One awesome week.

Last week was definitely been the best week so far, hands down. Lots of touristy-picture taking and lots of laughs.

The week actually started out pretty tough for me and i really just wanted to be able to hang out with my best friends (Amy and Bethany). But after Wednesday night it completely turned around. Wednesday night after dinner me and Holly just sat at the table talking with Rosa, our host mom. We just chatted and had coffee, but it was so nice to sit there and talk with her.

Thursday afternoon me, Holly, Bri, and Skylar visited el Museo Fallero. Some background: here in Valencia they have a 5 day festival called Las Fallas where artists compete by making nearly life-sized statues/scenes made of paper mache that are called fallas. They usually satirize a current event or something in the culture. The fallas are in all the streets and the people vote on their favorite and then at the end of the week the winner goes in this museum (Museo Fallero) while the rest get burned in a huge fire. So Thursday we went to the museum to see all the winners from previous years, since about 1935. They're so entertaining and interesting to look at! Here's one of my favorites:

Friday morning our small group of American students from the institute visited the Cathedral of Valencia. It was so amazing to experience being in a place with so much history and had endured so much through hundreds of years. After we had got the tour of the cathedral we climbed the Tower of Miguelete, which had a lot more stairs than we thought. But when we finally got to the top the beautiful view of Valencia was definitely worth it! You could see so far we could almost say "I can see my house from here!" I circled the tower a few times looking at all the buildings and enjoying being there. It was wonderful. 

Friday night was just one of those perfect nights that nothing can ruin. Holly, Skylar, and me went to one of our favorite discotecas to dance and have a good time and we ended up meeting some really fun guys. One of them actually really liked me and he was really sweet! We ended up staying later than we thought we would because we were all having such a great time! One of my favorite memories so far.

Since then not much of importance has happened, but in a couple hours we leave for a weekend in Barcelona! There will be lots of sight-seeing, pictures, and fun. All the Spainiards keep telling us the Barcelona is a really great city and I can't wait to explore it!