morning of the next day, and were determined to stay awake as much as possible. We went walking around the city.
We met up with a couple other early arrivers from our group. I had met a couple of them before. Everyone else arrived the next day. Our group is eighteen people.
We've been so busy that it's all I can do to keep up with my notes. And the internet the last couple days might as well have been non existent.

Spain is actually different than I thought it would be. And by that, I thought that Spain would be a lot more different than America. Maybe because I have never been anywhere out of the America besides Asia. It's kind of funny that I don't stick out like a sore thumb here. I certainly did in China and Japan.
I am incredibly grateful for my three years of Spanish, even though I've forgotten a lot of it. I want to go over all of my notes from high school to refresh my knowledge of the language. Thanks to my freaking advisers, I didn't really get a chance to before I left. I should do it when I get home.

There are street performers all over. Some are people in interesting costumes. And there are musicians. And they are all fantastic.
Aah, one thing that has always gotten in the way is the siesta. Things close for several hours in the middle of the day, for a break. It makes it hard to visit places.
Our guide is named Adrian. He is the only one near my age. He does a great job too.
We have visited chapels, monasteries, and palaces. They have such amazing histories, and fantastic architecture. I've been taking tons of pictures. Though I have no way to get them on this tablet to share with you. The ipad is such a pain to type on. XD. It's a pain for everything.


Oooh, we visited the oldest restaurant in the world!

The royal palace of Madrid was incredible. And it had a huge armory.


And the Prado museum had so much art that you could easily spend a day or two taking everything in. We only had between two or three hours. Mam and I walked through really quickly and managed to see everything, even though it was brief. There was a lot of fantastic stuff. We had seen some of it in my humanities class in college.

The food is freaking fantastic. When we get lunch, there are three courses. And we're stuffed by the end. I haven't really needed to get dinner at all.

Oooh, something only I find interesting. They have loquats here! They're called nispero. I haven't seen loquats for sale since Nagasaki, where they are called biwa.
Biwa, nispero. I am becoming fascinated with this fruit. They so big and juicy here. I hope I can find more. I at a whole box muself, and then bought another box to share with the others, and spread the joy of biwa/nispero.
Okay, ill try to get part two done soon.

I hope you're all having fun at Fanime! Take pictures for me.

Last Day Home

It's my last day in America.
I'm heading to Europe tomorrow.
I haven't even had time to get excited. School wasted three full weeks of my time, for absolutely no reason at all. So I had to cram all of my preparation into a few days. I've been non-stop busy.
I think I have all of my loose ends tied up though!
I am a bit nervous. I'll be away for a month. I've never been gone for more than two weeks. I hope everything stays okay at home. Like my cat.

I'll post here about some interesting stuff that happens.

Better try to get to sleep!
See ya all in Spain!

3D Fern

Posting more super old pictures (or at least, a few months ago feels like a super long time ago).
I found a really nice leopard figure at the store. So I bought it and painted it to look like Fern in her leopard form.
Heheh. Not I have a 3D model for her.

I Shouldn't be Surprised

I'm leaving for Europe on Thursday.
And my advisers knew that.
I told them that I had to take my exams before I left, and so I started studying. Spent a few weeks doing little else but study. And I kept checking in to see when the exams would happen, and I wasn't getting anything. And I was getting more and more frustrated because I still have a ton of crud left to do to prepare for a month out of the country, and I was running out of time for my exams. Finally we decided that Friday (yesterday) was the last possible day I could take my exams, and still have time to finish them. So, I kept studying, reading my many many resources that I'd need for my exams.
Only to learn mid way through Friday that the exams weren't happening.
Weeeell, there goes several weeks of my life spent stressing when I could have been doing something that actually mattered...

I can't say I'm surprised. They keep finding new ways to drive me totally insane.

I don't understand people. I really don't understand them. Are they doing this on purpose? Or are they that oblivious to how much this is screwing me up?

Well, at the very least, I get to spend my last days in the country tying up all my loose ends. I might even get to hang out with people. --_--
At least I won't be totally stressed by exams and advisers right before I have to leave. Because I'm going to completely ignore their existence until I'm home.

And on a bright note, Nicole finished grad school! OH MY GOD, NICOLE! CONGRATULATIONS!

Tyra

Painted a picture of Tyra a long time ago XD
I'll post it here, and get back to studying.



(I kinda followed a tutorial from the Winged Fantasy art book)

Still waiting on the exams. I've been expecting some kind of reply for over a week, so I'm stuck in limbo. And I've only got a week until I have to leave.

What We Have

So, I've complained plenty on my blog about grad school.
And I'm tired and low on patience as I prepare for my theoretically upcoming exams (I guess they'll happen early this week?).

I'm especially tired right now, from helping my family with a little mothers day party thing. I had to spend the entire morning cleaning, straightening, doing chores, etc. So I haven't really gotten to do any studying today, which I'll get to right after this.
They just tole me a few days ago I've got to finish my exams, and possibly me defense, before I go to Europe. Although that day is approaching very fast. Normally it wouldn't bother me, except I also have a lot to do to prepare for the Europe trip. Plus I have an extra field trip next week, as well as my band concert, and other stuff too.
And I just heard a rather upsetting rumor regarding school stuff...

I'm going to make a slight backtrack. I'll connect the dots later XP
"Slightly" scatterbrained right now.

I finished a book last week. It's called "This Star Won't go Out." I learned about it from the vlogbrothers, quite a while ago, so when I saw the library had the audio book, I grabbed it to listen to during my commute.
The book is about a girl called Esther Earl. If you've been following the Vlogbrothers for a while, you know about her. She's the origin of Esther Day, which I've mentioned here before. It's the day in which you tell your family and friends that you love them.
Esther is also partly the reason that "The Fault in Our Stars" was written. The book is not based on Esther, but it was inspired by her.



I decided to try watching some of Esther's Youtube videos, which are mentioned in the book (taking a short break from studies, since her videos aren't very long).



It reminded me how much I have to be grateful for.
Yeah, school sucks. But things could be so much worse. I have a home, great family and friends, and health. And while school feels like it's sapping my life force, I do at least get to take short breaks a couple times a day, to play a game for 10 minutes, or to do a quick sketch.

So, things suck. But they won't suck forever. School will end relatively soon. Which is a bit scary in itself. Because then I'll have to go out and try to become something in the world.
Anyway, I've got to get myself pumped up to spend the rest of the night reading.

Gary Snyder

As I've been reading the many articles and chapters for my grad project, I've come across the name Gary Snyder a couple times. He is a well-known poet.
I get excited about this, because I met him.
Wow, that was a long time ago. Over ten years.
He had, or maybe he was staying at, a little Buddhist temple way up in the mountains near Nevada City. I was up in the area, for a summer camp. And one day, we walked down to the temple and asked him if we could walk around.
After I got home, I looked up one of his books, to learn more about him.

Now I've got to go see if I can find that book...

Curses. I don't know where it is. Hopefully it'll turn up, because I wanted to read one of the poems. I haven't looked at them in ages.

A Couple Years worth of Anime and Manga

It's been a couple years since I did the last update for the anime/manga I've been getting through.
I had no idea it had been so long O__O
And my list of stuff to read/watch is only getting longer.

14 Sai no Koi
This is a manga that I've been slowly reading as it's updated. I suppose it would be considered a romance? Usually I don't really care for stuff that is mostly about romance, but I like this one a lot. It's really sweet and fun.

½ Prince
I enjoyed the first part of this one. Getting to know the cool videogame world, and the cool creatures, etc. It'd be a cool game to play (for the most part). But it's very long, and the second half or so of the series so stops being interesting.

Coppelion
This one's still being updated too. So far, I've enjoyed quite quite a bit. It has several things that I'm a sucker for. It does seem to be dragging on a bit too long, but I'm still enjoying it pretty well.
It takes place in a future world in which a nuclear disaster has forced everyone to flee the city of Tokyo. But not quite everyone has escaped. So, three girls who have been genetically modified to withstand the radiation are sent in to find the survivors.


Azumanga Daioh
Finished both the anime and the manga on this one. It's fun. I laughed plenty. Other parts kinda failed at being funny, but I guess that's to be expected. I think I like the manga better. The anime was fun, but they seemed to end up with too much time during some of the episodes, so they dragged stuff out too much.
It is one I would recommend. I like Sakaki. Poor girl. She tries so hard to get cats to like her XD


Cirque du Freak
I read the manga first, and I recently read the first book. I enjoyed it. I'm not really a vampire fan generally, but I did get into this series. I like the snake boy~

Wolf Children
A beautiful movie. Especially if you love shape-shifters. I love how they explore the way they would grow up in a normal world.


Chi’s Sweet Home
Freaking adorable, both in the manga and anime. I love Chi. The end of the manga was rather abrupt. And the second half of the anime is too repetitive. But I love all the rest of it. I watched some of this while I was in Japan, and it made me so cat sick.


Doubutsu No Kuni
A rather strange art style. But I ended up getting rather attached to the series. Probably because it echoed some things that I feel very deeply.
In this world, there are almost no humans left. It's mostly animals. And since none of them understand each others speech, they don't get along. Except for one little boy who can understand all the languages of the animals.


Tiger and Bunny
The anime is a lot of fun. Tiger is so great.
A superhero series. I suppose the setup is a little bit like X-Men, as there are people who are randomly born with superpowers.

You are Umasou
This movie is freaking adorable. But then again, I do love dinosaurs.
What happens when a baby T-rex is raised by peaceful plant-eaters?


Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun
It took me a while to get into this. But that's pretty common for me. It takes me a while to get attached to a series. But it is quite funny, especially how they turn so many ideas on their heads.
A high school story, which is almost a romance, except I don't think an official romance ever happens?

Black Cat
Just finished reading this a couple weeks ago. It was good. It felt rather like Rurouni Kenshin to me, but it was enjoyable. I like Eve. Because I'm a sucker for characters like Eve...
Is it bad that I can't think of a simple interesting way to describe this? An ex-assassin wants to live a peaceful life, but one very dangerous friend/foe doesn't want him to move on.

Yowamushi Pedal
I am very grateful to this series (finished the anime, though the manga is still going). It got me into riding bikes. Which is something I had been thinking about for a long time, to avoid driving places.
All about a high school bike team.

Haikyu
Urrrgh. This makes me want to play volleyball so bad. I miss it so much...
All about a high school volleyball team XD

Patema Inverted
Fascinating. The execution was average, but the concept was fascinating.
Imagine what would happen if your world was upside down, and you risked falling into the sky, forever?

Heidi: Girl of the Alps
An old Ghibli series. It's amazing to me how they can turn a kids book into an entire series. Rather slow-paced, which is to be expected, but still fun.

Silver Spoon
By the author that wrote my favorite series. Not quite as exciting as FMA, but still lots of fun. It makes me laugh out loud occasionally, which is always great.
A school series, but this one takes place at an agricultural school. So, lots of animals.

Bakuman
Just started reading this from the library. It's one of those things that gets me really fired up for writing. Which is hard on me when I'm in the midst of evil grad stuff, and can't write as much as I want...
It's about two kids who want to be professional manga artists/writers.