Viaje de los hermanos.

"Sibling Trip"

I flew into Munich a day earlier than John and stayed with my friend Dominique who graduated with me as a foreign exchange student! He took me to the castle Walt Disney modeled the Disney castle after and took me for a reallllyyyy good restaurant to try legit German food and beer. Then we went to a little christmas village while we waited on John to arrive...It was a wonderful day! And then of course, seeing John for the first time in months...you can imagine how excited I was...

Yes, he is wearing a Cam Newton jersey...Yes, he's from Munich...He was corrupted by our valedictorian ages ago.

Sipping cider at the christmas village :)

The next day, John and I went to a concentration camp which was super enlightening, cool to be standing in pictures I have seen in history books, but also you can imagine the emotional toll it takes...

We toured the city and then hopped on the bus for Interlaken, Switzerland. The town looked like such a ghost town when we arrived...It felt super weird....I kind of forgot about that moment until just now and I just laughed out loud... Hmm...the next day we made some friends from Australia while we were "canyon jumping" and went to get swiss cheese fondu that night with them...of course at first we stopped to have a drink at a Hooter's in Switzerland...who knew?

Our little town

The Girls (Lucy & me)

The top of that is what we jumped from :)

The Boys (John & Sam)

That night the snow started and they were able to open the ski lifts for the first time of the year.  SOOOO basically visibility didn't exist but it was still a cool experience. The next day we got up and took the train to Zurich and then we were off to Espana :)

ZURICH, Switzerland :)

We didn't have very much time in Sevilla, but the time we did have we enjoyed and my students were OBSESSED with John...they still ask me every single day when he is coming back!

In Plaza de Espana

The following photos are similar to Where's Waldo...only look for John Dee.

Farewell/Christmas dinner with my roomies!

Spending a couple of hours in Majadahonda with my babies :)

The Day of LoVVEEEE.

Happy Valentine's Day!!


To start this entry, I need to start will one small explanation....Spain is not the USA...just in case you were confused...this is extremely evident on holidays.  Particularly today.  Most people in Spain believe this day to "a holiday for el Corte Ingles" (this huge department store/grocery store you can find all over the country).  Soooo you can imagine my shock when we were reviewing and giving tests today!! Can you even imagine in the US if this occurred? Valentine's Day was always a free pass day full of candy, valentines, xoxo & lots of love among friends... We tried our best to bring the spirit to Spain and we definitely made it cute!  Paco made a big mailbox that I will post a picture of whenever I put my pictures on the computer.  The children that wanted could make Valentine's at home and slip the letters into the box throughout the week.  During recess I delivered all the valentine's to their classes. I racked up on my stack, and you know me... I teared up for sure...they were so sweet....the gist being, Audrey you are my favorite teacher, you are pretty, we are forever friends, "I HOPE YOU DON'T LEAVE US!" (the hardest words to hear knowing I am leaving them in 4 months...) I had a wonderful day full of hugs & smiles, but it was super sad because it's not such a big deal and they don't set up the day like we do at home....plenty of children went home without their own personal valentine...I wrote poems and put them on cards for each class, but I couldn't make homemade ones for each student.... I talked to a lot of the professors and some are now calling it Valentine's week and going to make them in class this week and make sure everyone gets one :)


Miss you all and hope you had an incredible Valentine's Day!! Sorry I've been a litttttlleee behind on my blogging.  I'm gonna write a quickkkkk recap of mine and John's trip before bed!


ALL MY LOVE!

my loot... 

Y'all already know I'm corny, to solidify this I will admit that one of my poem's included the line, "Each of you are just so cute, and my time with you is worth more than a pirate's loot!"

My poems: Only one missing is first grade which said.... 

Well actually I don't remember how it started, but it ended with...."Thanks for all the hugging, smiling and kissing, when I am not with y'all part of my heart is missing."

Morocco .. Better 2 months late than never!!

Okay, Honestly, I am too lazy to go back and write about my experience in Morocco when 2 of my sweet friends already did such a good job with it!! SOOOO... I'm just copying and pasting their post about the trip for you guys to read! They are wonderful, minus the fact that they hold Auburn University degrees... :) Also, you can see their actual blog here : http://bienaventuranza.tumblr.com/


If you scroll down far enough there is a video from the trip also. They posted it on December 13 (a littttllleee more punctual than myself!)

All About our Adventures in Africa

It took a long time to get where we were going, but we finally made it to Africa! We took a ferry from Terifa Spain to Tangers Morocco, then back on the bus where we started at Rabat, the capital, a night in the Sahara Desert, the back up to Fez.  Rabat was really cool, but we didn’t stay too long. We ate, went down to the beach, and then took a walking tour through a mosque that was supposed to be the largest in the world but it was never finished; that obviously didn’t really work out for them. Cool fact: we ate at the same restaurant in Rabat as Obama when he was there.

After Rabat we were off to the Saharaaaa! The drive to the Sahara was an adventure where we had to take 3 different forms of transportation. We took the bus to a hotel in the southeastern part of Morocco, and it was a beautiful drive the entire way. There were mountains in the background topped with snow part of the drive and then the other part of the drive looked like the Grand Canyon. Off to the side of the road along the way you would see random huts and flocks of sheep guided by their Sheppard off in the distance, something I have only read about. It was difficult to capture all that we saw in pictures, so I guess you will just have to go see for yourselves one day! We arrived to the hotel only to find out that we were all piling in 4x4 jeeps and driving through the Sahara. Our jeep was leading the pack and we were flying through the desert in pitch black dark jamming to Arabian music, it was awesome! After about forty-five minutes of off-roading through the Sahara, just a normal day-to-day activity, we come up on about 80 camels and a group of nomads, who were part of the Berber population. About 60% of the Moroccan people are Berbers and they have their own language while the rest of the population is Arab and speak Arabic. Also, Berber comes from a Roman word that means barbarian. There are different tribes within the Berber population and we stayed with one of these tribes for a night in the Sahara desert.

We rode the camels in the dark to the tents where we were spending the night. The sky was filled with stars and we could see the outline of all the dunes surrounding us. It was unreal. Once we got to the tents the Berber tribe greeted us with a typical meal and then we all sat/danced around the fire and had a few Moroccan beers with the Berbers. We woke up really early the next morning to hike up a GIGANTIC sand dune to watch the sunrise. You know when you climb up a sandy hill and you slide back down with every step, well imagine trying to climb up a sandy mountain…im-po-si-ble. The climb was well worth it though because the view was incredible! After that we rode for an hour and a half back to the hotel on camels, and it was no la-z-boy, I think I’m still walking funny. 

After the Sahara it was almost time to head back home, but we stopped for a day in Fez, the second largest city in Morocco and home to the oldest university in the world. In Fez we walked around the medina, which would be impossible to get around without a guide. There are 9,000 streets with no names! You can see us walking through the narrow streets of the medina in our video. There are shops every 6 steps and everyone tries to get you into their shop to either sell you something for 4 times as much as what they finally sell it to you for, or to marry their son. In this part of Africa there are still arranged marriages, and one guy was trying everything he could to get one of the girls on the trip to marry his son. Even though his proposal was undeniably appealing, no one left Africa that day with a fiancé. Walking around, we went into a silk factory, a pharmacy, and the oldest tannery in the world. The leather shop overlooking the tannery was 3 stories and the walls were filled with hundreds of genuine leather bags. We spent a lot of time in those three main shops so our group only had 15 minutes of free time to bargain and shop around before we had to hit the road. It was one of the most stressful 15 minutes of our lives. There was so much to see with so little time and we had dirhams that needed to be spent. Running around the medina on our own truly intensified our Moroccan experience. Overall, our trip was really cool because we were able to experience so many different aspects of Morocco. 

If anyone wants to visit Morocco, let us know because we would love to go back!

Love,

Allie & Mary Duncan