"The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it." -George Kimble

Sierra Nevada Skiing Trips

Since we've been back from Christmas, we've taken a couple ski trips (January 22nd & February 11th) to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It's such an easy trip that it's possible to ski the whole mountain in one day, and get back home to Lucena, or have a night out in Granada. It's only 45 minutes from Granada on the bus! The Sierra Nevada National Park is the largest national park in all of Spain. Here's a video collage of both trips.



1st Trip - January 22: Reid Owens, George Hicks, and Steven left from Granada in the morning at 8am and skied until the lifts closed around 4:30pm. Here's the slideshow from the 1st trip:



2nd Trip - February 11th: For this trip, we decided to save as much money as possible (as always) and wake up very early in Lucena and travel by car to the Sierra Nevada. Our awesome friend from Lucena was nice enough to drive a group of us to the mountains and we had a wonderful day of skiing. We couldn't have asked for more perfect weather. This ski trip included Carmen, Jose, Stephen Zewe, Alan, and Steven. Here's the slideshow from the 2nd trip:



Morocco, Africa with DiscoverSevilla

As you may recall, we traveled to Lagos, Portugal in September around the time of my birthday with a company called DiscoverSevilla. Through the trip to Lagos and living in Sevilla, we've made some really good friends that work with the company. They apparently "got a good vibe" from Alan and I and we've been asked to help out on some of their trips this Spring. So for February 25th-27th, Alan and I were asked to be tour guides for about 200 American students going to Morocco, Africa. Not only does that opportunity include traveling with a great group of people, but we didn't have to pay an insane amount to travel to Africa. Not many people can say they've been to Africa...for free. It was certainly a wake-up call being exposed to their culture differences. A completely different culture that makes you really appreciate what we have in the USA. However, it's incredible the way these folks operate on a daily basis.

We split up into 2 groups - one group of students stayed in Tanger, Morocco and the other group stayed in M'diq, Morocco. Both of our hotels were on the beach and had spectacular views. We rode camels on the beach, and toured a different city each day. The cities we toured were Tetouan and Chefchaouen. Take a look at our video and slideshow to see these places for yourself. Incredible experience.





Carnivales de Cadiz

The week of March 5th-13th, its seems that almost every city/town in Spain has their carnival. Although Cadiz is known to have the biggest carnival in all of Spain and is actually considered the 3rd biggest party of year in Europe - per some website ;) We actually got another call from our friends at DiscoverSevilla and they were taking 650 students to the Carnival! Alan and I were asked to be tour guides again, and we each had to control our own bus of 55 students - which isn't that easy considering that most everyone was "preparing" for the 3rd biggest party of the year. It's a carnival where everyone dresses up...and if you're not dressed up, well, then you are completely out of place.

Our responsibility through the night was to introduce yourself and thank everyone for coming with DiscoverSevilla. We had to explain the schedule for the night - arrival & departure times. Make sure that all 55 of our students were accounted for at the end of the night. And perhaps the most difficult part, we had to judge the 3 top costumes on our bus. 1st prize got a free trip with DS, 2nd prize for a free bottle of Vodka, and 3rd prize got a free DS t-shirt.

Alan and I had no idea what we were going to wear until the day before we left. We asked one of the professors at my school where we could find some costume ideas. Lucky for us, the first store we visited had something we thought would be pretty funny. "Sexy Abuela" or in English "Sexy Grandmother". We both bought this costume and went to the party as sexy old women. These costumes were quite detailed as you can see in the pictures (You've been warned!)

**At the end of the slideshow, there are two video clips. Click on them and it will take you to a new screen to view the videos.
1) Alan and I trying to imitate two old women struggling to walk down the sidewalk. HA! Pretty funny...at least to me.
2) An overhead video clip of the Carnival in Cadiz. It really puts the party and number of people in perspective.