This past weekend was my last weekend of traveling in Europe, I went to Madrid, Spain with a couple of my friends from Butler University and one girl from Australia. It was a trip I was sort of looking forward to because there weren't many big "must see" things there so it was more of a relax and enjoy the culture type of trip. We also knew two guys who were studying there so they told us quite a bit about what places we needed to eat and what else we should do. It was an overall nice trip where I ate quite a bit of good food and enjoyed getting to speak a lot of spanish. I was very caught off guard by the fact that the people in Madrid spoke absolutely no English. Luckily though 3 of us at least took spanish in high school and I took spanish last year at college as well. The first night we went to eat at this place call the Museo de Jamon, which directly translated is the Museum of Ham. To be honest it looked and felt like a spanish Bob Evans, they served mostly breakfast food and there were sooo many old people everywhere. The food was delicious and relatively inexpensive which was good as well. One of my other favorite places we went while in Madrid was a tapas bar called El Tigre. Now if you don't know Spain is know for many different things, one of them being Tapas. Tapas are basically free finger food when you order a drink at a bar. El Tigre was a place that was known for there tapas as well. So four of us went there and ordered a couple drinks and with that we got two heaping plates of random fried finger foods. They were absolutely delicious too! The cool thing about it too was that the cooks at the bar just made whatever they wanted and then the waiters threw some on a plate randomly and brought it to you so the food changed randomly throughout the night. The place was absolutely pack too and the way it was set up was that the only tables were like ledges along all the walls and everybody just stood. This made it very interesting for the waiters to bring the food and drinks to you but entertaining to say the least. One of my other favorite kind of experiences was in another bar where we stopped because everybody wanted to get some Sangria (which Spain is also known for). We were all chilling in the bar talking and watching soccer and I randomly starting talking to this guy in Spanish, well as good of spanish as i could and then come to find out later, He was German. He was studying in Spain and also spoke english so we then started talking in english which we were both fluent in. I just found it funny that two non-spaniards first met and spoke spanish until we discovered that we spoke a different language better haha. The other "interesting" thing about this trip which i tack up to laziness was the fact that we missed our flight home on monday. We showed up to the airport about 4pm with the thought that our flight left at 6pm. The person who had all of our tickets was meeting us at the airport because he went to Seville the day before to visit a friend he had there. Well once we got to the airport we were in for a surprise. The last flight home that night on a discount airlines was 3:40 pm, apparently our tickets said 06:00 which since we're in Europe and they're in military time means 6am. The guy who printed our tickets and such hadnt thought about that. So needless to say 24 hours later, a night in the ariport, and about 100 euros later i found myself getting off a train in Maastricht and walking straight to my class haha. Sorry if this last story is a little lack-luster i'm slightly exhausted from all the studying for finals and such. I currently only have about a week left in europe and two finals and a presentation. But as long as i can make it through next tuesday i'll be fine and can enjoy my last two days here! Hopefully all of you are having a wonderful Christmas season and Hope to see you all soon!

Much Love,

Devon Latimer

The Holiday spirit

Ok so i know that i said i would post again the next day but let me tell you so many things come up randomly here I got so busy and finally have a "day off" today but still have so much to do, but this just happens to be on that list ;). Ok so I'll start with the first Holiday that we celebrated here and that was Thanksgiving. So just to set things up we normally do these big dinners where some people from different cultures get together and make like Indian food or American food so we already have like a group of us who do that. So within this group there are a decent amount of Americans so we decided that we needed to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. So we kinda divided up the tasks and started our search for the many necessary items. The number one item being the turkey of course. We finally found a 12lb bird at some local butcher who like raised a lot of the meat that he sold so that was pretty sweet. In addition to the turkey we also made green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, steamed vegetables, and apple pies for desert. If you were to tell me before I came here that i was going to be cooking a Thanksgiving turkey and all the other things we had to bake in a German kid's oven (since we don't have one of our own in our guesthouse) I would have flipped out haha. Now the strange thing about my German friend's kitchen was that it was all gas powered. Now I understand the gas powered stove top and even oven, which i thought was pretty dangerous haha but we survived, but that was not all the sink in the kitchen was also gas powered..... If you're not sure what that means, this means that there was this big box which kinda looked like a paper towel dispenser above the faucet. Now when you turned on the hot water a small flame poofed inside of this box and was very intimidating since you could kind of see inside the box. But anyway We made it through and cooked everything to perfection and i was astonished at how good everything turned out as well. for a bunch of American kids who had never really cooked much in their live i was impressed and so were all the other kids from other cultures who Loved! our food and thanksgiving haha.
Now this next little story isn't based on a holiday but more of the giving spirit. The Saturday night in Rome that I left out from my last blog is what I'm talking about. So anyway I'm wondering around Saturday night in Rome seeing all the random sites when I stumble upon this Irish Pub with the game (Michigan vs. OSU) on and decided to watch it. It was already half time and I wanted to at least watch some of the second half because it wasn't too bad at this point. I walked in and it was pretty packed so I stood kind of by the door but still could see the half time highlights and such and then I got to talking to this guy who I could tell was a Michigan fan from the way he was cheering. We started talking and he invited me to sit and have a drink with him. So we got to talking and and watching the game, got to know each other pretty well, he got his MBA from Michigan and was living in California currently but lived three years in Italy prior so spoke fluent Italian and was now back on vacation with wife and couple colleagues. Well just as the game was wrapping up he asked me what I was up to tonight and since my friends weren't in yet i didn't really know. He then invited me to dinner with his wife and such and I accepted haha not sure what really to expect. But he picked up the tab (which i was happy about being a cheap college kid) and we starting walking towards the place where we were meeting people for dinner, all along the way he was pointing out random little things that i never would have known on my own, such as the first pub ever in Rome. But anyway we got the Pizzeria which was packed and got seats pretty quickly (it helps when you have someone who speaks fluent Italian haha), we sat down in this small hole in the wall place which was completely packed with Italians and Jay started to just order a bunch of stuff in Italian. We ate some traditional Italian appetizers one of which a deep fried pumpkin leaf with an anchovy flavoring which was delicious and other stuff. Then came the pizza. I got a cheese and honey baked ham pizza which was AMAZING! the crust was so buttery and the cheese and ham were sooo good. Then on top of that when i was stuffed already he ordered some dessert for us all to share, Tiramasu, Lemon sorbet, and some baked cream with fruit on top. This food and atmosphere was almost too much for me, i actually felt like an Italian it was crazy. Now once the bill came as you may have guessed, he looked at me and said, "Devon now here is the deal, when you get older and you are traveling for business or whatever I want you to pass this on. Remember it's not about the money but the experience you can give them". Then as we got out of there he just shook my hand and we headed in separate directions, such an amazing time that i was soo beyond blessed to experience.
Ok I know this is getting long and i debated actually blogging about this but it's worth it and really pretty funny. So after Thanksgiving as you all know is Christmas and the entire month of December getting in to the Christmas spirit. Now there are two guys here, from Indiana actually, I've gotten to know pretty well and i hang out with them a lot and we decided a long time ago that we needed to decorate for Christmas and originally we thought just paper snowflakes and such. But then one day before we left for this Christmas festival a couple towns over I saw this small pine tree out behind our dorm through the hallway window and I looked at them and said that we needed a Christmas tree. Long story short, we got back from the Christmas markets that night and found ourselves out back in the wooded area with large cerated kitchen knives sawing at this nearly six foot Christmas tree. We then proceeded to sneak it in the window of our friends room which was on that side and move it over to our room. It is now currently sitting in a large cup of water in a trash can to support it. We decorated it with the most random colorful items which we found around our rooms haha. So yea, um.... Christmas! and now as i am typing this it is snowing outside!

Much Love and Merry Christmas!

Devon Latimer

Travels

I cannot even do justice in explaining how cool Italy was first off. Prior to coming to Europe there were only a handful of places I knew i would have liked to visit and Rome was one of them so I had been looking forward to this trip for a while. I got there about 3pm on saturday afternoon and was picked up from the airport by a friend who showed me where to get a map and a public transportation ticket. She then had to go work on a paper for a class so I was off on my own. I was not really sure what to do first but then thought about what i may end up doing with the group of friends who were coming later that night. So I set off first to see the Spanish Stairs which I did not know much about but they were really cool, not sure the history behind them along with a lot of the other stuff but will definitely look in to it in the future. Those were really sweet and after some pictures and an amazing slice of pizza folded into a sandwhich i was off to look for the Trevi Fountain. The Trevi fountain was one of my favorite things in Rome and I'm not sure why, I had no idea what it looked like prior to going and no idea how immense it really was. I was in awe when I saw it because there was so much design and like there was basically an entire buidling side dedicated solely to this fountain. I also enjoyed the overwhelming sound of rushing water from the waterfall in the middle of the fountain and just the general joyous attitude around the fountain while people were tossing coins and making wishes. I then wondered around randomly map in hand constantly stopping to take pictures of random things that I had absolutely no idea what they were but they were all unlike anything i had ever seen in my life. It was seriously like the stuff you see in text books but like i was seeing it in person. Even things like this mall i strolled into randomly had huge pillars outside and like huge ceilings with very intricate designs. The next big stop i made for the night was the Pantheon. This was one of the things that I knew was in Rome and was pretty excited to see but not sure why haha. When I got there i was a little dissapointed because they had scaffolding put up on half of it which is something that is really beggining to annoy me because there is construction on everything in Europe like almost all the monuments or big buildings are all being worked on, so annoying but oh well. Besides that it still did really make me stop and think about how this is the building i've seen in movies and in textbooks my whole life and seeing the words on the front of it was soo cool, that was really what did it for me, just made it kind of surreal. The inside of the Pantheon was also really sweet even though i really had never heard much about the insides or seen anything about it. It was now a type of church/holy place with an alter and paintings and sculptures all around. After I left the pantheon I did quite a bit of wandering around again, seeing random plazzas and fountains and buildings highlighted on the map which were all spectactular. Until I randomly stumbled upon this irish pub named "Scholars" which only looked familiar because my friend who is studying there told me about it and how that is where they went to watch American sports. Since it was saturday and I was well aware that the Michigan vs. Ohio State game was on I decided to stroll in and watch the remainder of the game. Now my night from that point on was an amazing experience where the only thing really bad was the outcome of the game haha. I will definitely blog about that tomorrow I hope which is a whole other story in itself. But skipping that. We come to Sunday Morning after I met my friends and we stayed the night in our hostel we made our way to another country, the Vatican. We made it there around ten or so due to some of the kids not wanting to get out of bed so early (actually not me). Once we go there we wandered around the area for quite some time and my italian roommate had informed me that the Pope spoke every sunday at noon so we waited around until sure enough he popped his head out of a window and did some readings and addressed the people in the square, which was absolutely packed, in about 7 different languages blessing them all and thanking them for stopping by. I did not get a chance to get into the sistine chapel because there was about a 4 hour wait and needed to make it to the colleseum by 2 because it closed around 3. Sure enough though we caught the metro and made it there in time. It costs about 12 euros to get in but was definitely worth it. This was another one of those things that you see so many pictures of it and read about but i was actually there and walking around in places where some really crazy things used to occur. I walked around reading as much as I could and it still amazed me at some of the stuff that went on there. The Colleseum itself was so massive too. Like i know it was supposed to be big but wow. It's crazy to think that it was built so long ago before they had any modern technology or machines to assist them really. The other thing about Rome and italy in general was the food. The best part about it though was that even though it was amazing, it was also cheap compared to other places. The pizza there was incredible by far the best pizza i have ever eaten in my life and the gelatos were equally amazing. I did not get too much pasta while there but the pasta I did get was good. Monday morning we got up at 5 am and caught a 4 hour train to Florence at 6. Once we got there everyone was in a good mood and just having a great time i think it was the lack of sleep but everyone was very chipper, more so than usual haha. Florence was just one of those cities which was really cool, kind of like Bruges. Florence had a little more to offer than Bruges but it was equally as pretty of a city. There was a huge church there and so much artwork everywhere. Random fountains and more sculptures than I had ever seen in my life. We did eventually find the museum where the famous statue of David was held but for some insane reason it was closed on Mondays. We were a little upset by that but after wandering a little more we did find a replica which was the same exact size of the real one and was an exact replica so I guess i was pretty satisfied with that. It would have been neat to see the real one but hey you win some you lose some. That night after a little shopping around an a nap we decided to chill at a little pub nearby and get a drink. We asked the place what was good and this guy reccomended a shandy if we had never had one before so me and a couple other guys decided to get a pint of shandy which turned out to be half lager half lemonade and all good (haha lame i know). But anyway that was a nice time where we had a drink and caught the second half of the Barcelona vs. Real Madrid game. The next morning i caught another 6 am train back to Rome where there were some sort of riots going on in the streets which didnt totally surprise me because my friend who studied there was telling me about them. It was mainly a bunch of people marching down the streets chanting in italian which was rather cool at first but come to find out later they were protesting the government and something with public transportation, not good for me who decided to hop on the metro take it a few stops over and see a couple more things before having to catch my plane home. I ended up having to walk close to 2 1/2 miles back to catch a bus to the airport which was also delayed due to the increased traffic fromt the halt of public transportation. Long story short after about 12 hours of public transportation that day i made it back to Maastricht and returned to some white powdery stuff on the ground which was a really nice surprise!
I will post pictures within a couple of days on Facebook from the adventure and as usual if you have any questions feel free to ask because i had to condense some of the story and also as i said i will blog again soon about some of the other things going on here!

Much Love,

Devon Latimer