Christmas plans, etc.

Hello everyone! Yes I know...my entries are becoming less and less. I guess that's what happens when you lead a busy life. Right now it is busier than I would like but it will only be that way for about another month and a week or so. Today is a holiday so I didn't have any school or work which is really nice. I could definitely use the break!

All is well here. I just finished making plans for my Christmas break and it looks like I get to go to Paris for half of it and to England for the other half! I am so pumped! I have some distant relatives in Paris who have offered to take me around the city and do touristy things with me as well as see some fabulous art exhibits. Spending Christmas in Paris...can it get any more dreamlike or romantic?

Then after a little less than a week in Paris I am heading to Reading, England to stay with Nikki, my female roommate here and her family. She lives about 45 minutes south of London so we will be doing lots of exploring in London of course! She and I have gotten really close these past few months and I really look forward to seeing where she comes from and meeting all her people. Of course having a good friend to be with while bringing in the New Year is something I am really happy about too. And I think it is so sweet of her family to give me a place to stay during that time. I am very, very lucky to have that.

We are hoping to make a trip to Madrid in about two weeks to get a trip in before Christmas. We still need to do some more researching, which is easy to put off when life gets crazy but I'm really going to try to make that happen.

We got a second chance to go back to La Rioja last weekend for just a day but this time it was organized by the institute and so we were finally able to see a winery and taste some of their wine. It was really interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed that trip. Not only did we visit a winery, but we went to this beautiful restaurant that was hiding in the mountain area of La Rioja, where we had an amazing and huge lunch (it's the main meal of the day here). I don't think I've ever been so full in my life! But the scenery was beautiful outside the restaurant and we had a large table full of friends eating some of La Rioja's delicacies and drinking some of the wine made from grapes that were grown directly on the land we were walking beside. How cool is that?

After a very long lunch, we decided to walk some of it off by going to explore some ancient castle ruins up some smaller mountains. It was the perfect time of day, almost sunset, and the leaves on the vines were brilliantly gleaming all the beautiful fall colors you can imagine-reds, oranges, yellows. The entire country side looked like it was lit up and glowing. I loved it...as many of you know from my hundreds of pictures!

That's about all the news over here. I hope all is well with those who are visiting my page and checking up on me. Leave me a comment! I'd love to hear from you.