My Gravity Lyrical Dance

Hi guys! So, about a week ago I just really felt like dancing, so I recorded it! There isn't really a whole lot of choreography, but I love the song and the lyrics and message inspired me! The song is "Gravity" by Sara Barailles, and I dedicated the dance to my friend Rebecca, which you can read about in the description of the video if you like. Have a wonderful day!

Green Challenge #1 Results

Happy weekend! So, the first green challenge is now complete! I would say that I passed! Basically, the first day I showered in well under my goal time of 5 minutes, perhaps because I wasn't sure exactly how long my showers take. The other days of the week also went well. However, I personally found that the showers still felt a little rushed. Therefore, I decided to use the technique of turning the water off when I am not using it, which is essentially what I did in Spain, since the shower head was not mounted, so I would get my hair wet, turned the water off, used shampoo, and turned the water back on to rinse.  This way I could take a more leisurely shower, while only using about 2 minutes of water! I will continue doing this throughout this year!

Life is still quite hectic now, so I will wait on introducing another challenge for a little while. I realize that this semester I will have to do less blogging. Although I absolutely love it, I understand that it needs to take a backseat role when factors such as 21 credit hours and my RA job are ever-present parts of my day. Thank you again for your continued readership!

Green Challenge #1

Hello and happy Friday! This is the very first of (hopefully) 25 green challenges over the upcoming year! I am very excited!

So, for my first challenge, I will be trying to shower in 5 minutes or less every day this week. I will set a timer, and when the  5 minutes is up, I will turn the water off. I will be keeping track of how long each shower takes and trying to see how short of a shower I can take to minimize my water consumption. In addition, I will be researching more information about water consumption in our daily lives and ways to reduce it, which I will be sharing in the conclusion of this challenge.

Have a wonderful weekend!

More quotes and update!

Hello friends!  I know it has been a few day!  I forgot how busy RA training is! However, here are a couple quotes you might enjoy!

Las Alpujarras Mountains just outside Granada, Spain

The Magic Fountain in Barcelona, Spain

This upcoming semester I will be doing weekly green challenges, during which I learn something new about how to live more sustainably, or something that I know is good for the environment that I am not yet doing well enough. I do try to be as green as possible already, so I am excited to push my limits! I will start the challenges on Friday with a short post highlighting what I will be doing, along with goals and expectations. I will then write a post when I complete the challenge and share my "findings". So, I am excited to try some new things! Have a great night!

Travel Quotes

Hello! The other day I was looking up travel quotes, and decided it would be cool to share some of them with pictures I took in Spain or Italy in the background! Enjoy!

From Rome, Italy at the Roman Forum

From Venice, Italy, walking towards San Marco Square

From Barcelona, Spain, at a park near the 1992 Olympic park

From Ronda, Spain in the Plaza Del Toros

No Bake Nutella Oatmeal Cookies

No bake chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies have always been a favorite of mine. Especially with all of their gooey, chocolatey, peanut buttery goodness! While I love them when they are chilled in cookie form, my favorite way of eating them is with a spoon when they are warm and gooey! So good! And incorporating Nutella was certainly something I was excited about trying!

This recipe is incredibly easy, and I feel like good pass as a pretty healthy treat!

Makes 1 batch, whatever that means to you. It depends on how much you eat with a spoon. Or maybe that's just me... :)

Ingredients: 

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup milk

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1/4 cup peanut butter or other nut butter of choice

3/4 cup Nutella

2 cups oats

Melt butter in a saucepan on low to medium heat. Add sugar, cocoa powder, and milk. Stir in the peanut butter and Nutella, and add the oats last after the peanut butter and Nutella have melted. Once everything is evenly mixed, form into balls and put them on waxed paper to refrigerate. Or, embrace their gooey deliciousness, it's up to you!

Have a delightful Friday/weekend! You deserve it!

One Crust Blueberry Pie

One of the things I love most about summer is fresh fruit! It seems like so many wonderful things are in season and so delicious! Blueberries, peaches, watermelon, and cherries are all some of my summer favorites! And when we purchased lots of blueberries from Trader Joe's, I jumped at the opportunity to make a pie! However, I wanted to make a pie that was very wholesome, delicious, and even healthy! And it was all of those things! It is a little different from your typical blueberry pie, since there is only one crust, which is composed of whole wheat flour and canola oil instead of white flour and butter. Also, the filling is essentially just blueberries, along with a little flour, sugar, and cinnamon. And it was soooo good!! And easier than I expected too, so that was a nice surprise! It took less than 15 minutes to prepare.  I guess the saying "easy as pie" rings true! :)

Makes 1 pie (8 inch)
Ingredients:

for the crust:
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon salt if you're into that (I'm not haha)
2-3 tablespoons cold water

for the filling:
3 cups fresh blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter or margarine

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

To make the crust, mix the flour, canola oil, and water together until all of the flour is moist. Add more oil if it seems dry. Then, mold the dough into the pan you will use to bake it in the shape/thickness that you want it. You could get fancy if you want, but I kept it basic.

To make the filling, mix the flour, sugar, and cinnamon, and then add the blueberries. After everything is mixed together, pour the filling into your prepared pie crust. Put a little butter or margarine on various locations on the top and bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the crust browns and the juices start bubbling.

And enjoy! :)

Madrid and the Conclusion of the 10 Day Adventure

This is already the last post of the 10 day adventure! I can't believe it!

We flew to Madrid from Rome and arrived at our hostel at around 5pm. The Madrid Metro system was very easy to navigate, and once we exited at the Puerta Del Sol exit, we only had a 3 minute walk to our hostel! Since it was a very full day of travel and we had such busy days in Italy, we definitely took it a litter easier in Madrid, which was the perfect city to end our program with. The entire city center is very much in walking distance, and while it is known for it's art museums and a few other main attractions, much of Madrid's charm came from plazas, the architecture, and more general things we experienced from walking around! It also felt so great to be able to speak regular Spanish again!

 This statue is of Miguel Cervantes, the author of Don Quijote.

 This post office could be confused as a castle in my opinion.

 La Puerta de Alcalá

Click "read more" to see the rest of the post!

Day 8: Rome

Time to move on to day 8 of the 10 day adventure! I can't believe it!  If you have not yet read about Day 1 in Rome, click here! This post covers our second day in Rome, which was also delightful and busy!

When we woke up, we were all so sweaty. It was even hotter than Granada, and again without air conditioning or fans. Plus, since we were planning to visit The Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica, we needed to cover our knees and shoulders. However, we thoroughly enjoyed our organic breakfast that the owner of the Eco B&B made for us, which included freshly baked coffee cakes and sweet bread, organic yogurt with granola, fresh fruit, hard boiled eggs, orange juice, and tea or coffee.  Breakfast of CHAMPIONS!

We started with our morning walk across the river and past the horse farm to get to the Metro station.

We began with two different museums of Roman history! I definitely loved all of the statues and columns and classical art that we saw! I was also happy that I was able to take many pictures, and the museum wasn't very crowded. We actually ended up here because we purchased the Roma Pass. If any of you wish to travel to Rome, I highly recommend looking into this pass. If I remember correctly, it cost us 30 euro, but for 3 days offered unlimited transportation (bus, Metro, tram), free admission to two museums/groups of museums, and discounts at every museum thereafter. The biggest highlight was when we used our passes to get into the Colosseum for free and bypass the gigantic line to walk right in. It was beautiful, since I think the line would have been at least 60-90 minutes long.  We also were able to get into the two Roman history museums for free, so that was awesome!

Detail from a tomb we saw

Not the original, but still very cool, especially with all of the Olympics going on right now!

This is the courtyard from the museum. So pretty!

The hallways were lined with awesome artifacts. It is amazing how much is preserved, despite the fact that all of these historical treasures are so old!

Next stop... the Vatican! My third country *technically* on my study abroad trip! Here is the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, the largest church in the world.

Our first stop, however, was in the Vatican Museums. We were a little bit on the fence about whether or not we would visit the Vatican museums, but it is definitely something I had looked forward to from the time I saw pictures of it in my old and beloved Geographica book, and it was the only way to see the Sistine Chapel! So I was very happy to see it, although it was huge and lots and lots of walking.

There was an epic courtyard we encountered very soon after entering the museum. The centerpiece was this rotating gold sphere, which happened to have a seagull on it, enjoying the ride.

The whole courtyard was very pretty!

Then, we were inside the seemingly endless museum. Each and every room seemed to have a glorious ceiling and lots of gorgeous architecture and art, along with lots of tourists. And we were allowed to take pictures! The whole place definitely had a palace like feel to it, so that was cool! Fun fact: Together, all of the Vatican Museums make up the largest museum in the world. We spent over two hours moving at a pretty good clip just to see the main parts, but there were lots of side exhibits we did not see. Also, they are sneaky to have the Sistine Chapel be the very last thing you see, so everyone passes through the main parts.  At one point, Kelley, Elle and I were so tired that we found a bench in this random contemporary art exhibit in the museum that wasn't very popular, so we gladly rested for about 10 minutes before continuing onward.

With all of the beautiful ceilings, we kept asking ourselves if we were at the Sistine Chapel, since we couldn't believe that the ceilings could get better than they were. Also, they were all very elaborate, so I was thinking about the logistics of painting such ornate designs on the ceiling, so many years ago. Crazy!

Next, we were in the famous Gallery of Maps, which I thoroughly enjoyed!

Looks legit.

This place is big... really big.

And all of sudden... BAM!!!!!  Raphael's The School of Athens! I couldn't believe it, and actually had no idea that the original was a fresco on one of the walls in the Vatican Museums! It was a huge surprise and just wonderful! I did not realize that it took up an entire wall either! It is really cool since I have studied this painting in many years of history classes, especially because of all of the historical figures and thinkers present in this work!

And finally we made it to the Sistine Chapel! I think we spent a good 20-30 minutes in that one room. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but here are some images from the internet.

It was very cool stuff. This picture is what it would have looked like had the room been empty, which it was not. It was cool to be looking at "the" Sistine Chapel, although I think I may have built it up too much in my mind beforehand. The pictures I had always seen gave me the impression that it was so massive, with small detail upon small detail. However, it was smaller than I expected, and much larger and more spread out. It was still fascinating to imagine not only how many people on this Earth have looked at the exact same ceiling that I was looking at, but also to picture "the" Michelangelo painting it between 1508 and 1512!

The cool spiral staircase we walked down on our way out!

Now we moved to St. Peter's Square.

And then we got in line to visit St. Peter's Basilica.

I love all of the natural light that's going on here!

La Pietá, completed by Michelangelo in 1499

Perhaps my favorite part of the Basilica was this timeline of all of the popes since the year 64 CE! So many popes over the course of nearly 2,000 years.

The Vatican guard, sporting U of I colors!

My attempt to get a panoramic shot of St. Peter's Square

After the Vatican, we got some pizza slices and moved on to explore some other smaller landmarks that Rome had to offer.

The Spanish Steps

That awkward moment when you don't remember what this is...

The Pantheon!! It was built by Emperor Hadrian in 126 CE.

Our day so far had been quite full of adventure, so we crossed this bridge to visit the Trastevere  neighborhood, which is home to one of the most famous pizzerias.

They were working so quickly and whipping out pizza after delicious pizza! It was an incredibly popular place!

I ordered the mushroom pizza, which was covered in so many mushrooms!! YUM YUM YUM!

And then we made it home around 12:30! Fortunately, Gelati and Mozzarella was open until 1 am, so we indulged with the best Italian gelato one last time, before heading to Madrid the next day!

And that is all for Rome! I promise my Madrid posts will be much much shorter!