prior to departure

I leave on the 31st from Salt Lake, so Wes, Dad, and I are going to go down early so we can spend the day prior to departure skiing Alta! Should be lots of fun.

For the first week, my roommate Liz Ackley and I will be visiting Paris! She was also my roommate last term, and we were lucky enough to be put with the same host family while we're in Sevilla. She's great; from Mass, right outside of Boston, and she has good life habits....goes to bed early, eats healthy, A+ student, exercises regularly...... I always get the good roomies :-) Hopefully some of that will start to wear off on me.

Another plus to being friends with her: her dad has good connections. He knows a woman who owns a place right in Paris that she usually rents out, but which she's offering to us for free! This is the place: http://www.vrbo.com/186925 . I guess she also has a villa in the south of France that she said we could stay at the end of our trip, when we finish up with classes in March. We still have to decide where we're traveling to for that last free week...any suggestions? We think Greece might be fun.

This woman also arranged for an American family in Paris with four daughters to pick Liz and I up to the airport, so we don't have to worry about that. They're going to show us around the city.

Then on Jan seventh is when we go and meet up with our Union classmates in Sevilla! Only one boy, and I think nineteen girls. Classes start on the eleventh...hopefully my Spanish is up to par.

This is the home of the host family where Liz and I are living, it's the pink house: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=calle+alfonso+xii&daddr=calle+harinas,+seville&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=37.386869,-5.995672&sspn=0.006854,0.013368&g=calle+harinas,+seville&ie=UTF8&ll=37.392968,-5.998471&spn=0,359.999164&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=37.392968,-5.998471&panoid=c4KuvzHEg7n7KiQhBTqSJg&cbp=12,1.87,,0,-5.44

More to come soon, I'm sure.