Semana Santa or Jesus Built My Vespa

I don´t have enough time to post really, as prophesized, because I´m too busy with schoolwork before I go away for Semana Santa (basically Spring Break). Semana Santa is actually a big Catholic whoop-de-doo, with lots of solemn processions and the general praising of the Passion of Christ (not the movie, the actual Passion). So instead of doing all that, I´m going to some very non-Catholic areas of Europe. I think I´ve outlined the trip before, but here it is again, with feeling.

Greg, my former spunky roommate from NU, is coming along for the adventure because he wants to and because he can. The other member of our party is Eric, who is from Colorado and likes kebabs.

First stop, Amsterdam for 2 nights - Mostly for the prostitutes, but I hear they have some nice museums as well.

Second stop, Rotterdam for 3 nights - Don´t ask me why we´re going to Rotterdam for 3 nights, I just figured it´d be cooler and less touristy than Amsterdam. Everybody keeps telling me that it´s lame though and I shouldn´t waste my time in Rotterdam. Whatever, screw ´em. We might rent a car anyway and then go out into countryside or back to Amsterdam, or maybe some other cool places.

Third stop, Brussels for 4 nights - If we do have a car, we´ll drive here, if not, we´ll take a train. Brussels is supposed to be great, but so is the rest of Belgium, so it´ll be ideal to have a car or to take day trips by train to check out some of the other cities and the countryside. It´ll mostly be beer and waffles while here. If they have other culinary offerings, I´ve never heard of them thus far in my life.

Final stop, England for 3 nights - I break off from my party and visit my friend, Matt, in Southampton. Won´t be going to London, as I´ve done that in the past and it´s a wallet buster. I like just hanging out with Matt and his friends and family anyway, and I´m really looking forward to getting back into England as it´s a place I´ve grown to love. I return on Monday, the 24th.

I think Eric´s friend is also going to be joining us for one leg of the trip (either the Rotterdam or Belgium part), which is cool because the more, the better.

It´s gonna kinda suck to be leaving Spain for the sake of my Spanish, which I´m really starting to get comfortable with. It´s hard to explain, but I´ve started to reach a level where I don´t feel so awkward speaking Spanish. I´m not where I consider to be fluent or anything, but the rate at which I´m improving has increased a lot since I got here. Hopefully I won´t lose too much of that while I´m on vacation.

Other than that, I´ve just been trying to get the massive amounts of work I have done. Just about to write up the report for a book I just read. It was a book written for people learning Spanish, so it didn´t have a very complex plot or even many polysyllabic words, but it did fit the requirement of our assignment, so I´m just gonna do it and pass it in tomorrow. Even though that´s only the tiniest amount of the load I have to do, I´m going to go away and forget about the rest since there´s no way in hell I´m doing any of it there. I´ll save the headaches for the last week of April.

OK, enough chatter, time to get to it. I´ll try to get a short update in here and there during my travels, but it might only be a brief recounting of events. Pictures will probably have to wait til the end to be put up, but I promise a mega-update once I get back, regardless. Oh, and Graham saw my blog and told me I wasn´t sarcastic enough, and therefore it´s boring, so I´ll try to be more sarcastic when I get back. Maybe I´ll even come off as witty, if I´m lucky, but don´t get your hopes up.

Happy Passover and Easter. Maybe that rabbit will see his shadow this year.