Update!

Just a quick update, there is currently no internet in our apartment (or cable, too bad it's a rainy day and both of these would be perfect because God knows I'm not hanging out outside), so I will not be updating before my big trip! I have little stories from this week and I will hopefully have more with the fam, but I will do a HUGEEEE MAJOR MONSTER update on the 13th when I am back in business in the 'bao. Have a great Easter everyone!

Spring Break!

Can you believe it is already Spring Break time?? I can't, that's for sure. After this little 3 week hiatus I will only have ONE MONTH left in Espana. (!!!!)

That said, I'm not actually doing anything official for the next week, mostly because I a) don't want to spend too much money, and b) wasn't sure where to go last minute. I'm excited to stick around Bilbao though because the last weekend I spent in Bilbao was in February! So i think it's about time I spend some time with the locals, especially now that the kiddos think I'm hilarious(ly bad at Spanish) and there will be Easter parades all week for Semana Santa- what better way to learn about a country than watch some religious celebrations with booze!

Speaking of the kids/family, things are going super well these days. Marta and Esti have always been sop friendly and helpful, and now they really treat me like a member of the family with extra sarcasm, etc., but the biggest change so far is the kids' acceptance of me in the fam. They've started hugging me and greeting-yelling at me when I come home from long trips/days, and Telmo (the 5-year old and my new bfffl) has even started remembering things I like, how old I am, and how high I can count (it's kind of a big deal to him, he can only count a bit past 100, whereas I can count to a million! Yeah not infinity, at least not in Spanish). It's a pretty good feeling when I realize they are finally relaxed around me and I get to see/hear/live Spanish jokes and stories through these little developing personalities, especially with the parental commentary (I've learned many a command and sarcastic comment that way). They definitely still give me odd looks sometimes when I struggle through pronunciations (I will EVENTUALLY learn to roll my r's), but that hasn't stopped them from trying out embarrassing jokes on me, usually involving a play on words where I say some sort of bathroom word yet don't realize it- kinda like Spanish-nino hazing. Ah well I will take all the embarrassment and silliness with this family because they have honestly helped me improve not only my Spanish, but my new-situation/family coping skills tenfold. It makes a bit sad, too, to think that chances of them coming to America for any reason are pretty slim so I might not see them again for a long time, if not forever, but I guess that's all the more reason to come back to Spain. :)

As for Spring Break plans, the fam (Mom, Dad, Will, Catie, and Teej) come next Thursday when we will spend a day in Bilbao then fly off to Brussels to see where the rents were married/lived, as well as where Will was born. I'm pretty excited to have the whole family back where it all started at my parents' practically-medieval-it's-so-old church, I'm sure the family photo will be a backup Christmas card for years to come because of the story behind it. After a few days in Belgium we'll drive down to Paris where Pops will depart (big AAA plans) and the rest of the fam will stick around until Wednesday and then fly back to the States (bummer). THEN Linden is meeting me on Wednesday in Paris for some quick extra sightseeing and on Thursday we'll be whisked off to London for 5 days filled with sights, (supposedly awful) British food, possibly a day trip to Dublin, and finally my two favorite parts of the trip: ENGLISH AND STONEHENGE! Bahhh remember how psyched I was about the Aqueduct? Yeah Stonehenge is like a million times older and cooler than that so as you can imagine I am UBER PUMPED to touch some prehistoric rocks and do touristy cartwheels on the grass in front of the main circle while taking sweet picssss. Yeah, that's happening. I'll update anything exciting this week but if not, I will have a mega entry in two weeks all about my travels through Europe! A luego!

The Real Camino de Santiago this time

So this weekend was the official journey along the Camino de Santiago, and it was a whirlwind of emotion to say the least. I guess the roller coaster metaphor would be a bit better, especially since the physical journey itself was practically a roller coaster the way we were constantly walking up and down mountains and coastlines. We started out in Portugalete at 7am, the town outside of Bilbao along the Bay of Biscay- it was great because we got to see the sunrise for the first time while in Bilbao. From there we walked 12km to La Arena along a paved bike path which wasn't too bad at all, and we even got to meet other walkers/see a bike race (as we were actually walking through it).
Then we walked along the beach and up into the mountains where we followed the coastline for the rest of the day, until the pueblo of "Onton" where we started walking on the highway "nacional" that was more like an actual highway with guardrails and no sidewalks rather than a medieval walking path, but we made it work and actually had a blast risking our lives dodging traffic!
After that experience we passed through the other small towns and finally made it to Castro-Urdiales (with so much pain in our feet, we were limping pretty badly), a small port town that had a special albergue (a hostel only for pilgrims, or peregrinos en epsanol) that we had just to ourselves- literally, there wasn't even a guide staying with us or anything, we had the keys to the building (a very small 3 room ranch) so we came and went as we pleased.
This really just meant leaving once for dinner and then coming back at 8pm to crash into bed and lock ourselves in for the night, we were pooped. In total we walked 27km on Friday from Portugalete to Castro, which is about 17 miles give or take.

The next day we knew would be rough because we were supposed to make it to Laredo, the next biggest town between Santander (the capital of Cantabria) and Bilbao (the capital of Vizcaya), but it was a whopping 36km away! Yikes! Luckily, we had plenty of time the night before to rest our feet and take cold showers (against our will actually, I guess the water heater was about the size of 2 gallons of milk, TINY) because the warm water is also not very good for your skin when walking as it makes you more susceptible to blisters (fun fact about hiking!). We left at 8am because we knew how long we had to walk and how rainy and warm it was supposed to get (all the way to 68 degrees!) but luckily it was cloudy and breezy the whole day except when the beautiful sun would come out!
We started in a few small towns but then switched over to my favorite part of the trip, walking along the cliffs of the Altantic Ocean/Cantabrian Sea, like literally through pastures and only about 150ft. from falling into the ocean. So cool! We followed that back onto nacional after about 11km, this time with a big enough shoulder and almost no cars that we felt pretty safe, it was just pretty painful to walk on concrete again for so long! From there we turned away from the highways and into the valleys, fields, and mountains between Islares (another pueblo) and Laredo, which was now only about 22km away- easy peasy, right? WRONG. It was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but O.M.G. it was so painful to constantly be walking up and down hills (more than mountains, we actually climbed almost 245m) on uneven concrete and then dirt paths, and eventually we turned out of civilization altogether and walked through a eucalyptus forest and then beautiful but deserted valley (think full of animals and pastures but lacking a single human being) for the next 12km or so.
This was definitely the hardest part of the trip because we literally couldn't stop anywhere for help/rest/a lift because there was no one around for MILES, but it was also my second favorite part because we were only a few km away from the nearest town and yet it felt like we were discovering a whole new part of Spain, completely alone on a small dirt path that was barely big enough for a small car (or passing tractor, it happened once). In that valley we had a little picnic lunch on a close field, and it was pretty surreal- eating a PB&J (the easiest thing to make/pack) and watching some Spanish livestock under the sunny Spanish sky, with absolutely no noise except for the occasional ringing of bells around the necks of nearby goats. We could have time traveled and I wouldn't have been surprised.

We FINALLY left that valley and ended up in Liendo, a valley town that separated us from the the second mountain range we had to climb, this one much shorter but equally as far- about 11km until Laredo! At this point we were all in serious pain, Linden's toenails were about to fall off, Sarah's hips were so displaced I'm surprised she could still move her legs, and I thought (still thinking it, actually) I had a stress fracture in my right foot that was screaming in pain in every step. Luckily, once we saw that we were in the home stretch and would make it to Laredo in about 2 hours (it was almost 3 at this point), we cranked into high gear and pushed through the last bit of the trip to finally crest a small hill in an even smaller pubelo (some of these "pueblos" were really just 3 houses and a street with a real name/sign) and see the ocean, the beach, and civilization!
I say civilization here because although we had been traveling through little towns all weekend, the only signs of life we saw were the hundreds of dogs the Spaniards have- where was everybody?? Each town was like a ghost town, it was so creepy. Anyways, we walked down into Laredo and into one of the main plazas where the yellow arrows of the Camino magically led us right to our albergue (a convent this time) and even more magically, to our bus station about 1000ft away! There we stayed in Laredo after a victory meal of bocadillas and fruit until Sunday morning when we hopped on the next bus back to Bilbao and made it back home in a VERY DEPRESSING 50 MINUTES. Two days of traveling and almost 66km and we made it home before 10am. GRRRR.

But this whole trip did point out some very cool realizations for me: for starters and the most obvious to me, I couldn't believe we were able to walk on nearly the same path as millions, maybe billions of peregrinos from as far back as 1300! Oh history you are so cool you never cease to amaze me! Another cool thing about the whole weekend was that we only had a guidebook from 2004 and a pamphlet stating some albergues across northern Spain, yet we managed to walk so far with only small yellow spray painted arrows to guide us. I know the original route was a religious pilgrimage to see the body of St. James in Santiago itself (on the western coast), but I never thought I would need my own dose of faith in order to believe that there would be another arrow guiding the way to the next town and not off the cliffs into the sea or lost in the woods. There are groups (like the amigos de Santiago) who make it their mission to promote and maintain the Camino but it still amazes me that it is still so well maintained even after 700 years, even the lesser used northern route (what we did). This is done by the people of Spain who (and this brings up my final realization) not only remember and know the Camino routes and directions, but make it their mission to welcome the pilgrims they see and give them any advice they have about their journey. This happened to us the entire weekend, no matter who we stopped to ask for a quick dose of Spanish directions, they always led us in the right direction and then offered a simple piece of advice to make the Camino a bit easier. This is one of those times where I fall in love with Spain and even more so the PEOPLE of Spain once again, because we were obviously gringo/greenhorn Americans who had no clue which way was up for most of the journey, but they still loved talking to us and helping the peregrinos of the Camino stay strong and on track. Now I only wish I could have done the whole thing or at least the last 100km to Santiago, but we've already made a pack to complete before we die. So watch out Spain- these americanas will be back for more Camino!

Camino de Santiago

Hola mis companeros. I wish you all could visit me this week because so far the weather has been GORGEOUS! Sunny and mid-60s all week with only a slight breeze (as opposed to the usual 40 degrees, "ciclona" (cyclone!) winds and RAIN), so I've been spending most of my free time outdoors soaking it all up. I even got some freckles today! (Perfect to celebrate St. Patrick's Day through my Irish heritage of transparent skin, no?)

My real story today is the adventure I am starting that is the Camino de Santiago, the medieval pilgrimage route through Spain to Compostela de Santiago, where the body of St. James (Santiago en Espanol) lies in the cathedral of the city (you can probs guess its name). As much as I would love to do the entire route del norte along the northern coast of Spain, it would take me over a month and I only have 4 days. THAT SAID, this weekend we (me, Sarah, and Linden) are partaking in a small piece of the Camino puzzle from Portugalete, in the port of the river that flows to Bilbao, to Laredo, a town about 80km away. That means we'll be walking about 50 miles over the span of 3 days! It sounds tough to me but I'm excited for the challenge, especially for the parts of the camino that trace along the northern beaches!

Funny story about getting out "pasaportes de peregrino", or our Pilgrim Passports, which allow us to stay in particular albergues (hostels) for free/donations. It started when we found out there was a little bar that hosted a "Friends of the Camino" center inside, but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7-9pm. Kinda weird. Then we went to go find it, and of course it's in the shady neighborhood where, shall we say, "ladies of the night" enjoy spending their time. Awkward. Especially awkward because we couldn't actually find it at first until we asked someone for directions, and then they led us to a shady Elks-type bar literally filled with trophies, poker tables, and about 30 old men playing cards with a cigarette in one hand and a beer on the table. As it turns out, the "friends" of the Camino are really just 8 or so old men who volunteer their time explaining and guiding peregrinos about the Camino from the back room in their little bar. Surreal! So there we were, sitting at a poker player surrounded by old locals in a cloud of smoke and the guide was asking us about which routes we wanted, the albergues available, how long we were traveling, etc. It kind of felt like we were buying shady insurance under the table or something, like I said: surreal. We finally got our pasaportes and a guide book that actually describes the routes via a physical map (as opposed to the hand-drawn maps on the pasaportes or the generic "this is the Camino" map that shows the 10 or so different routes throughout all of Spain), so as of today I am finally not so worried about the route itself or finding places to sleep, but now it's the hiking that troubles me. I'm sure it will be tough at points (like the point in the route where we must climb 263m, one of the higher climbs along the entire Northern Camino), but the ocean views and great temps will probably sway any doubts I have about doing the Camino in general, and I can't wait to post some pictures of the true Spanish countryside! We've got our trail mix (haha it's actually relevant for our trail travels), our hiking shoes, our backpacks, I think we're prepared. Wish us luck!

La Rioja and Vitoria, Spain

Gah! I will take it as a good sign that my weeks are catching up to me so fast that I can barely keep updating this lil' blog more than once a week! But lucky for you readers I have plenty of fun stories about my weekend.

A quick update on my regular life here in the 'bao, we just finished "midterms", if you can call the two one-page tests we had midterms. They still required studying and reviewing of course but they were not the psycho midterms I am used to back at FU, thankfully. The fam is pretty good, Marta had a little pneumonia spell two months ago that is coming back with the communal cold the family has been sharing for a week now, so she was stuck in bed this weekend but is currently in some passionate argument with her mother about something so I think she is feeling much better already. Also, weather has been awful lately, it seems when it is beautiful here it is crappy in the states and then vice versa, so my allergies are going CrAzY right now with all of the pressure and temp adjustments even just throughout the day! Ah well, when in Rome.

Now to the weekend! It started with a lunch date out to El Churro Loco, a Mexican restaurant near the Gugg that had a pretty inexpensive menu del dia for THE BEST vegetarian burrito I've had in a while. I only bought a vegetarian burrito because I knew I would be eating a massive plate of chocolate crepes and then wine later (on the wine tour, keep reading..) so maybe I should try and eat SOME veggies during the week, right? Eh, it may have been a lost cause since I also downed a plate of nachos covered in cheese to myself. Ah well. Back to the timeline, we then booked it over to San Mames bus station to catch the 3:15pm (15:15pm lols) bus to Haro, La Rioja, one of the autonomous communities of Spain (just think of them like the states, with "counties" in some and just cities in others, oh and some are violently terrorizing the capital cities in order to have establish their autonomy as its own country, no biggie).
It was a quick ride, only about an hour or so, and the views were increibles! Once we came around the final mountain passes in La Rioja, the bodegas (vineyards) opened up and and spread across these valley/plains with the huge Pyrenees behind them- so awesome! We made it to Haro and after only a couple wrong turns found ourselves on Bodega Boulevard where there were quite a number of old and new bodegas, all with their own vineyards and brands. Our bodega was called Roda and was relatively new, but it was pretty cool because it mixed the super old school technique of oak barrels (French style, apparently) with these high-tech mashing and fermenting systems. We got to try one of the reserves, and it was decent but the best part was trying some olive oil from Mallorca, an island in Balearic Islands. It tasted like kiwi to me (other peeps said bananas), but not in a gross way, in a very light and fresh way- a bought a bottle for the rents to try with their little dipping bowls so I can't wait to give them that present!

After our tour was over we went back to the city to catch the bus back and grab a drink. I wanted to be fun and daring so I tried an "Irish coffee", and go figure it isn't made with those little "Irish Coffee" creamers or even Baileys for that matter: it was straight up espresso, cream, and Jameson ewwwww. I could barely drink half of it, but at least I can say I tried it? Ugh maybe I'll just stick with "vino tinto, por favor" from now on.
The town was so adorable, it was super tiny and had all these crazy huge egret-type birds swooping about, and making these ginormous nests on every building. It was kind of like Jurassic Park, actually, so that was neat. And then the bus back to Bilbao was nearly empty so I got to sit right behind the driver (almost creepily, at one point I was hovering directly over his left shoulder...) and watch him drive through the crazy mountain passes and European traffic. Did you know those Greyhound buses have 8 gears? 8! And they also go up to 160km an hour, which is really only like 90 mph but that's still bookin it for a bus.

After passing out early on Friday night, I woke up Saturday and went to Vitoria with Linden for a capital-city adventure. In case you didn't know, which I'm sure most of you don't because even I didn't know Euskadi (Pais Vasco) even existed before coming to Europe, Vitoria is the capital of Euskadi, which is made up of three provinces (one being Vizcaya and it's capital, Bilbao). So we thought it was necessary to see where all these Pais Vasco and ETA (nationalist party) rantings go down. It turns out Vitoria is as small, if not smaller than Bilbao, so we navigated the entire city, including a sit-down meal, in about 3.5 hours.
It was still pretty fun though, so far all of the towns we've visited are either super old in its entirety or else have a Casco Viejo (old quarter, remember?) that has buildings over 150 years old, AT LEAST. So we found that area first and checked out the famous church (under construction, kind of boring), the four towers of that church and the other three churches a few blocks away, and the medieval wall! Too bad the medieval wall is such a tourism fail because the map we had marked it down in the middle of nowhere, except possibly on top of a cat refugee camp thing. Super weird, it just had all the stray cats of Casco Viejo living in an open pit (full of medieval walls, LAME) with cat toys, little houses, etc. No comprendo.

BUT, it was still a great weekend, I've really come to enjoy taking day trips to little cities and pueblos around Bilbao instead of those big (and expensive, ka-CHING) Euro-trips to other major cities and countries. The history buff in me is loving the small towns in Northern Spain almost more than the bigger ones mostly because of the people there. Both times, in Haro and Vitoria, we got lost and needed to ask for directions (the grid pattern wasn't too big in medieval times, I guess), and BOTH TIMES a very friendly Spaniard came up to us and asked what it was we needed to know, and then actually led us in the right direction! They of course spoke no English so the entire conversation in itself was a mini-victory for my Spanish speaking skills, but it goes to show you that the people in these towns are the same people from this place, minus 300 years. They all know each other and go to the local pub to play cards or watch each other's kids, and even the stores themselves have a longer history than my own immediate family. It's great that they all seem so eager to help the blatant tourists find their way around their small towns, and it just makes me love Spain that much more. Of course, this means getting lost in NYC will be a nasty shock when I go to ask someone directions and they spit on my shoes or try and sell me a fake ID or something, but I think I'll just try to enjoy this welcoming atmosphere here as long as possible.

Weekend travels in Madrid and Segovia

Well this past weekend was the last CIDE excursion for the semester (and my life in Spain!) and we traveled by bus to Madrid and Segovia from Friday to Sunday. It was a pretty crazy trip, action-packed with history, culture, stories, new people- it was amazing! We did hit quite a few bumps along the way, but all in all it was definitely worth going and seeing the third biggest city in Europe, awesome.

Things started out rough when we were supposed to meet at the bus station at 8am and when I arrived at 7:55, I realized I didn't have my passport or even my passport copy, thus making me unable to go! Bah! Luckily, I only live about 5 blocks away from the station so I was allowed to literally sprint back to the apartment and fetch my passport (and later my camera, which I also forgot- I am the worst tourist ever). I barely made it back to the bus by 8:17, only 5 minutes or so after the departure time, with only some trouble breathing and an embarrassing walk of shame down the bus aisle upon my return. (It actually worked out in our favor because some poor kid didn't set his alarm and barely made it sprinting to the bus at a stop light to hop on, so if I wasn't an idiot he would never have been able to go! Ah fate.) The bus ride was fine, about 5 hours with a short stop somewhere along the way, I honestly had no idea where, and then we arrived to a very rainy and kind of gross Madrid! It was HUGE but still had all the old skool charm of European cities so I was instantly happy to be there. Immediately we checked into the hotels, had lunch, then were whisked away for a bus tour of the major city sights like the government buildings, Palacio Real, Plaza Mayor, etc. That afternoon we had some free time so we decided to visit the Reina Sofia and see some modern art and the Guernica mural by Picasso because we had seen it in the actual city of Guernica so it only made sense. It was alright, not my favorite but the Dalis were pretty wicked.

The next day, Saturday, we got up early and departed around 10 for Segovia, a little city about an hour outside of Madrid. It was so beautiful just driving there because we went though snowy mountains, grassy plains, sunny deserts- it was like watching Planet Earth from inside the bus!
Once we got there we started walking around the city until we came upon my new favorite sightseeing place in the world, THE AQUEDUCT. It was so much bigger than I expected and at the same time, so much smaller and more accessible to the people of the city. It didn't look a day over 2000 years old and when I finally ran up to it and hugged it/held back my tears of shear excitement, joy, and awe, I realized that it epitomized why I love history so much, and now Spain just as much.
It all got better when we went to a real castle (Alcazar) that connected to the aqueduct system and I got to stand on the top tower and see literally all of Spain at my feet. Ah I love Spain and history and the combo of them both was just overwhelming! If chorizo had been present I would have died on the spot, like my camera did from sheer beauty-overload. And a dead battery.

When we returned to Madrid for the afternoon Linden and I visited an Egyptian temple that was donated by Egypt to Spain for its help in moving the pyramids and temples away from the Nile after building a new dam. It was funny because it looked so familiar and then I realized I had seen one of its two brothers in the Met in NYC several times already! What a small world. :) Then the epic night of Madrid-outings began. It started with getting locked out of our room because somehow the lock jammed and permanently locked our door from the inside so we had to get the manager every time we wanted to go into our room, bah what a pain. Then, we decided late to go out and about and literally ending up running to the metro before it closed at 1:30am to catch the last train, only to have two girls force their way into our swipes and almost get Linden sent to jail by security. Oh boy we barely talked/paid our way out of that one, only to then get caught in one of the busiest metros I've ever seen! The entire car (and every car) was so packed they had to stop the train and force people out because it was too heavy. Then, when we suddenly realized it was our stop, we struggled to push ourselves through the crowds to exit the car when the doors squished me like a bug and did NOT budge. Between sounds of gasps and "Oh Dios mio" from the rest of the passengers, I was finally PULLED out but poor Linden was stuck on board, so she had to get off later and take a cab to our stop! Ridiculous, and we haven't even GONE out yet. To top it all off, the bars all closed at 2 (it was 2:15 at this point) so we were without bars to bar-hop to, and when we finally found a bar/discoteca that would take us, we got kicked out because those SAME GIRLS brought in outside booze and got the whole party ejected. MADRID PARTY FAIL. Needless to say, we attempted to look for another bar fruitlessly (although we did find the gay-hangout of Madrid and one girl in our party saw her first transvestite, not a complete fail!) so we headed home around 3am.

Our wake-up call was at 7:45am so that was unfortunate, especially given the exciting night before, but it was fine because everyone else seemed to have equally awesome/late nights (some went to Capital, the 7-story discoteca, and returned at 7AM!!) so we were all in the same boat. We left for the Museo del Prado and it was probs my second favorite part of Madrid- I had no idea how many famous paintings were there! What a great surprise for me! It was beautiful and tiring but we finally made it to a quick lunch at the hotel and then the 5-hour bus ride back to Bilbao, where everyone slept peacefully on the bus.

I'm a Spanish BAMF

So today I had to buy a new nose ring because the one I had in was not the best quality and the little diamond fell out, and of course I never thought to bring replacements. So I went to this tough-looking tattoo parlor near the school and ask for a new "aro de la nariz" (nose ring) and we had this 5-minute convo about rings and studs and colors and blah it was so tough! They definitely don't teach you how to say those words in Spanish classes, so it was a great feeling to walk out of there having actually shopped around/ask for advice about different nose-jewelry and not just buying whichever one I found first. I ended up getting a new sterling silver legit one so it should last a while. HOWEVER, this good feeling quickly dissolved when I got home and realized the nose ring itself was almost twice as thick as my old one, making me gauge my own nose in order to fit it- maybe this is TMI, but now I REALLY feel like a BAMF because I pretty much had to re-pierce my nose and it hurrtttttt. Oh boy at least I feel edgy or something.

Just to go over the weekend I had, Saturday was spent indoors fighting off the "code rojo" windstorm that was supposed to produce 150 km.hr winds but actually it only turned out to be around 80, which is still rough but not too bad. It was a pain though because my host family thought it'd be best to stay inside all day so I didn't get to do anything all day! But I made up for it on Sunday because the whole family went for a nice walk to Deusto where the rest of the family lives (they all live within walking distance of each other, with the exception of my family's father who lives about 20 min. away driving). There we had some pintxos, cervezas, and then a huge family lunch/dinner at 3:30 where Marta and her sister-in-law had a very heated discussion about schools and kids or something. They talk fast enough everyday anyways, so I could barely hear their arguments during that luncheon to explain what the eff was going on. These peeps are pretty passionate people (even their initial greeting goes straight to kissing on the cheek!) so their little lunch time discussions usually turn into screaming matches where everyone talks at once. Needless to say I went home early with a headache from trying to translate and comprehend 4 different Spaniards at once for 2.5 hours. At least it's been sunny and warm all week so I got to walk home the long way and enjoy some of the sights in the sun! This week is pretty exciting, too, because not only will the weather stay relatively calm, but we are going to Madrid on Friday for the weekend! I'll definitely be posting pictures and info after the trip, so look forward to it!