Amsterdam vs. Cody (1 - 0)

When I decided to study abroad, why didn't anyone tell me that we were required to actually do work like other college students? I've been doing more school work than exploring, that wasn't the deal that I signed up for...

Since the last time I've blogged...

I've been to a town called Sitges, for Carnaval (spelled correctly) (Europe's version of Mardi Gras)

...where they practice a more efficient forms of containment for children.

Carnaval was really cool and interesting. It's kind of comparable to Halloween in the states but it's for big kids like us too. But i have to say my favorite part about Sitges was the day after and just exploring the small "beachy" town. It was beyond beautiful!

How can you not love waking up to this?

We also took the day to climb Montserrat 

Went to Paris, France with my Padre

I was beyond excited to see my dad especially being away for so long, it's like bringing a piece of home to my new (temporary) home! And he got to meet my friends and Elisa and experience her amazing food, but more on that later.

Got to meet this pretty lady, Mona Lisa

And then there was Amsterdam...

I was extremely excited to visit Amsterdam for a lot of reasons but mainly because of how different it is than most other cities around the world. Our first day there we went to the Heineken factory and took a tour, so that was cool. 

We took pictures with cardboard cut-outs

Before I go on, you have to know that I love food and I love to try new foods.. Since I've been here I've tried things that you wouldn't imagine.

el pulpo: octopus

Cow's Stomach

Snails

Trying new foods is just part of traveling and experiencing a different culture so naturally, we had to try the best food Amsterdam had to offer and as much of it as we could on our first night. But what I was most excited about was visiting the Anne Frank house during our visit to Amsterdam because it is the actual house that she and her family hid in during part of the Holocaust. We planned on going to tour the house on Saturday after breakfast. But then I woke up and felt really sick but didn't want a little bug to get me down on this trip so I tried to ignore it. Then during breakfast I went back to our room and didn't leave bed for the rest of the day because of how bad I was feeling. Reminder that I had 0 alcohol in the past 24 hours besides 1 sip of the beer in my hand in the picture above. So surely if I rested all day, I would feel better by that night and then I'd be good to go the next day, right? 

I wish that would have happened. Instead, the next day I didn't even make it through breakfast before I was going back to our room. I had to change my flight to leave 12 hours earlier than I had originally planned because of how I felt and my friends convinced me that I needed to see a doctor before we left Amsterdam (I'm glad they did). The doctor said it was a form of food poisoning and gave me a shot. 

We know the shot didn't work because I ended up in a wheel chair at the airport...

When I finally got back to Barcelona, my room mates were already making plans for me to go to the doctor the next morning. I hadn't eaten or drank anything in almost 3 days so of course, Cody being Cody, didn't care what anyone had to say and wanted to lay in bed until it was all over and the pain was gone and could finally eat again. 

Well the next morning one of the directors of our study abroad program gave us the name of hospital to go to and made arrangements for them to assess me right then. I was running a fever and was dehydrated. So of course as soon as we get there, they started to run an I.V., ran a bunch of test, and told me that I had an infection in my stomach from something I had eaten. 

Looks like my adventurous taste buds finally caught up to me... 

You think you know Spanish until these nurses are asking you all of these questions and poking you with 10 different needles while you're cramping in parts of your stomach that you didn't know existed to where you can't even think straight... Just picture yourself talking to someone, not understanding a word of what they're saying just constantly thinking "stop talking please, I'm not going to understand anything you say just fix me, please." So if that was my fluency test, I failed and refuse to take it again. 

Because of this, I never thought I could miss my parents, my family, and The United States of America so much at a given point in time.

But after 2 nights and almost 3 fulls days in the hospital, I feel 100 times better! It's honestly all thanks to mi Modre España and my awesome friends for forcing me to shut up and go to the hospital because I know I was not a pleasure to deal with (sorry about that) during that time. You guys are awesome!

This is one of my friends, Rachel, visiting after I came back to life 

So that was my past few days/ weeks in a nut-shell and some pictures...

This weekend I'm going to Morocco, so hopefully I'll have some interesting stories to tell you from there :)