My girlfriend and I spent fucking ages planning this thing… We spent hundreds and hundreds online booking stuff. We did join a tour, but that wasn’t until Madrid.
5 Likes
We all have the hard time. The same with you. Good luck to all of us.
3 Likes
So I finally figured I’d get around to posting some more pics…
After disembarking from the bullet train in Madrid, where we stayed in the snazziest hotel on the trip and enjoyed the spa bath, we joined the tour in the morning. Our fellow tour-goers were like 95% 25-30yo Aussie teachers living in London, plus a couple of Kiwis and a South African, also 25-30yo teachers living in London (school holidays, obvs). IIRC there was only one other person from back home, from the other side of Melbourne in fact (the Asian girl in one of the pics). Given the narrow age bracket, it was a bit loud and inane from time to time…
We have a bike bar in the first pic, the pair of buildings are the Gates of Europe, Madrid station has turtles in that pool!
I’ll edit in some links for the stuff here later.
Madrid
Not Madrid
Granada and la Alhambra
Cordoba and the crazy Gothic/Moorish church/mosque there
Seville
9 Likes
Nigh mutually unintelligble. Okay maybe not that bad. I can speak formal Arabic, but being from the Levant I’ve have a hard time understanding pure Maghrebi dialect at times. Especially if it’s super rural.
It sounds like she has a fun task ahead of her. I wish her luck!
3 Likes
Looks like you missed the bump, that would’ve been in May or so.
2 Likes
No, you are exactly right! She went assuming/hoping the second sentence, and discovered very quickly that your first sentence hit the nail on the head.
Her French was much more helpful, but even that not so much.
She shifted her focus, and got full credit for the project anyway. And it looks like she might be back there in a year or two for a solid 3-month program, which would afford her more time to pick up at least a reasonable amount of Maghrebi ‘Arabic’.
There are so many Middle Eastern/Arabic countries right now that U.S. students are just not allowed to go to, even for formal programs. It makes things harder for those who are hoping to be part of the solution in future.
5 Likes
Actually, I’m so glad they did, because it was wonderful to go through all your fantastic photos again!
6 Likes
I guess you didn’t notice that last lot of pics was prompted by the totally random bump by the noob 
4 Likes
and the post had me completely confused too. like did it actually read the thread?
3 Likes
I’m gonna guess “No…”
3 Likes
In Portugal, our first port of call was Lagos. Pretty place. After a brief stop, we went straight on to Lisbon where we sampled the local coffee and custard tarts (both tiny but very yummy) and I was offered several varieties of drugs, scant metres from numerous cops (I think it was a scam). We hung out there for 24 hours or so, before scooting back off to Madrid for a night.
Lagos
Lisbon
The Tejo entering the Atlantic
Madrid again
Bye, Spain!
Hello Africa.
A lot of it is pretty brown
Marrakesh didn’t look too impressive at first…
8 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 314 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
