Segovia

Saturday I took a trip to Segovia, a city about 2 hours away that is famous for its beautiful castle among other things. This is the Roman aqueduct, built by the romans (appropriately) when they had a city here long long ago. It was huge! Look at the tiny people below and you get an idea. I think it was 100 feet tall in some spots. And they built it all without mortar, just fitting the rocks together perfectly, and it is still standing there today.

This is the cathedral and plaza mayor in Segovia. Very beautiful!

This is the castle in Segovia call the Alcazar. It was very pretty like a fairy tale castle. There was a tower there that of course I had to go up also and take pictures. It was a very nice city and a fun trip.

As far as work goes, I am still working in the outpatient part of the pharmacy. There are lots of other pharmacy students working there, and every morning they go to the cafeteria once or twice to sit and talk, have coffee and breakfast, etc, and they invite me to go with them. It is a very relaxed atmosphere, as opposed to hopsitals in the US. I like it!

Ahh Spain...

Once again I refer you to my facebook page for more pictures of Salamanca. I find it alot more complicated to put pictures on here, so I'll just post a few along with some of my witty (or not) commentary :)

So these first are pictures of my room at the residence. It is very clean, and farily large.

People come by to clean the room every day and I get free breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Overall a very nice setup. The only bad part is there is no air conditioning, we are on the 3rd floor, and it is so HOT. Almost as hot as Utah... I had to buy a little room fan yesterday.

OK I just had to post this picture of the bathroom and the bidet- is that what you call it? It seems so European :) I must say I do not understand how you are supposed to use those things, or WHY you would, for that matter. I didn't include a picture of the shower but it is tiny... I can't really bend over in it, so it is quite an adventure to try to shave my legs.

This is the inside of the huge cathedral. I found out you can take a tour of the cathedral towers and for some reason I just love to climb to the top of things! I love to get the view over the city, so of course I had to do it. Part of the tour went across this stone balcony inside the cathedral, it was really cool to look down on everything.

This is looking from the top of the cathedral down towards the plaza mayor. It was so pretty!

Today I started working at the hospital pharmacy department. For the next week I will be in the outpatient department where they dispense medications for things like HIV, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, etc. The people there are very nice , and I certainly can't complain about the schedule (9 to 3). It is very interesting because they have socialized health care here, so people just come and pick up the medicine, there is no insurance or charges to worry about. It definitely has its positive and negatives sides, but I won't get into that :).

Salamanca!

Last night after a 2 hour bus ride I made it to Salamanca! This is a picture of the student housing, my home for the next month. It is quite nice. I am going to share a room with a girl from Germany who is also part of the pharmacy exchange program.

This morning I took a walk around the city. This is a typical street in this very clean and beautiful city.

I found out the old part of the city is not far at all from where I was staying. It was only about a 10 minute walk and I was in the midst of narrow mideval looking streets.

Here is the Plaza Mayor- did anyone see the movie Vantage Point? It was filmed there. Look out! There is an assasin in that window! :)

Stinky French Airport

Yesterday I made the four-part trip to my temporary home here in Spain. It was the longest trip EVER! But, I saved alot of money doing it this way. But I still want to complain about it! Early yesterday morning I flew to Houston, where I enjoyed a 7 hour layover (actually it wasn´t that bad), then I flew to Paris overnight.
The worst part of the trip was the Paris airport! It did not leave me with a good taste in my mouth for France, but I will try not to judge until I see the actual country. I really wished I could speak French, because everyone just speaks French to you and thinks you will understand. I had to transfer to another airline and my flight to Madrid was 5 hours later. I asked a lady at the information desk how to get to the check in for the other airline. She said something like¨"2B, go up" in a very annoyed tone of voice. I said "take the elevator up?" to which she nodded yes and then turned to continue looking at her computer. So I tried to get on the elevator but for some reason only down elevators kept coming! Finally I just got on one and figured I would take it down and then up. I selected the top possible floor and rode back up to find... I was back on the same floor where I started! Luckily after wandering around a bit then standing in line for 2 hours I was able to check in. I guess the French don´t believe in air conditioning... or fans... or any kind of deoderant... I was very relieved to get to Spain!

New York City!

Last week by a combination of luck and good timing I got to go with my friend Elizabeth to New York City!! It was a great trip. We stayed with Elizabeth's friend Sarah who lives in Manhattan and spent five days walking around the city and eating all kinds of delicious things. Basically I fell in love with New York, and I have never thought of myself as a big city person. But now I am seriously considering the city as an option to move after I graduate next year. Here I am in central park.

This is the view from the top of the Rockafeller Center.

We went to see this broadway show called Cry Baby. It was kind of like Grease, but set in the 1950's and really funny.

This is just one example of the delicious food we ate. New York has EVERYTHING! As you can imagine, this was one of my favorite things about New York :) This is a sundae I got at Serendipity (like in the movie!). It was fabulous.

Me and Elizabeth by the world. I'll put more pictures up on my facebook if you want to see!

My Work Without Pay

Behold, this is the Kolff Dialysis Center where I am doing my first rotation! I am working with a pharmacist here and basically we go to talk to the patients while they are having dialysis and go over their medications with them, then we make sure that there aren't any problems with the doses or if they need any additional medications, and we make notes of that in their chart. I also have to do research and read alot of scientific papers and do presentations. It is pretty fun though, I like it. It is fun to actually be doing something with all the information I've learned. The only bad part is that dialysis involves alot of blood and needles, and you know how I hate blood and needles!! (For anyone who doesn't know, I tend to pass out easily at the sight). The first time I talked to a patient hooked up to the machine it grossed me out... but luckily I haven't passed out yet.

Wahooooooo

Ha ha! I think I just beat out Alvey's record for longest time not updating the blog... sorry! I do have some new pictures- these are of a trip I took with my dad down to Moab a couple of weeks ago during my free week between the end of classes and starting my pharmacy rotations. We had a great time on the Slickrock "practice" trail. This picture is of me about to do a faceplant into the sand.... just kidding, luckily I didn't --though I almost did.

Fun times with the Iverson's

This week I got to hang out with an old mission friend, Melanie. We were never actually companions but we shared a house and helped keep each other sane :) We went up skiing at the Canyons with her husband and his brother last friday. Then this tuesday we went to a climbing gym where she is a member. It was really fun- they are very adventurous, even the baby (Hattie) loves going to the climbing gym and the ski resort!

Ahh the dream...

This is where I should be pretty soon, if things had all worked out as planned... I actually had a goal when I was a kid to be the first women on Mars, and since we were supposedly going to have people on Mars by 2008, I thought that would work out perfectly! Maybe they need pharmacy astronauts... :)

Snowboarding Day at the Canyons!

I skipped out on class today (wahoo!) and went snowboarding with my sister, Erin. It was a fabulous day, sunny and warm even, we had to unzip our jackets. We had a good time. I just love the snowy mountains and the evergreens and the powder when you just kind of float over it. We wanted to go off some jumps too, but the place where they usually have the "baby" jumps, which are the only ones I dare to go off, was closed! And we didn't dare to go off the really big snowboard park jumps, even though we considered it. So no cool jumping pictures, unfortunately.

A New Indiana Jones!

Hey is anyone else as excited as me that the new Indiana Jones movie is coming out in May?? Its SOO about time. And Harrison Ford is still sexy :)

Mt. Ranier

Well unfortunately I haven't done anything fun lately so I thought I'd post some pictures of an adventure I had a while back. Me and my dad went to climb Mt. Ranier and it was cool but it was amazingly difficult. It sure was pretty to look out over the clouds as the sun came up though. But we started climbing at 3:00 in the morning and went up and up and up.... it was so steep and tiring, and my glove got blown off into a crevasse. You can see from the picture that it was steep and icy, it was scary to think that if you slipped you would slide all the way down and maybe into a crevasse! But we survived OK. I learned from that experience that don't want to be a mountaineer and try to climb Mt Everest. But it was an adventure!

Babies are cute

Here's my friend Alvey's baby Lily and her future husband, Dezi's baby Peyton (I hope I spelled that right! :))

"Britta in Real Life"

SORRY! So sorry everybody... school started and I sort of got extremely busy. I thought I would put a picture up of what my real life is like, just in case you got the idea that my life is really exciting or something. This is where I spend all my time, exept when I'm at class or at work. But I'm doing homework usually, not updating my blog (sorry!).

Hey and if anyone hasn't seen "Dan in Real Life" I would highly recommend it! Good movie!

Gorditos!

OK I wasn't going to put any pictures of me from my mission up because I was so chubby! And I'm embarrased. But this picture made me laugh because we are all so chubby! This is me and my parents with my favorite Chilenos, la familia Varela :) Me, my mom, my friend Andrea, her mom and sister, we were all chubby compared to now. Thank goodness we've changed for the better!

Chile Chile lindo

I miss my Chile!!! It is so beautiful... I am feeling very nostalgic for Chile lately.

HORRAY FOR SNOW!!!

Well after all the anti-winter comments that were inspired by my last picture I thought some good winter pictures were in order. Snow is awesome! Even if you don't like skiing or snowboarding, there is always snowball fights or building igloos or forts. What about sledding or tubing! Winter is great! I think so anyways... Hey that is really me jumping -how cool am I?! :)

Ahh... the beach

Well, school started this week again. Sigh....

So I thought it would be a good time to remember the sun and the beach. This picture is from when I went to California with my friends Elizabeth and Amanda in August '07. We stayed at this SWEET hotel in Santa Monica, that is the hotel behind me. It was literally on the beach. We were living the good life there, it was an expensive place (Elizabeths parents got us a good deal through their time share) for example parking alone was $30 per night. Once we tried to borrow beach chairs-- oh wait-- they cost $30 per HOUR. I could buy a beach chair for $30!! It was a fun trip though!

Rappelling

Here is my mom rappelling at Lone Rock. I like this picture because of her face- check it out she is like "Ahhhh!" :) But she is really brave and she went down fine. The guy there is Erin's boyfriend, Chris.

Sisters!

Look how cute we are! :) Well, Erin is pretty cute. This was over thanksgiving when we went with my familiy to a place called Lone Rock out by Tooele ( I hope I spelled that right I never do!). We went out to do some rappelling but we found this cave up on the mountain. At first we were scared to go in it because we thought there would be a mountain lion, but then we went in together and there wasn't one really.