Porch-you-gull

Wow! what a trip! This past week was Semana Santa (holy week) here in SEvilla. Which basically means huge religious parades and processions of monks and brothers who are dressed up in robes with hats that seriously look just like the KKK. Kinda scary, but it's what they all wear. So we had the week off school. I went with four friends to a beach on the coast in Albufeira Portugal. It was incredible. Here's our beach
Adam Van Gelder...cool name, I'm jealous...and myself chilling on the beach. We got pretty darn tan.
Perhaps my favorite picture of all time. I was just goofing around and took this. It turned out really cool.
Mike and Adam trying to juggle a volleyball. We juggled a lot, and peppered a lot. It was pretty darn sweet. The sand was just incredibly fine. It was so nice.
Action shot! Sometime while we were peppering. So the ocean was freezing, so I never actually got in it more than up to my knees. Every day it was about 75 degrees, with a little wind. If the wind was blowing a bit it was nice. Without the wind it was a bit toasty. It was the perfect weather for a week on the beach. We were at the beach literally at least 4 hours a day for 5 straight days.
We stayed in this great little 3 star hotel. We put 5 people in a 4 person room, and it cost us a whole 8.66 euros per night. Incredibly cheap. Our room had a little kitchenette, so we bought all of our own food at the grocery store and cooked. It was super cheap and a lot of fun. You can see the worst ketchup of all time on the table. We bought it at some little store where all the food was labeled in greek...still can't figure that one out. That pot is a bot of potatoes that we fried in a pan with some oil. They were good.
This is me cooking French toast. The kitchen area was actually really dark. There wasn't a light in that part of the room. The only light was that little stove light. So I wore my little headlight so I could see when the french toast was done. It tasted incredible. We could've eaten that every day and been content, if we hadn't run out of syrup on our 3rd day. It was so good I would've just eaten the spatula.
Adam, Carine, and Hayley chilling in our kitchen area. Probably cooking rice or something. We had rice one meal. Hayley had this great idea to cook the whole bag. Holy cow that was a ton of rice. After Adam and I ate 3 helpings each, and the others each ate a good ammount, there was still half the pot left. Adam tried to snack on it throughout the night but couldn't make a dent. So we left it on the counter for the next few days and occasionally picked at it. Eventually we gave in and threw it away.
Ya we decided to go take modelling pictures on this huge rock. So this is Adam and I being hot.
The ole wink...

There were these really cool rocks that jutted out into the ocean. So Adam and I climbed up them and hung out for a little while. So this is me striking the Stuck pose. Good times...
And on the last night, to top the week off, we had a bonfire on the beach. Had a hilariously great conversation complete with the classic questions about if you were stranded on a desert island what would take, and if you could have one super power what would it be. We tried to roast some little hot dogs, but their hot dogs here suck and theyre tiny, so it didn't work well. We sat around and talked for 4 hours, til the fire died, then headed back to the hotel for some sleep before we headed out.

Funniest story of the trip: One night we were playing the card game presidents until about 3. Well then we had the idea, 'hey let's just stay up all night and watch the sunrise.' So I looked it up online and it said 'sunrise 7:15am.' We still thought it was a good idea. So we played presidents for another 4 hours, straight, not as good of an idea. So come 7am we strolled down to the beach to see the sun rise. Well if you noticed in the above pictures, the beach is kinda walled in by really tall rocks all the way down the coast. And our beach didn't face east, it faced south. So the sun rose, and it was probably beautiful, we just couldn't see a thing cause there were huge cliffs between us and the eastern horizon. We went to bed a bit cranky at 8am.

Frustration of the trip: My credit card company placed a hold on my card cause my parents had called on my behalf trying to set up a PIN number so I can take money out of an ATM here. Well the credit card company thought it sounded fishy. So they thought a third party had my card and put a hold on my account. Even after I got on my online banking and sent them messages they refused to pull the hold off my account, so I had ZERO euros for the trip. Thankfully Carine loaned me money, and a lot of it. It was frustrating.

Overall it was incredible. We relaxed on the beach the whole week, got some great tans, ate some good food, and played a lot of cards. 6 nights at a hotel, and meals for 7 days, + bus tickets and little souvenirs, all totalled 110 euros. Absolutely fantastic. Now I just have to survive 11 days, before I head to London, Dublin, and St Andrews for 10 days!